by Husayn Al-Kurdi

A small island of spirited people, descended from Blacks, Spaniards and Red Indians for the most part and in varying mixtures, has managed to hold out and develop a socialist society with an anti-Imperialist orientation under the very noses of the mightiest empire in known history, a scant ninety miles from its borders. This small island nation has held out against punishing sanctions, invasion and sabotage on the part of the mighty power's hirelings. Its now-elderly recognized leader has survived numerous assassination attempts. Its people proudly and defiantly tell the Superpower to go peddle its merchandise and its inhuman system elsewhere. The island is festooned with statues, murals, memorials and other testaments to its resilient ability to maintain a dignified, compassionate society in spite of the constant assault intended to get it to buckle down to its knees and give in to its historical tormentors.

That island nation is Cuba. It would do all people good to recognize the laudable features of the Cuban revolution, to support its achievements and to try to emulate and institute political action and social initiatives in their own nations and societies which approximate those of the spirited Cubano people.

The Cuban revolutionaries were motivated by deep and intense motives of patriotic nationalism, involving a caring for the welfare and prospects of their people. Unlike phony "nationalists" such as the Irish gentry who were reputedly "proud that they had a people to sell" and unlike ersatz reactionaries who pretended to love their countries only so that they could lord it over their subjects, those who took to the hills to wage armed struggle with Fidel Castro in the 1950s were eager to achieve a genuine liberation of their people, of the suffering impoverished popular masses.

The Fidelistas explicitly were fighting against oppression, to stop oppressors and their system of exploitation along with the conditions of poverty, illiteracy, gangsterist landowning slavery and exploitation and to abolish the aristocratic overlordship which had blighted the country for centuries. They chose the only viable road to achieve their objective, that of armed struggle based on, and on behalf of, the popular and poorer classes, and resolutely stuck to their course until achieving military and political victory. They showed what a determined few could accomplish once they ignited the spark and initiated the process of attaining true liberation.

The guerrillas refused to listen to the blandishments of the compromisers, the pacifists and the "reformers", those who counseled "participation in the political process" and those who espoused making a deal with the devil which they clearly recognized and sought to eliminate. Unlike such as the Communist Party of Cuba of that period, they never approached the dictator Batista to make a deal or to enter his puppet government. A compromise which would have liquidated them as a revolutionary entity was impermissible and unthinkable. Unlike so many others such as the PLO, IRA and ANC, they stuck with the task at hand, made all the necessary sacrifices and achieved their goal.

The revolutionaries recognized that the revolution meant taking measures on behalf of the welfare of the people after the seizure of power and have striven mightily to do this in the decades since. They got rid of the exploiters, the foreign corporations and the American-based gangster Mob elements which were running Cuba and did everything to educate, feed, house and clothe the people, something unprecedented in Cuban history. They achieved monumental feats in terms of the health and well-being of the people, a fact which even the hostile Imperialist media have been forced to repeatedly acknowledge.

Finally, the Cubans have resisted Imperialism for decades as virtually all other governments and almost all organized political movements have succumbed and surrendered. They have helped other peoples and their struggles, being among the very few to disinterestedly back and support Black and Arab strugglers when few if any others were inclined to do so.

No matter what the future brings to Cuba and the rest of us, what the Cuban revolution has done will live forever in the annals of the genuine struggle for liberation, which is and will be ongoing. Those of us who are committed to a revolution to get rid of oppressors and their oppressions will always carry a debt of gratitude to the sterling example they have provided. The million or so gusano traitors to their homeland scheming and plotting with their Norteamericano sponsors as they cower in their lairs in Florida and Washington,D.C.,will never succeed in defeating the Cuban people who have stuck by their guns and defended themselves with dignity, providing an inspirational beacon of hope as to what possibilities exist for the rest of the people of the world, provided they do the right thing and are not dissuaded from seeing their fight through to the finish.

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by Husayn Al-Kurdi