In Loving Memory of Celia Hart
Santamaría
by George Saunders, co-managing editor,
Labor Standard
[Note: Departing
from our web site’s usual type style, I have used varying fonts in this tribute
to Celia Hart — because it consists of several articles written at different
times, and within some of the articles there are distinct parts or passages.
The differing typefaces are meant to highlight those varying aspects. — G.S.]
The world socialist movement and the
international working class lost a unique and inspired voice with the sudden
death of Celia Hart in a freak auto accident on September 7, 2008.
I agree with some thoughts expressed by
my friend Andy Pollack on the news of her death:
One of
Celia’s heroes, Che Guevara, said: “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let
me say that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.”
When
you were around Celia, nothing could seem less ridiculous. The love she showed
to the newest, most casual acquaintance made you understand immediately that
she was living Che’s precept to the fullest.
Celia
reminded you with every look, every laugh — indeed, with every challenge to
your own arguments, made in the warmest, friendliest way — why we fight for
socialism, what kind of humanity we see as possible and seek to help create.
The
warmth she showed all the time was of the sort that most of us only display
when circumstances draw it out of us — as in a strike, when workers, no matter
what their previous disagreements, are all of a sudden one big family. Or as we
will have under socialism, when for the first time we’ll have the opportunity
to learn how to be loving people all the time.
We
can’t replace the unique person that Celia was. But we can try to emulate her,
to be as persistent in our dedication to the struggle, and as consistent in our
display of love for our fellow workers and fighters for humanity.
Two,
three, many Celias!
As a high school student in Warsaw,
Rosa Luxemburg expressed a similar idea more than a century ago: “My ideal is a
social system that allows one to love everybody with a clear conscience.”
Unlike Andy, I missed the opportunity
of meeting Celia in person. But even in our e-mail exchanges, I encountered the
same qualities Andy describes. She was usually quite succinct, and could be
very outspoken, even sharp, and often surprising, but at the same time she was
always warm and affectionate.
Despite the terrible loss of her
passing, Celia still lives in her writings. By reproducing those writings and
making them available to the English-speaking world, we continue her work and
our common cause — that humankind free itself from the destructive forces of
capitalism and win through to the socialist emancipation of all our species
Posted below is an updated version of
part of an article I drafted a year ago commenting in general on Celia Hart’s
writings and interviews, a collection of which is to be published jointly by
Socialist Action and Labor Standard (SA-LS). Since 2004, in collaboration with
Gerry Foley, Jeff Mackler, and others, I have been editing and translating
Celia’s articles and interviews, and communicating with her by e-mail as
questions came up. The part of my draft article reproduced below represents
only my views, not necessarily those of others associated with the publication
project.
One title I
suggested to catch the spirit of Celia’s writings was this:
America Is a Continent, Not a Country,
And on Che’s Motorcycle, Flies The Flag
of Coyoacán
Elsewhere on the Labor Standard web
site, we have reproduced, in memory of Celia, a translation of her very first
published article about Trotsky, “The Flag of Coyoacán,” written in 2003 near
the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution.
We also reproduce below her 2006
interview with the Spanish journalist Manuel Talens, which is perhaps her most
vivid account of her own life, brightly expressing her energy and loving
spirit. It’s one she specifically asked us to include in the SA-LS collection,
and I consider it one of the most fitting tributes to her memory.
The Talens interview is preceded by part
of my rough draft mentioned above.
From My Updated Article about Celia’s
Writings
In publishing a collection of Celia Hart’s writings from 2003–2008,
we wish to express our fundamental agreement with her views. Her essays and
interviews are particularly relevant to the international working-class and
socialist movements, and that is why Socialist Action and Labor Standard have
combined efforts to produce a book of her writings.
One feature of Celia Hart’s writings that to us is especially
significant is the detailed way in which she shows the connections between the
Cuban revolution and the theory of permanent revolution. For a fuller
explanation of that theory, see my recent new translation of Trotsky’s 1938
article about permanent revolution, entitled “Three Conceptions of the Russian
Revolution,” which is posted elsewhere on the Labor Standard web site. Also see
Joseph Hansen’s 1961 lectures on the Cuban revolution and permanent revolution,
first printed in Bulletin in Defense of Marxism (BIDOM), the predecessor
publication of Labor Standard. Hansen’s talks were entitled “The
Development of the Theory of Permanent Revolution in Russia” (see BIDOM,
No.117, July-August 1994) and “Cuba and the Theory of Permanent Revolution”
(see BIDOM, No. 120, November 1994).
There are many more articles by Celia Hart than the ones we have
been able to translate and edit thus far, but we think the items now in English
do represent a good sampling. We hope we will also be able to publish more of
her writings, making them accessible to the English-speaking part of the world.
She is a passionate writer, with her own special, poetic style. We believe that the translations we have provided effectively convey the spirit of her writings, so that readers will enjoy the wonder that is Celia Hart.
Who Is Celia Hart?
Perhaps the best introduction is her own account of her life and political evolution given in an interview with the Spanish journalist Manuel Talens. The interview was first posted on the Spanish-language web site www.rebelion.org in March 2006. For our translation of that interview, see below, “An Impassioned Interview with Celia Hart Santamaría: That Hart Woman—By Profession a Trotsky Advocate” (La Hart—de profesión Trotskera).
Celia Hart is a daughter of the Cuban revolution, as she states in her interview with Manuel Talens, and a revolutionary in her own right. She does not wish to be overshadowed by the outstanding accomplishments of her parents, both of whom were leaders of the July 26 Movement, headed by Fidel Castro. (That movement, which went on to make a socialist revolution in Cuba, was officially founded in June 1955, after Fidel’s release from imprisonment as a result of the armed assault he led on the Moncada military base, or barracks, the Cuartel Moncada in Santiago de Cuba. The name of the movement was taken from the date of that assault, July 26, 1953.)
Celia Hart’s mother, Haydée Santamaría, took part in the attack on Moncada and later fought in the Sierra Maestra mountains alongside Fidel Castro and Che Guevara during the guerrilla war that finally overthrew the dictator Fulgencio Batista on January 1, 1959. She carried out many other leadership responsibilities both inside Cuba and abroad during that struggle. Haydée remained part of the leadership of the Cuban revolution and headed the remarkable publishing house Casa de las Américas. She also, by the way, chaired the 1967 OLAS conference, dedicated to promoting revolutionary struggle throughout Latin America. In July 1980, Haydée committed suicide, when Celia was 17 years old. Celia discusses that event in several pieces included in the SA-LS collection.
Celia Hart’s father, Armando Hart, helped lead the urban underground of the July 26 Movement in the years 1955–1958 and became Cuba’s Minister of Education after the overthrow of Batista, directing the revolution’s ground-breaking literacy campaign and establishing schools throughout the island. Later, for many years he was revolutionary Cuba’s Minister of Culture. He continues to be part of the top leadership of the Cuban revolution, a member of its Council of State and of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (CPC), and director of the José Martí Program.
Books by or about Haydée Santamaría, with prefaces by Celia, include Haydée Habla de Moncada (Haydée Speaks about Moncada; Ocean Press, 2005) and Haydée de Sierra a Casa (From the Sierra Maestra to the Casa [de las Américas], Buenos Aires: Nuestra América, 2005).
Armando Hart is a prolific writer, the author of many books, essays, etc. In the English-language edition of Aldabonazo, his invaluable account of the underground revolutionary struggle against the Batista dictatorship, the reader will find a partial list, about twenty titles from among his numerous writings (see Aldabonazo, New York: Pathfinder Press, 2004, p. 13). A more recent essay by Armando Hart, dated January 2005, is particularly interesting. It is about Stalin, and draws extensively on Isaac Deutscher’s 1949 biography of the Kremlin dictator, the erstwhile kingpin of the Soviet bureaucracy. The Spanish text of Armando Hart’s essay on Stalin is on the web site www.rebelion.org
Shortly before her mother’s death Celia had decided to study physics, and she did so — not only in Cuba, however, but also at Dresden University in East Germany. She attended that university from 1982 to 1987 and was the first non-German woman to graduate in physics from that 300-year-old institution.
The bureaucratism she encountered
at every turn in East Germany jarred on Celia, as did the apolitical attitude
of East German youth. She was not unique among Cuban revolutionaries
encountering the nonrevolutionary atmosphere in the Eastern European countries
dominated by Stalinism. Nearly twenty years earlier, in a 1968 speech about the
Soviet bureaucracy’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, Fidel Castro commented on the
disregard for communist ideals “in more than one socialist country of Europe.”
“Those who have visited
these countries, including Cuban students on scholarships [emphasis added], have often come back completely dissatisfied and displeased and have said to us: ‘Over there
the youth are not being educated in
the ideals of communism and in the principles of internationalism: the
youth there are highly influenced by all the ideas and tastes prevalent in the countries of Western Europe. In many places
the main topic of conversation is money and incentives of this or that
type, material incentives of all kinds, material gains and salaries.’ As a
matter of fact, an internationalist and communist consciousness is not being
developed in those places.”
Celia Hart rebelled against what she found in East Germany, as she recounts in her interview with Manuel Talens, and she was further disoriented and discouraged by the renewed revelations about the crimes of Stalin that came out of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, especially in 1987, when Repentance, a Soviet film exposing Stalin’s crimes, gained a worldwide audience. Disillusioned with the “actually existing socialist states,” Celia says that she even began to wonder about the fate of the Cuban revolution, where the revolutionary spirit, so far, was still alive. Unlike Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Cuba has managed not to succumb to bureaucratic degeneration.
Nevertheless, the reasons for Stalinist bureaucratism had not been explained to Celia, and she was in a condition of “revulsion and despair.” At that point her father saved her, she explains in the interview with Manuel Talens, by giving her three books by Isaac Deutscher: (1) The Prophet Unarmed, the second volume of his three-part biography of Trotsky; (2) the 1949 biography of Stalin; and (3) The Unfinished Revolution, a small book consisting of lectures on fifty years of the Russian revolution, delivered by Deutscher at the University of Cambridge, in England, January-March 1967. (A little bit later, as she told me in an e-mail message, Armando Hart also gave Celia a book by Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, and she gained access to the other two volumes of Deutscher’s trilogy on Trotsky.)
Those books revealed a whole new world to Celia. Why, she wondered, had no one in the Fidelista leadership told about the ugly history of Stalinism and about the revolutionary socialist alternative represented by Trotsky and the Left Opposition? At any rate, she was won over to Trotskyism, and after another decade and a half as a physicist, she decided in 2003–2004 to devote her life to advocating the ideas of revolutionary socialism, especially Trotsky’s legacy.
In her interview with Manuel Talens, Celia does not go into detail about her life in the roughly fifteen years between 1987 and 2003–2004, when she decided to leave her technical and scientific profession and begin publicly writing and speaking about the ideas of Trotskyism and revolutionary socialism in general. Part of her life during that decade and a half involved being a mother to two sons, who were aged sixteen and eleven at the time of her death. In her work as a physicist she specialized in magnetism and superconductivity. These have an advanced medical application in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is used in hospitals to obtain especially clear images for diagnosis of tissues, organs, or other parts of the body under medical examination. She tells, in passing, about this work in one vignette in her interview with Manuel Talens.
She also gave a brief summation about that part of her life in her 2005 preface to the Spanish-language collection of her writings, Apuntes Revolucionarios (Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels, 2006, ca. 280 pp.).
In my translation of this part of her preface, I have edited her text somewhat for consistency with her account in the later and more detailed interview with Manuel Talens. In an e-mail exchange with me, Celia agreed that, where there were inconsistencies, the information in the Talens interview was correct. I’ve also used a larger typeface to highlight this edited passage from her preface, and accompanied it for readers’ information with the Spanish original in parentheses, paragraph by paragraph.
In 1982 [NOT “1992,” as one mistranslation
has it], after two years of physics at the University of Havana, I was chosen
to continue my career in Dresden, in the former German Democratic Republic.
There I completed my studies in 1987 as the first foreign woman to graduate in
that specialty. I returned and worked until a year ago [i.e., until 2004] at
the University of Havana, during which time I published fifteen specialized
papers on magnetism and superconductivity and participated in six [scientific]
congresses in Italy, Brazil, Argentina, etc.
That year — that is, 2004 — I was expected to complete my Ph.D. in physics.
(En 1982, después de dos años en la Facultad de
Física de la Habana, me escogieron para terminar la carrera en Dresde, antigua
Republica Democrática Alemana. Y continué mis estudios de Física que concluí en
1987, siendo la primera extranjera (mujer) que se graduaba en esa facultad.
Regresé y trabajé hasta hace un año en la Universidad de La Habana, donde
publiqué cerca de quince trabajos especializados en Magnetismo y
Superconductividad y participé en unos seis congresos en Italia, Brasil,
Argentina....
(En este año 2004 se suponía que
terminaría el doctorado en Física.)
When I got ready to write [a dissertation] on philosophy as part of the requirement for my doctorate — this was published much later in Marxismo Hoy (Marxism Today), the journal of the Fundación Federico Engels (Friedrich Engels Foundation) — I came to understand, quite simply, that my unusual love for physics was something else: it was a means to an end and not the end in itself.
(Cuando me dispuse a
escribir el tema de Filosofía, como crédito para el doctorado (que me publicó más
tarde la revista de la Fundación Federico Engels, Marxismo Hoy), me di
cuenta así de sencillo que mi amor inusitado por la Física era otra cosa: era
un medio, y no un fin por sí mismo.)
During my stay in the GDR I had realized that
there existed an unacknowledged contradiction between the bureaucracy, with all
its stagnation, and the unavoidable goal of socialism, which is to fight for a
better world.
The apathy I found in that country, in spite
of the good living conditions and the ubiquitous images of [the East German
Communist Party leader, Eric] Honecker in the store windows, was a clear
reflection of these contradictions.
(En
mi estancia en la RDA comprendí que existía una contradicción tácita entre la
inevitabilidad del socialismo para luchar por un mundo mejor y la burocracia,
con su anquilosamiento. La apatía que encontré en ese país, amén de las buenas
condiciones de vida y de las excesivas imágenes de Honecker en las vidrieras,
eran una buen reflejo de esas contradicciones.)
During the summer of 1985 [?] I returned to
Cuba on holiday.
(Note: In an e-mail discussion with
me, Celia agreed it was more likely this happened in 1987, the year the Soviet
film Repentance was released; see her interview with Manuel Talens.
— G.S.)
When my father saw my desperation [over this
demoralizing encounter with bureaucratic “socialism” in Eastern Europe], he
opened a bookshelf and took out four books: three by Isaac Deutscher (including
The Prophet Unarmed, the second volume of his biography of Leon Trotsky)
and [later] The Revolution Betrayed, one of Trotsky’s topmost
achievements.
From then on Deutscher became my bedside
prophet. I was not able to read Trotsky’s other writings until a short time
ago. In spite of all disagreements and controversies, Trotsky — and Deutscher
too, why not? — pieced together the puzzle that had not allowed me to breathe. Everything began to fall into place…
(Durante el verano de 1985 [1987?] regresé por
vacaciones a Cuba, y ante mi desesperación mi padre abrió un armario y sacó
cuatro libros: tres de Isaac Deutcher (los tomos de El Profeta armado..., su biografía sobre León
Trotsky) y La revolución traicionada, una de las obras cumbres de
Trotsky. Desde ese instante Deutcher se convirtió en mi profeta de cabecera. No
pude leer hasta hace unos meses el resto de la literatura de Trotsky. Amén de
todas las divergencias y polémicas, Trotsky, y por qué no Deutcher, armaron el
rompecabezas que no me dejaba respirar. Todo se fue acomodando...)
In her “Acknowledgments” to Apuntes
Revolucionarios, Celia Hart gives credit “for having given me the
first books by Trotsky” (other than Revolution Betrayed) to the El
Militante tendency and the Fundación Federico Engels, both of which are
connected with the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) historically led by two
British Trotskyists, Ted Grant and Alan Woods. Celia Hart met the IMT soon
after gaining worldwide attention with her May 2004 article — published by the
Cuban magazine Tricontinental — “‘Socialism in One Country’ and the
Cuban Revolution.”
In the years between 1987 and 2004 Celia evidently broadened her acquaintance with Trotsky’s ideas, but since 2004 she has been introduced to the many currents of world Trotskyism today. As she indicates, the Trotskyists she has met since 2004, especially those from the International Marxist Tendency headed by Alan Woods, have made many more of Trotsky’s writings available to her. Among the works by Trotsky that she cites in her articles in the SA-LS collection are his History of the Russian Revolution, Revolution Betrayed, The New Course, and Permanent Revolution. Celia also learned a lot about the history of Trotskyism worldwide. For example, she quotes from James P. Cannon’s History of American Trotskyism and also from Ernest Mandel’s Trotsky as Alternative. In one of her articles, of December 2005 (not included in the SA-LS selection), she tells of Mandel’s participation in debates about economic policy in Cuba in 1963–64, debates that Che Guevara took part in and helped organize.
In one of her very last articles, written in late August 2008, she refers to two works by Mandel on the subject of workers’ control and workers’ self-management of industry.
Little notice was paid in November 2003, when Celia Hart posted her first article about Trotsky on the Internet, on a web site in Spain run by a Cuba solidarity association named after her mother. (For that article, “The Flag of Coyoacán,” see elsewhere on the Labor Standard web site.) But in May 2004, when the Cuban magazine Tricontinental published her article “‘Socialism in One Country’ and the Cuban Revolution,” that attracted much more attention. In the United States, the Trotskyist organization Socialist Action translated her article and published it in pamphlet form, as well as in a special supplement to the monthly newspaper Socialist Action for August 2004. Walter Lippmann, a Los Angeles–based socialist activist and longtime friend of the Cuban revolution, also posted a translation of the article on his web site, which focuses mainly on Cuba.
At the same time, Labor Standard placed a translation of the Tricontinental article on our web site. All three web sites, socialistaction.org, laborstandard.org, and walterlippmann.com, have carried many of the numerous articles that Celia Hart began to post on the Internet in 2004 and after, and Socialist Action newspaper has printed translations of many of her articles as well. Since 2005, a year later, International Viewpoint, the web site of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the mainstream organization of world Trotskyism, has also posted a number of articles by and about her. The Spanish originals of nearly a hundred of Celia Hart’s articles from the years 2004–2008 may be found on the web site www.rebelion.org.
Also in Spanish, and available on line, is a collection of forty or more of her articles, Apuntes revolucionarios (Revolutionary Notebooks), published by the Fundación Federico Engels, based in Spain and associated with the International Marxist Tendency (see the web site www.engels.org).
More recently Celia Hart has also posted many of her articles to the Venezuelan web site Aporrea (www.aporrea.org), and in 2008 she became a featured contributor to the Spanish web site Kaosenlared. (See the article about her by Lois Pérez Leira of Kaosenlared, elsewhere on the Labor Standard web site, under the title “Spanish Radical Reports on Cuba, Celia Hart, and the Dream of a ‘Socialist Tide.’”)
In November 2007 Celia participated in an “International Rally” in Caracas, Venezuela, calling for a “Yes” vote in the Dec. 2, 2007, constitutional referendum. The rally was sponsored by the Marea Socialista tendency, which plays a leading role in the main Venezuelan labor federation, the UNT, and which functions as a distinct current in the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (Spanish initials, PSUV). Its position of critical support to Chavez as the leader of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution can be seen in an article by a leader of Marea Socialista, Stalin Perez Borges, which is strongly critical of Chavez’s meeting in June 2008 with Venezuelan capitalist leaders calling for cooperation between them and the supposedly workers’ government. (See elsewhere on the Labor Standard site under “Reports from Venezuela—Summer 2008.”) Perez Borges’s article criticizing Chavez was also printed in the September 2008 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.
Celia participated in Marea Socialista’s Nov. 28, 2007, rally in Caracas together with representatives of the PSOL (Party of Socialism and Liberty) from Brazil, the MST (Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores) from Argentina, and the LCR (Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire) from France. Shortly before her death, she helped found a new magazine, Revista de America, in collaboration with the Marea Socialista tendency in Venezuela, part of the Brazilian PSOL, the MST from Argentina, and revolutionaries in Panama, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. Earlier this year, in May, she participated in a conference in Toronto with Trotskyists from Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. (See Barry Weisleder’s report on the Toronto gathering, “‘A World in Revolt’ Really Rocks,” elsewhere on the Labor Standard web site.)
Celia
Hart with Esteban Volkov
Thus, Celia’s collaboration with various tendencies in the world Trotskyist movement was growing by leaps and bounds at the time of her death, and with reference to Trotskyists in the U.S. she expressed especial closeness for us of Labor Standard and Socialist Action who were working with her.
We have collected more than thirty of her articles and interviews, mainly edited reprints of the translations published in the years 2004–2008, by Socialist Action, Labor Standard, International Viewpoint, and Walter Lippmann. While we gratefully acknowledge the contributions of others, we wish to emphasize that publication of a book of her writings in English is a joint project of Socialist Action and Labor Standard (SA-LS), which have provided the main editorial resources making the book possible.
A comment should be made, in passing, on the earlier English-language collection of Celia Hart’s writings, published in London in 2006 by the Fourth Internationalist group Socialist Resistance. That booklet, entitled It’s Never Too Late to Love or Rebel and edited by Walter Lippmann, should be viewed as a companion volume to the projected SA-LS collection.
Although that earlier edition is smaller than the SA-LS collection will be (containing roughly twenty items, as compared to more than thirty), several articles, interviews, etc. by Celia Hart may be found there that are not included in the SA-LS edition. Thus the Socialist Resistance booklet provides English-language readers a further opportunity to sample Celia Hart’s thoughts and opinions.
Most of the material in the SA-LS edition will be new, but there is a small amount of overlap with the Socialist Resistance collection. In cases where both books have the same article or interview by Celia Hart, our later version has generally sought to improve on the earlier effort and to correct some errors that found their way into the Socialist Resistance edition.
A further comment is also in order on the British socialist group that split off from the mainstream of world Trotskyism in the 1940s and which found supporters in a number of countries to form the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). Members of this tendency made contact with Celia Hart and invited her to their international conference, held in Spain in August 2004. There she met two friends of ours — Trotsky’s grandson, Esteban Volkov; and Pierre Broué, an outstanding historian of the world Trotskyist movement, since deceased. And of course she also met Alan Woods, ideological leader of the IMT. The IMT also began posting articles by and about Celia Hart on its English-language web site “In Defense of Marxism” (www.marxist.com) and in the Spanish-language publication El Militante. The present selection of her writings includes three that first appeared on the IMT’s Marxist.com web site.
In general, most of the groups in the world that call themselves Trotskyist have responded favorably to Celia Hart’s strong voice from the storm center of the Cuban revolution hailing the merits of Trotsky and the Left Opposition.
Since 2004, it is evident that Celia Hart has made new Trotskyist acquaintances of many different varieties. A February 2006 article by Celia mentions her friend James Cockcroft, widower of Hedda Garza and a contributor to International Viewpoint. That article stated that Celia Hart and James Cockcroft were working together with the aim of having Hedda Garza’s book about Trotsky for teenage readers published in Spanish in Cuba. At a seminar in Havana in September 2004, Celia read a paper by Zbigniew Kowalewski, a Polish Trotksyist and also a contributor to International Viewpoint. It just so happens that Kowalewski had lived in Cuba for a time in the 1970s.
Celia has also collaborated with Michael Löwy, a leader of the Fourth International originally from Brazil but now a French citizen and a professor at a university in Paris, who has written widely on Latin America. She shared the platform with Löwy in London in June 2006 at a public educational conference on the Latin American revolution sponsored by Socialist Resistance, the Fourth Internationalist organization in England mentioned above. In Cuba itself she has made the acquaintance of some survivors of the Trotskyist group that had historically been centered in the Cuban city of Guantánomo. These were mainly from the Posadista offshoot from world Trotskyism, but some of them had been friends of Che Guevara during his time in Cuba, in particular 90-year-old Ydalberto Ferrera and his son Juan Leon Ferrera.
In short, while her writings have introduced Trotskyism to new audiences, showing the historical connections and commonality between the Cuban revolution and the concept of permanent revolution, she has also been making the acquaintance of various tendencies, not only among Trotskyists but “on the left” in general, worldwide.
To speak of our own political views for a moment, we aspire to carry on the legacy of James P. Cannon and the mainstream of U.S. Trotskyism that he headed, the school in which we received our training. One of the best representatives of the Cannon school of Trotskyism was Joseph Hansen, whose 1961 lectures on permanent revolution and the Cuban revolution we have already mentioned. And we highly recommend Hansen’s book Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: The Trotskyist View, whose various parts were written from 1960 to 1978.
As indicated above, there are many currents in the world that call themselves Trotskyist, but they do not always see or understand that the Cuban revolution is an outstanding confirmation in reality of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, an expression of revolutionary internationalism, of a persistent fight for socialism worldwide.
Some of the self-designated Trotskyists, wrongly in our opinion,
call for so-called political revolution in Cuba. They believe (erroneously, we
think) that the Cuban revolution was born deformed or quickly degenerated, and
they mistakenly equate the Fidelista leadership with, of all things —
Stalinism.
Again, as indicated, we share the viewpoint of Joseph Hansen, one of the leading figures in what we consider the genuine current of world Trotskyism. Hansen was a secretary to Trotsky in Mexico, 1937–1940, and for many years — up to his death in 1979 — a leader of the main U.S. Trotskyist organization, the Socialist Workers Party. (We were also members of the SWP before a new “leadership team” from the younger generation decided to diverge from Trotskyism in the early 1980s and expelled those who remained loyal to the historical political positions of Trotsky.) From 1960 until his death in 1979, Hansen strenuously and effectively fought against the idea that the Cuban revolution and its leadership were, supposedly, Stalinist. He emphasized, as does Celia Hart, precisely the importance of the Cuban revolution as a revolution led by a non-Stalinist political current, the July 26 Movement.
For us, Celia Hart’s articles raise again two questions that have long been discussed in the world Trotskyist movement: (1) What is the nature of the leadership of the Cuban revolution? (2) And what is the place of the Cuban revolution in the world situation and the worldwide struggle for a humane socialist society, with a planned economy, under workers’ self-management, that would place human needs before profits?
A sustainable worldwide socialist system, in our view, is an urgent necessity, and we share the views Celia Hart expresses on this point. It is vital for humanity to put an end to the destructive monster that is the capitalist system, based on the exploitation of the vast majority by a small minority of extremely wealthy power-holders, the owners of huge quantities of finance capital. Capitalism, with its neo-colonialist oil wars, has become a threat to the very basis of life on this planet, especially because of global warming from the unrestrained carbon emissions of capitalist industry and a capitalist-dominated world economy, and also because of nuclear weapons and the unresolved problem of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.
We agree with Celia Hart that the non-Stalinist character of the Cuban leaders has been decisive, aligning them, whether consciously or not, with the tendencies and inclinations of the best and most consistent class-struggle fighters in the twentieth-century history of the world socialist movement, including figures like Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci, José Carlos Mariátegui, and so on — figures who are denied or downgraded by class-collaborationist Stalinism and Social Democracy and by people influenced by those political currents.
Sam Farber — Another Voice Calling the
Fidelistas “Stalinist”
Understanding and appreciating the non-Stalinist origin and nature of the Castro leadership team is central to understanding how this leadership has been able to stand at the helm of the Cuban revolution and keep it vibrantly alive, with continuing mass support, for more than fifty years, despite the economic blockade and unending attacks by the biggest military and economic power on earth, the U.S. empire. And Celia Hart’s writings contribute in a lively way toward strengthening the understanding and appreciation of the Fidelistas’ non-Stalinism.
The question may arise: Why spend time and space in this article refuting those currents of opinion who call themselves Trotskyist but advocate a “political revolution” against the Fidelista leadership? The fact is that the erroneous views on Cuba espoused by such “leftists” extend much farther than the small circles to which their ideas are addressed. The practice of calling the Cuban leaders “Stalinist” has long been a stock in trade of powerful forces in the ruling circles of the U.S. empire itself. And all too many U.S. citizens blindly accept the lies the capitalist media tell them, that Castro is a “dictator” and that the Cuban people are suffering under a “tyranny.” Celia Hart was superb at refuting those oft-repeated lies.
As an example of the official lie, promoted as ideological cover for the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, we recall that the Democrat administration of John F. Kennedy, on the eve of that invasion, issued a White Paper accusing the Castro leadership of “betraying the revolution” by allegedly turning toward Stalinism. Simultaneously with that White Paper, the same accusation was repeated like an echo by a so-called socialist, Theodore Draper, in a pamphlet widely distributed at the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion by a pro-State Department “socialist” publication, The New Leader. All this is thoroughly documented in Joseph Hansen’s article “In Defense of the Cuban Revolution: An Answer to the State Department and Theodore Draper.” Hansen’s 1961 article, written and circulated right at that time as part of a revolutionary socialist campaign against the Bay of Pigs invasion, was reprinted and may be read in his book Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution (1978) in a separate and important section entitled “Is the Castro Government Stalinist?”
From 1960 on, until his death in 1979, Hansen consistently and convincingly argued against the view that the leaders of the July 26 Movement had become Stalinist. Today, without knowing Hansen’s writings, Celia Hart provides powerful and up-to-date confirmation of the correctness of Hansen’s views — which were the views of the mainstream of the U.S. Trotskyist movement.
Is all this just ancient history? Is what happened in the 1960s and ‘70s no longer applicable now that we’ve entered the twenty-first century?
Well, curiously enough, the Jan.-Feb. 2007 issue of a socialist magazine in the United States, Against the Current (ATC), which seems to consider itself some variety of Trotskyist, published an interview with a supposedly socialist “expert” on Cuba — Sam Farber (who incidentally is also a favorite of the International Socialist Organization, which considers the Cuban regime to be “state capitalist” and “Stalinist” and which has often provided a platform for Farber’s views on Cuba). What does Farber say about Celia Hart? He dismisses her as — of all things — a “Stalinist”! Thus, wittingly or not, Farber echoes the invidious position of the State Department.
The Nov. 28, 2006, interview with Sam Farber, conducted by a leading editor of ATC, David Finkel, and published in the Jan.-Feb. 2007 issue, was the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that Against the Current had commented on Celia Hart at all. It certainly did not reprint any of her articles, although she has been very well known to socialists in the U.S. ever since May 2004, when her ground-breaking article first appeared in Cuba’s Tricontinental magazine. We refer of course to her essay “‘Socialism in One Country’ and the Cuban Revolution.”
Farber’s logic is that the Castro leadership is “Stalinist.” Therefore, since Celia Hart unequivocally idolizes Fidel Castro — despite her occasional disagreements with him — she too must be a Stalinist. Q.E.D.
This completely disregards Celia Hart’s stated positions, which any reader may find without difficulty in her writings. For example, she denounces Stalinism as “one of the best allies of imperialism.” She blasts the harmful influence that the former Soviet bureaucracy of the USSR had on the Cuban revolution, although she points out that that baneful influence, thankfully, did not succeed in irreversiby distorting the Cuban revolution, did not bring a crystallized and hardened, privilege-seeking bureaucratic caste to power in Cuba. Celia Hart’s response, now that Stalinism has lost its former seat of power in Moscow’s Kremlin, is to proclaim: “Hallelujah!” She states explicitly that what she likes most about Trotsky is the “war cry” he issued during the discussion about the “New Course” in the Soviet Union in 1923: “Out of the party with bureaucratism, etc.” (See her interview with Manuel Talens below.)
But to Sam Farber, none of that matters. Like so many others, he refuses to recognize the non-Stalinist revolutionary impulses of the Fidelistas. To him, in his grumpy academic armchair (he is a professor in Brooklyn), they are all just “Stalinists.”
And the logic — whether conscious or not — of that point of view is to let the Empire do its damnedest against those accursed “Stalinists,” who supposedly lack workers’ democracy and do not represent “socialism from below.” The logic of that view is to suggest that for socialists there isn’t much to defend in Cuba. So it wouldn’t matter much if Bush & Co. repeated what John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower tried to do with the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the “missile crisis” in 1962. The logic is to let the bipartisan military machine have its way with the ”Stalinist” island. Let them extend U.S.-style “democracy” from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo — with its well-shackled “enemy combatants,” deprived of any and all legal, civil, and human rights — extend that to the rest of the island. Such is the logic, whether consciously held or not, of the blind and obtuse position that declares, against all the evidence, that Fidel Castro (and even Celia Hart) are nothing but a bunch of “Stalinists.” What Celia Hart writes — that Fidel Castro is one of the great leaders, if not the greatest, of a liberating socialist revolution — is far closer to the truth, in our opinion.
For us that makes defense of the Cuban revolution more vital than ever, as a miraculous milestone and model in the fight to replace capitalism with a worldwide humane and liberating socialist society that puts people’s needs before profits and private greed. The Fidelistas’ humanistic beliefs and practices, as Celia Hart points out, have kept the Cuban revolution alive for fifty years and have not been overcome by the foul and nefarious, truly antidemocratic ways of Stalinism and capitalism.
[Supplementary Note of October 2008: Paul Le Blanc has rightly called to my attention, and I hereby acknowledge a fact that had slipped my mind: in the same issue of Against the Current in which Sam Farber’s comments about Celia Hart appeared, there was also a review by Paul Le Blanc of Farber’s 2006 book about Cuba. Le Blanc, who is a member of the Labor Standard Editorial Board, had a more positive assessment of Celia Hart than the Farber whose book he was reviewing.
[The following references to Celia Hart by Paul Le Blanc are worth quoting, although I should also mention that, as far as I can determine, Against the Current has not returned to the subject of Celia Hart since those two passing comments about her in its Jan.-Feb. 2007 issue. Here is the conclusion of Paul Le Blanc’s review of Farber’s book, followed by Le Blanc’s useful listing of other books and articles about the Cuban revolution.
Today,
from within Cuba itself, there are some revolutionary-minded elements — even in
the Cuban Communist Party — who speak of “the Stalinism which contaminated us …
[as] a contagious virus, in spite of which, and not without battles, the ideal
of socialism was able to survive, because it was the very essence of the
revolutionary process.”
These
are the words of Celia Hart (daughter of two historic leaders of the Cuban
Revolution, Armando Hart and Haydée Santamaría) in one of her many articles
popularizing the ideas of Trotsky in her homeland. More recently, in an
interview with French Trotskyists, she has commented: “The interpenetration of
the bureaucracy and the market economy, that’s where the danger lies. We have
to demolish the foundations of the bureaucracy, because it is on these
foundations that the bourgeois class can develop — we saw in the USSR, in
Poland, and elsewhere how the bureaucrats, who were managers, men of power,
became owners, became capitalists.”
Actually,
there is some overlap between this and the conclusion of Farber’s book, which
asserts that with Fidel Castro’s death “a capitalist transition is highly
likely to be led, as in the Soviet Union and China, by Cuban Communists and
would restore … much of the power that the United States lost in Cuba almost
fifty years ago.”
This
and the ideological confusion going along with it will, he predicts, “be
challenged by those upholding the legacy of Fidel Castro as well as by those
trying to create a new revolutionary and democratic Left in Cuba.” (172)
The
question remains whether positive elements in the legacy of the Cuban
Revolution are stronger than Farber is inclined to acknowledge and — perhaps
intertwined with revolutionary developments and counter-influences elsewhere in
Latin America — will push aside bureaucratic afflictions and capitalist
restoration, resulting in the ideal of socialism (the free association of the
producers) being made real “as the very essence of the revolutionary process.”
Works
Cited
Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, Pamela Maria Smorkaloff, eds. The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
Frank T. Fitzgerald. The Cuban Revolution in Crisis: From Managing Socialism to Managing Survival (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1994).
Carlos Franqui. Diary of the Cuban Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1980).
____________. Family Portrait With Fidel (New York: Vintage Books, 1985).
Jeanette Habel. Cuba: The Revolution in Peril (London: Verso, 1991).
Marta Harnecker. Fidel Castro’s Political Strategy: From Moncada to Victory (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1987).
Celia Hart. “Fidel and Trotsky,” International Viewpoint, May 2006 (http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1052)
_________. “‘Welcome’ … Trotsky,” International Viewpoint, November 2005 (http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article898#nb5)
Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy. Socialism in Cuba (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969).
K.S. Karol. Guerrillas in Power: The Course of the Cuban Revolution (New York: Hill and Wang, 1970).
Robert Taber. M-26 — The Biography of a Revolution (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1961).
[That is the end of the excerpt from
what I wrote about Celia Hart a year ago, with the note about Paul Le Blanc’s
contribution added. We now reproduce her interview with Manuel Talens.]
An
Impassioned Conversation with Celia Hart Santamaría
That
Hart Woman — by Profession a Trotsky Advocate
Conversación
apasionada con Celia Hart Santamaría
La Hart, de profesión trotskera
(interview
conducted by Manuel Talens,
contributor
to the web site www.rebelion.org)
(posted
on that site on March 13, 2006)
[Editors’
Note: Celia Hart and Manuel Talens met just after she gave her presentation
on the fiftieth anniversary of the official founding of the July 26 Movement. A
translation of that work, “On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the July 26
Movement,” will appear in the forthcoming larger collection of Celia Hart’s
writings, prepared by SA/LS. The interview with Manuel Talens, begun at the
time of their meeting, continued through e-mail exchanges, roughly between July
2005 and March 2006, when the interview was posted on the Rebelion web site.
The material in square brackets is by the editors, for purposes of
clarification. Also, some references that U.S. readers might not be familiar
with have been explained in notes added by the editors, who also wish to
acknowledge and thank Carlos Feliz and Manuel Talens for reviewing the
translation by George Saunders.]
My
last hours in Havana were running out. I felt sad and weary, being alone for
the first time after ten intense days of discussions, music, and unforgettable
get-togethers, but now my friends had all started to head back to their
respective countries after the Fourth International Congress on Culture and
Development [June 6–9, 2005]. In the barroom of the Hotel Palco, next to the
Convention Palace, with my elbows on the bar I was watching without seeing a
Cubavision program playing on the TV set to which no one was paying much
attention. Suddenly, right next to me, I heard a woman speaking.
“I’ve just made
a presentation for the old-timers of Moncada. And they liked it a lot. Let me
have a beer, because I sure have earned it.”
There was no
question that the woman was speaking to the barmaid, not to me, but her voice
was as warm and alluring as a bolero, so I turned toward her with curiosity.
And there, less than a yard away, what met my eyes was a kind of Caribbean
Lauren Bacall, with a head of lovely, wavy hair and sparkling, honey-colored
eyes. I couldn’t stop myself from asking:
“Are you taking
part in a conference?”
“Yes, in a
scholarly workshop (Taller Cientifico) on the fiftieth anniversary of the July
26 Movement. I presented a report from a Trotskyist position. That’s because
I’m a ‘Trotskera.’”
My daily
reading of the web site rebelion.org helped me keep up my end of the
conversation.
“A ‘Trotskera’
like “La Hart’ (the Hart woman)?”
The look she
gave me was half-surprised, half-complimentary.
“But...I am
Celia Hart!”
It was my turn
to be nonplused. Life’s happenstance creates such situations. I felt obliged to
introduce myself, maintaining a calm that was more fictitious than real.
“Well, that
means we are fellow contributors to Rebelión. I’m Manuel Talens.”
We hugged. I
looked at my watch. There was exactly one hour left before the taxi would take
me to the airport. Sixty minutes can give a lot when there are things that
count. We spent them talking without stopping. Celia is as impassioned in
person as in her writing, inquisitive, rebellious, a worthy daughter of that
admirable woman [Haydée Santamaría] who fought alongside Fidel Castro in the
revolutionary war. She glows with vitality and her eyes remind me of Picasso’s,
because they are like flames that scorch everything they rest upon. We made
plans to do some writing, some eventual collaboration, including possibly a
novel based on an ingenious idea she has in mind, which I am not about to
reveal here. And when, at the end, we said goodbye we had laid the cornerstone
for an interview that continued by e-mail and that now I present to the reader.
Manuel
Talens: Please
introduce yourself, Celia.
Celia Hart: First I’ll tell you where I come from,
because until about two years ago there were only two illustrious names, to the
point that on certain occasions I would have liked to destroy those names,
because Hart and Santamaría were pitilessly devouring poor little Celia, who I
have also, with great effort, been carrying inside me.
I was born in
the clamorous early days of the Cuban revolution [January 1963]. Biologically I
am absolutely its daughter. Under normal circumstances, there would have been a
clash between Haydée Santamaría’s passion and indomitable rebel nature, on the
one hand, and Armando Hart’s talent for politics, on the other. It was only the
volcanic heat of an authentic revolution that could have brought them together,
above all a revolution whose impulse came from such extraordinary beings as
Fidel and Che. If not for the revolution, the dissimilar personalities of my
parents would never have permitted them to be joined through the mediation of
love. Nevertheless, I will tell you this: to my surprise my father confessed in
Aldabonazo, one of his most recent books, that when it came to politics,
my mother and he “acted as one.” I know them both very well. Only an enchanted
and love-filled work like the revolution could have “disciplined” (for lack of
a better word) a free spirit like Yeye [nickname for Haydée] or could have made
an intellectual with such a rigorous legal education as Armando become fragile
and vulnerable to sentiment.
[Editors’
Note: In the English-language edition of Aldabonazo (p. 100),
Armando Hart says of Haydée and himself during their joint activity in the July
26 Movement, ca. 1954–1958: “We were practically the same person, and we worked
together without a single political or revolutionary difference or
disagreement.”]
What is mainly
remembered about my mother is that she took part in the Moncada attack,
together with Fidel. This seems to me unjust. But we should have patience,
because also in the case of Che, the epithet “Don Quixote” is attached to him,
and he’s transported without any intermediate steps from the battle of Santa
Clara to Bolivia, and then he becomes a kind of poster saint and nothing more.
Everyone forgets about Che’s contributions to Marxist practice, his creative
revolutionary labors in Cuba. But that’s a different subject.
In the case of my
mother the same kind of thing has happened. She was an instinctive
internationalist, and all the defiant oppositional trends in the world of Latin
American art and literature came together at the Casa de las Américas, which
she headed. The literary prize awarded by the Casa was, in its day, one of the
most coveted of all such prizes.
Under her wing
I came to know the hidden road to happiness. That was much more important than
to have a lot of dolls. My education was so heretical that I think I know why what
was distilled was this crazy little girl who I carry inside me. Moral values
were inculcated in me as a conditioned reflex, not through reasoning. I’ll give
you an example. When I was five years old I was given a doll that would talk
when you pulled a little string in the back. It was a dream of a doll, and I
named it Pablita. One fine day I was looking for Pablita and couldn’t find her.
The young women who stayed at our house and looked after me when my mama was at
work were tearful, and I couldn’t understand anything. I asked mama about this
and she told me, as though she were explaining where sunlight comes from:
“There was a mute girl who came by, and I thought you would have wanted to give
her the doll.” I couldn’t believe it and I began to yell, to cry out in
protest, because I considered this an injustice and at my young age I had no
way of expressing my anguish more coherently. She looked at me with an
expression that I later learned to fully appreciate, and without raising her
voice or showing any alarm at my desperation, she said: “You see? You can shout
and protest. But she can’t. Pablita is in better hands. You can talk to your
dolls, but she can’t. At least now she has a doll that can speak.”
This line of
reasoning, which she repeated to me later, I can now accept as just, now, more
than twenty years after her death. Sometimes it seems to me that my mother gave
me an education for the long term, so it would last me all my life, or
something like that. I could tell you a thousand anecdotes like this one, but
there’s no need.
From this
upbringing what I managed to extract was an almost morbid disdain or disregard
for material objects. I have reached the utmost extremes. I am not interested
in old records or photographs or anything like that. It is as though my life
has no rewind button; it only goes forward. But don’t let me stray any further
off the subject.
So that’s how
this little girl grew up, one who fell passionately in love with José Martí.
And I had the premonition that the revolution constituted the great mystery in
which my life would unfold.
My father, for his
part, taught me the Marxist texts, and I discussed politics only with him. My
mother loved to listen to us, but generally she didn’t participate. Besides,
you could read about it in books, the history of the Moncada attack and all
that. She didn’t like to talk to me about her past.
I was always a
good student at school, and when it came time to choose a career I decided for
some odd reason to study physics. Philosophy has always been one of my
passions, but physics studies the most general phenomena of nature, and I was
captivated by the idea of understanding them. Everyone objected except my
mother, who said to me, exactly one month before her suicide, “Do it, my
daughter, perhaps it’s one of the few things you won’t be able to achieve on
your own.”
People were
surprised. Everyone had thought I would dedicate myself to politics or
literature.
That was one of
the most right-on-the-mark decisions of my life. I studied physics with the same
passion that I had read Martí. What’s best, I was selected to finish my studies
in Germany, and there, far away from where my family names were so well known,
I began to be recognized simply as Celia, and I began to pursue my impassioned
interest in the universe, which, as a matter of fact, is easier to understand
than we imagine. It’s enough to translate the language of mathematics into that
of love, and all human beings would understand and would be astounded in the
face of the revolutionary and venturesome truth of creation, because the
universe so completely follows the design of certain beautiful laws [of its
own], which are far removed from any pretended Creator.
One month after
this decision, in 1980, during a terrible summer, which has become known as the
“summer of Mariel,” hundreds of thousands of my compatriots abandoned Cuba.
My mother’s
apartment, where I had been sleeping ever since her break with my father two
years earlier, had a large picture window that faced the sea. Through
its enormous windowpane the two of us would watch, down below, the little boats
and rafts that were abandoning the Cuban revolution. My mother uttered hardly a
word. In her enormous green eyes traces of red appeared, but without a tear
being shed. I could feel her sadness, which extended to the outermost hairs of
her head. But there was no comment, no analysis.
She started to
make me a dress, which must still be out there somewhere, unfinished.
One afternoon
in that month of July I was taking a bath and I saw her coming into the
bathroom. She looked at me as she never had before, walking very bent over and
also looking very thin. That look is one of the things I could depict in a
painting if I were a painter. There was olive green in that look, like her
guerrilla uniform, and an intensity that was terrifying. For several seconds
that stretched into an eternity she didn’t take her eyes off me; she managed to
snatch from me the power of speech. I thought: “Something has happened.”
Moments later my brother Abel arrived and told me, “Mama has shot herself.” For
some reason it didn’t seem very strange to me. I sat down on the bed [near
her], trying to understand, but I didn’t sit right next to her because I was
still all wet from my bath.
Today I believe
she did the right thing. She wanted to leave this life, and that is a decison
one must respect, like any other. A short time later I went to the room with
the enormous windowpane. The blood had reached the floor. And strewn all
around on the floor was an endless number of papers that I had never seen
before. Meanwhile she had been taken, still alive, to the hospital, but I knew
it was the end. And it was. Soon the house was filled with hundreds of people,
who bewildered me with their solicitude, calling me “darling” and all that.
Neither I nor my brother Abel had a second to ourselves, nor could we come to
grips with the real tragedy of being left behind like planets without an orbit
after the collapse of the sun.
We were moved
to another place immediately, and I never again went back to look at the house
of my childhood, or my mother’s coconut palms, or, above all, that enormous
windowpane through which we watched the first rafts leaving Cuba. And those
“raft people” somehow buried at sea whatever life was left in that uncompleted,
unconventional woman, who continues to be the most beautiful human being I ever
had the chance to know.
In Germany, a
new stage in my life began, as I have said. I joined whatever international
political organization existed. Initially at the embassy they didn’t allow that
[joining an organization], but we raised a gigantic fuss, and after that we
were given permission.
But the youth
of East Germany had no interest in politics. They spent the whole damned day
yearning for fancy West German chocolates.
The
functionaries of officialdom who surrounded us in the GDR [German Democratic
Republic; official name of East Germany] told us that this is how Cuba would be
in thirty years. But there was no blood coursing through their veins! From
soccer the East German youth skipped over to Bach and his music, and any
reference to politics or past history was short-circuited.
I also became
aware of racism. I have dreadfully white skin, even more so in cold weather. At
the low-price restaurants that I went to it was made known to me that I should
not hang out with my darker comrades. This was said by oldtimers who seemed to
be well meaning.
Bureaucracy
dominated the university, the dormitories, everything. It was considered in
poor taste to talk about politics: “After all, we are here to study physics.”
Little by little, I started to distance myself from all that [bureaucratism].
The tumultuous events that had occurred at the time of my departure had
confused me so much that I couldn’t tell if things were the same in Cuba, but
when they told me that Cuba would be like this after a few decades, it
frightened me. I couldn’t accept the idea that this East German version of
“socialism” could be an alternative for humanity, a means of creating happiness
for human beings.
To top it all
off, the books on Marxism that we studied were distorted, dry and wearisome.
None of them had anything in common with the readings I had done with my
father, the things he had read to me when I was younger. I remember that if I
tried to refer to Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program, I was calmly
told that I was going to be a physicist, that I should not blow things out of
proportion [and not go outside my field of specialization]. They treated
Marxism as something akin to a Bible that should exist only in Latin. And there
was a bit of truth to that. My studies were so rigorous that they absorbed all
my neurons, required all my brain power. Even so, I took a public stance
against such “socialist” states. They did not represent for me an alternative worth
living for, and without any sort of remorse I became a fanatical devotee of the
Enlightenment thinkers, the French Revolution, and the Commune.
I reached the
point where I began to wonder if Lenin had calculated correctly in October
1917. For some reason the image of the boats leaving Cuba, seen through my
mother’s window a few hours before her death, became mixed up with those
tear-filled reflections.
Physics helped
me add things up and armed me with an unconstrained Aristotelian logic. In the
society of East Germany I could not recognize [the possibility of] Che Guevara;
and I could not see the passion of my mother in the women of that country. One
year I made a trip home to Cuba, and in spite of my admiration for Fidel and
for my family’s past history, I was in an absolute crisis of faith. I told my
father that I had my doubts about the balance between social justice and
individual liberty, but without liberty I did not want justice, and vice versa,
that to take power was a way of losing it, as Che had said, and that what I had
seen in the GDR and, to some extent in Cuba, was a state that was constantly
growing more powerful. I said that I didn’t understand the things Gorbachev had
undertaken to change overnight. That this was a state of utter confusion, that
I had lost touch with the concept of revolution, of where its starting point
was and where it would end, and [it seemed that] if it ended, that was only in
order to produce a new [and more] powerful state.
It was raining. I had just seen a Ukrainian film entitled Repentance,
which told about Stalin. [Editors’ Note: Actually it
was a film by a Georgian director, Tengiz Abuladze, released in 1987.] I was
walking around, waiting for my father, bathed in tears, and sipping vodka. The
words of José Martí, which I knew by heart, kept running through my mind, along
with thoughts of Che and Haydée. It all seemed to be a huge fraud. And my
father, seeing me in such a state of revulsion and despair, took three books
out of an old cabinet and, certainly with doubts and misgivings, handed them to
me right there. Those books and my father, on that rainy afternoon, saved my
shattered soul so that I could dedicate it fully to the service of the
revolution.
M.T.: But please, don’t leave me hanging. Tell me right away
what books they were.
C.H.: They
were three books by Isaac Deutscher. The Prophet Unarmed, Stalin,
and The Unfinished Revolution. They were commercially successful books,
but I devoured them as if I was reading the unraveling of a mystery. Socialism
could have a different face; it could be built in a different way.
We had been
subjected to a systematic deception. Those books, for me, were the equivalent
of romance novels. I wept with happiness, and was filled with passion. Just as
in the adventure stories serialized in the newspapers, the “bad guys” were the
“aburridos” [the “dullards”—that is, the ones who had grown tired and lazy, and
abandoned the revolution]. Stalin had made a pact with Hitler. He was a
murderer. He was not the victor in World War II, not at all!
Everything fell
into place and started to make sense. But then I wondered why I hadn’t read
anywhere that Che or Fidel or anyone in my party had mentioned these events.
Ah! I can still smell the well-preserved old paper of that 1968 edition [of El
profeta desarmado] by the Mexican publishing company Era. I remember
the rough paper it was printed on and the impassioned sentences of the Old Man,
Leon Trotsky. It was all the truth. And I went back to considering myself a
Leninist, because without Leon Trotsky there is no Lenin worth mentioning.
I began to predict that the GDR would collapse like a house of cards. I
said it many times. I repeated it ad nauseam. But it was no use! I think there
came upon me something like the curse of Cassandra. People would tell me,
“There’s nothing to what you’re saying, Celia. The economic strength of the GDR
will prevent it from falling.”
“No!” I would shout. “Socialism is a form of society that takes as its
premise free will and consciousness. If two plus two equals four, if certain
individuals think only about soccer and Western chocolates, if they are not
committed to and in love with the society they are building, I don’t believe it
can last.”
I remember talking about this a lot with a close friend, Marcos Portal,
former head of Cuba’s Ministry of Basic Industry, who was very close to my
uncle Aldo Santamaría. After the fall of the Berlin Wall he liked to say that I
was a fortuneteller. Of course I wasn’t; I was simply applying the laws of
physics. If the pressure drops lower at the center of a tropical storm, and if
the ocean waters are very warm, you can expect a hurricane. Despite the fact
that many people were annoyed by what I was saying, Trotsky had restored the
relevance of socialism for me, linking it with liberty, culture, and freedom of
discussion and debate (la polémica).
M.T.: And how
does it feel to be a “Trotskera” in a socialist society like Cuba’s, where the
figure of Leon Trotsky is not one of the official icons? But don’t answer the
question just as a supporter of Trotsky but also as a woman, because I cannot
help seeing that machismo, despite the achievements of the past 45 years, has
not yet disappeared from the island of Cuba. And discussion like that in which
you are engaged not only runs the risk of being in the minority, however much
it defends the revolution, but also of suffering the usual disregard for the
female sex when it comes to important decisions.
C.H.: Of course. And not only now, and not
only because I’m a woman. Ever since I was young I have been — how shall I put
it? — too feminine. I am fascinated by my gender. And also I am fascinated by
men, their ingenuousness, their way of falling in love with any skirt that fits
well, and sometimes (please don’t be offended) with their sweet
simple-mindedness. I was always a girl who liked the celebrated “macho” way of
being treated, just as I loved flowers or sappy, romantic music.
In fact, when I
wanted to study physics, no one took me seriously. Everyone assumed I would
study literature or art or something like that, because I liked to write and
because of my childlike personality. I had a definitive reply for them: “I’ve
fallen in love with my high school physics teacher, and what he teaches about
nature is a poem of love.” I seemed even crazier, above all, because that was
the same month as my mother’s suicide. The ultimate consideration [in my desire
to study physics] — aside from love for my teacher, who, let me say in passing,
never found out how I felt, nor could he have been interested in such an ugly
young girl with a cast of the eye — was to understand how the world works and
what makes it move. No one thought I would succeed in this field. But not only
did I succeed; I left everyone gasping when I decided to go, with nine other youngsters,
to Germany to continue my studies.
Even then no
one took me seriously. I was the first non-German female in 300 years to
graduate in physics from that university. But they kept on not taking me
seriously. I continued to be papa’s little girl, half mad from the death of my
mother. I think I got used to this [attitude]. And now, after I decided, one
fine day, to dedicate myself to writing about and advocating the ideas of
socialism, which for me are what can truly captivate people, because they captivate
me as much as the physics classes of that poor lost high school teacher — after
that, they still continue not taking me seriously.
And that is why
it is thought that feminism was created for women who assume the roles of men.
But I must confess to you that I love men a lot — so much that I feel for their
inferior status, stemming from their inability to get close to nature as we
women do when we give birth, so much that I think I am half macho. In defending
Trotsky’s ideas I do not, for one instant, renounce my femininity. But I am
precisely the type of woman who is not a “feminist.’ I have learned to have
pity for men, and I let them go on...not taking me seriously. What I talk about
is more than a minority point of view, but that’s not important. Many students,
and young people in general, find it attractive and interesting. They ask me
questions, and for me that’s enough. Besides, at the personal level it works
out very pleasantly for me.
In Cuba now
people don’t have a very good idea of what I stand for. Many friends —
including my father — ask me to abandon Trotsky, saying there are other, better
figures to study and promote. It’s odd. It’s as though we were dealing with a
box of colored pencils, and people are saying that the blue pencil is better
than the green one, etc. But like a salmon, I have journeyed against the
stream, and I refuse to be a sardine. For the same reason I refuse to renounce
either physics or communist ideas that I think are true — and even less am I
willing to renounce men. I may die, as they say, without anyone taking me
seriously — except for the muse of happiness (La Felicidad). She does take me
seriously. Happiness and I are the best of allies.
M.T.: Perhaps now that you have made this declaration of
principles, you could tell me in what way, as you see it, Trotskyism can add to
the gains, or build on the achievements, of the Cuban revolution, or in what
way it can assist the incipient Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. Because
what we are talking about is making these revolutions as perfect as possible
without having any labels attached to them, however honorable those labels
might be. And don’t forget to say a little something about why, in your
opinion, Trotskyists are a kind of rara avis among progressive people
around the globe, just as much in the minority in Cuba as in any of the
bourgeois democracies, like those we are enduring in “the West.”
C.H.:
Trotskyism was present in our revolution. I have said something about this in a
couple of my articles. But its participation was in a quiet, unannounced way,
like the diffuse light of a late afternoon, or like an instantaneous flash that
enters our pupils without a by-your-leave.
This is a demonstrable fact. My particular case, for example, is that of
a person who a few years ago had no knowledge of Trotskyism. If I was committed
to Martí and Che and a follower of Fidel, why am I a Trotskyist? Only because I
fully aspire to be a revolutionary. You could say that if anyone taught me to
be a revolutionary, it was my mother, who had no knowledge of Trotsky, who
hadn’t even seen his photograph. But that was not necessary. [Editor’s Note:
That is, the impulse toward revolution, of being a revolutionary, was still
there.] No one teaches a rose to be beautiful or the waves of the sea to be in
permanent motion. It is the [revolutionary] cause [that does that]. There’s an
underlying history in this luminous revolution that has converted it into a
great hope. The only thing we got from Stalinism was more petroleum, but far
less heart. Now we are free of its influence. Hallelujah! Even though we are
not free of danger. In Cuba Lenin has never died. Now the truth of socialism is
clear, that Trotsky was just as right as Einstein had been in 1919, when no one
believed in the theory of relativity and you had to wait for an eclipse to
measure the perihelion (point nearest the sun) in the orbit of the planet
Mercury. It took the collapse of the USSR and of the whole “socialist camp” to
show that the Old Man [Trotsky] was right. He might have been wrong on many
other things, but not on that one [that Stalinism was alien to socialism]. The
mysterious channel that runs from José Martí through Julio Antonio Mella to the
July 26 Movement and Che is guarded and protected by a socialism
that is
non-Stalinist.
The thing is
that now we don’t have the right to just keep calling on heroes to rescue our
history all by themselves. The Cuban revolution can take up the legacy of
Trotsky without being branded opportunist. And we ought to do it, consciously.
I know we owe this to our youth, along with many other legacies. And — note
this well — I defend Trotsky [precisely] because he is “the great forgotten
one.” Not because I believe he is the only one who can serve us well, but
because, for reasons that I don’t quite understand, he is not mentioned while
others are, such as Gramsci and Mariátegui, and that includes earlier thinkers
too. There must be some Freudian phenomenon here, because there is no logical
reason for it. Perhaps it’s because he was assassinated, and unlike in other
cases, his assassination was carried out by a “socialist state” — even though
we are not certain that it was only in his case [that a “socialist
state” sponsored an assassination]. There are certain versions going around
about the assassination of Julio Antonio Mella. [It seems that] Vidali, or
Contreras, or whatever he’s called, if he was not the assassin, could well have
been. And what about Codovilla? [1]
Stalinism also
had its share of guilt in the death of my beloved Che. All this will have to be
investigated, Manuel, because if ever capitalism had a good ally, it was
Stalinism. Besides, it’s frightening to think about the hundreds of millions of
human beings it managed to deceive. I hate it all the more because of this.
Stalinism deceived more people than Hitler, and not in the name of Nazism or
Fascism, but in that of the red banner of the proletariat.
For my country,
for my revolution, it would be a good thing to retrieve and to study the work
of Leon Trotsky. I insist that passion is the perfect way for us to be
revolutionaries; there is no more effective way — and it doesn’t mean “spending
hours sitting on your rump, reading books.” If you read at the same time that
you are engaged in struggle, as Che did, much more gets read. As I have also
said, to be a revolutionary is the most economical way to be happy and to stay
forever young. And I don’t know if we can win our young people [to the
socialist cause] solely with health, education, and social security. That is
only one part of the task. What we need is for them to fall in love [with the
revolution] time after time, and to be convinced that the world depends on
them! For that reason I feel happy when they visit and meet with young
Venezuela.
There is a pair
of singers in Cuba, very young and popular, who sing beautifully. They call
themselves Buena Fe (Good Faith), and one of their songs, listened to a lot by
young people, is We are all born angels. It has a couple of lines that
I’ll repeat to you, because this is exactly how young people ought to
feel: “If the heavens give you lemons, share the seeds with me. Let’s sell some
lemonade — and take your tears to the Chapel.” We ought to give them seeds, and
Trotsky has those seeds, the spirit of challenge and opposition, from within
the revolution itself. The theory of permanent revolution is fundamental, along
with his invaluable concept of uneven and combined development. But that’s not
what made me fall in love with this man (although, as you know, I fall in love
easily).
I will quote
you what captivated me more than anything else and opened up my heart anew. It
was an outcry that the Old Man made during his polemic [in December 1923, over
“The New Course”] against those who were called the Old Guard of the
Bolsheviks, who had already become bureaucratized. This was a battle cry that
Trotsky launched and that I would like to bring to all young people:
“Out of the
party with passive obedience, with mechanical leveling by the authorities, with
suppression of personality, with servility, with careerism! A Bolshevik is not
merely a disciplined person. He [or she] is a person who in each case and on
each question forges a firm opinion of his own and defends it courageously and
independently, not only against our enemies, but within our own party. Today
perhaps he [or she] will be in the minority...He will submit...But this does
not always signify that he is in the wrong. Perhaps he saw or understood a new
task or the need for a change of course before the others did. He will
persistently raise the question a second, a third, a tenth time, if need be. In
doing this he will render his party a service, helping it to meet the new task
fully armed or to carry out the necessary change of course without organic
upheavals, without factional convulsions.” [Translator’s Note: See Challenge
of the Left Opposition, 1923–25 (Pathfinder, 1980), p. 127.—G.S.]
It is in this
manner that I conceive a better society, and only in this manner. I am addicted
to the truth. This [addiction] is not a virtue; it is a real defect. I am
always being told, including by my father, that it will not serve me well for
“doing politics,” and I think that’s right.
Martí has a
sentence very similar to the paragraph I just quoted from the Old Man. In his
book The Golden Age, Martí wrote: “I want the children to say
what they think and to say it well. I want them to be people who are eloquent
and sincere.”
In the same
sense, I tell you, our young people are fascinated with revolution. I have said
it more than once: the youth are revolutionaries in and of themselves,
naturally (de por si). We need to tell them that discipline and
discretion are not enough, that they must focus all the strength of their
hormones on the revolution. The youth do not remain revolutionary just like
that; they can become opportunists in order to climb career ladders, or in the
worst of cases they can go off and leave the revolution, like those “raft
people” [of Mariel] who my mother was watching through her picture window.
Trotsky comes
to us from within our own ranks. He is the twin brother of Che. There is no
better place in the world [than Cuba] where old Leon could find asylum. And the
same is true not only for him, but for Rosa Luxemburg and all the others. But
the situation is such that they don’t want to talk about Trotsky here, in Cuba,
where the task he could perform is great. The Cuban revolution is one of the
veterans, one of the longest-lasting revolutions in history, and we have the
maturity to take on many things. Much is said here about thinkers from an
earlier era, to the extent that even the ideas of Bishop Espada are brought up.
[2] And so, why not Trotsky too? Never, Manuel, never has anyone wanted to
respond to me about this, and I assure you I have inquired in every quarter.
In the case of
the young Bolivarian revolution [in Venezuela] we have a much more transcendent
situation. This revolution is “the child we had in old age.” Just when
neoliberalism was bluntly accusing us of sexual impotency, a baby was born to
us, a luxuriant revolution of the people, deeply rooted among them. Chavez is
not a leader in the style of Fidel or Lenin (or even Mao) or other major
figures in history. He is a good fellow who, in his youth, decided to follow
Bolívar’s teachings and who actually takes the Gospels seriously. That’s what
he is, and no more. He sings, he jokes, and he enjoys leading a
revolution as no one else has.
Our
responsibility is that things should go well in this revolution from the very
beginning. This is crucial for the revolutionary movement. This revolution does
not know what the Stalinist system of Moscow was, and it doesn’t have to please
anyone, to laugh at their jokes. For the first time in history I feel that a
revolution is coming into being without being forced — like a childbirth
without doctors present. Chavez’s personality is overpowering, because, in the
first place, anyone can see that he is a man of flesh and blood; you can
picture him unbuttoning his shirt. He makes mistakes and begs forgiveness. He
makes fun of anyone he wants to. But for the first time ever a son of the
people is the most beloved president anywhere. You see, I am a fan of
Chavez, and I have written thousands of words about his comings and goings all
over the place.
But something
became clear to me when I was in Venezuela at the Second Solidarity Encounter
on April 14, 2005. Venezuela is Chavez! They are completely the
same. Of course I’m not talking about the elite district of Altamira and all
that, but the ordinary people of Venezuela, who talk about the revolution as if
they were talking about a plate of beans to be eaten for supper. So Chavez is
just the vehicle. It is a revolution that is growing up, together with its
leader. He has come around to talking about socialism by default. His
aspiration is to carry out the Bolivarian mandate in this century, while being
a Christian. And this cannot be done nowadays without the socialist revolution,
and he is doing that intuitively.
Besides, the
Venezuelan revolution has something we never had — economic resources! And it
was able to undertake the “miracles” of its social programs (or Misiones), to
restore vision to the blind and to make paralytics walk again. That’s on the
one hand. On the other, there is its Latin-Americanism, its vision of Latin
America as one great homeland. It feels as if it is Colombian, Ecuadorian,
Bolivian, and I believe that for the first time in history an attempt will be
made to form a genuine party that supports Chavez and the revolution, because
none of the parties of the Fifth Republic [the republic established after
Chavez first won election, under the new constitution drafted and adopted by
popular referendum in the period 1999–2000], and none of the traditional
parties of the left in Venezuela have been able to follow the impulse given by
the people, who have been called on to make this revolution (as long as it
doesn’t break down or give in, as we Cubans say [si es que no se raja]),
called on to be the vanguard of the world revolution. The Venezuelan people did
not have to “look it up” in any classic work [of Marxism] in order to save
their president in April 2002, nor during the bosses’ lockout in the oil
industry [December 2002–February 2003]. They talk about workers’ control of
production, co-management [or workers’ self-management], and socialism as if
these were just as natural as the filthiness of the streets of Caracas (which,
I should say in passing, are just dreadful). The party that Chavez and his
magnificent team need is, for the first time, a continentwide revolutionary party.
All
this, my dear friend, could not be closer to Trotsky. And it is important that
on the road to socialism we don’t veer off and get lost again in bureaucratism
— because it exists! This virus stands in the way of our making the revolution,
and we must be vaccinated against it constantly.
For all of us,
this little baby revolution [in Venezuela] has opened up our hopes, and we need
to help it grow, letting it crawl around on all fours and get a few bumps on
its head, and also watching its first teeth come in.
I don’t think
there could be any better prize than Venezuela for those of us whose dreams are
with the revolution. Obviously, there is no heavenly mandate that this
revolution will be preserved, but with it we do have a new beginning. What I am
telling you is [that we must] drive ahead to reach October and open the gates
of the Americas to Bolívar. Unless it is socialist there cannot be another Gran
Colombia. [3] And in this situation the Old Man, Leon Trotsky, is here
again, together with all the others in a grand tribunal of good spirits from
the dead who have been quick to issue forth from the old books and dusty
volumes.
Members of
Trotskyist organizations are indeed rara avis. Supporters of, or
sympathizers with, Trotsky’s ideas (“Trotskeros,” or “Trotskeras”) are many
times more numerous. According to my own criteria (which are very limited and
not well informed), from what I have been able to find out about the [various]
small Trotskyist organizations, together with those with which I have been able
to share or exchange ideas, I want to say the following about them: (1) They
ought to receive recognition from everyone on the left, because they are the
ones who held the fort, held out against Stalinism for many years, and suffered
the consequences. (2) There are various aspects to the rivalry (which in my
opinion is petty) between the Mandelistas, Posadistas, Morenistas, Spartacists,
and all the other different Trotskyist groups. First, because they all, in good
faith, would like to maintain the purity of the Old Man’s ideas, and second,
because each group believes it is the only one preserving those ideas. The
ideological differences (which have been explained to me by the thousands!!!)
really amount to nothing. And that includes the fact that some have told me, at
times: “Look! That group has been bad-mouthing the Cuban revolution, or
bad-mouthing Che, or took a wrong position at one or another crucial historical
event or turning point.”
Again I turn to
the methods of physics. I have a visceral love for my revolution and admire
Fidel, despite all the occasions on which I have disagreed with him.
Differences are not insoluble; they can be overcome. Because all of them [the
different Trotskyist tendencies] are aspiring, one in a more theoretical way,
another in a more activist way, to bring down the capitalist system, and
however profound they may consider their differences to be, they really are not
that big. It’s evident that there are many organizations that I don’t know
about, but there is one factor in common. And Cuba, my dear friend, is no
longer indifferent to anyone [that is, any of the forces on the left], because
it is the only country, together with Venezuela, that is “fearlessly taking a
stand” (guapea) in defiance of the enemy.
(3) Because of
the ostracism to which [the Trotskyist groups] have been subjected, they are
very closed off within their own circles and they see enemies wherever they
look. I have had discussions with various groups and we have reached certain
understandings in common. I am not offended that they criticize my beloved Che,
because to me it’s like criticizing the spots on the sun. It’s so easy to
defend his revolutionary consistency, including his positions that were
Trotskyist wihout him knowing it, so that after lengthy discussions we end up
all smiles with joint projects before us.
(4) Finally,
what is decisive for me is that I do not know a single Trotskyist militant who
is not a sincere revolutionary, with serious intentions and great personal
integrity. This has attracted my attention. They might or might not be mistaken
[about one thing or another]. My lack of knowledge about such questions is too
great. But one thing is clear: they are all individuals of great value who have
opted for a redeeming project, including at the expense of their own personal
needs. I am enthused by this, and the more I get to know them, the more I
admire them. I know there are some who call us Bonapartist or who stick I don’t
know what other labels on us, but if you talk with the Trotskyists, and engage
in polemics with them, you reach the conclusion that they are better than many
of the comrades who are in my own party [the Communist Party of Cuba]. They do
not undertake to organize themselves for any reason other than their political
motivation, and that is why I issue an appeal: “Let’s live more beyond our
preconceptions.”
Because of all that, I am a “Trotskera,” not a Trotskyist [that is, a
“freelance” follower of Trotsky’s ideas, not a member of a Trotskyist
organization]. First, out of respect for those who — while I was going around
here thinking all kinds of foolishness — were, in a serious way, going up
against the two fundamental enemies, imperialism and Stalinism, and also
because I have not attained even ten percent of their political culture.
Second, because I am still wary of being a militant in such organizations,
although I will tell you I have in fact cooperated with [many] of them and,
together with all of them, I am committed to the marrow of my bones.
M.T.:
Following up on the question of machismo, and before I forget, one of seven
DVDs about the Cuban revolution published this past year by the ICAIC
[Instituto Cubano de Arte y Industria Cinematograficas—the Cuban Institute of
the Cinematic Arts and Industry] is entitled Island in the Stream.
Appearing in it is an “old girl” from Operation Peter Pan [4] who now lives in
the U.S. She
called Fidel “macho, super-macho, and everybody’s father.” What is your reply
to such a direct verbal attack? Take advantage of this opportunity and tell me
frankly about Fidel, especially because your family connection has given you
more access to him than anyone else around you. Don’t tell me about the myth,
because I already know that by heart, but tell me about how you perceive him
from your position as a woman-to-whom-no-one-pays-attention in your own
country.
C.H.: Yes, that was a very direct attack in
the film, and it certainly expressed malicious intention, but it’s not entirely
wrong. Fidel is macho. And I hope that my saying so will not be offensive to
anyone. Remember, after all, that everything in this world seems to orbit
around definitions [that is, what is meant by a word, such as “macho”]. For
example, I feel that I am a hembra [a strong, assertive, unashamedly sexual
woman; literally, female animal]. Our species has been bottled up to such an
extent that we shy away from such words. Macho man, hembra [sexy woman]. And
that also goes for gays, some of whom I count as my true friends. I tell them
not to shy away from words like “macho” and “hembra.” For me, [the Cuban poet,
essayist, novelist (and homosexual)] José Lezama Lima (1910–1976)] was in
spirit a “macho.” And believe me I am one of those “hembras” who knows how to
use all the senses, especially touch and smell. That is what separates us from
the animals, to know how to use all our senses. People exist who do not know
how to use any of their senses or sensuality. The corruption of this
civilization, the lack of sensuality; the inability to achieve orgasm, the
spiritual frigidity (anorgasmia) in which we live, and of which
we are all guilty, has turned us into NOTHINGS, neither men nor women, neither
machos nor hembras nor gays, neither rhinoceroses nor bees.
Yes, Fidel is
macho. Not only on the inside. He’s also that on the outside. After I became an
adult woman I saw him up close a few times, but as I have already told you, I
have strong senses; I know how to use all my senses. The green of his uniform
is a very intense green. I believe that this green has blended into his skin.
And this green — it stirs my soul, projecting itself irresistibly to all my
senses. His cap, Manuel, is of such a penetrating green, and the visor digs in
when he says something that he believes is fundamental.
It’s obvious
that he’s macho! Whoever among us is a woman, whether of the hips or of the
heart — and all genuine men and women, if they are sincere — must recognize
that Fidel is the “leader of the pack” or “chief horse of the herd.” And he’s a
stud horse who sires good fillies and colts.
I’m not being
sexist. The dominant horse in a herd is something that exists, as are Alpha
males and females, macho men and dominatrixes. (The queen bee, for example, is
the boss of the beehive.) I am overpowered by Fidel’s hands. He moves them as
if he were a flamenco dancer. [The Ecuadorian painter Oswaldo] Guayasamín has
painted them very well. They dance, they whirl about, they contain ideas, and
there is no way, no human way anyhow, of resisting the movement of those hands.
Don’t think
that I agree with everything he says — but he’s like a sweetheart of mine. I am
enamored with this supple, mobile figure dressed in olive green, and I have no
doubt that he is macho (to the extent that I understand this term). But of
course that’s not what you asked me. Yes, I have seen him many times since I
was a little girl. My mother told me that he was the one who noticed that I had
“a cast of the eye” — that is, I had the same divergent vision (strabismus, or
“walleye”) as my uncle Abel.
The last time I
saw him was by accident. We were involved in a Casa [de Las Américas] award,
and this blessed institution has always invited me to attend award-giving
ceremonies (without my deserving any such thing). At that time I was working at
the Superconductivity Laboratory of Havana University. And now, if you’ll allow
me, I’ll make a digression to explain to you some of what was connected with
the last time I saw him.
I’ll be brief:
Superconductivity is one of the more surprising phenomena in nature. There are
materials which, if they are broughjt to a low enough temperature, will
transmit electric current continuously, without any loss. Copper wire, for
example, as is used for delivering electric power, cannot [at normal
temperatures] transmit all of the current that one would want. Depending on the
caliber of the wire, some 50 amperes, more or less, can be transmitted. That’s
why thicker wire is used for equipment that consumes a lot of electricity.
Superconductors, on the other hand, can let hundreds and hundreds of amperes
pass through without resistance. But nature imposes its costs. In order for
such superconductivity to occur, the copper must be cooled to the temperature
of liquid helium — to 4 degrees Kelvin, or [to express] it better, to minus 274
degrees Centigrade. To achieve these low temperatures is quite a feat, and this
ends up being very expensive.
In 1986
higher-temperature superconductors (or superconducting materials) were
discovered, which only had to be cooled to a temperature of –198 degrees
Centigrade, or 77 degrees Kelvin [the temperature of liquid nitrogen]. But
liquid nitrogen is incomparably cheaper than helium. In short, we were among
the first in the world to achieve these materials, which are known as “high TC
superconductors” (referring to the transitional point below which these
materials exhibit their spectacular behavior).
Fidel gave his
consent for some financing to my laboratory. I had just become a junior
researcher, an apprentice. It was unbelievable that he would put his faith in
this project. We ten researchers who had this good luck thought we could now
play God, and we dreamed up a thousand plans. The institute had an installation
for liquefying helium. A piece of equipment for magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) had been purchased. It worked with a superconducting electromagnet to
produce a full, unimpeded electric current and thus achieve the formation of an
intense magnetic field, making possible very high-quality images. In principle,
the Council of State was supposed to provide the financing for material from
which the necessary refrigerant could be produced to keep this electromagnet
“cool.”
And now to return to
Fidel. I went to the Casa award ceremony. On this occasion Fidel was hosting a
dinner in honor of intellectuals [including research scientists], and of course
I made sure I was part of the group. Surprisingly, he recognized me — after
all, he hadn’t seen me for a long time. And then. such was God’s wish (because
God likes to amuse himself at times), it occurred to him to talk with us guests
from that research team about how the grand operation was going: Was it going
well? Were a thousand miracles happening? Up to then I had been standing there
like a dummy, listening to him talk and, above all, watching the movement of
his beautiful hands, but now he had touched on a topic that I was suffering
over. I couldn’t contain myself and exclaimed: “No, Comandante, it’s no longer
working — because of the lack of refrigerant.” I don’t know if it’s accurate,
as they say, that the Comandante doesn’t like losing [or losses]. But this was
a topic on which I could make no concessions.
“No!” I shouted, as if the life of my country depended on this electromagnet. “The equipment has failed, Comandante.” And he began to say that, no, it was functioning quite well, and that there shouldn’t be any discussion about it. I became quite upset and walked out of the circle that had gathered to listen to the conversation. I was very upset. If he had said the sky was lime green, I would have kept on listening like a blockhead, but in connection with this equipment, no! At that exact moment his olive-green and genial beauty ceased to exist, and instead (unjustly on my part) I saw a person who refused to disburse the money for the refrigerant that this nuclear magnetic resonance equipment needed. It seems that no one had told him anything. So it wasn’t his fault. More than I or any of us, he loved that equipment, and that’s why he was protesting against what I had said. But I repeated it and said to him: “Let’s go to the hospital with a measuring instrument and you will see that it has conked out.”
Within a few
hours he had checked into it and was told it was not working. He came
back to call on me, but I was still upset. They had not wanted to pay attention
to me that time either. As I have told you, I must have been Cassandra in an
earlier incarnation.
With the
passage of time I have come to realize that much more was lost than some
refrigerant for a sophisticated piece of equipment, and I will never forget the
sad smile, though fresh and green, with which he embraced me. That was the last
time I talked with him. But as every revolutionary does, I listen to him, I
watch him, I study his voice and his tone. It is a privilege to be a
contemporary of such a man, in spite of the fact that at times some of the
things he says or does tick me off. But there’s one thing about which there can
be no doubt, and that is his political perspicacity, his sense of [what must be
done in] combat, his integrity and commitment.
It’s stupid to
bring up the infamous “cult of personality” that people talk about. Obviously,
as long as there are men and women, there will be some who rise above the
average! I make a cult of Silvio Rodriguez, for example, and I’m not ashamed of
it.
Therefore, yes,
Fidel is macho, and I don’t object to this adjective, which cannot be reduced
simply to a matter of the past. As the journalist Baez has said, Fidel’s great
merit is that he has remained alive and has continued to fight.
But beware! I
don’t have the slightest doubt that despite my admiration for him as one of the
most eminent leaders (perhaps the most eminent) of the twentieth century, the
world revolution takes precedence over him and everyone. He knows that and I am
sure he accepts it with good will.
Let me tell you also that among the four spirits who watch over me, help
me, and give shape and direction to my life, I do not include Fidel Castro.
Because he is my living contemporary, the best of them, my best comrade.
M.T.: To
conclude this interview, Celia, let’s look to the future. Among the Reds of
Europe, and I’m referring to those who have never renounced their revolutionary
ideals, not to those who the Comandante once called the “social idiots”(or
“Social Imbecilocrats” — socialpendejos), the conviction is widespread
that if the possibility of a better world really exists, it is to be found in
Latin America. Do you agree with that analysis?
C.H.: The
only possible better world is socialism. And that is not just a manner of
speaking. A pathetic slogan has been made up: “A better world is possible.”
The real
alternatives [that is, socialism or barbarism] were correctly stated by
Frederick Engels and Rosa Luxemburg many years before we were inundated with
cell phones and computers, these empty and fatuous means of communication. But
the socialism I envision, my friend Manuel, is not one deformed by fraud,
deception, or pseudo patriotism.
God wanted
communism. And we are offering plaster substitutes: “anti-capitalism,
anti-neoliberalism, anti-globalization.” Some day I would like to talk about
what God wanted to do with Jesus. Either the fishermen distribute the fish
[equally], or the hell with it all.
It’s obvious
that the Church benefits by confusing everything. That’s why I hate
ecclesiastical power as much as I admire the comrades who advocate liberation
theology. I detested the huge funeral ceremony for the Polish pope, who would
not commit himself to the poor. And I had to endure seeing his photos hanging
at the memorial to my beloved José Martí, a man who criticized the Church so
much. As he said, “Christianity died at the hands of Catholicism.” Within this
Church the poor seek salvation from the world. Paraphrasing Martí, we could
also say: “Socialism died at the hands of Stalinism.”
Latin America
is in a position to carry through with the socialist revolution. But the left
must put on its pants and skirts [that is, grow up]. It must unite and stop
clowning around (and I include myself here). For the first time I think we are
coming close to what happened in 1917, but with the freshness of our [Latin
American] language and sensual temperament. We are “at the caramel point” [the
point to which sugar is heated in the making of caramel]. Latin America now is
what Europe was at the beginning of the twentieth century, but what is not
entirely clear to me is where the Lenins are, the Trotskys, the Mellas and
Gramscis, the Mariáteguis and Rosa Luxemburgs.
I’ll tell you
this. We are suffering an epidemic of spiritual anorgasmia, inability to
reach a climax.
But the best analysts
are the people. And there they are! In Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, almost
everywhere.
For the
Americas, it’s our turn to put on the bridal dress of the revolution, and we
will do it. The culture and beauty of Europe will certainly fasten the orange
blossoms in our hair and will give us counsel about “the wedding night.” But it
will also need to explain to us, very carefully, why it has gotten divorced
(for the time being) from the revolution.
On the other
hand, Manuel, what the heck is meant by “a better world”? More TVs, cell
phones, and cars? Or more majestic gatherings of the left or right, or the up
or down? Where no one comes to agreement on anything and there’s merely an
exchange of e-mails? I envision a better world as one with more social justice.
A world in which we all participate, where every bit of the sky is relevant to
us. Where justice and freedom are as natural as the flight of migratory birds.
A better world
will be one in which affection and the sense of smell and touch are restored to
us.
To achieve
this, only one means exists — the revolution. It can’t be achieved by
conventions, conferences, special events, or by the United Nations or the Kyoto
Protocol or any World Social Forums.
I would give
part of the springtime of my days, or I think almost all the years of my life,
to have been at Versailles when the women of the French Revolution — having
torn off their aprons [and left their kitchens] all at once — surrounded the
palace and forced the empress, Marie Antoinette, to return to Paris, or to have
been with the Commune so beloved by Victor Hugo, or to have been at Rosa
Luxemburg’s side, or to have shouted a battle cry, together with Mella in
Mexico or with Che in Bolivia.
In a recent
speech at the United Nations, Ricardo Alarcón concluded by saying “Either we
will succeed in attaining a better world or we will deserve the curses of our
grandchildren.” He is an optimist, our Alarcón.
As for me —
barring exceptional circumstances, as always — I don’t know if I won’t be
cursing my grandparents or if I will manage to see my grandchildren as
well-grounded men and women, rather than mere artifacts...that is, I don’t know
if we’ll reach those heights.
Capitalism is a
dragon, and it has no way of stopping, of not being the dragon that it is. It
was born dripping with blood, as Marx said, but now it is oozing pus. And are
we to do nothing? — just make little screeching sounds like frightened maidens?
It has devoured all the oil, now it wants the water, later it will be the air;
who knows what it may not want to devour? But the worst thing, my dear friend,
is to feel that your soul is being devoured. And at some point, my God, I think
we might destroy ourselves and lose the right to be the unique species that we
are, a species which — to repeat (more or less) what Gabriel García Márquez
said in 1986 — has learned to sing better than the birds and even to die for
love.
Editors’ Notes
1. On Codovilla, Vidali, and Mella — Vittorio Codovilla was an Italian-born socialist who in 1918
helped found the Communist Party of Argentina. He went on to become an official
of the Comintern in 1926 and soon began to function, in effect, as Stalin’s
satrap in charge of the Latin American Communist parties, transmitting the
“official line” from Moscow. In that capacity, [in 1928] he apparently played a
role in the denunciation of Julio Antonio Mella.
[The following more detailed
information on Codovilla is based partly on the article “Codovilla” in the Bolshaya
Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (Great Soviet Encyclopedia), 3d ed.,
v. 12, Moscow, 1973; and on Michael Lowy, ed., Marxism in Latin America
from 1909 to the Present [1980], Humanities Press, 1992.]
Codovilla, Vittorio (1894–1970), for many years a leading figure in the Communist Party of Argentina (CPA); he was its general secretary from 1941 to 1963, in which year he became its chairman.
Born in Italy, he arrived in Argentina in
1912 and soon joined the Socialist Party there; in 1918, he helped found the
International Socialist Party, which soon became the CPA, a section of the
Third (Communist) International, or Comintern. As a representative of the CPA
he took part in a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Communist
International (ECCI) in late 1924. He quickly became part of the bureaucratic
apparatus of the Comintern, dominated by the Soviet CP leadership in Moscow. In
1926, he helped adopt a resolution in the Central Committee of the Argentinian
CP that condemned Trotskyism and supported the Stalin-Bukharin leadership of
the Soviet Communist Party. In 1928–30, he was secretary of the Comintern’s
South American Bureau; he helped organize the first conference of Latin
American Communist parties, which took place in Buenos Aires in 1929 and at
which he presented a report supporting Stalin’s bureaucratic ultra-left theory
of the “third period” (the supposedly final period of capitalism in crisis),
but at the same time he emphasized, also following Stalin’s line, that “the
character of the revolution in Latin America is that of a bourgeois-democratic
revolution.” It is also reported that in 1928, Codovilla accused Julio Antonio
Mella, then a leader of the Mexican CP and previously a founder of the Cuban
CP, of holding “Trotskyist” positions. At about the same time, another
Comintern official, “Stirner,” urged the Central Committee of the Mexican CP to
expel Mella on the basis of a resolution adopted earlier “to expel Trotskyist
elements from the party.” (The latter information is from Olivia Gall, Trotsky
en Mexico, Ediciones Era, 1991, p. 49.)
Vittorio Vidali (alias Sormenti, alias Carlos Contreras), a sinister figure who, especially in the 1930s and ‘40s, played a big part in the foreign operations of Stalin’s political police, the GPU (later renamed the NKVD), aimed at eradicating or suppressing opponents of Stalinism in and around the Communist movement. (The following account of Vidali’s life is taken mainly from Olivia Gall, Trotsky en Mexico, pp. 50–55, but a great deal more information about Vidali can be found with a Google search on the Internet.)
Vidali was born in Trieste, Italy, and joined the Italian Communist Party as a young man. Forced to flee Italy after Mussolini came to power in 1922, Vidali sought refuge in the United States, from which he was later expelled. In 1927 he took refuge in Mexico, where he was also active in the Communist movement under the alias “Sormenti.” In early 1929 he played a role in a purge of the Mexican CP, but by the second half of 1929 he was in Moscow, working for the Comintern — and for the GPU.
Vidali is suspected by some of having committed the January 10, 1929, assassination of Julio Antonio Mella, although the official version blames agents of the Cuban dictator Machado. Mella’s girl friend, who was with him when he was killed, was Tina Modotti, a strikingly beautiful woman and a photographer with a big reputation among Mexico’s leftist-minded rebel artists. But she also had a peculiar relationship with Vidali. In 1931 she joined Vidali (and the GPU) in Moscow and was linked with him for the rest of her life; it is suspected that Vidali poisoned her in Mexico in 1942, when she was about to break with Moscow and reveal the truth about the GPU and NKVD crimes in which she and Vidali had taken part.
In 1934 Vidali was sent as a representative of the Stalinized Comintern to help oversee the work of the Spanish CP. During the Spanish Civil War, under the name “Carlos Contreras,” or Comandante Carlos, he was one of the founders and leaders of the Fifth Regiment, which was used to carry out Stalinist repression against Anarchists and members of the POUM. He is accused of being personally responsible for the team that kidnapped, tortured, and assassinated Andreu Nin, the POUM leader. Tina Modotti was also in Spain with her life partner Vidali, engaged in a “counterespionage” unit of the International Brigades under the name “Maria Ruiz.”
In 1939, after the defeat of the Spanish Republic, Vidali again took refuge in Mexico (along with Modotti) and was probably involved, as a GPU official and agent of Stalin, in a March 1940 purge of the Mexican CP. He is implicated in the May 1940 machine-gun assault on Trotsky’s house and was probably one of the GPU “handlers” of the Stalinist Ramón Mercader, who assassinated Trotsky in August 1940.
The Italian American anarchist leader Carlos Tresca, who cooperated with the Trotskyists in exposing the crimes of the Stalinists in Spain, said of Vidali that “around him there always floated the odor of death.” Tresca himself was assassinated in 1943, a crime that the secretive Vidali was probably involved in, as well as in the 1942 assassination of Sandalio Junco, a former close associate of Mella in the Cuban Communist movement.
After Stalin’s death Vidali, managing to cover up his murderous past, became a high-ranking official in the Italian CP, and was well known and respected as such at the time of his death in 1983.
2.
Bishop Espada — Juan Jose
Diaz de Espada y Fernandez de Landa, a Spanish bishop of Havana in the early
1800s; was a reformer, responsible for the introduction of vaccination; he may
also have been an early opponent of slavery.
3. Gran Colombia — Gran Colombia (in English also called Greater Colombia) was a republic founded by Simón Bolívar in 1819. It united the former Spanish territories of Nueva Granada (consisting of present-day Colombia and Panama) and Venezuela, all of which had been liberated from Spain under Bolívar’s leadership. It was Bolívar’s goal to unite all of Spanish America — following the example of the thirteen former British colonies in North America, which had merged to form the United States by 1789, a couple of decades before the fight for independence in South America began, in 1808.
Bolívar left Gran Colombia to liberate Ecuador, Lower Peru (which today is Peru), and Upper Peru (which today is Bolivia). Ecuador was liberated from Spain in 1822 and also became part of the republic of Gran Colombia. Earlier, liberation fighters from Argentina, led primarily by José de San Martín, had freed most of what are now Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile from Spanish rule, as well as part of Peru. After an agreement between Bolívar and San Martín, the latter withdrew and Bolívar led the forces that completed the task of ending Spanish rule in Lower and Upper Peru. In honor of Bolívar’s role as liberator, Upper Peru took the name Bolivia.
Bolívar hoped that Peru and Bolivia would join Gran Colombia and that all the newly independent former Spanish colonies would unite into a single federation. He held a Pan-American congress in Panama in 1826, but nothing came of it. Unification, in Bolívar’s view, would enable the former colonies to preserve their independence against other world powers, especially Britain, France, and, increasingly, the rising power of the United States in North America. It was in December 1923, after all, that the Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed by the then-U.S. president, implying exclusive U.S. rights, as against the European powers, to exert influence and claim possessions in the Western Hemisphere.
However, no further unification of former Spanish colonies took place. Worse yet, Venezuela and Ecuador broke away from Gran Colombia, which then ceased to exist. Only the name “Colombia” survives as a partial reminder of Bolívar’s vision. Bitterly disappointed at the failure of his attempts to unify Spanish America, he said just before his death in 1830, “Those who serve the revolution plow the sea.”
Many revolutionaries in Latin America and the Caribbean today seek to revive Bolívar’s vision. As Che Guevara, who traveled by motorcycle through much of the region in the early 1950s, commented in the mid-1960s, the region has (for the most part) a very similar culture and two very closely related languages [Spanish and Portuguese], as well as a common enemy, U.S. imperialism — all this providing a firm material basis for unification.
Just as, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, many small German-speaking states united into a single Germany (except for Austria and, partly, Switzerland) and many Italian-speaking states united into a single Italy, the aspiration for a united Latin America and Caribbean is a powerful vision common not only to Simón Bolívar and to José Martí, the Cuban liberation leader of the 1890s, but also to many of their descendants today. The project that Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez are seeking to carry through with ALBA (and by participating in Mercosur) is heading in that direction and is explicitly aimed at countering the corporate-inspired “Free Trade Area of the Americas” advocated by Wall Street and Washington.
4. Operation
Peter Pan — a program that took young children from Cuba
and placed them in foster homes in the U.S. It was coordinated by the U.S.
government, the Roman Catholic Church, and anti-Castro Cubans. Between December
26, 1960, and October 23, 1962, over 14,000 children were brought from Cuba to
the United States. The operation was originally intended to transport the
children of parents who opposed the revolutionary government. Later it was
expanded to include children of parents frightened by maliciously circulated rumors
that their children would supposedly be shipped off to work camps in the USSR.