Cuban Revolution gains importance

[amyrose2712]

BY JACOB PERASSO
MERCED, California—Nearly 100 people, mostly students, participated in a discussion on the book Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution, held October 21 at the University of California campus here. The featured speaker was Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder Press and editor of the book.

At UC Merced and three other campuses the same week, Waters spoke to some 150 students at five classes about the Cuban Revolution and related topics. One of the classes at San Francisco State University focused on Cuba’s revolutionary internationalist solidarity in Africa (see accompanying article.)

Our History Is Still Being Written tells the stories of Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui, and Moisés Sío Wong, three young Cuban rebels of Chinese ancestry, who in the 1950s became combatants in the revolutionary war to overthrow the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship, rose to the rank of general in Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces, and continue to play leading roles today in Cuba’s socialist revolution.

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“Is it possible that in this economic crisis other countries in Latin America will become socialist? Will capitalism last only for a time and then go into socialism?” asked Carla, a student in a first-year English composition course.

“Capitalism is based on a different economic foundation from socialism, but property relations don’t just change on their own,” Waters answered. “A contradiction grows up under capitalism between the increased concentration and productivity of labor and the private appropriation of wealth. The problem is not bad guys on Wall Street. It’s capitalism itself.

“Many countries have similar conditions to those that existed in Cuba prior to 1959,” Waters noted. “However, revolutions don’t just come out of conditions of poverty and desperation. Revolutions come from traditions of struggle, growing consciousness, and political leadership.”

http://www.themilitant.com/2008/7245/724550.html