Forty-one years ago, on Jan. 1, 1959, Cuban working people in their millions made history. Led by the Rebel Army and the July 26 Movement, they brought down the blood-soaked Batista tyranny backed by Washington, the world's mightiest imperialist power, which grotesquely poses as a champion of democracy around the world. Those who the parasitic capitalist minority views as the unwashed masses—workers and farmers—did what we're always told we're incapable of: they began to take the reins of society, and to transform themselves in the process. What have the Cuban people achieved in these 41 years?

Tens of thousands of young volunteers went into the countryside and launched a campaign that wiped out illiteracy in Cuba—something the world's richest power has not done and will not do here.

Peasants, with the support of their revolutionary government, carried out a sweeping land reform that guaranteed land to those who worked it. Since then, not a single working farmer has been driven off his or her land—in contrast to the scourge of foreclosures that thousands of farmers face in the United States and other capitalist countries.

In face of economic sabotage by the wealthy, workers demonstrated massively to demand the takeover of the factories, leading to their nationalization. The active involvement of working people in fundamental decisions affecting society, and their resulting self-confidence, has marked Cuba for 41 years.

Millions of Cubans have mobilized to defend their hard-won sovereignty and socialist revolution against U.S. imperialist attack—defeating U.S.-backed mercenary invaders in 1961, staying the hand of the U.S. warmakers in the October 1962 "missile" crisis, and confronting ongoing threats today.

Hundreds of thousands of Cuban volunteers have gone around the world to join internationalist campaigns—from helping defeat the apartheid invaders in Angola in the late 1980s to the voluntary medical brigades that are now in Venezuela giving selfless aid to flood victims.

These deeds are why the U.S. government has maintained a policy of aggression against revolutionary Cuba for the past 41 years—from a criminal economic embargo to its latest provocation of not returning a Cuban child back to Cuba. The foreign policy of the biggest imperialist power in the world is not set by a handful of right-wing Cuban-American businessmen in Miami. It is decided by the ruling class of billionaire families, whom Democrat William Clinton and his Republican cohorts faithfully serve. The example of the Cuban revolution to working people and the oppressed worldwide represents a mortal threat to the class interests of the U.S. rulers.

The new Pathfinder book Making History: Interviews with Four Generals of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces, gives readers a vivid picture of the men and women who have accomplished the deeds that Washington fears and hates. In conversations with fellow revolutionists from the United States, four revolutionary combatants—generals Néstor López Cuba, José Ramón Fernández, Enrique Carreras, and Harry Villegas—recount their experiences over four decades of the Cuban revolution, from the battles of the Rebel Army in the Sierra Maestra, to internationalist missions in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. Above all, they address fighting workers and young people—in the United States and elsewhere. They speak to those who want to emulate their example and make a revolution that can sweep out the exploiting classes and establish a government of workers and farmers. To those who want to join in the worldwide fight to put an end to capitalism, with its philosophy of plunder, and open up a socialist future.

Studying Making History and getting it into the hands of others who are searching for political answers to the world of 2000 is one of the most effective ways to tell the truth about the Cuban revolution, and to celebrate 41 years of workers and farmers in power.  
 
 
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