Karl Butts, a small vegetable farmer from Plant City, Florida, and Gladys Williams, a farmer and member of the South Georgia Vegetable Producers Cooperative in Dixie, Georgia, gave a reportback and slide show on their February fact-finding trip to Cuba. This tour, hosted by the National Association of Small Farmers of Cuba (ANAP), also included four other farmers from Georgia and New Jersey.

The meeting was held in Royal, the rural Black community in Wildwood, which is about 40 miles south of Ocala in central Florida. The fund-raising dinner and meeting was organized by Francis Sesler, wife of Clyde Sesler, a watermelon farmer. Sesler had helped to organize a meeting last year for Gary Grant, president of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, and Augusto Oslen of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers of Brazil. The Royal Community Center where the meeting was held used to be a segregated elementary school until it was desegregated in 1969.

The audience was overwhelmingly Black, with a half dozen or so small farmers in attendance. Many more in the audience used to farm but were driven from the land, in part by the U.S. government's racist policies and discriminatory practices.

A number of these ex-farmers now work in local factories, or as independent truck drivers. Many are part of a class-action civil lawsuit brought by Black farmers against the U.S. government as part of the fight to keep their land.

Nelson Brooks, Jr., used to farm and now works in a nonunion juice-processing plant in Dade City. Before the meeting he said, "When they give you money, they give you just enough to fail. They give you enough to make a down payment on a tractor, but not enough for fuel. Enough to plant, but not enough to harvest. The USDA has organized a systematic theft of Black farmland."  
 

Backbone of the revolution

Butts and Williams showed 70 slides of their fact-finding tour, which presented an overview of the Cuban revolution of 1959, and showed the different advances and challenges facing Cuban farmers, cooperatives, and urban farms today. "The rule of the rich was replaced with the rule of the urban and rural workers and farmers," Butts said.

The first slides showed the triumph of the revolution and an early photograph of a peasant receiving the title to his land. "Peasants provided a backbone for the revolution. For them it was like a watershed event as material resources were concentrated in the countryside for the first time."

The fight for agrarian reform was linked to the fight against institutional racism from the start. Among the farmers who received title to their land as part of that measure "was a black woman," Williams explained. "They don't view each other as black or white, but just as Cuban. It made me feel good to see so many black people in Cuba sitting behind desks making decisions."

"None of what the Cuban people have accomplished could have occurred without making a socialist revolution," Butts said. "And they couldn't have made a revolution without a strong alliance between city workers and rural toilers."

The question of ownership of the land was addressed during the discussion by Irving Forester, leader of the Orlando Committee to Free the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners. "Never give up your land," he said. "Our land was taken. Our whole nation was taken. You don't give up your land. You don't get your land from your fathers, you borrow it from your children. And you owe it to them."

To a rousing ovation, he said, "We're right down the road in Orlando, just give us a call if you ever need any help or political solidarity." Forester, along with three other members of the Orlando Committee, brought flyers publicizing a National Day of Solidarity with the people of Vieques on April 19, the one-year anniversary of the killing of David Sanes by a 500-pound bomb dropped by the U.S. Navy in a practice maneuver on the island.  
 

'Have to make revolution'

Cozette Sesler, another younger worker, said in the discussion that he agreed with the "need to make a revolution." He asked, "How could it be possible when you have to go through the government and the big corporations? They are not on our side. How do you unite people to make a revolution against them?"

Williams responded, "Well, I don't know exactly how yet, so I'll have to get back to you on that. All I know is we have to do it. How many people were at the affirmative action march in Tallahassee last month? I was there and that was a good example of people uniting to make political progress."

Williams described how the Atlanta Network on Cuba worked together with the Georgia farmers to raise money by having yard sales and other events so that they could get to Cuba. She said they would do that for anyone who wanted to go.

Reportback meetings for the six farmers on the February 2000 farmer-to-farmer trip to Cuba can be organized in other cities by contacting either Cuba Vive at (813) 307-9733, P.O. Box 270928, Tampa FL 33688, or the Atlanta Network on Cuba, 441 Ridgewood Rd NE, Atlanta GA 30307.

Bill Kalman, a member of the United Transportation Union in Miami, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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