1

RGBE MET ORTII CH SIAN 25 Be ha la

2
handed he had slain Batista.
“Fidel hate, ae =: tista

dressed like Fidel. Society

g columns have renamed him
; Dr. Fidel Castro, but to the
rebel army he is still Fidel and

-to you and me just Castro.

¥ But Cuba is free. You hear
‘it a thousand times a day .You
are told it by the taxi-driver,
the boy: who insists you need
a shoe shine, the customers
in the restaurants, the bank
manager and the bus conduc-

~ You feel certain that Cuba
will always be free of gun-
men like Batista and his thugs.
And you feel certain that Cas-
tro. will always be a_ hero.
Nothing he will do or will not
do from now on could be-
smirch this glorious hour of
triumph. Batista is gone.

- Time will reveal many more

heroes and the world will yet
come to know the full story
of how the people of Cuba de-
feated Batista. :
I had an interview - with
Ramon Rojos, secretary-gen-
eral of the Socialist Youth of
Cuba. With extreme modesty
he showed me copies of their
underground magazine Mella,
which appeared regularly
throughout the Batista terror.
This pocket-size magazine of
20 pages or more was pro-
duced in two colors here in
the country and distributed
in s€veral thousand copies.
_ Anybody who doubts the

crimes of the Batista regime

can read the evidence of the
wanton murders in Mella. In
one memorial issue of last
October, Mella published the

_ flames and addresses of hun;

dreds of murdered victimis, in-
cluding photographs of some
44 1€ mutilated bodies.

organization includes
uth from 16 to 25 years. It
astonishing to learn that
"y emerged from seven years
illegality with 3,000 mem-

_ Ramon told me the immedi-
y ate objective of the organiza-
tion is to recruit 50,000 mem-
bers and issue the paper in
50,000 copies.

I learned from Ramon and
the other officers at their
larters that there are 600,-

unemployed in Cuba, most-
young people.

C4 This figure has been the

“same for several years. Be-
sides, there are 60,000 to 70,000
young people joining the work
force every year and will con-

_ tinue to do so for another few

astro has stated in one of
lis speeches that unemploy-
ent is the most serious na-

By LESLIE HUNT

age HAVANA—This city is still in a state of celebration.
+he magic words, “Fidel Castro” are painted, chalked, printed,
y radio and television everywhere, as though single-

On the streets you can buy

burp guns and beards. Even boy dolls

Leslie Hunt of Toronto (above)
is a Canadian war veteran
who has been associated with
the progressive movement in
this country for many years.
He is now in Cuba getting
a first-hand impression of the
situation in that country, and
in this article tells how the
young people of Cuba played
a key role in overthrowing the
hated Batista regime.

tional problm. There is no un-
employment insurance, no di-
rect relief. Families follow
the tradition of their exploited
ancestors and share their re-
sources, so that other sections
of the family might not starve.

Ramon Rojos is a true son
of Cuba. He told me that Cu-
ban youth will struggle against
U.S. imperialism with all their
might. To him and other Cu-
bans, Batista and U.S. imperi-
alism were synonymous.

The root cause of the mis-
ery in Cuba is the profits ex-
tracted from Cuban _ sugar,
land ownership and monopoly
contro] by Americans of vir-
tually all trade and services

in Cuba. And-the taking away.

of profits from the island.

When I said goodbye to Ra-
mon Rojos, underground free-
dom fighter and leader, we
walked across the street from
their newly-acquired office to
Havana’s central, park. To-
gether with a group of young
people from the headquarters
we took pictures in front of
the monument of Jose Marti,
the apostle of freedom who
organized the revolution of
Cuba against Spain in the 19th

-century. 2

My last thoughts as I left
these enthusiastic young peo-
ple was that the fight for free-
dom goes on for Cuban youth
and is in good hands.

BUCK TELLS CPSU CONGRESS:

Trade with USSR —

essential to Canada

By MARK FRANK

MOSCOW—Bigger trade relations with the Soviet Union and the socialist world mar-
ket is what large numbers of Canadians, including important members of the capitalist

class, are seeking as one way o
States. This is what Tim Buck, national leader of the

f freeing Cgnada from economic dependence on the United
Labor-Progressive Party of Canada,

told delegates attending the 21st Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

As Buck spoke from the
restrum,
ranged fraternal delegates of
70 Communist and Worker
parties —_ the largest such
delegation ever to visit a Sov-
iet party congress. Many of
the party leaders, like
Gomulka, Chou En-lai and
Novotny, are government lead-

‘ers in their respective coun-

tries.

Other Canadian fraternal
delegates a day earlier had
visited factories in the Mos-
cow district.

Nigel Morgan, of British Co-
lumbia, addressed some 2,000
workers right in the plant
of a Moscow machine tool
factory while the congress ses-
sions were going on.

Bill Ross of Manitoba,
spoke to several hundred
workers, told them of the per-
spectives for Canadian work-
ers and compared them to the
outlook forecast in the Soviet
seven-year plan.

“It was a wonderful experi-
ence,” said Nigel Morgan, “to
be introduced by the foreman
and feel the whole factory’s
splendid unity in the battle for
a higher living standard and
the goals of the plan debated
by delegates in the Kremlin
palace.”

In greeting the 2lst Con-
gress, Tim Buck linked his ref-
erence to trade with a state-
ment that there was growing
Canadian resistance against
U.S. efforts to compel the mili-
tary integration of Canada
into U.S. war plans.

The Khrushchev report, said
Buck, “smashes the pretences
of the revisionists and is a
powerful contribution to the
international solidarity of the
working class. It will en-
lighten and inspire millions
of workers and rural people
in all lands. It will attract
millions to the lofty ideal of
communism. “a

“Truly there is no precedent
in history for the assurance
of the triumph of communism,
in a historically short time,
which is the keynote of com-
rade Khrushchev’s report. The

perspective opened up by the

seven-year plan and the long-
term economic program for the
building of communism in the
Soviet Union illustrate the im-

around him were —

TIM BUCK

measurable possibilities in-
herent in socialist society,

guided by the party of Lenin
and the liberating science of
Marxism-Leninism.

“In sharp contrast to the
surging all-sided growth in
the Soviet Union and all the
lands of the socialist world,
Canada today is an example
of the opposite results of the
policies of .monopoly-capital
and its sacrifice of the real
national interests in its drive
for quick maximum profits and
war. Fourteen percent of all

‘the workers who depend for

their livelihood upon employ-
ment in the production and
distribution of goods are un-
employed. This is a result of

the policies by which the mon- -

opolists and their government
have made Canada a depend-
ency of the United States, the
northern base for aggressive
military operations against the
Soviet Union.

“But among the people of
Canada there is growing op-

-pdésition to the integration of

the country and its policies in
the war plans of United States
imperialism. Canadians are
realizing that if the imperial-
ist madmen are permitted to
start a nuclear war across the
Arctic ocean, Canada will cer-
tainly be a victim of it —
with the mass extermination
of half of her population and
the probability that vast areas

cf her territory will be made
uninhabitable for centuries.
“The first Soviet Sputnik
launched into orbit in October,
1957, followed quickly by
Sputniks two and three, stimu-
lated the growth of this reali-
zation. The most recent tri-
umph of Soviet science, the
Mechta. became a_ political
reality in Canada very quick-
ly. It is compelling recognition
of the fact that Soviet science,
in the service of peace and the
advancement of human well-
being, is in the very vanguard
of mankind. It is bringing a
widespread re-assessment. of
Canada’s foreign policy and re-

‘lationships.

“Blind acceptance of United
States claims to scientific and
technical superiority is crumbl-
ing under the impact of events.
The. imperialists pretence that
Canada can survive. only by
becoming an expendable de-
pendency of U.S. imperialism
is discredited. It is being re-
placed by the realization that,
if the two Canadian nations

-are to survive and develop as

free and independent peoples,
they must disentangle Canada
from the war schemes of USS.
imperialism.

“We must take our stand
realistically and actively in
the great world camp of peace
and all-sided intercourse be-
tween countries with differing
political and economic sys-
tems. Large numbers ef Cana-
dians including influential
representatives of the capital-
ist class, agree now that ex-
panding economic intercourse °
with the Soviet Union and all
the socialist. world market is
the one means by which Can-
ada can free herself from eco-
nomic dependence on _ the
United States.

“We know that the great
party founded by the immor-
tal Lenin will continue to
lead the Soviet people along
the path that he charted.
Therefore, we know that the
targets of the seven-year plan
will be achieved and_ sur-
passed. The life of abundance

and cultural opportunity that

you are building is’ the guar-
antee that capitalism, with its
evils of the explcitation of
man and the oppression of
nations, will be left behind and
abolished forever.”

February 13, 1959 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 3