Vol. 73/No. 16      April 27, 2009

The event featured brief talks by UTPA professors David Carlson and Emmy Pérez, and Mary-Alice Waters, the editor of the book and president of Pathfinder Press. More than an hour of lively discussion followed the talks.

English professor David Anshen chaired the meeting. The UTPA departments of Latin American Studies, Modern Languages and Literatures, and History and Philosophy sponsored the meeting.

Our History Is Still Being Written tells the stories of Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui, and Moisés Sío Wong, three generals of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba of Chinese ancestry. In the 1950s, when they were still in their teens, each of them joined the revolutionary movement to overthrow the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The victory of that struggle in 1959 opened the road for the socialist revolution in the Americas.

Each of the three carries important responsibilities in Cuba today.

The program opened with a portion of the documentary film Ancestors in the Americas: Coolies, Sailors and Settlers, produced by Loni Ding, that depicts how hundreds of thousands of Chinese were forced into indentured labor in Cuba and elsewhere in the Americas during the 19th century and how they resisted their virtual enslavement. Elaborating on the film’s themes, Carlson, who teaches Latin American history at UTPA, described how Chinese brought to the Americas as indentured labor “were deprived of their dignity and self-worth, and driven to extreme exploitation.”

“The Chinese resisted,” he said. He gave as an example a January 1868 rebellion at a sugar plantation in Guantánamo by 80 Chinese sugar-cane workers. Chinese in Cuba “also fought in the war for independence against Spain” in the late 19th century, said Carlson.

The plantation owners sought to pit Cubans of African descent against the Chinese to keep them divided, he said. “Bosses setting workers against each other has always been part of the history of labor.”

Pérez, who teaches English literature and poetry writing, talked about the common experiences of immigrant workers in the Americas and read her poem “El Paso,” which evokes her own search for her ancestors. Pérez, who is a second-generation Chicana, described the pressures she confronted to deny her heritage as she was growing up. “The title of this book refers to all of us here. Our histories, too, are still being written,” she said.

Waters explained that this book of interviews with participants in the Cuban Revolution is part of a series that has now grown to 19 books published by Pathfinder that bring alive the example of the Cuban Revolution and its importance for today.

“These three Cubans were part of the generation that refused to bow down to the indignities of life under one of the most brutal dictatorships in Latin America,” said Waters. “Initially, they didn’t set out to make a socialist revolution. Along with millions of others, they simply set out to create a society with a greater degree of social justice and equality. When they destroyed Batista’s army and police, one of the first and defining acts of the revolutionary government was to carry out a land reform—confiscating the enormous plantations and giving land to the peasants. They organized 100,000 young people to carry out a literacy drive and wiped out illiteracy in one year. They passed laws that made discrimination on the basis of the color of one’s skin illegal, and enforced them.”

“These basic democratic reforms,” Waters continued, “brought the workers and peasants of Cuba up against U.S. owners of land, factories, and natural resources in Cuba.” And this remains the reason for the implacable hostility of the U.S. government toward Cuba and the Cuban Revolution today, she added.

“This is the reason why the U.S. government has imprisoned for more than 10 years, five Cubans who came to the United States to monitor counterrevolutionary groups responsible for terrorist acts against Cubans,” she said. Waters was referring to the men—known internationally as the Cuban Five—who were framed up by the U.S. government on false charges ranging from conspiracy to commit espionage to conspiracy to commit murder. They were in the United States to gather information on Cuban groups in Miami that have a history of carrying out violent attacks on Cuba with Washington’s complicity. “They are being held hostage, because the Cuban people refuse to surrender to U.S. power,” she added.

During the discussion period, a participant asked if Cuba’s ability to resist and win against the U.S. government has to do with the European, African, and Chinese mixture of the Cuban population.

Waters said that the ability of Cuba to resist is part of how the Cuban nation was forged, through the independence struggle against Spain intertwined with the fight to abolish slavery and indentured servitude, and its century of struggle against imperialist domination.

Among the other questions discussed were: Do Chinese Cubans still speak their own language? How much do Chinese Cubans know about their history? Do Cubans in general know this history? Is capitalism being reestablished in Cuba today?

Carlson said that from his own travels to Cuba he found the Barrio Chino in Havana ethnically mixed where “some speak Chinese but many others don’t.” He also said, “There is very little knowledge of the real history of the Chinese here in the United States.”

Waters said that today there are hundreds of thousands of Cubans of Chinese ancestry, but “very few Cubans who grew up speaking Chinese and speak it today as their first language. That is because second and third generation Chinese Cubans, like the three generals, are integrated throughout Cuban society. That is a measure of the blows Cuban working people have dealt to racist oppression and prejudice—what they made possible by carrying out a socialist revolution.” She added, “But interest in this culture and history is increasing today in Cuba, just as people here are also rediscovering our history as Professor Pérez expressed in her poem.”

Following the meeting a number of the participants got copies of Our History Is Still Being Written and other titles at the Pathfinder literature table, and picked up information about an international conference on the importance for today of the political legacy of José Martí, Benito Juárez, and Abraham Lincoln to be held May 18-19 in Monterrey, Mexico.

The animated discussion—including around plans for May Day activities in the Valley demanding legalization of immigrants the U.S. government deems “undocumented”—continued informally.  
 
 
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