HAVANA, May 7 (NY Transfer)--Fidel Castro, standing erect at a podium under the permanent, contemplative gaze of José Marti, delivers a May Day speech to a million Cubans massed under a hot sun in the Plaza of the Revolution. It is the largest May Day mobilization ever in this historic site, and the biggest ever on the island, as an additional six million people fill plazas in 14 other provincial capitals and innumerable smaller cities under the slogan of "primero, la patria [the homeland first]." Directly in front of the Cuban president are foreign guests -- some 800 altogether from 70 countries, including nearly 60 from the United States.

Cuba is "the inescapable axis of May Day demonstrations in Latin America," states the Argentine daily Clarín. "Combative May Day," states the headline in the Los Angeles Spanish-language daily La Opinión, "all Latin America merges to raise labor, political and social demands." The newspaper features a photo box of Cuba's president, sprinkled with key points in his speech.

Fidel enunciates every word carefully. "We were condemned in Geneva by those who believe that this sea of people gathered here, which can be seen from every corner of the globe, has been deprived of its human rights," the Cuban president says in a soft, gravely voice. He pauses.

"I am certain that not one of those Latin American countries that promoted, co-sponsored or supported this project could gather even five percent of the number here in their respective capitals," Fidel says. He departs from the text, challenging those heads of state to call such actions. "The Latin American press here," he says, waving his arm at journalists gathered on either side of the grassy rise that abuts the podium, "will report on them."

The Cuban Communist Party's first secretary is wearing his legendary olive green fatigues. He is dressed for combat.

The struggle, though, is not military. It is "the battle of ideas," a title first derived from the mobilizations mounted by the Cuban people - particularly its newest generations-- to win the return of Elián González, two year ago. May Day 2002, convoked by the three-million member Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC) --to which 98 percent of the country's working people are affiliated, voluntarily-- is dedicated to the "Cuban youth."

Today, the battle of ideas is expressed in every aspect of Cuba life. It is the ideological, political, cultural, and practical effort to forge -- as the Cuban president emphasized in a December 2 speech -- "real human beings," new women and men who are conscious, organized, and combative in defending the revolution and its core communist values of social solidarity and internationalism. This battle is necessary, many Cubans affirm, due to the results of the nation's necessary insertion into the world capitalist market, impelled by the disappearance of the Soviet Union and its allied regimes, and with them, economic relations that were at the center of Cuban commerce.

A Cuban "dollar economy," nurtured by world capitalism, has taken root in Cuba, and with it, the "ethics" of market relations and the appearance of growing inequality between those with access to such hard currency --estimated at 70 percent of the population-- and those without.

These difficulties are compounded by recent blows to the economy, including a temporary drop in all-important tourist income as a result of the post-September 11 downturn in the industry, and the effects of Hurricane Michelle which struck hard at tobacco and sugar production and devastated the country's chicken industry.

As well, Cuban officials have faced the arduous task of renegotiating the country's growing external debt, now over $12 billion. The steady exchange rate of 20 Cuban pesos to 1 USD has risen to 26 to 1, leading to price increases in both dollar and peso denominated products.

The battle of ideas also arrays the Cuban revolution against its international detractors, from servile Latin American presidents to their handlers in Washington, in a decisive contest between Cuban revolutionaries who assert that the current world economic order is "unsustainable," and proponents of the magic of the market who claim that capitalism is natural law.

There is nothing abstract about the battle of ideas. This struggle is anchored in rival social realities. The dominant one is based on more than four decades of nationalized property and political power in the hands of the working people. The challenge comes from its adversary, the shoots of capitalism embodied in joint ventures, the free circulation of the dollar, and foreign capital -- all reinforced by the international marketplace and its private owners and the object pressures they, and the crisis of their system generate.

How these forces unfold is the story of daily life in Cuba, the last country in Latin American to win formal independence from Spain, the last to abolish slavery, slightly more than a century ago, and the first and only people --so far-- to free themselves from the yoke of the United States.

Fidel minces no words on May Day.

He enumerates the undeniable depth of ruin that faces the vast majority of 526 million people who live in Latin America and the Caribbean. The hour of "total crisis" has arrived, he says.

"For the sake of time, I will outline just a few figures for Latin America as a whole as compared to Cuba," Fidel says, offering the following statistics:

-Illiteracy: Latin America, 11.7%; Cuba, 0.2%

-Inhabitants per teacher: Latin America, 98.4; Cuba, 43.

-Primary education enrollment ratio: Latin America, 92%; Cuba, 100%

-Secondary education enrolment ratio: Latin America, 52%; Cuba, 99.7%

-Primary school students reaching 5th grade: Latin America, 76%; Cuba, 100%

-Infant mortality per 1,000 live births: Latin America, 32; Cuba, 6.2

-Medical doctors per 100,000 inhabitants: Latin America, 160; Cuba, 590

-Dentists per 100,000 inhabitants: Latin America, 63; Cuba, 89

-Nurses per 100,000 inhabitants: Latin America, 69; Cuba, 743

-Hospital beds per 100,00 inhabitants: Latin America, 220; Cuba, 631.6

-Medically attended births: Latin America, 86.5%; Cuba, 100%

-Life expectancy at birth: Latin America, 70 years; Cuba, 76 years

-Population between 15 and 49 years of age infected with HIV/AIDS: Latin America, 0.5%; Cuba, 0.05%

-Annual AIDS infection rate per million inhabitants, i.e., those who develop the disease: Latin America, 65.25; Cuba, 15.6

The huge crowd raises a cheer as Fidel ticks off each figure. Each person has a small Cuban flag. Instead of applauding, they wave the flags. It is the sound of an immense flock of birds in flight.

Fidel summarizes Cuba's achievements. "Our people's glorious tradition of rebellion and patriotic struggle, to which we must today add a full and profound understanding of freedom, equality and human dignity; their solidarity and internationalist spirit; their self-confidence and heroic conduct; 43 years of tenacious and unrelenting struggle against the powerful empire; a broad and solid political culture and an extraordinary humanism -- all of these qualities cultivated by the Revolution -- have made Cuba a unique country," the Cuban president says.

This uniqueness is expressed in myriad ways.

The country is abuzz with discussion about the public unmasking of Mexico's President Vicente Fox by Fidel in an extraordinary, live public address to the nation days earlier -- where he played a tape of Fox imploring Fidel to leave a Monterrey summit earlier this year so as not to offend U.S. president George Bush, something which, until that moment, the Mexican head of state had denied.

In the speech, whose importance had been previously communicated to the international media, Fidel offers to resign his office should his accusations be proven false. "He never, ever did this in such an unambiguous way," says a friend in the Communist Party. "Of course, we all knew he was telling the truth."

The speech was, above all, a direct answer to the United States, which was behind the entire Mexican operation, whose main shill was foreign minister Jorge Casteñeda. Washington thought "because we had this relationship with Mexico we would never risk it by going public," says another friend, smiling.

Meanwhile, Uruguay breaks relations with Cuba, using as a pretext Fidel's reference to its president --who sponsored an anti-Cuba resolution in Geneva --as an "abject Judas."

"No book by Marx or Lenin could illustrate the anti-national, submissive and treacherous nature of the Latin American oligarchies and true significance of imperialism for the destiny of our people," the Cuban head of state explains.

The people of the continent, he says, "have had the opportunity to learn firsthand the meaning of imperialist domination, exploitation, injustice and pillage." The prostration of Latin America's ruling class before this onslaught on the one hand, and their increased condemnation of Cuba as proof of their dependence on Washington, is something to behold. "What garbage are many of those who pretend to be sovereign governors," Fidel says, his contempt echoing through the plaza.

But the music to which Washington's bourgeois servants march does not play well at home. On May Day in Montevideo, up to 20,000 people march in solidarity with Cuba.

In Havana, Jorge Castro, general secretary of the National Convention of Uruguayan Workers, denounces the government of his country, and salutes Cuba.

May Day speaker Ramón Pacheco, head of the independent Electricians Union of Mexico, blasts Fox and hails the "relations" between "the peoples of Juárez and Martí" that are "stronger than ever."

Pablo Michelli, general secretary of the Confederation of Argentine Workers, details the crisis in his country, including the growing number of deaths by hunger of Argentine children. He hails the example of Cuba.

This simple axiom of José Martí is on display in the plaza. For many years, May Day was a celebratory pageant of workers' floats and union contingents, which passed by a vast reviewing platform -- militant, but traditional.

Last year, 600,000 workers, their families, and contingents of young people gathered in the plaza witnessed an extraordinary cultural presentation -- from salsa to classical music, folkloric dance and ballet, poetry and political satire with life-sized puppets, then snake-danced their way through Havana down to the oceanside Malecón Boulevard past the U.S. Interests Section.

This year, its ranks swelled by an additional 400,000 people, the gigantic human bloc remains stationary. Interspersed between speakers -- the Latin American union leaders are brief: CTC general secretary Pedro Ross speaks for five minutes, Fidel Castro for 20 -- are a series of cultural acts, narrated by a young woman and man.

The acts are crisply organized from start to finish, featuring hundreds of young Cubans -- in interpretive dance, sleek, in black leotards. In a representation of different epochs of revolutionary struggle, from the 19th century to the present, featuring men in period dress -- from mambi fighters to the bearded guerrillas of the Sierra Maestra on horseback, descending from behind the reviewing platform. And a youth chorus, which sings a composition in honor of "the five heroes, imprisoned by the empire." This is a reference to five men, framed by the US on espionage charges, now serving up to life in prison for informing Havana about the terrorist plans of Miami-based ultra-rightist organizations.

Their five faces dot walls and buildings across the island, and their liberation from Washington's penal institutions is a central campaign of the revolutionary government. Gloria La Riva, head of the U.S. defense committee that works for their emancipation, addresses the May Day throng. Her speech is punctuated by hundreds of thousands of voices chanting the slogan that announces Cuba's determination to free the five: "volveran [they will return]!"

This theme will be repeated the following day at the national headquarters of the CTC, where National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcón addresses a packed room of 300 guests from 20 countries. He gives a two-hour speech, rich with details about the character of the frame-up, the bogus nature of the trial, the actual work of the five, their heroic and impeccable conduct and the tasks facing those who defend them, particularly in the United States -- some 30 U.S. activists are in attendance -- and in Latin America and the Caribbean. "We implore you to put this at the center of your work," the Cuban leader says, urging greater attention to defense of the five, and to securing their freedom.

At the May Day rally, the youngest voice to demand liberty for the five is a seven-year-old Cuban. In order to be seen, he stands in front of the podium. He uses a hand mike. And he speaks flawlessly, presenting adult themes with a child's voice.

His name is Lazarito Castro. He is dressed in the red and white uniform of the Pioneers, the organization of Cuban children. He tells his story --of an eye disease so severe it threatened blindness, and how, through Cuba's system of free medical care, it has been virtually cured, his sight restored. He is impassioned, and the words reach the status of oratory. He defends his homeland, its values, it leaders. He concludes with poetry, the last line igniting a torrent of flags rustling in the wind, and a roar of approval. "I am socialism," he says, extending his arms in a gesture to the crowd, "and we are the revolution."

Later, I tell several Cuban friends how impressive the child is. Each responds the same way, not bragging, but making a point. "There are lots of kids like him," they say.

Tens of thousands of young people at this May Day are wearing red shirts. They are college and university students, members of the Union of Young Communists (UJC), the Federation of University Students (FEU), military cadets and students in Cuba's newest project, the schools of social work.

The youth representative who speaks at the rally is wearing a red shirt, and she describes this endeavor. Later, a group of U.S. activists meets for a two-hour exchange at the Havana training center for social workers --home for a year to 1,700 students.

The effort began a year ago, in response to the fact that, due to reduced figures for incoming classes in the country's university system, thousands of students graduating from public college preparatory high schools would not seek enrollment in higher education. Others failed entrance exams. If there was no conscious answer to this problem by the end of next year, 7,000 Cuban youth would face unemployment, without career options. This alone would be a significant social problem.

At the same time, the effects of the world economic crisis in Cuba --which, as a Third World country, despite its advanced economic and social system, is not immune from the same pressures devastating sister nations in the "developing world"-- continue to appear here in many ways.

These include unemployment, officially at 4.1 percent, petty crime and delinquency, prostitution and other anti-social activity attached to the tourist industry, ans poverty. The housing crisis, marked by over-occupancy and buildings which deteriorate at a rate faster that reconstruction and repair, continues. Already-strapped public services in Havana are squeezed by population growth and internal migration to the capital --a center of the tourist industry and its temptations.

The social work schools - there are now three in the country, with 5,000 student -- recently graduated a first class of 1,500. The students spend a year in studies, from social work training to psychology, learn how to interview and interact with affected parents and students, find practical solutions to unemployment, deal with the problems of children who have a parent in prison, work to reintegrate drop-outs into schools, and serve as counselors to young people.

"Our concept has nothing to do with traditional social work," Rubén Zardoya, director of the Havana school, explains. "It is not police work. The social workers are forbidden to inform police about any crime they encounter, for instance, if someone is smoking marijuana. They are friends of the people they are with. They are friends of a delinquent, they are friends of a prostitute. The only thing they report is a crime of extreme violence," he tells the U.S. activists. The students learn the history of the revolution and the new and central role of their generation in it, Zardoya says, noting the importance of their study of Marxism as a key component of their political preparation for their work.

After a year, the new social workers are assigned to various neighborhoods across the country. Their year in school is free, as is room and board, and they are paid a modest stipend. After graduation, they receive a regular salary and are encouraged to attend night school at the university on a career track of their choice. No examination is required to enroll in such classes. "The favored subject," Zardoya says, "is psychology." Their work is supervised by the appropriate city government -- the municipal assembly of people's power -- and the UJC.

"We encourage the students here to take advantage of this year," Zardoya explains, "and the majority do." "Our goal," he says, "is not to collect data, but to find and see what these figures represent. We know there are children who are underweight. Why? Who are they? Where do they live? What can we do? We know there are 33,000 retired people in Havana who live alone. For one reason or another, they are abandoned. Who looks after them? What do they need? How can this situation be addressed?"

A visiting U.S. student is curious about the youth she's met on the streets, hustling. Zardoya tells her it's important to remember where she's been approached. "In my neighborhood, this is not a problem, nor in most neighborhoods, or other parts of the country, where you never see a prostitute or a hustler. But in the part of Havana where the hotels are located, these elements gather like flies. You should make sure you visit a factory," he suggests, "or an agricultural cooperative, to see how most Cubans live."

Several students speak. They have been genuinely affected by the program. It is not "make work." Many are awaiting results of their interviews for membership in the UJC, affiliation to which is woven throughout the process. There is a broad, elected student government in the school, with ample political, organizational and disciplinary functions, chosen through direct and popular election.

"But the UJC is a selection process," a young woman says -- the majority of the students are female -- "and only the best of the best are selected."

"It's an honor to be in the UJC," another says. Indeed, after several years of flat membership figures in the UJC, following several years of depoliticization, when the organization's leadership believed that it could recruit socially, through parties and dances, recruitment has undergone a significant increase. In its 40th anniversary celebration in April, a week-long political celebration, UJC first secretary Otto Rivero announced that 95,000 young people had joined the organization in 2001, with 20,000 more joining since the beginning of the year, pushing its ranks toward half a million.

This growth is a reflection of the political leadership young people shouldered in the mobilization to repatriate Elián González, and more broadly, their involvement in campaigns and projects which expand the horizons of cultural empowerment that are cornerstones of the battle of ideas, especially among young people. Among such programs is the hugely popular University for All, a television series that provides instruction in English, French, mathematics, geography and culture, broadcast live and then re-run twice daily. Course material is available at kiosks for a few pennies.

Now, the government has embarked on a special program to train teachers, with a goal of improving the teacher-student ratio to 1-to-15 by the end of next year. At the same, the revolutionary regime is fulfilling promises to put televisions, VCRs and computers in every school -- including the most remote mountain redoubts with only handfuls of students. New computer clubs for young people continue to sprout in working class neighborhoods. This explosion of public education is accompanied by the expansion of space for debate and discussion that prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union would have been unthinkable. Old taboos and self-censorship have collapsed.

In February, La Jiribilla, the on-line cultural supplement to the Cuban daily Juventud Rebelde -- which receives 50,000 to 60,000 hits daily, according to one of its young editors -- featured special thematic issues on Gays in Cuban Literature and Race in Cuba.

In June Colores Cubanos, a project of the National Union of Cuban Educators and Artists (UNEAC), is sponsoring the first-ever symposium on the 1912 massacre, the slaughter of 5,000 Black Cubans by the military forces of the pseudo-republic, in a bloody campaign to wipe out members and presumed supporters of the Independent Party of the People of Color, who launched an uprising for democratic rights in eastern Cuba the same year.

Colores Cubanos groups UNEAC members in efforts to press for more accurate representation of Cuba's multi-racial, multi-ethnic society in movies, television and the arts. The subject of the massacre and its legacy will be the focus of a two-day public workshop. A new and authoritative book on the subject, by a Cuban author to be published in Cuba, is now on the agenda.

Projects begun as responses to emergencies --like the Latin American School of Medical Sciences, located in the old, oceanside naval academy in east Havana-- are now institutionalized. The school grew out of Cuba's rapid answer to the wreckage caused by hurricanes in Haiti and Central America four years ago, as the country first dispatched hundreds of doctors to the poorest and most affected corners of these countries. The revolutionary government then opened its 22nd medical training center to enable foreign students to learn Cuban medical science for practice in their native communities.

By the end of next year, the school will host over 5,000 students from all of Latin America --there are now 33 U.S. students there as well-- including hundreds of young people from indigenous communities where Indian doctors are virtually unknown. The expansion of the school -- in student body, facilities and specialization -- is further proof of the strength and vitality of Cuban medical internationalism, and the focused use of "human capital" in a country where other natural resources are scarce to non-existent.

"We are learning Cuban medicine," says a young Argentine student to a group of visitors. "It's not just science, curing people, but attention to the whole person, prevention of disease. It is solidarity."

There are 270 Argentines here from remote rural areas and working class urban neighborhoods throughout the country. The newest students, just arrived, are seven descendants of the country's indigenous people, the Mapuche Indians. "They are the most important among us here," says one of the young Argentines.

Hundreds of students from the school attend May Day, dressed in the red shirts of Cuban youth. They are medical students to be sure, but they are something else, too: voluntary combatants in the continental battle of ideas.

"May Day is usually very good, but this one was marvelous," says a friend, a retired worker. She lives on a small pension with her daughter and son-in-law and their two small children. She helps care for her 87-year old mother. "Things are difficult," she says. They have no access to dollars.

More difficult than a year ago, the last time we talked? "More difficult," she says.

"It's worse in Latin America," I say. "Much worse," she says. "Consuelo [consolation]."

Few Cubans ask when the U.S. blockade will end. The coming trip by former U.S. president Carter evokes mild curiosity, little more. "He doesn't represent much," says a University of Havana professor, but the trip could be "of use."

There is expectancy about Argentina, how deep the crisis can actually go, before a leadership develops.

There is, notwithstanding great solidarity for its people, trepidation about Venezuela, about the showdown many sense will come. "When the coup happened, everybody was waiting, wondering, when are the people going to come into the streets," says a friend in the Communist Party.

Another party member tells me, "It will be worse the next time. Chávez doesn't know what do, he can't do anything."

Still another says, "Look, they need a real revolution, the working class and the military that supports them, together, have to take care of everything."

There is speculation about the next war moves of the United States, and Washington's targeting of the "axis of evil." Because of all this, there is tangible sense of preparation -- mental preparation, political preparation. For the revolutionaries with whom I talk -- veterans of the July 26 Movement, the Rebel Army, the Urban Underground, of internationalist missions, workers, the newly tested youth, party members, UJC militants -- that is what the battle of ideas about.

"We are in the trench of ideas," says Pedro Ross, who opens the May Day rally. The CTC's central leader is a short, fire-plug of a man, a former bricklayer, then a teacher and a leader of his union before assuming his current post. "We defend our revolution with ideas," he says, "but, listen well, 'senores imperialistas,' we will defend it with arms if necessary, no matter the cost."

The Cuban people, he says, are in "an incessant struggle" to be free, independent, sovereign and socialist.

Two hours later Ross, Fidel, other leaders of Cuba --both of oldest and newest generations-- assemble at the foot of the of the monument as he music from a military orchestra, dressed to the nines, breaks into the Internationale. This is the anthem born of the Paris Commune but its words have a striking timeliness: "Arise ye prisoners of starvation, Arise ye wretched of the earth, for justice thunders condemnation, a better world's in birth."

Across the length and breadth of the island, from Santiago and Guantánamo, within hailing distance of the infamous military base, to Pinar del Rio and the Isle of Youth, so close to the shores of the empire, seven million Cubans sing the international hymn of the working class.

Some think that these are the lonely voices of the last outpost of socialism, lifting their banner against unfavorable odds in the face of all-powerful enemies. But from the vantage offered from this spot on the globe this is not accurate, and something far more decisive is palpable.

The tectonic plates of history are moving. Here, conscious protagonists of their own destiny hold a mirror to their adversaries, and the image that appears is one of weakness, crisis and demagogy.

Whatever economic and social difficulties exist, the titanic May Day mobilization is proof that, as many leaders state publicly and is verified on the ground in all sorts of discussions, the revolution is stronger and more united than ever. "This is because," a 22-year old UJC member says, "we fight to have political answers to the challenges we face."

A searing Havana sun rising in a cloudless sky warms the crowd but there is a sense, on this balmy day, that a storm of world historic proportions is gathering.

A sea of flags flutter in the humid breeze and the notes of the Internationale fade into cheers. The crowd disperses onto side streets, into rows of buses and trucks and vans, bound to the barrios where they live.

Some dance their way to the transportation, singing, banging conga drums, shimmying and swaying. There are waves of red shirts and little flags everywhere. Couples hold hands, fathers hoist babies onto their shoulders.

It is still early enough in the late morning for a day at the beach. There is time enough to soak in tropical Caribbean waters.

Relaxed on this International Workers Day, many Cuban workers look at the high blue sky, serene in the knowledge they have resisted for 43 years and are prepared for anything.

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Copyright (c) 2002 by Jon Hillson and NY Transfer News. Reprinted with permission.
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012
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