Vol. 72/No. 40      October 13, 2008

The tour included a half-hour radio program on WGRB and a panel discussion at the Auburn Avenue Research Library on the book Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution. Waters is the editor of the book. (See accompanying article.)

Spelman College is one of five historically Black schools that are part of the Atlanta University Center (AUC), which today has some 10,000 students. AUC’s history dates to the end of the Civil War and the period of Radical Reconstruction.

Waters was invited by Professor Bahati Kuumba to speak about women and the Cuban Revolution at her introduction to women’s studies class; by Professor Fatemah Shafiei to speak about U.S. policy toward Cuba to her class on U.S. foreign policy; and by Professor Kathleen Phillips-Lewis to talk about Cuba’s health-care system in her Caribbean studies course.

In the U.S. foreign policy class Waters responded to questions about changes taking place in Cuba today and whether President Raúl Castro is moving in a “capitalist” direction.

“Most things written here about changes in Cuba are not accurate,” Waters said. She pointed to the way the U.S. press has written about the fact that cell phones and cell phone service can now be purchased by Cubans. “This is not a policy change initiated by Raúl to reverse a repressive ‘communist’ policy implemented by Fidel, as it has been portrayed in the U.S. press,” she noted. “This change was being prepared for a long time.”

Cell phone use in Cuba was limited because the cell phone infrastructure was just being rolled out and couldn’t support a larger number of users, she said. The entire phone system is being rebuilt and converted to digital service for the first time ever through a joint venture with an Italian company. Cell phone use in Cuba isn’t a matter of “rights,” but of economic conditions.

In the Caribbean studies class Waters explained that in Cuba health care is not a commodity. It isn’t bought and sold. It is a basic human right, free to all, as is education up to and through university and post-graduate studies. She also talked about Cuba’s role in helping to train medical personnel and build a public health system in Equatorial Guinea, which Waters had just visited.

In response to a student from South Florida who challenged the facts she had presented about Cuba and objected that there is no democracy or freedom in communist Cuba and China, Waters said, “Let’s talk about Cuba, not Cuba and China. They are not the same. In fact, the two are polar opposites. In Cuba health care and education are rights, in China they are not. In China, if your family can’t pay you get neither health care nor education.”

“There are housing problems in Cuba,” she noted, “big housing problems. They will now be even more acute given the devastation of hurricanes Gustav and Ike, which damaged or totally destroyed more than 400,000 homes. But Cuba is not New Orleans after Katrina. No one is homeless there.”

It is simply false that there is no freedom of religion, she said. For a time Communist Party membership was not open to religious believers, but even that changed almost 20 years ago.

“The U.S. government says there are no elections in Cuba because they don’t like the results,” she added. Washington wants to restore capitalism in Cuba, with a government that defends that system. But in Cuba, working people decide their government and its policies, not Wall Street, and not Washington, she said.
 
 
Related articles:
Atlanta library hosts panel on ‘Our History Is Still Being Written’  
 
 
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