Vol. 73/No. 45      November 23, 2009

The presentations and discussion drew on the examples of three Cubans of Chinese origin whose contributions to the Cuban Revolution—from its conquest in 1959 and continuing today—is told in the book Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution.

The meeting was cosponsored by the Asian Studies Center, the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, the Department of African-American Studies, and Delta Phi Lambda, an Asian sorority at GSU. About 35 of those attending were students.

Michele Reid, assistant professor of history at the university, chaired the meeting and introduced the panel, which included Heying Jenny Zhan, associate professor of sociology at GSU; Eleanor Hunter, research librarian, Auburn Avenue Research Library of African American Culture and History; Amanda Lewis, M.A. candidate, Department of History, GSU; and Mary-Alice Waters, editor, Our History Is Still Being Written, and president of Pathfinder Press.  
 
Slavery and Chinese migration
Lewis's research includes investigating race relations in 19th century Cuba. She talked about the hundreds of thousands of Chinese who were brought to Cuba in the mid-19th century as sugar planters looked for cheap labor elsewhere in the world to replace the African slave labor they were having growing difficulty importing. “The contract laborers were called ‘coolies,’ a term which some say comes from a Chinese word for ‘bitter strength,’” Lewis said.

Professor Zhan said that she, like many Chinese growing up in China, had never experienced racial discrimination, but all that changed upon arriving in the United States. “In China I was one of the 92 percent of the population that is Han nationality,” she said. “I first encountered discrimination, both as a minority and as a woman, when I came to the United States when I was 28 years old.”

Talking about China and Cuba today, Zhan asked, “What is socialism?” She said readers will find the book Our History Is Still Being Written an invaluable help in answering that important question.  
 
Cuba and Africa
Hunter talked about Cuba’s 1975-91 internationalist mission in Angola, which was decisive in turning back several invasions by the South African apartheid regime seeking to take over the newly independent Angolan government. It was initiated through Operation Carlota, named after the African woman who led an 1843 slave rebellion in Cuba. “This book made me understand the human and material sacrifices and the principled stand of the Cuban volunteers on a whole new level,” she said. “Over 16 years, 375,000 Cubans volunteered—an enormous commitment that risked the existence of the revolution itself.

“Angola is a country rich in resources, but Cuba did not go there for resources,” Hunter stated. “They went because it was the right thing to do.”  
 
Socialist revolution
Waters, who interviewed the three generals for the book, said that each of them takes great interest in the book’s impact around the world. She pointed to an afterword written by Wang Lusha, who translated the Chinese edition. Wang asks, “How is it possible that three men of Chinese descent could rise to positions of such responsibility in Cuba, when this would not happen elsewhere in the world?"

Wang quotes the response by Gen. Moisés Sío Wong given in the book to the same question he was asked in 1999 at an international conference on the Chinese diaspora held in Havana. He said, “Here a socialist revolution took place. The revolution eliminated discrimination based on the color of a person’s skin. Above all, it eliminated the property relations that create not only economic, but also social inequality between rich and poor.”

Waters noted that women and men like the three generals didn’t set out to make a socialist revolution when they took up arms against the U.S.-backed military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s. “They set out to create a society with a greater degree of social justice,” she noted. Waters explained that one of the revolutionary government’s first acts was a sweeping land reform, which came into conflict with the propertied interests of wealthy ruling families in the United States who owned vast tracts of land in Cuba. “Ninety percent of cultivated land in Cuba was owned or on long-term lease to U.S. families and corporations,” Waters said.

Despite U.S. threats, the Cuban people refused to back down. As they defended themselves against the U.S. government's aggression, they carried out the first socialist revolution in the Americas.”

“In Cuba," Waters said, "working people have used state power to transform themselves and society,” adding, “This is not a book about the past primarily. It is about understanding history to prepare ourselves to act today. That’s why the Cuban Revolution matters.”  
 
Lively discussion
During the discussion, Professor Zhan asked, “Why does the American government still have such fear and hatred for socialist Cuba?”

Waters quoted from a 1960 U.S. State Department policy memorandum that states that the majority of Cubans supported Fidel Castro, and that the U.S. had to find a way to cause disenchantment, desperation, and dissatisfaction, including through imposing hunger and other privations, with the aim of driving the Cuban people to overthrow the revolutionary government.

“The economic embargo has been the biggest obstacle to economic development in Cuba,” Waters said. “It has kept the squeeze on over the past 50 years and made the Cuban people suffer. And it has served to tell the people of all Latin America, ‘This is what will happen to you if you try to be independent and take your future into your own hands.’”

Zhan added, “The U.S. thinks they can tell countries, ‘We want you to grow sugar for export.’ Only Cuba says, ‘We’ll organize our economy the way we want.’”

Peter Williamson, an economics student at GSU, asked, “What is the impact of the embargo on other countries doing business in Cuba?” Waters explained that subsidiaries of U.S. companies based in other countries are prohibited from doing business with Cuba and that shipping vessels are prohibited from docking in the United States if they have docked in Cuba the previous six months.

Another student asked if all three of the generals had volunteered to fight in Angola. Waters explained that every Cuban who fought in Angola volunteered and recommended the documentary Cuba, An African Odyssey, directed by Lebanese-born filmmaker Jihan El-Tahri and funded by the French Foreign Ministry, which tells much of the rich history of Cuba's decades of aid to countries in Africa.

Following the meeting, Van Hai Nguyen, president of the Gamma chapter of Delta Phi Lambda, said, "The discussion of Our History is Still Being Written put forth new perspectives of the Cuban Revolution." Nguyen said she wants to read the book and organize another discussion of it next semester.
 
 
Related articles:
Cuban library head speaks at N.Y. meeting
Australia union builds support for Cuban Five
Cuban foreign minister answers U.S. gov’t at UN  
 
 
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