Hernández, other panelists at the event — Oscar Pino Santos, Alfredo Menéndez, and César García del Pino — as well as several people in the audience, were among those who argued for, drafted, and waged the fight to implement the law four decades ago.

Immediately following Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro's May 17, 1959, speech at La Plata in the Sierra Maestra mountains, where he announced the agrarian reform and signed it into law, a commission was formed headed by Hernández. Working out of the Havana Province headquarters of the July 26 Movement, its task was to publicize the law and "organize Cuban working people to become knowledgeable of our economic reality, and therefore of the fairness of the agrarian reform." The commission was also charged with mobilizing peasants and workers throughout the country in support of the measure building towards a mass rally in Havana on July 26, the anniversary of the opening of the revolutionary struggle against the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1953.

Cadres of the Rebel Army and July 26 Movement were central in leading the implementation of the agrarian reform and other revolutionary measures at the time. Under Castro's leadership they had led toilers in Cuba through a revolutionary war that had culminated six months earlier in the overthrow of the dictatorship. Rebel Army captains Pablo Rivalta, Rafael Garrido, and José Ramón Cartaya were assigned to work with Hernández and others to lead the educational tasks as well as the mobilization efforts behind the agrarian reform. They involved in the work other political forces supporting the revolution, including cadres from the Popular Socialist Party and the Revolutionary Directorate.

The First National Forum on the Agrarian Reform became a vehicle to win broad political understanding and support for the law. Nightly, for two weeks in a nationally televised debate, leaders of the revolution joined issue with opponents of the decree, clarifying and advancing the raging debates taking place in the country as a whole. Simultaneously, under the guidance of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA), the first land seizures were taking place across the island, backed by the Rebel Army and organized groups of peasants and workers.

Commander of the Revolution Raúl Castro gave the opening address at the forum on June 28, 1959. "Our country's independence will never be complete if it doesn't rest on economic freedom," declared Castro. "And without agrarian reform there will be no economic independence in our country, nor will there be industrial development or social welfare either."

In his presentation to the forum on another evening, Rebel Army captain Antonio Núñez Jiménez, director of INRA, described the specifics of how the law was going to be applied. Each night, the forum opened with a presentation on a key aspect of the agrarian law. Individuals representing the full range of class interests then joined the debate. Fidel Castro gave the closing speech July 12.

Spokespersons from nearly 80 institutions took part in the proceedings, including 28 government entities and 17 organizations representing landowners, ranchers, and the chamber of commerce. Five peasants' associations, six trade unions, six political organizations speaking for a range of class interests, and guests from 18 countries participated. The debates were televised live. The sessions were scheduled to begin at 10 p.m. because the TV stations, which were still in private hands, only agreed to broadcast them following their prime-time programming.

Speaking at the seminar commemorating the 40th anniversary of the forum, Hernández explained that the revolutionary leadership had been deeply marked by the profound effect Law no. 3 of the Sierra Maestra had on both peasants and revolutionists during the war against the dictatorship.

He was referring to the law proclaimed Oct. 10, 1958, by the Rebel Army, granting tenant farmers, squatters, and sharecroppers ownership over the land they worked, as long as the total area was less than two caballerías (a caballería is about 33 acres). "Although we had no long-term strategy, we knew what had to be done," he continued. "We knew the agrarian reform was fundamental to the revolution."

Speaking for the revolutionary leadership at the 1959 forum, Raúl Castro said they were confident of winning "the debate in defense of our program and our aims before the eyes of the entire people of Cuba and the world." He used his speech to denounce the land ownership structure in the island: "157,000 farms, or 99 percent of all Cuban farms, account for . . . 53 percent of the total area," he noted. In other words, ownership over half of the land rested in 1 percent of the proprietors. Only 30 percent of Cuba's working farmers owned the land they tilled.

Condemning U.S. imperialist interests, Castro continued, "Do they think they can keep on living in a world where their comfort, the luxuries some of them enjoy… depend on the backwardness, the misery and the insecurity of millions of men and women in Latin America who live in peonage in the land holdings of United Fruit; American Sugar; Francisco Sugar Co.; the Braden mines; in Mr. Clayton's cotton plantations; in the oil fields of the Standard Oil Co.?" Responding to U.S. media reports that U.S. sugar companies were now willing to put idle lands into production, Castro said, "Why did it take them 50 years to realize this had to be done?"

"Mass pressure was such," recalled Pino Santos, one of the drafters of the law, "that virtually no one opposed it openly; just about everyone was 'for it.' " Some landowners, for instance, would pay lip service to the law's limit of 30 caballerías, and in the same breath argue for increasing the number of exceptions for holdings larger than 100 caballerías that were permitted.

The panelists recalled how landowners searched for loopholes and employed all kinds of delaying tactics. Some did not really believe the agrarian reform was going to be carried out; they were sure Washington would stop it. One of them told Menéndez, "I'm leaving for Miami, Alfredo. But I'll be back in three months." That was 40 years ago.

The most heated debates, the panelists explained, took place during discussions involving ranchers and sugarcane and tobacco growers. The forum simply reflected the intense discussion and sharpening class polarization taking place across the country, they said.

Throughout the month of June the first land seizures were carried out by the Rebel Army, by organized peasants, or both. These were accompanied by massive mobilizations throughout the island, under the leadership of the July 26 Movement: In Santa Clara 100,000 poured into the city for a rally addressed by Fidel Castro (see speech published in May 31, 1999 Militant); 75,000 came together in Matanzas to back the agrarian reform decree; 10,000 did so in Camagüey.

The momentum of the local rallies kept building as the July 26 celebrations approached. Led by Camilo Cienfuegos and other commanders of the revolution, 2,000 peasants rode into the capital on horseback. Their "Invading Column" — for whom the workers of Havana opened their homes — joined in a rally of more than 1 million people — one of the largest Havana had ever seen — in support of the measures being adopted by the revolutionary regime.

Under the dictatorship, "the administrator of a sugar cane mill would simply phone the local army headquarters, request a couple of soldiers, and have workers punished," recalled Menéndez.

"Today," said Raúl Castro to the 1959 forum, "the military commanders work for the benefit of the economy, and the peasants — identifying with the revolution —see to it that our skies and our coasts are being watched." Castro concluded by stressing the watchword peasants in Camagüey had embraced during their mobilizations: "Agrarian reform or death."

Mary-Alice Waters contributed to this article.  
 
 
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