BY JIM ALTENBERG
SAN FRANCISCO - More than 500 people joined Itamys García
Villar and Luis Ernesto Morejón at meetings on three
northern California campuses to discuss the Cuban revolution
and the situation of youth in Cuba today.
García, 27, is a veterinarian and leader of the Federation of University Students. Morejón, 23, is a professor at the Enrique Jose Varona Teacher Training Institute. Both are members of the Union of Young Communists. They spoke at the City College of San Francisco and San Francisco State University, as well as the University of California at Santa Cruz, as part of a national speaking tour of colleges and universities.
"Our purpose is to have an open exchange of ideas with people whose voices are not often heard," Viridiana Vázquez told 180 participants at San Francisco State as she opened the April 22 meeting. Vázquez and Melissa Murga, both on the San Francisco Student Committee on Youth and Education, co- chaired the event. University president Robert Corrigan and Felix Kury, speaking on behalf of the La Raza Studies program and College of Ethnic Studies department, also welcomed the Cubans to the campus.
After hearing presentations by both García and Morejón at San Francisco State, a student there, who said she was Cuban, demanded to know why "everything was based on dollars" in Cuba.
"The revolution has gone on 40 years," said another. "What good is it if the economy is stagnant?"
At the beginning of the 1990s, García explained, with the collapse of the "socialist bloc, the region of the world with which we had the most exchange," Cuba lost 85 percent of all of its trade. "The U.S. government saw this as an opportunity to finish off Cuba," she said. "They strengthened the blockade. Washington proclaimed the imminent end of the Cuban revolution."
Under these circumstances, "precisely to defend the revolution's gains, the decision was made to open up to foreign exchange. It was not an arbitrary decision of the government. It was debated inside Cuba for a year. Through foreign exchange earned by tourism, the economy has been revitalized."
Morejón reminded participants Cuba remains an underdeveloped country. Because of the gains of the revolution, Cuban workers and farmers enjoy living standards far higher than what is available to the vast majority of people in the underdeveloped countries. "Within the Third World we are privileged," he said. "The whole world is in a special period," referring to the term used in Cuba to describe its economic crisis of the 1990s.
García pointed out that the Cuban leadership "knew that decriminalization of possession of foreign exchange would have a price. There is social differentiation. We're trying to make sure that every Cuban still has what the revolution was fought for."
"How are youth looking at the future in Cuba?" asked a student at City College, where 80 people heard the Cuban youth.
"Of course it is today's youth who will be primary actors in the new millennium," replied García. "It is our responsibility that the country overcome our difficulties."
Morejón added that Cuban students are represented in the national parliament through seats reserved for members of the federations of university and high school students.
An extended, at times sharp, debate over the extent of democratic and political rights in Cuba took place at the meeting at UC Santa Cruz. One person, who identified himself as Cuban and a former member of the Union of Young Communists, began by claiming he had suffered at the hands of the Cuban police and that no one in his old neighborhood had any rights.
Among the 240 people attending the meeting were a handful of right wingers, who pressed to turn the discussion into a debate between the speakers and this individual, whose commentary soon degenerated into screaming and shouting. They were able to win the backing of some liberal forces in the crowd, who echoed the idea that the disrupter should get a "fair" hearing for his views.
All these efforts to prevent a civil discussion from taking place proved unsuccessful, however. The meeting proceeded for well over an hour without incident. As it drew to a close, the rightist opponent of the Cuban revolution and his supporters stood outside bellowing insults and claiming that they had been not been allowed their say.
García and Morejón's San Francisco tour was capped by a send-off reception April 24 hosted by New College professor Febe Portillo. Sixty people attended, including tour activists and young people who learned of the event at the demonstration to free Mumia Abu-Jamal held earlier in the day.