August 12, 1960
THE FISHERMAN
Page 5
Social, Industrial Revolution .
Described in Labor Publication
Cuba's New Declaration of Independence
THE plain fact is that the Cuban Revolution was above all else a declaration of independence from the United States." This is the conclusion drawn by The Dispatcher, publication of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, in a comprehensive review of developments in Cuba.
An ILWU delegation headed by Jimmy Guiterrez, the paper reports, will make a first hand report on Cuba shortly.
Opening with the comment that it "is difficult for the average reader of the daily press to get any real picture of what is happening in Cuba," The Dispatcher's review quotes Robert Taber in The Nation last January that there has been "a virulent press campaign, concocted of ignorance, half
THEY SUPPORT CASTRO Castro meets with representatives of Cuba's sugar workers to discuss their problems and accept their pledge of full support for his program of industrialising Cuba and improving its economic situation. —Courtesy The Dispatcher
AFL-CIO Leader Will Urge Exchange Visits
MOSCOW, USSR: "Before we left USA to come here we saw the need for increasing trade union exchanges. Since being here in the USSR we now believe they are even more important."
This is what Joseph Curran, president of National Maritime Union — AFL-CIO, told Soviet newsmen as he summarised his impressions and those of three ether union delegates. The USA union delegation has visited Stalingrad, Sochi, Odessa, Leningrad and Moscow.
Curran told a press conference that "we will intensify our efforts to convince the AFL-CIO leadership of the need for increased
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exchanges. Our report will emphatically stress this point."
The delegation will also propose tc their own union that it invite a delegation from the Soviet Sea and River Transport Union, which was host to the NMU delegation here.
Curran said that exchanges would help American unionists to see "at first hand" how Soviet unionists work and live. "This will help them to pierce the fog of propaganda in newspaper and radio accounts. Besides," he went on, 'such exchanges will cut both ways; Soviet seamen could learn something from us, too."
During their tour the NMU delegates saw rest homes, sanatoriums, farms, children's camps and other establishments under the control of the trade unions. They went aboard Soviet ships and talked to the crews.
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truths, name calling, connotative misdirection and outright fabrication" against the Castro regime in Cuba.
The truth, says the paper, is that   what   is   taking   place in Cuba is "a real social and economic revolution, stemming primarily from  the  needs  of the Cuban peasants." What these needs are and how they have been denied by a succession   of   ruthless dictatorships supported by US interests which hitherto   have   controlled   the islands rich resources are outlined by The Dispatcher.
RICH RESOURCES
Cuba, it says, is endowed with advantages that could make her an island paradise. It has a deigbtful year round climate. The land is so fertile that "a stake driven into the ground will blossom."
Cuba has extensive nickel, iron, chrome, manganese and copper deposits — a good part of the necessary basis for industrialisation. She has good ports, good communications and she is well located in relation to large natural markets in both North and South America.
These are sources of wealth which, if wisely used, could have raised the standard of living of every Cuban to heights which few countries in the world could equal.
These potentials have not been realised. As everyone knows, Cuba has been virtually a US colony since the Spanish-American war in 1898. It is not widely known, but the Cubans fought for and won their own independence from Spain before the US intervention. For the last 60 years, ever since that intervention, US private investors have dominated in key areas of the Cuban economy.
The economic and political domination of the US began with the inclusion of the notorious Piatt Amendment in the Cuban Constitution of 1901, under which the Cubans were forced to agree "that the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence (and) the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property and individual liberty." The Piatt Amendment also forced them to give the US naval bases in Cuba. US BACKED DICTATORS
But, continues The Dispatcher, what kind of government has the United States fostered in Cuba and for what purpose has it intervened in Cuban affairs?
The Machado dictatorship, supported to the very end by the US was finally overthrown by a coalition of courageous students, radicals and patriots, and the lower levels of the army led by Batista.
Batista was the dominant figure from 1933 to 1944. In the last four years of that period he was a duly
TOO LITTLE FOR TOO MANY Cuban workers, despite living on an "island paradise" found only poverty and despair under succession of dictators. —Courtesy The Dispatcher
elected president and he permitted fair elections in 1944 and 1948.
But Batista turned against the people who made his rise possible. He remained a power behind the scenes and gave Cuba one of the most corrupt and gangster-ridden regimes in her history. He did not permit an election in 1952, but took power by a military coup 80 days before the election.
This   succession   of dictators, spanning   some   60   years, protected a vast amount of American, rather than Cuban, wealth. By the time Batista was overthrown, US private interests had investments   of   $850   million in Cuba. Sugar, which accounted for nearly two-thirds of Cuba's national income, was 40 percent controlled by US interests. Another 10-20 percent was controlled by other foreign interests.
Ninety percent of Cuba's mineral wealth was owned by American   interests,  its  oil refineries were owned entirely by US and British interests, its public utilities were 80 percent American-owned; its great cattle ranches were largely in American hands. This is colonialism, and its profits were drained out of Cuba by hundreds  of  millions  of dollars every year.
POVERTY RIDDEN PEOPLE
The Dispatcher gives these facts to show the appalling conditions imposed on1 the people by successive  dictatorships  to  enable for-
eign interests to exploit the country's wealth.
Cuba has about 450,000 sugar workers, it points out. Their average income has been $120 a year. A US survey in 1957 estimated ! that 96 of every 100 sugar workers had never eaten meat. They worked an average of four months a •year, and were unemployed for eight months every year. This they call the "tiempo muerto," the season of death.
Cuba with a population of about 6,000,000, had as much unemployment as either France or Italy with populations above 40 million. About one in every four Cubans was unemployed.
The average per capita income in Cuba is about $6 a week.
Almost three quarters of the available land was held by a small handful of wealthy Cuban families and huge US-owned sugar and cattle corporations. About 200,000 I rural families had no land whatever on which to raise their own vegetables, yet almost 10 million acres of untouched available land
was kept idle by private landholders. |
Cuba exported sugar and imported candy. She exported leather and imported shoes. She exported iron and imported plows. A land that was fertile and could grow all her own food supplies, nevertheless imported vast quantities of food from the US, including rice, a crop she could grow herself.
The housing situation was incredibly bad. Over half of the rural families lived in shacks and slums without the barest necessities of sanitation. About half of all Cubans paid rents of one-fifth to one-third of their incomes. Over half had no electricity.
See CUBAN — Page 6
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