Cuba

This year, for the first time one of Trotsky's key works, the Revolution Betrayed, was presented by the Frederick Engels Foundation at the Havana Book Fair, stimulating big interest. A special edition of a theoretical magazine on China, including the analysis of the International Marxist Tendency on this subject was also being sold. It is clear that a layer of the most conscious workers and youth in Cuba are looking far a Marxist alternative to the prospect of "market economics" being reintroduced to the

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As the news came out about Castro not standing again for president, the comrades manning the Frederick Engels Foundation at the Havana Book Fair sent us their impressions of how people are reacting and what situation is opening up in Cuba.

On Tuesday, February 19, Fidel Castro announced he was no longer going to stand for the position as President of Cuba. All the talk in the bourgeois is of the need to remove the regime, but there is no mention of the real social gains of the Cuban Revolution. We do not stand with these vultures. We defend the Cuban Revolution by working for an all-Latin American and international revolution.

The Cuban revolution has made many spectacular advances, but it faces serious problems. From the streets of Havana Darrall Cozens offers an eyewitness account of these successes, challenges, and the debates that are taking place in the island.

Ernesto (“Che”) Guevara was executed by Bolivian troops near the town of La Higuera on 9 October 1967, following an ambush. The operation was planned by the CIA and organized by US Special Forces. On the anniversary of his death it is appropriate that we make a balance sheet of this outstanding revolutionary and martyr. In this article, originally written on the 40th anniversary of Che's death, Alan Woods looks at the evolution of Che Guevara from his early days to the day he was killed.

During her stay in Buenos Aires at the end of June, El Militante Argentina interviewed the Cuban revolutionary Celia Hart. In this interview, Celia tells us about the role of Fidel in the Cuban revolution and the perspectives for Cuba, about the relevance of the ideas of Che and Leon Trotsky, and about the Venezuelan revolution and the tasks for Latin American revolutionaries.

The decision by the US authorities to release the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles exposes before the eyes of the world the hypocritical attitude of the United States government to terrorism.

In presenting his book on the history of the Bolshevik party, Alan Woods was able to set the record straight on what really happened in the Russian Revolution, in particular emphasising the role of Leon Trotsky. The fact that Trotsky’s books on sale at the stand of the Frederick Engels Foundation were sold, once again, is an indication that on the island there is a thirst for the genuine ideas of Marxism.

It is clear that Castro is now very ill. The fact that he has not appeared in public for some time would seem to confirm this. The capitalists of the world are now looking eagerly to the post-Castro era where they hope to make deals with some sections of the Cuban state bureaucracy to introduce measures favourable to the return of capitalism. But the swing to the left in the whole of Latin America and especially in Venezuela is working against this.

On 12th September 1998, Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and René González, were arrested in Miami. They were combating reactionary exile Cuban terrorist networks. The US authorities ignored this and later the 5 received severe prison sentences. Only international solidarity and continuous and unrelenting action can end their imprisonment.

Yesterday's Morning Star published an interview with Celia Hart. "If revolutionaries manage to capitalise on this [revolutionary] process to our advantage, a new era of socialist revolutions will begin worldwide. But history won't wait for us and we in the organised left-wing ranks must grasp the rich and splendid process now open to us."