Stokely Carmichael Lectures in Front of Che Guevara Poster
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The Inheritor and Continuator of the Revolutionary Theory and Practice of Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure and Kwame Ture
URL: http://www.a-aprp-gc.org
E-mail: info@a-aprp-gc.org
Part 1 & 2 of 3 parts – December 14, 2009
An Open Email to Dr. Darsi Ferrer Ramirez:
Imprisonment is an occupational hazard for activists who make mistakes!
CC: Dr. Iva E. Caruthers, Dr. Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Professor Norman Girvan, Queen Nzinga Heru, Dr. Acklyn Lynch, Dr. Carlos Moore, Professor Abdias Nascimento, Dr. Rex Nettleford, Dr. James E. Turner, Dr. Ron Walters, Dr. Conrad Worrill, Other Signees, HE Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, HE Raúl Castro Ruiz, HE Fidel Castro Ruiz, African and Oppressed Humanity
Dr. Ferrer,
You are accused of illegal possession of two bags of cement that cost about $8 in state-owned stores. Yusnaimy Jorge Soca, your wife, has publicly said, in the Uncommon Sense blog, that “When he was arrested, the police raided our house, supposedly, due to [a] tip that we were buying construction materials with an illegal origin. During that fake search in our house, they confiscated two bags of cement and some metal sheets. … What nobody understands is, why they didn’t show any interest in the bag of cement, the gravel and the sand piles we have had in the house’s front porch, in plain view, for almost a year?” She also said that you were using the cement to fix a hole in the ceiling of your house. If this is true, this was not a political act. It was an error, with tragic repercussions for you, your family, and the people and cause you serve. We beg you, as members of the A-APRP (GC), to not compound this error, this tragedy, by attempting to politicize and build a movement around your case. We speak to you as your older sisters and brothers. We speak to you from experience---collective and individual.
You know that stealing from state workplaces in Cuba, the “rerouting of resources,” is so common that some Cubans dismiss it as an acceptable part of daily life. Cubans call it “por la izquierda,” on the left. In November 2005, Fidel calculated that this “rerouting” could be costing the state as much as $200 million. He accidentally discovered state workers boldly selling stolen construction materials in a public market, and reportedly asked, “Just how many ways of stealing do we have in this country?” Raul has called it a “deadly cancer,” plaguing the Revolution. In March 2009, he allegedly replaced most of his cabinet, “in part, on the grounds that they were too cozy with foreign business men and lax in controlling graft beneath them.”
Corruption in Cuba did not begin in 1959, when the July 26 Movement seized power. “There is hardly a period in the history of Cuba,” according to Robert Buddan, on page 97 of The Foundation of Caribbean Politics, “that is not replete with descriptions of corruption in government, through every administration.” In 1942, according to Wikipedia, “the British Foreign Office reported that the U.S. State Department was “very worried” about corruption under Fulgencio Batista, describing the problem as “endemic” and exceeding “anything which had gone on previously.” Batista was African. He was also a prostitute and a pimp for U.S. Mafia bosses and businessmen, who by the way were European. Eduardo Chibas dedicated his life to fighting corruption under the presidencies of Ramon Grau and Carlos Prio. Dating as far back as August 23, 1498, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain sent Francisco de Bobadilla to Havana to relieve Christopher Columbus, and his two brothers, Diego and Bartholomew, of their command in Cuba. They were accused of mismanagement and of being rebellious subjects. They were arrested and shipped back to Spain in chains. When it became clear to the Monarchs that Bobadilla had abused the trust they placed in him, they ordered Columbus’ release, and assured him of their royal favor. But they did not restore him to his position as Governor of the West Indies.
In their paper, Housing Policy in Castro’s Cuba, Teddy Kapur and Alastair Smith, report that from 1959 to 1993, the housing stock in Cuba grew 80%, with the construction by the government of 1.3 million dwellings, while the population only grew 57%. The largest population growth occurred in the African community. The gusanos, the Cuban worms, fled to the comfort and safety of Miami. That exodus was overwhelmingly European/persons of Spanish descent. “The staggering need for housing,” according to Kapur and Smith, “has left the government in a perpetual chase to build enough units to distribute to needy families. … From 1971 to 1985, the need for housing grew from 745,000 units to 888,000 units.” The proportion of housing in good or average condition grew from 53% in 1953 to 83% in 1993. Leaseholders in government housing pay no more than 10% of their income on rent. The actual range is from 3-7%. The average state employee makes $10 per month. The price of vacant lots was set at $4 per square meter. Homeownership in Cuba is 85%, higher than in the African community in Chicago. A typical apartment in Havana is valued at between 4,500 to 10,500 pesos. Between 1996 and 2000, 141,000 units were added and 250,000 units restored in the Habana Vieja district. One half of these units were through individual efforts thanks to remittances from Cubans in Miami and one half through governmental efforts. The cost of rehabilitating all of Havana is estimated to be $14 billion.
Members of our organization, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC), have traveled to Cuba, for more than 4 decades. And we will travel to Cuba again, again, and again. We do not respect, accept, and will not obey the illegal and immoral ban on travel to Cuba. We know how the people of Cuba live, because we stay with them, not in tourist hotels. We know that one of Cuba’s greatest needs is for paint and cement. We know that Cuba is a major producer of cement, for the entire Caribbean, but its production capacity is outstripped by its needs; and severely damaged by the illegal and immoral embargo which the government of the united snakes has imposed for more than 40 years. Cuba is also suffering, like many countries in the Caribbean, from a wave of hurricanes that ravage its infrastructure. Thanks to its planning and organization however, the best in the world, few casualties are sustained. We have heard that the penalty for stealing a cow is higher than for killing a child, a woman or a man. If so, it should be, since that cow, in its lifetime, produces milk for thousands of children, and will feed, when it can produce no more milk, hundreds of women and men.
Dr. Ferrer,
Corruption is also pandemic in the united snakes, from Wall Street to the White House to the Governors Mansion in Illinois and the Mayor’s Office in Chicago. Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is accused of trying to sell Barrack Obama’s senatorial seat to the highest bidder. Blago is also accused of attempting to “use a $1.8-billion tollway project as a carrot to lure $500,000 in campaign contributions” from a Toronto-based cement company. These are not political acts! Michael Scott, the chairperson of the Chicago School Board, an African, plead guilty to misusing his School Board credit card to pay $3,000 in expenses for his and his wife’s trip to Copenhagen to lobby for Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games. His death, whether by murder as some believe or suicide as the coroner and police have ruled, is not political! The Mayor of Baltimore, an African woman, was recently convicted for buying a Nintendo with gift cards that were donated to the City for distribution to the poor. Her crime was not political! It was a crime against the City of Baltimore and all its citizens. She is not a political prisoner!
Theft of public resources and public trust, the creative “mobilization of resources,” is called many names in Chicago, including “pay-to-play,” patronage, etc. The bourgeois Nationalist Movement calls it “nationalization,” not socialist nationalization, but nationalization for individuals and elites, and justifies it by saying that they are taking back what the slave masters, the imperialists stole from us. Some call it “reparations” for the crimes they committed against us during our almost 6 centuries-long and continuing Maafa (1415 to today). But, there can be no justification for theft from the people, from the people’s institutions, from the people’s state. There can be no justification for stealing xerox paper or toilet paper from Bennett College, Cornell University, Emory University, the University of Maryland at College Park, the Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University or Princeton University; or for stealing pennies from the collection plates or frozen chicken from the kitchens at Trinity United Church of Christ and Allen Temple Baptist Church. God forbade it, and the laws of Cuba and the united snakes forbid it as well. Corruption and confusion—moral and spiritual, political and economic, is also pandemic in the civil and women’s rights, nationalist and Pan-African Movements in the united snakes and worldwide, and in the church as well. It is a ticking time bomb that is waiting to explode/implode and be exposed.
Our Party, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC), is the inheritor and continuator of the revolutionary theory and practice of Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure and Kwame Ture. We have supported the Cuban Revolution since its victory in 1959, and will continue to do so. We will not join forces with the enemies of the Cuban Revolution, who are also the enemies of African and World Humanity, not even to save our own lives. We are asked to support you, simply because of the color of your skin. You and we know that this request is unacceptable. The A-APRP (GC), adheres to the principle of class as primary in relationship to nationality, as enunciated by Ahmed Sekou Toure who correctly said at the so-called 6th Pan-African Congress in Dar es Salaam in 1974: “Fidel is more of a brother to me than Mobutu.” We say today, for the entire world to hear, that Raul is more of a brother to us than Batista or Carlos Moore. The class implications of this statement are undeniable, correct and clear.
Dr. Ferrer,
The crime that you are accused of is not political; and you are not a political prisoner. If you had those bags of cement, as your wife reported, and can not produce a valid receipt documenting there purchase, then you are guilty of possessing stolen property, the peoples’ property, state property at the very least. You are simply another brother who made a mistake, a tragic mistake, like millions of our brothers and sisters who are languishing in prisons in every corner of Africa and the African Diaspora. You are at best, a socio-economic prisoner, not a political one. If you insist that you are a political prisoner, please explain to us what your political ideology and objectives are. We beg you to not make another mistake. Please, do not be misused by forces that have no regard for you or for African People in any corner of the world. Do not become a pawn, cannon fodder, in a filthy and immoral game. It will be tragic for all forces concerned.
Raul,
The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC) is confident that you and the highest levels of the Cuban government will insure and protect Dr. Ferrer’s civil rights, especially his human and civil rights to a just, impartial and swift hearing. We know the Cuban Revolution will ensure his health and safety while he is incarcerated. We are also confident that you will continue to root out and crush corruption in any and all of its manifestations and forms, in Cuba in general, and in the housing and cement industry in particular, without pity or mercy, without regard to national (race or ethnicity), gender or age, status, stature or situation. Oppressed humanity will be forever grateful to you!
Kwame Ture, whom you may remember as Stokely Carmichael, authored his last Testament five months before his transition on November 15, 1998, in Conakry , Guinea . We engraved it as a plaque, and placed it on his grave: “If I could not alleviate Africa ’s suffering, I have at least shared fully in it!” We consider this statement to be a summation of his vision and virtues, his contributions and achievements, his example for and demand from revolutionaries, living and as yet unborn, in every corner of Africa, the African Diaspora, and the World.
Mr. Nascimento, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC) acknowledges receipt of your Open Letter dated October 30, 2009. You and your wife, Dr. Leila Gonzales, Claudio Rosa, Jose Santos and Martinho da Villa spoke and performed at our annual African Liberation Day (ALD) activities in Washington , DC . We will be forever grateful for the information and culture you shared, and the many lessons we learned from you. Our work and situation has not permitted us travel to Brazil in more than two decades. We will come to Brazil soon, and hope to meet with you.
The A-APRP (GC) acknowledges receipt of the Letter from Jamaica that was signed on November 26, 2009. We also acknowledge receipt of the Acting on Our Conscience statement dated December 3, 2009 that was signed by 59 African intellectuals who reside in the united snakes. We have read their Press Release. They know that we are not African Americans, that we are African, and that we are “victims of America ,” as Malcolm X so correctly said in 1964. We are here in the united snakes for one reason, and one reason only, the almost six century long and continuing Maafa (1415 to the present). They also know that anyone, whose allegiance is to the united snakes, hyphenated or whole, could never speak for us.
We respectfully say to them, as sisters and brothers, as comrades and friends, and publicly to the world, that it would be the height of ignorance and arrogance to assume that one small group of powerless African intellectuals are more endowed with conscience, because of their geo-political relationship to and socio-economic status within capitalism, zionism, and imperialism, than others. It would be the height of ego mania for anyone to assume that they have made more contributions to the struggle for the liberation and empowerment of African People in every corner of the world, or won more achievements, than the Cuban Revolution. It would be an error for anyone to pretend or assume that the African community in the united snakes speaks with one voice, one consciousness or one conscience. History is littered with the rotting and stinking remains of fools, of mad men and mad women, of charlatans who pretended such lies.
The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC), which is the inheritor and continuator of the revolutionary theory and practice of Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure and Kwame Ture, has a conscience and consciousness as well, and our conscience and consciousness compels us to disagree, openly, respectfully and firmly with their call to join in hand with the enemies of the Cuban, African, and World Revolution. We will never do so, not even to save our own lives. We thank them for unleashing this discussion, this debate, this war of ideas, of values and visions, of objectives and goals, which has been silently raging within the Civil and Human Rights, Nationalist, Pan-Africanist, Socialist and Liberation Theology Movements in the united snakes and the world, at least since African Liberation Day 1972 through 1976, the so-called 6th Pan-African Congress in 1974, and the escalation of revolutionary armed struggle leading to the inevitable victory of the Angolan Revolution in 1975-76.
Osagefyo Kwame Nkrumah teaches us that everything changes, and that that change is ramified and rarefied. These intellectuals do not know the struggle that they have unleashed, but we promise them, as Africa is our Mother, they will not define or dictate the terms of this struggle, the direction that it takes, or its outcome. They are not Humpty Dumpty, and we are not Alice in Wonderland. They do not have the “power to define” anything for us. They do not speak for the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC)! We speak for ourselves.
The A-APRP (GC) also acknowledges receipt of the Response by revolutionary African intellectuals and artists in Cuba . We share with them a common blood. We also share a common history of exploitation and oppression, of resistance, rebellion and revolution, and common aspirations for the future. The Yoruba are correct: "The lie may run for a year, the truth will catch up with it in one day". African mothers and fathers, in every corner of Africa and the African Diaspora are also correct: “You are known by the company we keep, and the half-truths and lies that we tell and teach, sing and dance, write and preach.”
We take this occasion to salute the revolutionary African intellectuals in Cuba , and to thank them for your principled and reasonable Response to this unwarranted and unprovoked affront to their humanity, integrity and dignity, to ours, and to Revolutionary Humanity, whom they are in the vanguard. We take this tragic but expected occasion to reaffirm and revitalize our unconditional and uncompromising support for the Cuban People and the Cuban Revolution. Our national (including ethnicity and spirituality), class and gender consciousness and conscience demand nothing less.
The Chinese have a saying, “No participation, no right to observation. No investigation, no right to speak.” Our participation in the Movement and mass struggles for almost five decades, affords us the right to make our observation. Our investigation, which is second to none in the united snakes at least, affords us the right, the obligation to speak.
Abdias and All,
Dr. Carter G. Woodson warned us about the Miseducation of the Negro and Harold Cruse warned us about the Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. Kwame Nkrumah warned us in Class Struggle in Africa about the crisis of the nationalist intelligentsia, which splits after independence, after affirmative action or national and gender inclusion is achieved. “Those who helped in the nationalist revolutionary struggle,” according to Nkrumah, “take part in the government, and are oriented either to the Party nouveaux riches, or to the socialist revolutionaries. The others join the political opposition, or become apolitical, or advocate middle of the road policies. Some become dishonest intellectuals. For they see the irrationality of capitalism but enjoy its benefits and way of life; and for their own selfish reasons are prepared to prostitute themselves and become agents and supporters of privilege and reaction.” (Page 39-40)
This struggle that your letters and statement has unleashed is not new, and it will not be confined to classrooms, boardrooms of non-governmental institutions, or pastoral offices. The A-APRP (GC) is taking it to the streets, in every corner of Africa, the African Diaspora and the world, and we do not need anyone’s permission to do so. They claimed to speak for us, and you do not, and we want the whole world to know it. This struggle that they have unleashed, despite your attempts to contain it to that, is not about the alleged persecution and incarceration, justified or not, of one man. It is not about the alleged persecution and harassment of an alleged Civil Rights Movement inside of Cuba, which is undeniably being financed and orchestrated from Miami and Washington, DC, and now Rio (Brazil), Kingston (Jamaica) and Chicago (united snakes. This struggle is about the political economy of corruption---material and immaterial, in the Revolution, in the Civil and Human Rights, Anti -Racist, Nationalist, Pan-Africanist, Socialist and Liberation Theology Movements worldwide. It is also about the immorality of justifying and condoning, aiding and abetting corruption, half-truths and lies, treachery and deceit. The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC) respectfully offers its contribution to this class struggle, this war of ideas, this war of conflicting ethics and values, this war of conflicting conceptions of nation (including ethnic and spiritual), class and gender interests and aspirations.
As intellectuals, they surely understand that the concept of corruption, of inclusion, of liberation and empowerment, presupposes the existence of a common ethic that prohibits actions deemed undesirable, e.g., criminality, lies and theft, rape and murder. The interests served through these actions tend to be quite narrow. Corruption, oppression and enslavement speak to the illegitimate and/or arbitrary exercise of authority in the interest of private gain at the expense of the masses. In the broadest sense of the term, political economy focuses on the nexus between the moral authority and/or legitimate right to make policy decisions that compel others to act in the name and interest of a given number of human beings and the means and methods by which it is implemented. The means and methods by which policy is exercised (political power) speaks to the moral authority to determine the production and distribution of wealth, that is, it’s a political question of a just democratic process to determine the fundamental questions of what goods and services are to be produced and how the product of the people’s labor are to be distributed and an economic question of funding and staffing issues associated with achieving the given policy goal.
Political corruption includes the ideology of elitism and a continuum of tactics (e.g., lies, slander, criminality, and political murder) that are outside the rules (ethics) of a just political process. In politics, there is a democratic idea that is at the heart of an ethically just political process; however, there is no democratic ethic (the dominant value) in the capitalist context. In capitalist society, there is no real rule that says, “democracy in, oligarchy out,” only rhetoric and a facade to that effect. Capitalism by definition is oligarchic, repressive, and undemocratic. Its ethics, statutes, and laws serve to institutionalize the “legitimacy” of an elite political class---European, African or other that is accountable not to the class of people who produce society's wealth, but to the class of people who accumulate money capital, and intellectual, cultural and spiritual capital, through a process of “legally” sanctioned theft from those that produce the wealth. The slave trade and slavery are excellent examples of this theft, though not the only examples. In this context, political corruption is an inevitable by product of money capital's domination of public policy. Political corruption therefore is a means to an unjust end. In the capitalist context, it stands counter to what advocates of democracy would expect, which is the theft and/or frustration of the people's right to legislate in their best interest. Money capital's overwhelming control of the political process corrupts and makes a mockery of the democratic ideas of universal participation, one-person-one vote, majority rule, minority rights in the form of Civil and Human Rights and affirmative action, accountability, and transparency with respect to the exercise of state power.
In the socialist context, political corruption is in fact the usurpation of the people's right to exercise state power in their best interest. Yes, political corruption exists in Cuba and it is fostered and enabled by united snakes funding of TV/Radio Marti and individuals and groups who claim to represent “Civil Society,” including the most right-wing, backward and anti-socialist wings of the so-called Civil Rights Movement in Cuba. It is combated by the Cuban Revolution whose ethic precludes the sacrifice of the people's democratic interest for private gain.
Economic corruption speaks to the theft of wealth. Wealth equals land, labor and lives. In Cuba, no one has the right to steal some one else's labor value and/or the material wealth produced from it and the land, as was the case prior to the Cuban Revolution. They no longer have the right to steal lives with impunity, sell them in chains, or enslave them on the sugar plantations or the rum factories of Cuba, to prostitute women and children in the casinos and hotels, or on the streets of Cuba, or parade naked African Cuban men as sex objects to fuel the racism and sexism of the Euro-American tourists---European and African. Yes, economic corruption takes place in Cuba. It takes place in Rio, Kingston and Chicago as well. Chicago, as the entire world knows, is the capital, the center of corruption---European and African, in the united snakes today. There are individuals in Cuba who steal from the people and groups that steal from the state, but the state does not sanction it and it seeks to eliminate it. This is in stark contrast with a capitalist system that: (1) through the regular work process and financial system of exchange, and (2) through periodic “bailouts” of capitalists by the state, systematically and unjustly transfer wealth from the working majority (producers) to a privileged minority as is the case in the united snakes.
Abdias and All,
Yes racism exists in Cuba, defacto, individual and generational. It continues to exist in Brazil, despite Pele’s successes, and in the united snakes, despite Obama’s election to the presidency and Oprah’s coronation to queendom. It exists in the United Church of Christ, despite its centuries long contributions to the struggle against the slave trade and slavery. It also exists at Northeastern Illinois University, Princeton, Cornell, University Maryland at College Park and Bennett College, despite the size of the paychecks the professors receive, thanks to the Peoples’ and the Movements’ sacrifices and struggle, and despite the tenure they have attained, or golden parachutes they fight and compromise for. There is no post-national society anywhere in the world, and there is no society without corruption.
As intellectuals who by profession must read the news and stay abreast of world developments and affairs, the A-APRP (GC) is sure that you know that a significant portion of Latin America, through the ALBA alliance, is in the midst of a struggle to assert its sovereignty over its resources and markets and assert its independence from the domination of the united snakes ala Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine, and Preemptive War. What right does the united snakes and its agents, African or European, conscious or unconscious, well intended or not, have to determine that capitalism is best for the people of Latin America, of Cuba; or that united snakes conceptions of affirmative action, of national and gender inclusion is best for African people anywhere in the world. Affirmative Action does not work in Brazil, Jamaica or the united snakes, despite the lies told otherwise, except for a small sector of the rising, corrupt African elite, and it does not work in Azania/South Africa either.
A foreign policy of elitism, arrogance and imperialism is quite distinct from that of mutual respect of sovereignty, mutual cooperation, Pan-Africanism and internationalism. In the last 10 years, a host of popular leftist governments have been chosen by their people to address the suffering they have endured under their historical settler-colonial and neo-colonial relationships with the united snakes and Europe. There is a national dimension to this awakening. Native Americans and Africans in Latin America have won political concessions that have not been previously enjoyed. This is in stark contrast to the fact that Africans on the island of Cuba enjoyed an even more dramatic awakening beginning in 1959 with the triumph of the Revolution. Enter stage right, Carlos Moore and the Cuba Transition Project based in Miami and Washington, DC, and their allies in Rio (Brazil), Kingston (Jamaica) and Chicago (united states).
Dr. Carlos Moore is an African born and raised in Cuba prior to the Revolution (now residing in Brazil) with a personal agenda, possibly to be the next president, the first African president, of a capitalist Cuba. Obama has given the African bourgeois intelligentsia, worldwide, a new hope to be the next generously paid criminal servant of capitalism, zionism, and imperialism. Where and from whom will Dr. Moore get the capital that he needs and seeks to accomplish his personal, political and economic goals? Certainly not from the masses of African People who languish in the projects of Chicago, the slums of Kingston or the favellas of Rio. What concession will he give for this capital? He is a representative of a broader ideological and economic war against Cuba that can be traced to the united snakes’ invasion of Cuba in 1898 to usurp the people's hard fought victory over Spanish colonialism and slavery, and to impose neo-colonialism and segregation. What is this issue he and his ideological friends raise, of racism and affirmative action in the context of the Cuban Revolution? Cuba, like every other country in the Americas, has a legacy of European supremacy, of racist ideologies given the chattel enslavement of Native American and Africans for more than 400 years by a nascent and developing capitalist Western Europe. This enslavement was and is a crime against God, and against humanity.
The public policy of the Cuban Revolution has put an end to state sanctioned ideologies and practices of European national and gender privilege, of national and gender exclusion, and made real investments in making whole the historically victimized and exploited communities (women, labor) of the island, which by definition includes the bulk of the African population. Compare the social mobility of Africans in Cuba since 1959 to that of Africans anywhere else in the Americas on the basis of levels of education, health, and social inclusion. The statistics speak for themselves. Affirmative action in Cuba is not the tokenism and cooptation that appeals to corrupt African elites as is the case in the united snakes. It is the essence of developing a system that speaks to the need of its people. At the same time, it does not mean that the legacy of national and gender oppression and national and gender exclusion has been fully overcome in Cuba. Fidel Castro himself has spoken to how entrenched it is and the need for continued struggle on this front. The point being, African Cubans are not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Only people who are mentally imbalanced, or child murderers, would do that.
The fact of the matter is that there would be no need for the Cuba Transition Project, no need for the united snakes government, or any of its spider web and alphabet soup of criminal agencies---domestic and international, to use Dr. Carlos Moore and the so-called Civil Rights Movement to create a wedge issue in Cuba, if there were a real base of support for the counter revolution in Cuba amongst the Africans. The African population in Cuba was and is the driving force that helped make, consolidate, and defend the Cuban Revolution. They have not fallen for the colonial tactic of divide and rule, for treachery and deceit inside the Revolution. They need only look at the conditions of workers, women, the elderly and youth in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Iraq and New Orleans, to see their fate, if they do.
Abdias and All,
Capitalism, zionism, other expressions of imperialism continues to assert that human nature is inherently negative, individualistic and selfish, and thus the best that humanity can do is enshrine this ethic of the survival of the fittest (the most individualistic, most selfish, most immoral, most unethical, most deceitful, most treacherous) in organizational form...the free market...civil society, including its spiritual and cultural sectors. The idea is that it is natural, even necessary to exploit others so that you the individual would benefit, that we live in a zero sum world. This is the ethic of corruption promoted, fostered and financed by the FBI/CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other agencies repression and exploitation of the united snakes government. They deify the market. But let’s be clear, markets existed before the dawn of capitalism, and they will continue to exist at the dusk of its destruction. The forces of supply and demand, the market, have always been and continue to be the creation of human decisions and actions and hence by definition not free. The people have every right to control their resources and markets in the interest of the masses; they are the ones producing the products and services to be traded. They have every right to demand a socialist ethic of fair distribution and trade in the regulation of those market relations and not surrender to the demands of the Empire or its agents---European or African.
The Empire’s effort to foster corruption in Cuba knows no bounds. Fidel's older sister is an excellent example of this. Without honor or shame, and from Miami, even she admits of consciously taking money from the CIA, the author of Che Guevara’s execution and numerous attempts to kill her brothers, Fidel and Raul. She is honest with respect to this admission. Cuba is just another example of the Empire’s interference in the sovereignty of a nation where it has allied with domestic counter-revolution to foster dissension, confusion, and chaos for the purpose of “regime Change”. The Cuban Revolution and her brothers have diametrically opposing ethics and values to her and capitalism as they are principled and altruistic. Cuba’s history of internationalism is unrivaled– hundreds of thousands of Cuban doctors, intellectuals, and soldiers have given their lives and served the poor and oppressed in Africa, Latin America and Asia. The Cuban Revolution came to crush corruption, capitalist values, and ethics. The Cuban Revolution will not have succeeded fully until it has institutionalized and ensured that success, until it achieves this fundamental aim. Corruption is corruption, no mater the color of its skin, or the gender of the crook.
Within the context of the current global crisis in capitalism, zionism, and imperialism, the ideological war is heightened because the suffering masses, especially their youth, within the capitalist world are objectively searching for alternative solutions to their increased hardships. Revolutionary Cuba stands as an irrefutable example. Cuba's socialist ethic survived the “Special Period,” the economic, political and moral collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1989-90, when its economy contracted by more than half virtually overnight. The coup de grace was to be the subsequent tightening of the then 30 year reprehensible, unjust, and immoral economic blockade by the united snakes on Cuba. The Great Depression of the 1930s pales in comparison to the social stresses Cuba has been forced to confront in the 1990s and beyond.
To the chagrin of the Miami Mafia, the FBI/CIA and NED, Cuba did not collapse into the mess that was/and still is the New Orleans of Katrina...this is the difference between the socialist and capitalist values of a population when put under extreme stress. More recently, massive hurricanes in succession have struck the length and breadth of Cuba, and again no post Katrina-like New Orleans where the ethic of survival of the fittest reigned supreme. Tiny Cuba is an example worthy of critical intellectual study, despite the recycled propaganda to the contrary, especially for those who claim to champion civil and human rights, especially for those who claim to lead African and Oppressed Humanity. No intellectual is worthy of that name, or the paycheck and perks that come with it, if they are incapable of or unwilling to make this honest, nation, class and gender study.
The A-APRP (GC) suggests to these African Intellectuals, in the name of Woodson, Cruse and Nkrumah, that they have a historically determined responsibility to speak truth to power, to make real the words of the Yoruba, “The lie may run for a year, the truth will catch up with it in a day.” This is the essence of responsible intellectual freedom. We accept as true and historically correct, a statement Toni Cade Bambara made to an Afro-American Writers Conference at Howard University in the Spring of 1974: “The responsibility of a writer representing an oppressed people is to make revolution irresistible.” Ironically, these letters and statements to President Raul Castro appear to be an isolated incident when viewed in the broader context of their unwillingness to exercise this freedom of political expression within the respective countries they reside. We are not aware of similar letters and statements with respect to the concrete reality of dire oppression and exploitation that the masses are confronted with in the respective countries in which they live.
Be that as it may, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party suggests that instead of “shooting from the hip” on the basis of sentimental appeals to racial solidarity, at any cost, as was the case in these letters and statements, it is their/our responsibility not to play into the hands of those that would reduce them/us to the role of conscious or unconscious facilitators of the political machinations of the Cuba Transition Project and its demented ideological and financial backers in Washington, DC and Miami. A thorough analysis of the Cuban reality is warranted, but to be clear, its context, must be grounded in analyzing the impact of the criminal, illegal, and immoral political and economic blockade on the Cuban Revolution and the social fabric of Cuban society. Heretofore, most foreign scholarship on the Cuban Revolution has been woefully misinformed and has had a not-so-hidden agenda to minimize its successes and use its shortcomings as a wedge issue to disrupt instead of advance the revolutionary process.
Abdias and All,
Let us be quite clear, in this unfolding struggle for Cuba, of the cynicism and opportunism involved in misusing and misapplying the rhetoric and tactics of the Civil Rights Movement in the united snakes to engender an appearance of legitimacy and support for a morally corrupt and ethically illegitimate project that seeks to undermine the integrity of the Cuban Revolution. The Cuban masses have a national, class and gender interest worth shielding from the external machinations of their avowed class enemies---European or African. On this basis of nationality (including race and spirituality) and gender it is clear that the Cuban masses have no inherent internal enemies (the contradictions between genders and nationalities are not inherently antagonistic, unlike class contradictions). It is also clear that the Cuban Revolution through the Communist Party of Cuba and its mass organizations (African Cuban intellectuals included) are committed to promoting and protecting this mass, revolutionary interest. What is genuinely the same for these African intellectuals and their colleagues however, is that the current “civil rights” movements represented by African intellectuals in the united snakes, Brazil, Jamaica, etc. do no even pretend to want to promote and protect the class interests of the masses in their respective countries of residence. The conditions of poverty, violence, disease, hopelessness, homelessness, crime, powerlessness and repression, and murder are quite acceptable. Do the masses in these countries not have genuine class interests that are currently threatened? Why the silence on these class concerns?
Ready for the Revolution!
Members of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC)
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