Also on the panel were Gen. Moisés Sío Wong, one of the three authors, and Iraida Aguirrechu, a senior editor of Editora Política, publishing house of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party. An article on Sío Wong’s remarks appears on the facing page.

The meeting was part of a speaking tour of seven Cuban cities to discuss and promote Our History Is Still Being Written. Sío Wong, Aguirrechu, and Waters spoke at similar events in Ciego de Avila, Holguín, and Bayamo. Gen. Armando Choy addressed meetings in Quemado de Güines and Corralillo in the central province of Villa Clara. And all three authors—Sío Wong, Choy, and Gen. Gustavo Chui—spoke along with Aguirrechu and Waters at a meeting in Havana. Each event was hosted by the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution along with the municipal government and the Cuban Communist Party in the province.

The footnotes are by the Militant.
 

BY MARY-ALICE WATERS  
On behalf of Pathfinder, I want to express our appreciation to the national leadership of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, who invited us to join you here today, and to the compañeros of the party, municipal government, and the National Institute of State Reserves who have done so much to assure the success of today’s activities.

I also want to thank our chairperson, Iraida Aguirrechu of Editora Política, and call attention to the fact that her editorial professionalism and political determination played no small part in bringing this book to fruition.

Above all, of course, our appreciation goes to generals Choy, Chui, and Sío Wong. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with each of them.
 

I want to say a few words about why this book is important outside Cuba, especially in the United States, as well as the kind of reception it has enjoyed since it came off the press in English and Spanish at the beginning of this year.

To mention just one example: last week, as we were preparing to leave for Cuba, we received a very thoughtful review of the book published in the widely circulated Journal of Chinese Overseas. It was written by Li Anshan, a professor at the School of International Studies at Peking University.¹

When we began the interviews that eventually became this powerful book, none of us thought it would be four years in the making. Nor that the end result would be, in fact, an introduction to the Cuban Revolution itself—not only “as it was,” but as it continues, today.

The book begins with the stories of three young Cuban rebels of Chinese ancestry who grew up under different social and economic conditions, in three different regions of the country. We learn how and why they, like thousands of others of their generation, threw themselves into the popular revolutionary struggle against the Batista dictatorship.

It initiates us into the rich, and still too-little-known, history of Chinese immigration to Cuba—immigration that in the mid-1800s was proportionally greater than anywhere else in the Americas, including the United States. And it recounts the historically unique place, and unblemished record, of the Chinese combatants in the Cuban independence wars of the 19th century.

But there is much more.

The book includes an important piece of the story of Cuba’s nearly 16-year internationalist mission in Angola. We have already seen the impact of this section of the book on many Chinese readers in the United States, especially. They’ve described the pride they feel upon learning that indeed there were Chinese on the front lines of the historic battles that brought down the apartheid regime of South Africa.

The reviewer from Peking University, however, puts his finger on the most important aspect of the book. “Although there are striking descriptions of the anti-Batista struggle, the guerrilla war, and the socialist revolution,” he comments, “it is the depiction of what is happening in Cuba today that I find most appealing.”

Indeed, one of the richest parts of the book is the final section, entitled “The Special Period and Beyond,” in which each of the three compañeros talks about the responsibilities he shoulders today. Organizing the work to transform the infrastructure of the Port of Havana and restore the environmental health of its bay. Leading the military-patriotic work of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution. Overseeing the expansion and integrity of the strategic reserves of the state. Transforming the structure of agriculture in Cuba with the establishment of the small-scale urban vegetable farms. Supporting the popular struggle advancing in Venezuela. And above all, preparing to meet the unpredictable, but inevitable, aggressions of the declining empire to the north.

From Iraq and Afghanistan, to occupied Guantánamo, we see the future imperialism has in store for us, a future of war and repression—inside the United States and throughout the world—if we do not succeed in taking from them for all time the power to rule.

Above all, this is a book that helps to answer the most important questions of our epoch: What is a socialist revolution? Where do the men and women who will make such a revolution come from? How do they transform themselves and each other in the course of their struggles, becoming human beings capable of accomplishing what even they never dreamed possible?

Through more than five decades of struggle, the concrete, living example of the Cuban Revolution offers our class a practical example of how to fight; more importantly, how to win; and most importantly, how to organize to defend what we’ve won, how to involve increasing numbers of toilers in that effort to advance and extend those original conquests.

That is why this book is so important outside of Cuba. Why Pathfinder published it. Why young socialists and communist workers are selling it not only through bookstores, to libraries, on the worldwide web, and at conferences and political events, but at factories and campuses, and from tables on the streets of working-class districts in towns and cities across North America. That is why it appeals so broadly not only to youth and working people who are Asian but to militant-minded members of other oppressed nationalities and national minorities in the United States, especially those who are Black and Mexican, and to determined immigrants from all corners of the world.

And I should add that we also know—including from letters written by our five Cuban brothers—that this book, like many others Pathfinder publishes, is being circulated and read in prisons across the United States.²
 

Of the more than 400 titles Pathfinder Press keeps in print, some 60 are books, pamphlets, and magazines that strive to make the history of the Cuban Revolution accessible to vanguard fighters and revolutionary-minded youth around the world. The real history, as told by Cubans who made it—with all its complexities, including its false starts, errors and corrections, sorrows as well as triumphs. But few—if any—of those 60 titles have received the kind of broad response we’ve witnessed to Our History Is Still Being Written.

Most interesting of all has been the warm reception it has gotten from hundreds of politically conscious Chinese and Chinese Americans, as well as Asian Americans of other nationalities. The official Asian population of the United States is some 13 million, about 4 percent of the total. And people of Chinese origin make up a sizable and growing percentage—some 2.5 million today by the government’s own understated figures, which count only legal immigrants. It is estimated that one third of the population of San Francisco is Chinese.

Chinese workers make up a substantial portion of the workforce in industries such as garment and construction in cities like New York and San Francisco. And tens of thousands of Chinese students, both U.S.-born and from China, are enrolled in universities across the country.

Most residents of Chinese origin in the United States today are young. They have immigrated to the United States, or have been born there, since 1965 and especially since 1990. Those were landmark years when laws that had prohibited virtually all Asian immigration were modified, and “quotas” increased.

As here in Cuba, Chinese and other Asian immigrants in the United States have a long and proud history of struggle, part of the broader fight against the racism, nativist bigotry, and ruthless exploitation of workers and farmers organized by the U.S. capitalist rulers and accelerated with the rise and growing dominance of Yankee imperialism. New generations of Asian Americans are themselves learning that hidden history only as they join in new battles today and are educated by those who opened the road through previous decades of struggle.

They are among the tens of millions of immigrants from all over the world who are today placing a powerful stamp on the class struggle and prospects for labor in the United States.

Earlier this year, as many of you are aware, a massive proletarian movement for the legalization of immigrant workers exploded into the streets across the length and breadth of the United States. Millions of people—and not only immigrants—proudly marched under the banner, “We are workers, not criminals. Legalization now!”

The speed and power of the actions that swept the country last spring—driven by Mexican and other Central American workers above all—caught the U.S. rulers by surprise. Taking the initiative in their own hands and often defying the efforts of leaders who tried to contain them, they downed tools and took to the streets in cities large and small in numbers never before seen in the United States. On May 1, they carried out what was in fact the first multi-city political strike in U.S. history. Their actions are irreversibly strengthening and politically enriching the workers movement. They have already changed politics in the United States.
 

This is the context in which meetings to launch Our History Is Still Being Written have been taking place.

Last month in San Francisco, nearly 200 turned out for a book presentation sponsored by the Chinese Historical Society of America—the oldest and best-known such society in the United States. Leaders of the Chinese and Japanese communities in the San Francisco Bay Area participated in the panel, as well as from the audience, and translation into Spanish and Cantonese was available for the entire meeting.

Next month the book will be presented at a National Asian American Student Conference near Chicago, as well as on the campus of the University of California in Los Angeles, home to one of the most important centers of Asian American studies in the United States. Another presentation will take place next month in Venezuela, with the participation of representatives of the Chinese community and others there, as part of the Caracas International Book Fair. In December, the Chinatown branch of the San Francisco Public Library will host a presentation. Plans are well advanced for a tour by one of the authors to present the book in major cities across Canada next March.

Similar work is under way in numerous other cities, but that gives you the idea. And we are just beginning.

In all of these events, one of the things that invariably wins an enthusiastic and spontaneous burst of applause is the announcement that the translation of the book into Chinese has already begun, along with plans to present the book in China itself next year as part of the activities commemorating the 160th anniversary of the arrival in Cuba, in June 1847, of the first shiploads of indentured workers from China. But participants in these meetings are even happier to learn that the Chinese translation will be available for distribution in the United States as well, where there are hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers who neither read nor speak either English or Spanish.
 

I want to end with an anecdote. Humorous though it may at first seem, it helps underscore the invaluable place of Our History Is Still Being Written. As we keep being reminded, there is literally no other book like it in Spanish, English, Chinese, or any other language.

At an Asian American studies conference earlier this year, one of the young professors who bought the book confessed he would read it with mixed emotions. He told us he was now going to have to revise his almost-finished doctoral dissertation because he had genuinely accepted as fact the propaganda put forward by the enemies of the revolution that there are no Chinese in Cuba anymore!

A typical example of this misinformation effort was an Associated Press story that appeared several months ago in the Miami Herald, under the headline, “Dwindling presence of Chinese immigrants in Cuba.” While making no mention of the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who so proudly proclaim their Chinese ancestry, the article misled readers by flatly reporting that there are only 143 Chinese in the entire population of Havana! The very same “story” was printed a few weeks later in AsianWeek, an English-language paper that circulates in the Chinese community in California.

We now find ourselves armed as never before to launch an effective counterattack against such political falsifications as well as organized disinformation! Our History Is Still Being Written is a flash of truth, throwing light on a hidden chapter in the history of Our America, on the unacknowledged accomplishments of all nationalities oppressed and formerly enslaved by the ascendant capitalist powers.

Most importantly, it helps open the eyes of those who read it to the truth about the Cuban Revolution today.

As the Beijing reviewer concludes, the authors convey “an idealism badly needed in a world of materialistic pursuits,” adding that “the book may be a history that is ‘still being written,’ but it has already struck a chord with me.”

More than one person of Chinese descent who has been introduced to the book in the last months have expressed surprise that Cubans of Chinese parentage hold such weighty leadership responsibilities in Cuba today. As Sío Wong, Chui, and Choy explain so well in these pages, however, the decisive measure taken to eliminate discrimination against Chinese in Cuba “was the revolution itself.” The Chinese community in Cuba is different from anywhere else in the Americas. The difference lies in the organization, triumph, and defense of a socialist revolution.

It is to spread that truth—that need, that real possibility for revolutionists throughout the world—that Pathfinder has published this book.

1. The review can be found at www.pathfinderpress.com, clicking on the text “Recently reviewed in the Journal of Chinese Overseas.”

2. The Cuban Five—Fernando González, René González, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, and Ramón Labañino—have been held in U.S. jails since 1998. They were convicted in 2001 of charges including conspiracy “to act as an unregistered foreign agent,” “to commit espionage,” and “to commit murder.” Sentences were handed down ranging from 15 years, to double life plus 15 years. The five—each of whom has been decorated “Hero of the Republic of Cuba”—had accepted assignments to infiltrate counterrevolutionary groups in the United States and keep the Cuban government informed about terrorist attacks being planned against the Cuban people. Millions worldwide have mobilized to condemn the convictions, sentences, and harsh conditions of detainment and to demand their release.
 
 
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