Vol. 71/No. 16      April 23, 2007

At both campuses, Mary-Alice Waters, editor of the book and president of Pathfinder Press, took part in panel presentations along with students and professors who had read the book.

Ben Mai, a student at the University of Iowa and president of the Asian American Coalition, chaired the April 4 Iowa City meeting, attended by 40 people. He said students had decided to hold the event because the book “brings up questions about race, what we confront as we fight racism, and something not widely known: the history of Chinese in Cuba.”

Mai, whose family is Vietnamese, said the interviews with the three generals—Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui, and Moisés Sío Wong—show that “they believed in what they are fighting for, that they believed in themselves.”

Also on this panel were John Lee, president of the Korean Undergraduate Student Association, and Marcella David, a law professor and associate provost at the university.

Lee said that reading Our History Is Still Being Written helped him realize “that race is not a biological question, it is a socially constructed idea.”

Waters said the men and women who made the Cuban Revolution “weren’t extraordinary human beings. They were young people who in the course of the revolution transformed themselves. They weren’t thinking of making a socialist revolution—they wanted to make a more egalitarian society through land reform, literacy, and health care for all, as well as equality for women and an end to racial discrimination.

“As they carried out this program, they came into conflict with the U.S. government and the ruling capitalist families here that owned enormous property in Cuba, and they refused to back down. That is where the socialist revolution in Cuba came from.”

More than an hour of discussion followed as people in the audience asked questions such as: Has racism been eliminated in Cuba or is there tension under the surface that could come out in a conflict like Yugoslavia? Is Cuba going to follow the way of China? How is Cuba different from what existed in the Soviet Union?

Waters explained that the revolution uprooted the economic foundations of racism “but that doesn’t mean that Cuba isn’t facing the legacy of decades of racism from their prerevolutionary history.” She said the question of confronting racism is discussed openly in Cuba today. But her own experience, “from growing up in the United States when Jim Crow laws were still in place, to spending time in a society where racism is a minor factor in the interrelationships between human beings—especially among young people—the contrast is striking.”

Noting there is racism against Asians in the United States, Mai said, “Only a small number of Asian Americans are ‘doing well.’ In fact, financial aid for Asian American students is being cut.”

The meeting at Drake University the following evening, which was attended by about 50 people, was marked by participation of international students, who hailed from Bahrain, Palestine, Jordan, Bosnia, Latvia, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Spain, China, south Korea, India, Pakistan, Ecuador, and Mexico. Several U.S.-born students were also present. The event was sponsored by the International Student Association (ISA), La Fuerza Latina (LFL), the Center for Global Citizenship, and the Chinese Iowa Association.

Arson Xu, a Chinese-born student who is president of the ISA, said he found it interesting that revolutionaries in Cuba “are staying in their beliefs in socialism.”

Samuel Li, who is Chinese-Ecuadorian and a member of La Fuerza Latina, said the book “was a real eye-opener for me. Before I didn’t think Cuba was a country worth thinking about. Now I see there is a lot we can learn from Cuba. It made me interested in the ideas of socialism.”

Also on the panel were Verónica Méndez of LFL, who gave a brief overview of the book, and history professor Matthew Esposito, who pointed out that “it wasn’t until the revolution that the Chinese in Cuba had all the privileges and rights that come with being Cuban.”

Waters said the most important lesson in the book was Sío Wong’s point that the difference between the experience of Chinese in Cuba and in other countries was that a socialist revolution took place, eliminating the property relations at the root of economic and social inequality.

The discussion, lasting more than an hour, centered on socialism and the future of the Cuban Revolution.

“What are the major obstacles to the development of socialism in Cuba?” asked Vladimir Sesar, a student from Bosnia.

“The biggest source of problems is economic scarcity,” Waters answered. “Socialism can never be built on the basis of economic scarcity. In the Soviet Union there was a social layer that had enormous material privileges that most did not have, and they defended that against the majority. That didn’t happen in Cuba. The difference is a leadership, a class question.”

Another student asked whether the new generation in Cuba “shares the goal of socialism, and will they keep the revolution going?”

Waters said that “tens of thousands of Cuban young people are involved in internationalist missions. For these young people it is their first experience living under capitalism and seeing what life is like in other underdeveloped countries in Latin America. They see the slums, the homeless children, the lack of education and medical care. They see what capitalism really means, and they come home with a different consciousness.”

Those attending the two meetings bought a number of Pathfinder books. These included not only Our History Is Still Being Written but titles ranging from Malcolm X Talks to Young People to The Truth About Yugoslavia.
 
 
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