Vol. 72/No. 7      February 18, 2008

The meeting, held at the Service Employees International Union Local 1199 hall, was sponsored by a coalition of groups active in solidarity with Cuba. It was co-chaired by Marianna Lamberti, a granddaughter of Miranda; Nancy Cabrero, the new president of Casa de las Américas; Rosemari Mealy, a long-time Black rights and Cuba solidarity activist; and Frank Velgara of the Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban Five and of ProLibertad, which campaigns for the release of Puerto Rican political prisoners.

In the audience were a number of decades-long members of Casa de las Américas and its predecessor Casa Cuba. One of them, Arnaldo Barrón, addressed the meeting.

Cabrero introduced Barrón as a founding leader of the New York chapter of the July 26 Movement, which was organized at the initiative of Fidel Castro when he toured several U.S. cities in 1955 in preparation for the revolutionary war in Cuba against the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. Two years later the July 26 Movement in New York launched Casa Cuba.

Barrón cited the names of several Cuban co-fighters who, after the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, remained in the United States and, like Miranda, were staunch defenders of the revolution. Most of the Casa Cuba cadres were factory or restaurant workers who were intensely loyal to the Cuban Revolution and fearlessly defended it in face of police and rightist attacks over the decades.

“We organized to oppose the U.S. blockade against Cuba,” he said. “There is a small group [of wealthy Cuban Americans] in Florida who work against Cuba, but that group has always and will always have to face opposition from other Cubans here—Cubans who are part of this country and who defend Cuba.”

This proud history was also illustrated in an exhibition of rare photographs and other archival material on display at the meeting, which spanned five decades of activity by Miranda and Casa.

Addressing the meeting, Rodrigo Malmierca, Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations, praised Miranda as a Cuban patriot who “was a part of the migration of humble workers from Cuba to the United States and, like many other immigrants, he faced discrimination.” He said further, “It is true that the Batistianos [Batista henchmen] came over here after 1959. But it is also true that they have been unable to erase the names of people like Luis and others like him who are matchless examples of dignity and heroism.”  
 
An internationalist
Malmierca noted that Miranda and Casa de las Américas “promoted solidarity with struggles in the United States, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Puerto Rico, as well as Cuba.”

Rafael Cancel Miranda, a longtime leader of the Puerto Rican independence movement, spoke of the historic ties between the Cuban revolutionary movement and the Puerto Rican independence struggle. A little-known fact, he said, is that one of the Puerto Rican independentistas who joined the July 26 Movement in New York in the 1950s was Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, who later became a leader of the Macheteros group and was killed by the FBI in Puerto Rico in 2005.

He explained that Casa de las Américas was among the first organizations to organize support for the five Puerto Rican Nationalists prisoners—Cancel Miranda and four others who spent more than a quarter century in U.S. prisons following an armed protest they carried out in Congress against U.S. colonial rule. “Cuba’s support for the independence of Puerto Rico has always been unconditional, total, and complete,” he said.

Luis Miranda was a revolutionary, Cancel Miranda said, and “Che [Guevara] said it would be an honor to be a revolutionary in the United States.”

Several members of Miranda’s family participated in the event. Miranda’s daughter Barbara Miranda-Sakaris spoke, and Marianna Lamberti read a poem by Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén titled Tengo (I Have), which, she said, expressed what her grandfather devoted his life to.

Leonard Weinglass, one of the attorneys for the five Cuban revolutionaries locked up in U.S. prisons, spoke of Miranda’s tireless efforts to win support for the freedom of the Cuban Five. Martín Koppel of the Socialist Workers Party described Miranda’s identification with and support to working-class struggles in the United States, from the United Farm Workers battles in the 1960s to the successful unionization fight by meat packers at Dakota Premium in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Also speaking were Rhadamés Rivera of SEIU Local 1199; Carlos Rovira of the Party for Socialism and Liberation; Rebeca Toledo of the Workers World Party; Radhamés Morales of Fuerza de la Revolución; Roger Wareham of the December 12th Movement; and Bonnie Massey of the Venceremos Brigade.

Casa de las Américas member Umberto Gonzales, the Puerto Rican group Pleneros de la 21, and Abram Llano provided musical tributes. A short video about Luis Miranda filmed by his granddaughter Gabriela Lamberti was also shown.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home