This Lovel

By LESLIE MORRIS

Along with fraternal dele-
gates from 40 Communist and
Workers’ parties I have just
returned to Havana from a
journey through Cuba.

This lovely island, Colum-
bus’ first landfall, ‘“‘pearl of
the Antilles’, lush and grac-

ious, is in the hands of its peo-

ple. The workers of the sugar
mills. and the plantations,
peasants, the shopkeepers
business people, are ov

and governing their country,
at last.

In Havana, at a trade union
meeting jammed to the roof
with cheering workers, where
Che Guevara lectured on pub-
lic health (first
woman with lashing black
eyes, who heard me talking
with my companion and kind

of a series) a

interpreter, Jesus Colon of the |

U.S. Communist Party, turned
around and said in English:
“You people in the States talk
a lot of lies. You see these peo-
ple on the platform, Che Gue-
vara and the others? They’re
there because we want them
there, and put them there,
understand?
PEOPLE’S LEADERS

Fidel Castro, Che Guevara,
Nunoz Jiminez, the leaders of
the 26th of July Movement,
are there because the people
want them there and put them
there — that’s just it. That is
what we have
journey by bus from Havana
to Varadero, to Santa Clara
(which brought
my visit to the Communist
congress there in 1939), to
Camaguey, to Bayamos, up in-
to the mountains of the Sierra
Maestra where Fidel gathered
his rebel army and from
where his first small group
was decimated on July 26,

1953 and where he was tried |

and sentenced after making

t i

Photo shows Fidel Castro with his men in a rousing cheer
somewhere in the Sierra Maestra mountains shortly after
in Cuba to lead the struggle against the U.S.-
backed Batista dictatorship. At the time of this picture
the Batista government was denying that there existed a
guerilla band under Castro’s

landing

seen on our),

memories of |

lently. The eggs fed to Ameri-
| ean pet dogs now are eaten by |

il

HU 1,

JOURNEY THROUGH CUBA

| his great speech to the Cone

to Victoria de las Tunas and}
back through the island to}
Havana. |
NO MORE TEXACO

The Esso and Texaco signs
are barely visible beneath the |

proud new banner, National |
Oil of Cuba. The oil industry,
the filling stations, the refin- |

eries, belong to the people. In |
Havana harbor we saw Soviet |
oil tankers unloading _ their |
precious store, to be exchang- |
ed for sugar. Soon a British |
tanker is due in from Novor-
ossisk. Shell Oil is not yet na-
tionalized. The Cuban govern-
ment knows how to use for
its own benefit the kinks of
conflict between U.S. and
British oil interests.

We saw the branches of the

Royal Bank of Canada, 24 of |
them in Cuba alone, and the |
outposts of the Bank of Nova |

LESLIE MORRIS

. recently brought fraternal
greetings from the Canadian
Communists to the Popular So-
cialist Party of Cuba.

there came in view the tall
| was a rice mill, with the Cu-
|ban revolutionary flag flying
| from the stack. It is a co-oper-
| ative enterprise, embracing
| field and. plant, and already
|new houses are springing up,
|new schools, communal rest-
'aurants and laundries.

| PLANNING AGENCY

foceck is under the general dir-
ection of INRA — whose init-
jials you see everywhere in
| Cuba today. INRA is the Insti-
{tution of National Agrarian
| Reform — the economic plan-
|ning agency of Cuba, which is
|now advancing from Agrarian
|reform (land to the landless)
ito industrialization. (‘Poor
| public health,” said the slogan
j at Che Guevara’s trade union
|}meeting “is the result of ec-
/onomic underdevelopment. Ec-
lonomic development means

Scotia. “As long as they do} A former worker is the mana-| good public health in a Free

business, we shall let them |}
alone,” said a bearded veter-|
an of the Sierra

Canada. US.
our enemy.” |
THE WORKERS’ MILITIA

The Cuban flag flies for the |
first time over. the fortress- |
like sugar mills in the seas of |
green cane. The workers are |
running the mills, improving |
working conditions, increasing |
production, using the swank |
American homes on the estat- |
es for schools and creeches.}
Now Cuban workers can walk |
and sing along the sugar-mill |
roads. Two. years ago they |
were forbidden to walk the
main roads; the servants who
came to minister to the Amer-
icans’ needs had to walk sil-

Cuban children.
We went to the Great Pal- |
mas sugar mill near Santiago.

4

leadership.

we crowded
the blazing

and as
him in

ger,
around

trade union organizer, the
workers around us nodding
their heads and shouting “Si,
sil,’ told of the poverty and
humiliation of such a’ short

time ago when sugar-mill wor- |

kers were slaves, when four
months a year was the work-
year in the fields.

The workers and peasants’
militia paraded for us, armed
with rifles and tommy-guns,
boys and girls among them,

part of the 280,000 armed wor- '
kers and peasants in the Cu-|

ban revolutionary militia who,
with the new army and the
new police, represent the pow-
er of the Cuban people.

A NEW STATE

We saw _ that the corrupt
and cruel Batista state ma-
chine, kept up by the USS.
money and arms, had been
smashed and a new state
brought into being, a state of
the workers and peasants, sup-
ported by those business peo-
ple who want a free, develop-
ed Cuba.

The militia, the Rebel army,
the state planning agencies,
the. new people’s -police, the
agrarian reform (1960 is the
Year of Agrarian Reform), the
great mass meetings in Hava-
na’s great Civic. Plaza, where
on Sept. 2) almost a . million
people voted to tear up the
San Jose and
adopt the democratic Havana
Declaration, read to them by
Fidel — these are the new
state.

A RICE CO-OPERATIVE

Our buses turned off the
main highway into a parched
and desolate land, and soon

WN nw AT een tin
VeCiarai0n

|Cuba-”) Cuba is being indus-
| trialized.

Maestra.| Carribbean sun, he expertly} EVERYWHERE — YOUTH
“We want good relations with | described the complicated pro- |
imperialism is | cess of making sugar and mol-j| Victoria de las Tunas, Bayam-
asses from the cane, and the |

In Santa Clara, Camagney,

os, every city or town through
which we passed, we stopped
to pay respects to the city
councils of the 26th of July
Movement, which everywhere
| received us. We filed into the
city hall; drank strong Cuban
| coffee, and invariably a young
|man in. his early 20’s, the ma-
|yor greeted us and one of us
greeted the council and the
citizens. The leading figures
of Cuba are the young men
and women in militia uniform
the students, young workers,
intellectuals and _ peasants,
| managers and directors. Ev-
erywhere, the youth.

To the National Assembly of
the Popular Socialist Party of
Cuba, which we attended a
few days earlier as fraternal
delegates from brother parties,
came a number of these young
people to say hello: the Min-
|ister of Communications, who
is 26; the Commandante of the
Havana District who is barely
20 and a veteran of Sierra
| Maestra; a girl of 21, who is
| one of the heroes of the upris-
ing, and now of construction;
the new Ambassador of Cuba
to the U.S:S.R., in ~ his. 20’s.
and so it is, everywhere.
SIERRA MAESTRA

We were all looking forward
to visiting the great new
school of the Sierra Maestra,
the mountain country of Or-
iente province in the eastern
end of the island, the cradle
of the revolution. At dusk the
mountains! came into view and
as the hours went by our bus-
es labored up the steep slopes,
over new and unfinished rough
roads.

Midnight passed, and in the

November 4, 1960—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page

Island in the Hands of Its People

early hours, tired but expect-

chimneys of a big plant. It | ant, exhausted from the trop-

lical heat but singing and
| happy, our international
| group from countries as big
| as China and as small as Mar-
| tinique, saw the lights of an
| army outpost. There followed
| pour-parlers with the guards,
| and then our buses turned off
|the road and in the faint light
many and massive buildings
| came into view. This was the
| world-famous Children’s City,

|named after Camilo Cienfue-

| gos, one of the heroes of the
| Revolution who. died tragical-
lly in a plane crash last years
| CHILDREN'S CITy:

The army, Cuban youth,
; and young people from all ov-
ler the world, are building the
| Children’s City in the Sierra,
the first of many in Cuba.
Here the illiterate peasant
children will live and learn,
in magnificent schools and
dormitories, enjoying sports
fields, planetariums, libraries
and even an artifical lake for
boating, swimming and_ fish-
ing.

We slept an hour or two in
a dormitory, then rose early
to see before us the sweep of
the mountains, the activities
of thousands of builders, thé
dust and din of a great build
ing site — and back of it, as
a grim reminder of Old Cuba,
a typical miserable village of
\thatched huts, soon to g0
down beneath the bulldozer.
SINGING, DANCING

What a day it was — of
conversations with young Brit
‘ishers, ‘Chinese, Soviet, Latin
[American and U.S. youns
boys and girls, come to show
their solidarity in a practical
way, and with the soldier
and the Cuban youth, with the
bearded Commandante, wh?
declared:a half-holiday in hon

| or of our. visit — whereupo?
the youngsters danced thé
rhumba- and the pachang#@

while their bands played, at
they sang for us the Cuba?
revolutionary songs, gay al
militant, -we heard every

and dancing. revolution,
gay revolution,” as one: of US

which is armed to the teet

quests. ,
THE TWELVE

In Santiago de Cuba
night we slept

the Sierra Maestra, on. thé
memory of the handful

prave young patriots, led ?
Fidel who,. only a short time
ago, reduced to 12 by Batista’

armed’ struggle, soon to
joined by the millions.

See CUBA, next page

where. For this is a singiné P
“the fF

put it. But a gay. revolutio? |

and ready to die for its co®’ >

tat ;
fitfully, out
minds and hearts lingering: #? :

hirelings, had kept up. the?

6,