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Vol. 73/No. 3      January 26, 2009

 
Celebrations held in Cuba on
50 years of socialist revolution
(front page)
 
BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
AND JONATHAN SILBERMAN
 
HAVANA, January 8—Local residents lined the streets to salute a procession that traveled through Havana today in a reenactment of the Freedom Caravan, the Rebel Army columns led by Fidel Castro that victoriously entered Cuba’s capital on this date 50 years ago.

The caravan culminated a week of political, educational, and cultural activities throughout the island celebrating the 50th anniversary of the victory of the Cuban Revolution, which opened the road to the first socialist revolution in the Americas. Since then, revolutionary Cuba has set an example of what workers and farmers can accomplish when they take state power out of the hands of the capitalist class and wield it in the interests of the vast majority.

In the early hours of Jan. 1, 1959, U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba in wake of decisive Rebel Army victories, including the taking of Santa Clara, the third-largest city. In the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, the dictatorship’s army garrison surrendered to the Rebel Army forces commanded by Fidel Castro, who called for a revolutionary general strike to prevent the consolidation of a military junta named by Batista. Working people responded with a mass uprising, as rebel forces led by Camilo Cienfuegos and Ernesto Che Guevara occupied the principal army garrisons in Havana.

Over the following week, the main Rebel Army columns marched westward across the island, greeted by a huge outpouring of workers and peasants along the way. On January 8 they entered Havana, where Castro spoke to the population from the former dictatorship’s army base in Camp Columbia.

On January 1 of this year, President Raúl Castro, commander of one of the main Rebel Army columns during the revolutionary war and second to Fidel in the chain of command of the revolutionary leadership over the past five decades, addressed a rally of 3,000 in Santiago marking the victory. Over the last week, a caravan made up of veteran revolutionary combatants, youth leaders, and others crisscrossed the island, leading actions in cities and towns along the route of the original Freedom Caravan.

In Havana, the procession ended at the former Camp Columbia, now called Ciudad Libertad (Liberty City), the campus of the Enrique José Varona teacher-training institute. The rally of 2,000, attended by Raúl Castro and other government leaders, was addressed by several speakers, including Pedro Sáez, first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party in Havana; Brig. Gen. Delsa Esther “Teté” Puebla; and President Rafael Correa of Ecuador. Puebla, who during the revolutionary war against the Batista regime was second in command of an all-woman platoon of the Rebel Army, spoke about her participation in the Freedom Caravan. Correa, the keynote speaker, expressed his solidarity with Cuba in face of Washington’s decades-long economic war.

This year’s celebrations were organized on a modest scale to take into account the urgent priority being given to rebuild housing and other infrastructure since three successive hurricanes devastated Cuba in August, September, and November.

In his January 1 speech in Santiago, Raúl Castro described the proletarian character of Cuba’s socialist revolution. “This demands, first and foremost, that tomorrow’s leaders never forget that this is a revolution of the humble, by the humble, and for the humble,” he emphasized. They must “never be softened up by the enemy’s siren songs, and must be conscious that, given its very essence, the enemy will never cease to be aggressive, dominating, and treacherous” toward the revolution. Above all, Cuba’s leadership “must never distance themselves from our workers, peasants, and the rest of the people” in confronting the challenges ahead.

“It befits the historical leadership of the revolution to prepare the new generations to take up the enormous responsibility of continuing to carry forward the revolutionary process,” Castro said.
 
 
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