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Dissecting What's Truly Happening in Cuba Right Now

7/13/2021

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The capitalist news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc., are running amok this week.  According to them, the people of Cuba are “rising up to overthrow the brutal communist dictatorship that has ruled them with an iron fist for over 60 years.”  The reasoning they are providing for this alleged mass uprising?  The collapse of the Cuban economy due to the pandemic and the inability of the Cuban government to alleviate the people’s suffering.

To dissect this in a methodical and analytical way, let’s start with that last statement.  Socialist Cuba is a technologically developing country.  Like every other country around it in the Caribbean i.e. the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Trinidad, and every country in the Western Hemisphere, Cuba was built on an economy based on stealing Indigenous lands and exploiting kidnapped Africans as free slave labor.  This reality built the country into a playground for privileged classes from the U.S. until the Cuban revolution overthrew the Batista regime in 1959.  Embarking upon a socialist path, Cuba has spent six decades building a society where social justice for the collective is the priority, not protecting the so-called “rights” of the privileged minority to profit from exploiting the masses of Cubans. 

The accomplishments of the Cuban revolution are numerous and have been widely documented for anyone who wishes to truly understand them.  So, we won’t repeat their many accomplishments here.  Instead, we introduce a simple analysis and question.  If you live in the U.S. or the other industrialized capitalist countries that have worked relentlessly against Cuba’s socialist revolution for decades, you already know that the U.S. (for example) experienced severe economic challenges during the pandemic.  Millions lost their jobs.  Homelessness has increased to unprecedented levels.  Poverty has grown.  Crime has risen, etc.  Yet, there is no sustained mass uprising against the capitalist empire within the U.S. or in any of these capitalist countries.  There is no question that Cuba, being an infant country struggling to develop and stabilize (like any country capitalist, socialist, etc), while being ruthlessly sabotaged by the 60+ year U.S. led economic blockade against their socialist revolution, has been hit hard by the pandemic.  Still, there is certainly no argument that conditions in Cuba are as bad or worse for the people there than in any of the surrounding countries i.e. the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, etc., yet no one is surprised that no mass uprisings are taking place in those countries where there is no tangible debate to suggest that their conditions are more stable than what exists in Cuba.  In fact, Haiti has had a president assassinated within the last week and has had mass uprisings and protests for months there due to systemic capitalist exploitation of the people there, but now, out of the blue, despite all of those ill-refutable facts, we are supposed to believe that the “oppressed” people of Cuba “have had enough” and are going to overthrow their revolution?  A revolution that has provided them quality healthcare that even millions of people in the money rich U.S. don’t have.  A revolution that has nonexistent crime compared to capitalist countries.  A revolution that even according to the World Health Organization has quality nutrition, a nonexistent infant mortality rate, and a strong education system that most countries on earth cannot compare to.  A revolution that unlike the capitalist U.S., provides its people with subsidies of food and money to survive in crisis times instead of leaving them at the mercy of the most brutal conditions to fend on their own.  Its this revolutionary country where these uprisings are taking place while nothing of the sort happens in all the countries that don’t provide a fraction of the support to its people that Cuba does?

The capitalist media is telling you that this hashtag “CUBASOS” is trending.  That the masses of Cuba are demanding that their president Miguel Diaz-Canal step down.  This is what they are telling you despite the fact this makes absolutely no sense.  Cuba is a socialist society governed by Marxist/Leninist principles.  Changing the president doesn’t change their system no more than changing presidents in this capitalist empire changes this system.  Yet, this is what they are telling you and because so many people in the U.S. wouldn’t study the Cuban revolution if a gun was placed against your head.  As a result, most of us here will believe some elements of what they are telling you (whether we want to or not.  Whether we are conscious of it or not).

Undoubtedly, there are some people in Cuba who will never accept the principles of the revolution.  South Florida is filled with them.  People who abandoned the Cuban revolution.  That so-called “Cuban exile community” in Miami, Florida, U.S. is 98% European (white).  That’s predictable because revolutions are fought and sustained for the oppressed, not the beneficiaries of that oppression.  So, those beneficiaries typically have a pretty strong history of opposing the revolutionary efforts and that 98% in Florida still have relatives and friends in Cuba.  Its primarily those people who are the face of this so-called “uprising.”  Backed by an established and elaborate network of reactionary capitalist minded thugs in Florida who receive unstop financial support from the U.S. government, these people want to convince you that the majority of people in Cuba oppose socialism and want to be capitalist like the U.S.  The question you have to ask yourself is how is it that upwards of 70% of Cuba’s population are Africans (remember, 98% of the so-called exiles in the U.S. are white), yet its not Africans you see speaking for these so-called resisters in Cuba?  Sure, they will find one or two sellouts just like they do here, but the masses of Africans, the majority of the people in Cuba, strongly support their socialist revolution.  Over 70% of Cuba’s population alive today was born after the revolution of 1959.  As a result, they have always had free healthcare so they don’t want healthcare premiums they can’t afford.  They have always had living expenses that are no more than a small percentage of their income so they don’t want monthly rent that is 150% of their income.  They have always had free education so they don’t want student loan debt.  And yes, white supremacy is a system so its far from being eliminated, but the Cuban revolution has made strides against it in concrete ways that this country cannot even comprehend (like government funding of African history curriculum in schools instead of denying even a discussion about that history as is happening here). 

In other words, this uprising is manufactured by the capitalist system, using and escalating those dissident voices in Cuba, to make it appear to you that this is a mass uprising.  This is an old tactic from imperialism.  A few years ago it was the so-called “Ladies in White” who were supposedly protesting the Cuban revolution and they carried this lie until it was revealed that this group was financed by the Cuban American National Foundation in Florida, a longtime rightwing anti-Cuban revolution lobbying and terrorist group.

And, since imperialism (Biden, Trump, Obama, Rockerfellers, Duponts, Kelloggs, etc.) knows it cannot refute any of the points being made in this article, they depend upon their go to move, using celebrities.  For this week, they are pulling out the usual tired old retreads. Has been performers like Gloria Estaban and Andy Garcia.  Longtime reactionaries, European of course, who have spent decades fabricating opposition to the Cuban revolution. 
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The concrete truth is what’s happening in Cuba is another concerted attempt by imperialism to undermine the Cuban revolution.  The truth is Cuba has done more to protect people from covid and the economic impacts of the pandemic than most of the world, including the U.S., but they don’t want us to know that because to know that will force us to acknowledge the logical alternative of socialism to address social, economic, and other problems we face.  So, these thugs do what they do best, they lie, sabotage, and depend upon you trusting them despite nothing they have told you in 500 years being true.  Meanwhile, a tried and true and legitimate uprising against a government is happening very close to Cuba in nearby Haiti and due to them wanting you to ignore that genuine struggle for justice against capitalism, this manufactured “event” in Cuba is being highlighted, but they will not have their way.  Instead, what the world is about to learn is despite the outstanding contributions of Fidel and Raul Castro.  Vilma Espin.  Che Guevara and Juan Almeida, and Camilo Cuengugos, etc., those outstanding revolutionaries have never been what the Cuban revolution has been about (despite imperialism’s efforts to make you think that).  Its always been about the masses of Cubans.  Those primarily African people, that working class mass.  Those descendants of Carlota – the African woman from Nigeria, kidnapped and taken to Cuba to work on the Mantillas plantation, who led a massive uprising that led to the eradication of slavery in Cuba.  Its those people who will again rise victorious for the Cuban revolution.  And, its that optic that capitalism is so intent on ensuring we don’t see.

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Building Respect/Support for Independent African Analysis/Media

7/8/2021

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Very recently, the Hood Communist Collective (an independent revolutionary African blog source) came up against the demand for $600.00 USD to pay for our domain name.  In our bi-weekly team meeting, we discussed chipping in to raise the money before the suggestion came up about fundraising within our communities to raise that money.  We decided to embark upon that suggestion and literally within hours of launching an internet crowd source requesting donations, we had raised the entire amount needed.  As for my book “A Guide for Organizing Defense against White Supremacist, Patriarchal, and Fascist Violence”, the book has sold in the thousands without a single cent being spent on advertising.  Awareness about the book is being spread 100% through word of mouth.  These are outstanding example of collective African self-determination and although these examples provide solid proof of our capacity and potential, I doubt anyone can disagree that this type of support for these mediums doesn’t occur nearly as often as it should.

Kwame Ture (formally Stokely Carmichael) was fond of saying often that “capitalism will make what should be absurd seem normal and what should seem normal absurd.”  His statement makes absolute sense because the capitalist system was built and is maintained on the mass suffering of the majority of people on earth as well as the complete destruction of the planet itself.  These are the natural consequences of a system (capitalism) where money is more important than people.  So, Kwame’s logic explains why the reality exists where genuinely valuable independent revolutionary African ideas and analysis is virtually nonexistent to the majority of our people while completely insignificant and useless analysis coming from bourgeoisie and celebrity culture is held in the highest esteem in our communities.

Without a broad, independent, revolutionary, African analysis, our people are left with the dominantly petti-bourgeoisie narratives existing unchallenged.  A dysfunctional example of this is the belief that the majority of our people’s problems result from our lack of discipline and effort and have nothing to do with this backward system.  Another example is the belief that we can rise out of our oppression strictly through individualistic efforts when we know that only the masses of people make history, not individuals, but so is the logic of capitalism.  A logic that is without question dominant and this is why our independent revolutionary African voices are so important because they provide our people with a healthy foundation that rejects the logic of capitalism.  We tell our people that the only thing wrong with us is that we have not organized to eliminate this backward capitalist system that is maintained on exploiting us and our mother Africa.  The latter analysis combats the attacks against us and provides us the inspiration that we can and will win which permits us to take responsibility for solving our problems ourselves.

Its important to highlight the contrast of independent, revolutionary African voices from African voices that sprinkle in some elements of African nationhood (petti-bourgeoisie nationalism).  The latter are provided vast platforms because their analysis in no way attempts to challenge the hegemony of the capitalist system.  Examples of this are people like Umar Johnson in the U.S. or Julius Malema in Azania (South Africa) who rail incessantly against Europeans while saying some things that make sense, but never saying anything to confront capitalism as a system of oppression.  This is what is meant by independent and revolutionary analysis and media i.e. the intellectual thrust that seeks to get us to think and act beyond the parameters of the capitalist system that is oppressing us.  For people with more sophisticated understandings of class struggle within the capitalist system, you can recognize that this backward system will embrace the rhetoric of people like Johnson and Malema, despite anything they say that can be perceived as anti-European (white), before this system will ever provide a platform to African revolutionaries advocating the overthrow of the capitalist system.

This is the reason that its so imperative for the African masses to support independent revolutionary African analysis and media.  Since the success of the worldwide African revolution depends 100% on the consciousness and participation of the African masses, without that support, those voices will die.  Every revolutionary and independent African writer, activist, organizer, artist, knows this is true.  At no point in history have we been able to trust the whims of the European left for anything besides additional emotional labor so we know that our ability to sustain ourselves certainly cannot rest with them, even if they are providing significant support (which has never happened and most likely never will).  So, the onus is on the African masses to claim what rightfully belongs to us and for us to decide that our voices are our responsibility.  That means that it is imperative that the masses of African people take it as their responsibility to spread the word about independent revolutionary African analysis/media on an ongoing and consistent basis.  That our people support these mediums in whatever way is needed.
African people should willingly do all of those things because it is these independent revolutionary African voices that provide the perspective of things happening in the world from a healthy revolutionary African perspective that isn’t tainted or coopted by capitalist dollars.  Therefore, these voices provide the serum to our people that helps us determine the best route for us to do what’s always best for our people and humanity.  Without these independent revolutionary African voices to provide that much needed resource, our people are left to the capitalist media, schools, and other institutions which have but one objective as it relates to our people – enslavement and/or death. 

From W.E.B. DuBois with “the Crisis” and Marcus Garvey and “The Negro World” etc., in the 1920s to the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), and Hood Communist, etc.,  in 2021, our people have never stopped pushing back against the reactionary and racist narratives coming from the capitalist system about us and we never will.  There are numerous independent revolutionary African voices out here today from the ones just mentioned to the Pan-African Congress of Azania (PAC), the Azanian People’s Organization (AZAPO), African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau (PAIGC), Amilcar Cabral Ideological School (ACIS), Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG), Haiti Action Committee, Black Power Media, and others.  What’s absolutely essential is that African people grab ahold of whichever source best represents your political outlook and then make it your responsibility to make sure as many people as possible know about that source.  Of course, the best way to do this is to join those organizations and become a part of their propaganda work, but either way, we must develop the level of enthusiasm about these resources that our people generate about Jay Z, Beyonce, Nick Cannon, and other people who contribute absolutely nothing to the forward progress of our people. 
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Especially with the internet, there is certainly no excuse for anyone to say in 2021 that they do not know how to find these independent revolutionary African voices.  These voices can be found just by simply typing in topics like Pan-Africanism, white supremacy, zionism, or patriarchy, Cuba, Haiti, etc.  The A-APRP alone has about a half dozen weekly and monthly broadcasts on a number of issues impacting the African masses that can be found easily on Youtube and Facebook.  The A-APRP, BAP, Black Power Media, PAC, AZAPO, and Hood Communist can all easily be found with just Googling those names in English so unless someone just has no internet skills whatsoever, all of these sources are easy to find.  Please find them and tell a friend about them.  Tell two friends.  Tell ten friends.  And donate to them and support them in every way possible.  Also, don’t continue to ignore the best way to provide support is by joining these entities in order to dedicate yourselves towards making them stronger on a systemic level.  For anyone who claims to love African people and want us to be free, for now, this is probably the most essential and necessary work needed.


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    I don't see disagreement as a negative because I understand that Frederick Douglass was correct when he said "there is no progress without struggle."  Our brains are muscles.  Just like any other muscle in our body if we don't stress it and push it, the brain will not improve.  Or, as a bumper sticker I saw once put it, "If you can't change your mind, how do you know it's there?"

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