Second Declaration of Havana has some defnamely concerning the characters of the State which must arise after the victory of the Rev. olution in the countries of Latin America, and which according to us must be a workers State. But we should be very bad revolutionaries, in fact incorrig. ible sectarians, if in front of such a living, broad, popular and radical revolution as the Cuban Revolution, we made use of these deficencies — secondary ones, for the Fidelist practices encourages the Latin American masses to "do as fidel did", that is to say, to crown the revolution with the creat ion of workers states! - to put into a secondary position our primodorial task which is THE UN: CONDITIONAL DEFENCE OF THE PROLETARIAN CUBAN REVOLUTION AND STATE AGAINST IMPERIALISM.
who read the Second Declaration of Havana and assimilate its eminently revolutionary message, are duty bound to put all their efforts into breaking the imperialist blockade through which Wall Street is trying to starve the Cuban people before unleashing against them a new military attack.
The Latin American revolutionary Marxists must fight in the first ranks for the defence of the Cuban Revolution to raise the masses of their countries against the shameful policies of their reactionary governments which at Punta del Este made themselves accomplices to the Imperialist siege. must demand from governments apparently more flexible" toward the Cuban revolution that they put in practice their anti-imperialist speeches developing their commercial ties with Cuba, assuring a large supply of food to the heroic Cuban people. heip they can give to Cuba is, final analysis, the efficent development of the revolutionary struggle on the continent on the road to the creation of other workers states.
The revolutionary marxists of Africa and Asia must explain to the masses of their countries and to the militants of the national liberation movements that the imperialist siege of Cuba sets an extremely dangerous precedent, which, if it is allowed to suc. ceed would threaten with the same fate whatever other people fight to achieve their emancipation from Imperialism and capitalism. That is why revolutionaries all over the world must fight for the defence
The revolutionary Marxists of the Imperialist countries must strive by all means to break the odious attempt to starve Socialist Cuba. They must mobilize the workers parties and trade unions their countries, to throw all their weight into the balance to check the Washington plan of associating the countries of NATO and all Imperialist countries with the siege against Cuba. They must demand that normal commercial relations be maintained and broadened with the Socialist Republic of Cuba, that the Cuban people receive all help possible in regards to pharmaceutical products, food, spare parts, agric ultural machinery and industrial equipment allowing them to freely build a better future.
The revolutionary marxists and all the commun. ist Left of the workers States must demand of their governments and first of all of the soviet government, that they should considerably incease their aid to Cuba. It is shameful that this soviet government, which pretends to construct Communism in its country, which distributes important economic aid to feudal potentates such as the King of Afghanistan or to bourgeois reactionaries such as Nehru, watches
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL with crossed arms the deteriorating conditions of food supply in Cuba, and seek even to exploit the temporary economic difficulties of the Cuban revolution to — exert pressure on the price of sugar. The workers of the Soviet Union must understand that the Cuban revolution is for them a means of defence and protection against Imperialism much more efficent than numerous divisions of tanks, and that in demonstrating their solidarity with Cuba, in demanding a more ample aid for the Cuban revolut they are only defending their own interests. Such is the response of the Fourth International to the call launched by the Second Declaration of Havana. We call on our militants, our sympathisers and friends to act in this way. Everything for the defence of the Cuban Revolution!
On May 18. 1895, on the eve of his death from a Spanish bullet through the heart. José Marti, apostle our independence, said in an unfinished letter to his friend, Manuel Mercado:
"Now I am able to write... I am in danger each day now of giving my life for my country and for my obligation... of preventing in time - through Cuba's independence — the United States from extending its control over the Antilles and consequently falling with that much more force upon our countries of America. Whatever I have done till now. and whatever I shall do. has been with that aim...
"The people most vitally concerned in preventing the imperialist annexation of Cuba, which would make Cuba the starting point of that course — which must be blocked and which we are blocking with our blood — of annexa tion of our American nations to the violent and brutal North which despises them, are being hindered by lesser and public commitments from the open and avowed espousal of this sacrifice, which is being made for our and their benefit.
"I have lived inside the monster and know its guts; and my sling is the sling of David"
In 1895. Marti already pointed out the danger hovering over America and called imperialism by its name: imperial. ism. He pointed out to the people of Latin America that more than anyone, they had a stake in seeing to it that Cuba did not succumh to the greed of the Yankee, scornful of the peoples of Latin America. And with his own blood, shed for Cuba and America, he wrote the words which posthumously, in homage to his memory, the people of Cuba place at the head of this declaration. HUMILIATION
Sixty-seven years have passed. Puerto Rico was converted and is still a colony saturated with military also fell into the clutches of imperialism. Their troops occupied our territory. The Platt Amendment was imposed first constitution. as a humiliating clause which sanctioned the odious right of foreign intervention. Our riches passed into their hands, our history was falsified. our government and our polities were en tirely molded in the interests of the overseers; the nation subjected to 60 years of political, economic and cultural suffocation.
But Cuba arose. Cuba was able to redeem itself from the bastard diase ip a perie chain, eide med its fortunes to those of the imperial oppressor, its riches, reclaimed its culture, and unfurled of Free Territory and People of America.
Now the United States will never again be able to use Cuba's strength against . America, but conversely, dominating the majority of the other Latin-American states, the United States is attempting to use the strength of America against Cuba.
13
What is the history of Cuba but the history of Latin America? And what is the history of Latin America but the history of Asia, Africa and Oceania? And what is the history of all these peoples but the history of the most pitiless and cruel exploitation by imperialism throughout the world?
At the end of the last and the beginning of the present entury a handful of economically developed nations inished partitioning the world among themselves ing to its economic and political domination, two-thirds of humanity, which was thus forced to work for the ruling of the economically advanced capitalist countries.
The historic circumstances which permitted certain European countries and the United States of America a high level of industrial development placed them in a position to subject the rest of the world to their domination and exploitation.
What motives compelled the expansion of the industrial powers? Were they reasons of morality and they claim? No: They were economic
From the discovery of America, which hurled the European conquerors across the seas to occupy and exploit the lands and inhabitants of other continents, the fundamental motive for their conduct was the desire for riches. The discovery of America itself was carried out in search of shorter routes to the Orient whose goods were highly paid for in Europe. THIRST FOR GOLD
A new social class, the merchants and the producers of manufactured articles for commerce, arose from the womb of the feudal society of lords and serfs in the decline of the middle ages.
The thirst for gold was the cause which spurred the efforts of that new class. The desire for gain incentive of its conduct through history. With the growth of manufacturing and commerce its grew. The new productive forces which were developing in the womb of feudal society clashed more and more with their subjection, its laws, its institutions, its philosophy, morality, its art and its political ideology.
New philosophical and political ideas, new concepts of right and of the state were proclaimed by the intellectual representatives of the bourgeois class, which — because responded to the new necessities of social life — entered into the consciousness of the exploited were then revolutionary ideas opposed to those outworn ideas of feudal society. The peasants, artisans, the workers in manufacture, led by the bourgeoisie, overthrew the feudal order, its philosophy, its ideas, its institutions, its laws and the privileges of the ruling class, that is, the hereditary nobility.
At that time the bourgeoisie considered revolution neces. sary and just. It did not think that the feudal order could and should be eternal - as it now thinks of its capitalist social order.
It encouraged the peasants to free themselves from dal servitude, it encouraged the artisans against the medieval guilds and demanded the right to political power. absolute monarchs, the nobility and the high clergy stubbornly defended their class privileges, proclaiming the divine right of kings and the immutability of the social order. To be liberal, to proclaim the ideas of Voltaire, Diderot, or Jean Jacques Rousseau, spokesmen for bourgeois philosophy, then constituted in the eyes of the ruling classes as serious a crime as it is today in the eyes of the bourgeoisie to be a socialist and to proclaim the ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin.
When the bourgeoisie took political power and estab-
14 lished upon the ruins of feudal society its capitalist mode of production, on this mode of production it erected its state, its laws, its ideas and institutions. Those institutions sanctified in the first instance the essence of its class rule: private property.
The new society based on the private ownership of the means of production and free competition was thus divided into two basic classes: One the owner of the means of production, ever more modern and efficient; the other, deprived of all wealth, possessing only its labor power, of necessity sold in the market as another piece of merchandise simply in order to live.
With the feudal bonds broken, the productive forces developed extraordinarily. Great factories arose in which greater and greater numbers of workers were assembled.
The most modern and technically efficient factories continually displace from the market the less efficient competitors. The cost of industrial equipment continually rose. It became necessary to accumulate more and more capital. A greater portion of production passed into a smaller number of hands. Thus arose the great capitalist enterprises and later, according to the degree and character of the association, the great industrial combines through cartels, syndicates, trusts and corporations, controlled by the own. ers of the major portion of the stock, that is to say, by the most powerful heads of industry. Free play, characteristic of capitalism in its first phrase, gave way to monopolies which entered into agreements among themselves and controlled the markets.
Where did the colossal quantity of resources come from which permitted a handful of monopolists to accumulate billions of dollars? Simply from the exploitation of human labor. Millions of men, forced to work for a wage of bare subsistence, produced with their strength the gigantic capital of the monopolies. The workers amassed the fortunes of the privileged classes, ever richer, ever more powerful. Through the banking institutions these classes were able make use not only of their own money but that of all society. Thus was brought about the fusion of the banks with great industry and finance capital was born. What should they do with the great surplus of capital which was accumulating in ever greater quantities? Invade the world with it. Always in pursuit of profit, they began to seize the natural resources of all the economically weak countries and to exploit the human labor of their inhabitants with much more wretched wages than what they were forced to pay to the workers of their own developed countries. Thus began the territorial and economic division of the world. By 1914, eight or ten imperialist countries had subjugated territories beyond their own borders covering more than 83.700.000 square kilometers, with a population of 970,000,000 inhabitants. They had simply divided up the world. IMPERIALIST WARS
But as the world, limited in size, was divided to the last corner of the earth, a clash ensued among the different monopolist nations and struggles arose for new divisions, originating in the disproportionate distribution of industrial and economic power which the various monopolistic nations had attained in their uneven development. Imperialist wars broke out which would cost humanity 50 million dead, tens of millions wounded and the destruction of incalculable material and cultural wealth. Even before this had happened Karl Marx wrote that "capital comes into the world dripping from head to foot from every pore with blood and mire".
The capitalist system of production, once it had given all of which it was capable, became an abysmal obstacle to the progress of humanity. But the bourgeoisie from its
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL origins carried within itself its contradiction. its womb gigantic productive instruments were developed, but with time a new and vigorous social force developed: the pro letariat, destined to change the old and worn-out social system of capitalism to a superior socio-economic form in accordance with the historic possibilities of human society, converting into social property those gigantic means of production which the people, and no one else but the people, by their work had created and amassed. At such a stage of development, the productive forces made completely anachronistic and outmoded a regime which stood for private ownership and with it the economic subordination of millions and millions of human beings to the dietates of a small social minority.
The interests of humanity cried out for a halt to the anarchy of production, the waste, economic crises and the rapacious wars which are part of the capitalist system. The growing necessities of the human race and the possibility of satisfying them, demanded the planned development of the economy and the rational utilization of its means of production and natural resources.
It was inevitable that imperialism and colonialism would fall into a profound and insoluble crisis. The general crisis began with the outbreak of World War I, with the revolution of the workers and peasants which overthrew the Czarist empire of Russia and founded, amidst the most difficult conditions of capitalist encirclement and aggression, the world's first socialist state, opening a new era in the history of humanity. Since that time until today, the crisis and decomposition of the imperialist system has incessantly worsened.
World War II, unleashed by the imperialist powers — and into which were dragged the Soviet Union and other criminally invaded peoples of Asia and Europe, who engaged in a bloody struggle of liberation - culminated in the defeat of fascism, formation of the world camp of socialism, and the struggle of the colonial and dependent peoples for their sovereignty. Between 1945 and 1957 more than 1.2 billion human beings conquered their independence in Asia and Africa. The blood shed by the people was not in vain.
The movement of the dependent and colonial peoples is a phenomenon of universal character which agitates the world and marks the final crisis of imperialism.
Cuba and Latin America are part of the world.
Our problems form part of the problems engendered by the general crisis of imperialism and the struggle of the subjugated peoples; the clash between the world that is being born and the world that is dying. The odious and brutal campaign unleashed against our nation expresses the des perate as well as futile effort which the imperialists are making to prevent the liberation of the peoples. Cuba hurts the imperialists in a special way. What is it that is hidden behind the Yankees' hate of the Cuban revolution? What is it that rationally explains the conspiracy, uniting for the same aggressive purpose the most powerful and rich imperialist power in the contemporary world and the oligarchies of an entire continent, which together are supposed to represent a population of 350 million human beings, against a small country of only seven million inhabitants, economically underdeveloped, without financial or military means to threaten the security or economy of any other country? What unites them and stirs them up is fear. What explains it is fear. Not fear of the Cuban rerolution but fear of the Latin-American revolution. Not fear of the workers, peasants, intellectuals, students and progressive layers of the middle strata who by revolutionary means have taken power in Cuba; but fear that the workers, peasants, students, intellectuals and progressive sectors of the middle strata will by revolutionary means take power in the oppressed and hungry countries exploited by the Yankee monopolies and reactionary oligarchies of America,
or lesser degree of development, but sooner or later, in ican agents in the most subtle forms of assassination; and
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL fear that the plundered people of the continent will seize the arms from their oppressors and, like Cuba. declare themselves free people of America. SPECTER OF CUBA
By crushing the Cuban revolution they hope to dispel the fear that torments them, the specter of the revolution that threatens them. By liquidating the Cuban revolution, they hope to liquidate the revolutionary spirit of the people. They imagine in their delirium that Cuba is an exporter of revolutions. In their sleepless, merchants' and usurers' minds there is the idea that revolutions can be bought. sold, rented, loaned, exported and imported like some piece of merchandise. Ignorant of the objective laws that govern the development of human societies, they believe that their monopolistic, capitalistic and semi-feudal regimes are eternal. Educated in their own reactionary ideology, a mixture of superstition, ignorance, subjectivism, pragmatism and other mental aberrations, they have an image of the world and of the march of history conforming to their interests as exploiting classes.
They imagine that revolutions are born or die in the brains of individuals or are caused by divine laws and moreover that the gods are on their side. They have always thought that way - from the devout patrician pagans of Roman slave society who hurled the early Christians to the lions at the circus and the inquisitors of the middle ages who, as guardians of feudalism and absolute monarchy, burned at the stake the first representatives of liberal thought of the nascent bourgeoisie, up to today's bishops who anathematize proletarian revolutions in defense of the bourgeois and monopolist regime.
All reactionary classes in all historic epochs, when the antagonism between exploiters and exploited reaches its highest peak, presaging the arrival of a new social regime, have turned to the worst weapons of repression and calummy against their adversaries. The primitive Christians were taken to their martyrdom accused of burning Rome and of sacrificing children on their altars. Philosophers like Giordano Bruno, reformers like Hus, and thousands of other nonconformists with the feudal order, were accused of heresy and taken by the inquisitors to be burned at the stake.
Today persecution rages over the proletarian fighters and this crime brings out the worst calumnies in the monopolist and bourgeois press. Always, in each historic epoch, the ruling classes have committed murder - invoking the defense of society, the country, order - to defend the privileged minorities against the exploited majorities: "Their class rule" maintained by blood and fire against the dispossessed; "the country", whose fruits only they enjoy, depriving the rest of the people of those fruits, in order to repress the revolutionaries who aspire to a new society; a just order. a country truly for all. MARCH OF HUMANITY
But the development of history, the ascending march of humanity does not hold back, nor can it be held back. the forces which impel the people, who are the real nakers of history, determined by the material conditions of their existence and the aspirations for higher goals of well-being and liberty, which emerge when the progress of man in the fields of science, technology and culture make it possible, are superior to the will and the terror un. leashed by the ruling oligarchies.
The subjective conditions of each country, that is to say, the conscious factor, organization, leadership, can ac celerate or retard the revolution, according to its greater
15 each historic epoch, when the objective conditions mature, consciousness is acquired, the organization is formed, the leadership emerges and the revolution takes place.
Whether this takes place peacefully or in painful birth does not depend on the revolutionists, it depends on the reactionary forces of the old society, who resist the birth of the new society engendered by the contradictions carried in the womb of the old society. The revolution is in history like the doctor who assists at the birth of a new life. It does not needlessly use the tools of force, but will use them without hesitation whenever necessary to help the hirth. A birth which brings to the enslaved and exploited masses the hope of a new and better life.
In many countries of Latin America the revolution is today inevitable. That fact is not determined by anyone's will. It is determined by the horrifying conditions of exploitation in which American man lives, the development of the revolutionary consciousness of the masses, the world crisis of imperialism and the universal movement of struggle of the subjugated peoples.
The anxiety felt today is an unmistakable symptom of rebellion. The very depths of a continent are profoundly moved, a continent which has witnessed four centuries of slave, semi-slave and feudal exploitation beginning with its aboriginal inhabitants and slaves brought from Africa, up to the nuclei of nationalities which emerged later: white, black, mulatto, mestizo and Indian, who today are made brothers by the scorn, humiliation and the Yankee yoke, and are brothers in their hope for a better tomorrow.
The peoples of America liberated themselves from Spanish colonialism at the beginning of the last century, but they did not free themselves from exploitation. The feudal landowners assumed the authority of the Spanish rulers, the Indians continued in painful servitude, the Latin-American man in one form or another continued to be a slave and the tiniest hopes of the people gave way under the power of the oligarchies and the yoke of foreign capital. This has been the truth of America - in one hue or another, in one variation or another. Today Latin America lies beneath an imperialism fiercer, much more powerful and crueler than the Spanish colonial empire.
And before the objective reality and the historically inexorable Latin-American revolution, what is the attitude of Yankee imperialism? To prepare to wage a colonial war against the peoples of Latin America; to create an apparatus oi force, the political pretexts and the pseudo-legal instruments subscribed to by the reactionary oligarchies to repress with blood and fire the struggle of the Latin-American peoples.
The intervention of the government of the United States in the internal politics of the countries of Latin America has become more open and unbridled each time.
The Inter-American Defense Council, for example, has been and is the nest where the most reactionary and proYankee officers of the Latin-American armies are trained, for use later as shock troops in the service of the monopolies.
The North American military missions in Latin America constitute a permanent apparatus of espionage in each nation directly tied to the Central Intelligence Agency, in. culcating in those officers the most reactionary sentiments and trying to convert the armies into instruments of its own political and economic interests.
Presently in the Panama Canal zone, the North-Amer. ican high command has organized special courses to train Latin-American officers in fighting against revolutionary guerrillas, with the aim of repressing the armed action of the peasant masses against the feudal exploitation to which they are subjected.
In the United States itself the Central Intelligence Agency has organized special schools to train Latin-Amer.
16 in the Yankee military services the physical liquidation of the anti-imperialist leaders is an accepted policy.
It is notorious that the Yankee embassies in the different Latin-American countries are organizing, instructing and equipping fascist bands to spread terror and to attack labor, student and intellectual organizations. These bands, into which they recruit the sons of the oligarchies, lumpen, and people of the lowest moral character, have already perpetrated a series of aggressive acts against the mass movements. SANTO DOMINGO
Nothing is more evident and unequivocal about the intentions of imperialism than its recent conduct in the events in Santo Domingo. Without any kind of justification, without even making use of diplomatic relations with that republic, the United States, after stationing its warships be. fore the Dominican capital, declared with its usual arrogance, that if Balaguer's government sought military aid, it would land troops in Santo Domingo against the insurgence of the Dominican people. That Balaguer's power was absolutely spurious. that each sovereign country of Latin America should have the right to resolve its internal problems without foreign intervention, that there exsist international norms and world opinions, and that there even exists an OAS, did not count at all in the considerations of the United States.
What did count were its designs for holding back the Dominican revolution, the reinstitution of its odious policy of landing marines, with no more basis or prerequisite for establishing this new buccaneer concept of law, than a tyrannical, illegitimate, crisis-ridden ruler's simple request The significance of this should not escape the peoples of Latin America. In Latin America there are more than enough of the kind of rulers who are ready to use Yankee troops against their own people when they find themselves
North-American imperialism's declared policy of sending soldiers to fight the revolutionary movement of country in Latin America, that is to say, to kill workers, students, peasants, Latin-American men and women, other objective than the continued maintenance of its monopolistic interests and the privileges of the traitorous oligarchies which support it.
It can now be seen clearly that the military pacts signed by the government of the United States with Latin-American governments — often secret pacts and always behind the back of the people - invoking hypothetical foreign dangers which no one saw anywhere, had the sole and exclusive object of preventing the struggle of the people; they were pacts against the people; against the sole danger — native danger of the liberation movement that would imperil the Yankee interests. not without reason that the people asked themselves: Why so many military agreements? Why the shipment of arms which, even though technically outmoded for modern war, are yet efficient for smashing strikes, repressing popular demonstrations staining the land with blood? Why the military missions, the pact of Rio de Janeiro and the thousand and one international conferences?
Since the end of World War II, the nations of Latin been impoverished more and more, exports have less and less value, their imports cost more, the per capita income falls, the awful rate of infant mortality does not decrease, the number of illiterates is higher, the people lack jobs, land, adequate housing, schools, hospitals, means of communication and means of life. On the other hand, North American investments exceed ten bil. lion dollars. Latin America, moreover, is the provider of cheap raw materials, and the buyer of expensive finished articles. Like the first Spanish conquerors, who bar
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL tered mirrors and trinkets for gold and silver — how the United States trades with Latin America. guard that torrent of riches, to gain ever more control of Latin America's resources and exploit its suffering peoples - that is what is hidden behind the military pacts, the military missions and Washington's diplomatic lobbying.
This policy of gradual strangulation of the sovereignty of the Latin-American nation and of a free hand to in. tervene in their internal affairs culminated in the meeting of foreign Ministers at Punta del Este . imperialism gathered the ministers together to wrest from them - through political pressure and unprecedented economic blackmail in collusion with a group of the discredited rulers of this continent -- the renunciation the national sovereignty of our peoples and the consecration of the Yankees' odious right of intervention in the internal affairs of Latin America; the submission of the peoples entirely to the will of the United States against which all our great men, Bolivar to Sandino, fought. Neither the government of the representatives of the exploiting oligarchies, nor the big reactionary press, in the pay of the monopolies and feudal lords - they did not conceal themselves but openly demanded agreements which constituted formal suppression of our peoples; abolishing it with a stroke of the pen at the most infamous conspiracy in the memory of this continent. BUYING VOTES
Behind closed doors, in reluctant meetings, where the Yankee minister of colonies dedicated entire days to beating down the resistance and scruples of some ministers, bringing into play the millions of the Yankee Treasury in an undisguised buying and selling of votes, a handful of representatives of the oligarchies of countries which together barely add up to a third of the continent's population, imposed agreements that served on a silver platter to the Yankee master the head of a principle which cost the blood of all our countries since wars of independence. Pyrrhic character of such sad and fraudulent accomplishments of imperialism, its moral failure, the broken unanim. ity and the universal scandal do not diminish the grave danger which agreements imposed at such a price have brought so close to the peoples of Latin America. clave Cuba's thundering voice was raised without weakness or fear to indict, before all the peoples of America and the world, the monstrous attempts, to defend with a virility and dignity, which will be clear in the annals of history, not only Cuba's rights but the deserted rights of all our sister nations of the American Continent. The word of Cuba could find no echo in that house-broken majority, but neither could it find a refutation; only impotent silence befell its demolishing arguments, the clearness and courage of its words. But Cuba did not speak for the ministers, Cuba spoke for the people and for history, where its words will be echoed and answered.
At Punta del Este a great ideological battle unfolded between the Cuban revolution and Yankee imperialism. Who did they represent there, for whom did each speak? Cuba represented the people: the United States represented the
Cuba spoke for America's exploited masses; United States for the exploiting, oligarchical and im. perialist interests; Cuba for the nationalization of foreign enterprises; the United States for new investments by fo. reign capital. Cuba for culture; the United States
Cuba for agrarian reform; the United States for great landed estates. Cuba for the industrialization of Amerthe United States for underdevelopment. Cuba for creative work; the United States for the sabotage and coun ter-revolutionary terror practiced by its agents — the destruction of sugar-cane fields and factories, the bombing by their pirate planes of the labor of a peaceful people. Cuba
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL: for the murdered alphabetizers; the United States for the assassins. Cuba for bread; the United States for hunger. •Cuba for equality; the United States for privilege and discrimination. Cuba for the truth; the United States for lies. Cuba for liberation; the United States for oppression. Cuba for the bright future of humanity; the United States for the past without hope. Cuba for the heroes who fell at Giron to save they country from foreign domination; the United States for the mercenaries and traitors who serve the foreigner against their country. Cuba for peace among peoples; the United States for aggression and war. Cuba for socialism; the United States for capitalism. SHAMEFUL METHODS
The agreements obtained by the United States through methods so shameful that the entire world criticizes them, do not diminish but increase the morality and force of reason of Cuba's stand, which exposes the sell-out and treason of the oligarchies to the national interests and shows the people the road to liberation. It reveals the corruption of the ex. ploiting classes for whom their representatives spoke at Punta del Este. The OAS was revealed for what it really is — a Yankee Ministry of Colonies, a military alliance, an apparatus of repression against the liberation movement of the Latin-American peoples.
Cuba has lived three years of the revolution under incessant harassment of Yankee intervention in our internal affairs. Pirate airplanes coming from the United States, dropping incendiary substances, have burned millions of arrobas of sugar cane jacts of international sabotage perpetrated by Yankee agents, like the explosion of the ship 'La Coubre", have cost dozens of Cuban lives; thousands of North-American weapons have been dropped in parachutes by the U.S. military services into our territory to promote subversion; hundreds of tons of explosive materials and bombs have been secretly landed on our coast from North. American launches to promote sabotage and terrorism; a Cuban worker was tortured on the naval base of Guantan. amo and deprived of his life with no due process before or any explanation later; our sugar quota was abruptly cut and an embargo proclaimed on parts and raw materials for factories and North-American construction machinery, in order to ruin our economy. Cuban ports and instailations have been surprise attacked by armed ships and bombers from bases prepared by the United States. Mercenary troops, organized and trained in countries of Central America by our territories, escorted by ships of the Yankee fleet and the same government, have in a warlike manner invaded with aerial support from foreign bases, causing much loss of life as well as material wealth; counter-revolutionary Cubans are being trained in the U.S. army and new plans of aggression against Cuba are being made. All this has been going on incessantly for three years, before the eyes of the whole continent - and the OAS was not aware of it.
The ministers meet in Punta del Este and do not even admonish the U.S. government nor the governments who are material accomplices to these aggressions. They expel Cuba, the Latin-American victim, the aggrieved nation.
The United States has military pacts with nations of all the continents; military blocs with whatever fascist, mi. litarist and reactionary government there is in the world: NATO, SEATO and CENTO, to which we now have to add the OAS; it intervenes in Laos, in Vietnam, in Korea, in Formosa, in Berlin. It openly sends ships to Santo Dom. ingo in order to impose its law, its will, and announces its proposal to use its NATO allies to block commerce with Cuba. And the OAS is not aware! The ministers meet and expel Cuba, which has no military pacts with any country. Thus the government that organizes subversion throughout
17 the world and forges military alliances on four continents, forces the expulsion of Cuba, accusing her no less of subversion and ties beyond the continent.
Cuba, the Latin-American nation which has made landowners of more than 100,000 small farmers, insured employment all the year on state farms and co-operatives to all agricultural workers, transformed forts into schools, given 70,000 scholarships to university, secondary and technogical students, created lecture halls for the entire child population, totally liquidating illiteracy, quadrupling medical services, nationalizing foreign interests, suppressing the abusive system which turned housing into a means of exploiting people, virtually eliminating unemployment, suppressing discrimination due to race or sex, ridding itself of gambling, vice and administrative corruption, armed the people, making the enjoyment of human rights a living reality by freeing man and woman trom exploitation, lack of culture and social inequality, which has liberated itself from all foreign tutelage, and established the bases for the development of its economy in order no longer to be a country producing only one crop and exporting only raw materials, is expelled from the Organization of American States by governments which have not achieved for their people one of these objectives. How will they be able to justify their conduct before the people of America and the world? How will they be able to deny that in their concept the policy of land, of bread, of work, of health, of liberty, of equality and of culture, of accelerated development of the economy, of national dignity, of full self-determination and sovereiguty, is incompatible with the hemisphere? CUBA'S RECORD
The people think very differently, the people think that the only thing incompatible with the destiny of Latin America is misery, feudal exploitation, illiteracy, starvation wages, unemployment, the policy of repression against the masses of workers, peasants and students, discrimination against women, Negroes. Indians, mestizos, oppression by the oligarehies, the plundering of their wealth by the Yankee monopolists, the moral stagnation of their intellectuals and artists, the ruin of the small producers by foreign competition, economic underdevelopment, peoples without roads, without hospitals, without housing, without schools, without industries, the submission to imperialism, the renunciation of national sovereignty and the betrayal of the country.
How can the imperialists make understood their conduct and condemnatory attitude toward Cuba? With what words and what argument are they going to speak to those whom, all the while exploiting they ignored for so long!
Those who study the problems of America are accustomed to ask: what country, who, has concentrated upon -for the purpose of remedying — the situation of the idle, the poor, the Indians, the Negroes and the helpess infants, this immense number of infants - 30 million in 1950 50 million in eight more years). Yes, who? What country?
Thirty-two million Indians - like the Andes Mountains - form the backbone of the entire American continent. It is clear that for those who considered the Indian more as a thing than a person, this mass of humanity does not count, did not count and, they thought, never would count. Of course, since they were considered a brute labor force, they had to be used like a yoke of oxen or a tractor.
How —under what oath— could anyone believe in any benefit, in any Alliance for Progress with imperialism, when under its saintly protection, its killings, its persecutions, the natives of the south of the continent, like those of Patagonia, still live under strips of canvas as did their ancestors at the time discoverers came almost 500 years ago? Where are those great races which populated northern Atgentina, Paraguay and Bolivia, such as the Guarani who were savagely decimated, hunted like animals and buried in
18 the depths of the jungle? Where is that reservoir of indigenous stock -- whose extinction is continually hastened — which could have served as a base for a great American civilization? Across the Paraguayan swamps and mournful Bolivian highlands, deeper into itself, America has driven these primitive, melancholy races, brutalized by alcohol and narcotics to which they became addicted in order at least to survive in the subhuman conditions (not only of nutrition) in which they live. Where does a chain of hands stretch out almost in vain, yet stretching out vainly across centuries? Over the Andean peaks and slopes, along great rivers and in the shadowy forests, it stretches uniting their miseries with those of others who are slowly perishing, Brazilian tribes and those of the North of the continent and the coasts, until in the most incredible and wild confines of the Amazonian jungle or mountain ranges of Perija, Venezuela's hundred thousand indigent are reached, then to the isolated Vapicharnas, who await their end, now almost definitively lost to the human race, in the hot regions of the Guianas. Yes, all these 32 million Indians, who extend from the United States border to the limits of the South. ern hemisphere, and the 45 million mestizos, who for the most part differ little from the Indians; all these natives, this formidable reservoir of labor, whose rights have been trampled on, yes, what can imperialism offer them? How can these people, ignored so long, be made to believe in any benefit to come from such bloodstained hands?
Entire tribes which live unclothed; others which are supposed to be cannibalistic; others whose members die like flies upon their first contact with the conquering civilization; others which are banished, that is, thrown off their lands, pushed to the point of locating in the jungles, moun tains or most distant reaches of the prairies where not even the smallest particle of culture, light, bread, nor anything penetrates.
In what "alliance" - other than one for their own more rapid extermination — are these native races going to believe, these races who have been flogged for centuries, shot so their lands could be taken, beaten to death by the thousand; for not working faster in their exploited labor for imperialism? "ALLIANCE" FOR NEGROES?
And to the Negro? What "alliance" can the system of lynching and brutal exclusion of the Negro offer to the 15 million mulattoes of Latin America, who know with horror and rage that their brothers in the North cannot ride in the same vehicles as their white compatriots, nor attend the same schools, nor even die in the same hospitals?
How are these disinherited racial groups going to believe in this imperialism, in its benefits or in any "alliance" with it (which is not for lynching and exploiting them as slaves)? Those masses who have not been permitted even modestly to enjoy any cultural, social or professional benefits, who — even when they are in the majority or number millions — are mistreated bp the imperialists in Klu Klux Klan costumes, are penned in the most insanitary neighborhoods, in the least comfortable tenements built expressly for them, are shoved into the most menial occupations, the hardest labor and the least lucrative professions. cannot presume to reach the universities, advanced academies and private schools.
What Alliance for Progress can serve as encouragement to those 107 million men and women of our America, the backbone of labor in the cities and fields, whose dark skin - black, mestizo, mulatto, Indian — inspires scorn in the new colonialists? How are they — who with bitter impotence have seen how in Panama there is one wagescale for Yan.
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL kees and another for Panamanians, who are regarded as an inferior race — going to put any trust in the supposed Alliance?
What can the workers hope for, with their starvation wages, the hardest jobs, the most miserable conditions lack of nutrition, illness and all the evils which foster misery?
What words can be said, what benefits can the imperialists offer to the copper, tin, iron, coal miners who cough up their lungs for the profits of merciless foreign and to the fathers and sons of the lumberjacks masters, and rubber plantation workers, to the harvesters of the fruit plantations, to the workers in the coffee and sugar mills, the peons on the pampas and plains who with their health and lives amass the fortunes of the exploiters?
What can those vast masses - who produce the wealth, who create the values, who aid in bringing forth a new world in all places - expect? What can they expect from imperialism, that greedy mouth, that greedy hand, with no other vista than misery, the most absolute destitution and death, cold and unrecorded in the end?
What can this class, which has changed the course of history, expect, which in other places has revolutionized the world, which is the vanguard of all the humble and exploited, what can it expect from imperialism its most irreconcilable enemy?
And to teachers, professors, professionals, intellectuals, poets and artists, what can imperialism offer? What kind of benefits, what chance for a better and more equitable life, what purpose, what inducement, what desire to excel, to gain mastery beyond the first simple steps, can it offer to those who devotedly care for the generations of children ise young people on whom imperialism will later gorge
What can it offer to these people who live on degrading wages in most countries, who almost everywhere suffer restrictions on their right of political and social expression, whose economic future doesn't exceed the bare limits of their shaky resources and compensation, who are buried in a gray life without prospects which ends on a pension not even meeting half the cost of living! What "benefits" or "alliances" can imperialism offer them save those which redound to its total advantage?
If imperialism provides sources of aid to the professions, arts and publications, it is always well understood that their products must reflect its interests, aims and "nothingness". The novel which attempt to reflect the reality of the world of imperialism's rapacious deeds; the poems aspiring to translate protests against its enslavement, its interference in life, in thought, in the very bodies of nations and peoples; and the militant arts which in their expression try to cap. ture the forms and content of imperialism's aggression and the constant pressure on every progressive living and breathing thing and on all that is revolutionary, which teaches, which — full of light and conscience, of clarity and beauty - tries to guide men and peoples to better destinies, to the highest summits of life and justice — all these meet im. perialism's severest censure. They run into obstacles, condemnation. Its presses are closed to them; their names are barred from its columns of print and a campaign of the most atrocious silence is imposed against them — which is another contradiction of imperialism. For it is then that the writer, poet, painter, sculptor, the creator in any material, the scientist, begins truly to live in the tongue of the people, in the heart of millions of men throughout the world. Imperialism puts everything backwards, deforms it, diverts it into its own channels for profit, to multiply its dollars; buying words or paintings or stutterings or turning into silence the expression of revolutionists, of progressive men, of those who struggle for the people and their needs.
We cannot forget, in this sad picture, the underprivileged children, the neglected, the futureless children of America.
America, a continent with a high birth rate, also has s high death rate. The mortality of children under a yeax
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20 solute majority sector, at times exceeding 10 per cent of the Latin-American population.
Discounting the landlords, who often reside in the cities, the rest of that great mass gains its livelihood working as peons on the haciendas for the most miserable wages, oI work the land under conditions of exploitation which in no manner put the Middle Ages to shame. These circumstances are those which determine that in Latin America the poor rural population constitutes a tremendous poten. tial revolutionary force.
The armies, built and equipped for conventional war, which are the force on which the power of the exploiting classes rest, become absolutely impotent when they have to confront the irregular struggle of the peasants on their own terrain. lose ten men for each revolutionary fighter who falls and demoralization spreads rapidly among them from having to face an invisible and invincible enemy who does not offer them the opportunity of showing off their academy tactics and their braggadocio which they use military displays to curb the city workers
The initial struggle by small combat units, is incessantly fed by new forces, the mass movement begins to loosen its bonds, the old order, little by little begins to break into a thousand pieces, and that is the moment when the working class and the urban masses decide the battle.
What is it that from the beginning of the struggle of those first nuclei, makes them invincible, regardless of the numbers, power and resources of their enemies? The aid of the people, and they will be able to count on that help of the people on an ever growing scale.
But the peasantry is a class which, because of the uncultured state in which it is kept and the isolation in which it lives, needs the revolutionary and political leadership of the working class and the revolutionary intellectuals, for without them it would not by itself be able to plunge into the struggle and achieve victory.
In the actual historic conditions of Latin America, the national bourgeoisie cannot lead the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggle. Experience shows that in our nations that class, even when its interests are in contradiction to those of Yankee imperialism, has been incapable of confronting it, for it is paralyzed by fear of social revolution and frightened by the cry of the exploited masses.
Facing the dilemma of imperialism or revolution, only its most progressive layers will be with the people.
The actual world correlation of forces and the universal movement for the liberation of the colonial and dependent peoples points out to the working class and the revolutionary intellectuals of Latin America their true role, which is to place themselves resolutely in the vanguard of the struggle against imperialism and feudalism.
Imperialism, utilizing the great movie monopolies, its cablegraphic agencies, its periodicals, books and reactionary newspapers, resorts to the most subtle lies to sow divisionism and inculcate among the most ignorant people fear and superstition against revolutionary ideas which can and should frighten only the powerful exploiters with their worldly interests and privileges.
Divisionism, a product of all kinds of prejudices, ideas and lies; sectarianism, dogmatism, a lack of broadin analyzing the role of each social layer, its parties, organizations and leaders, make difficult the necessary unity of action of the democratic and progressive forces of our peoples. They are defects of growth, infantile sickness of the revolutionary movement which must be left behind. In the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggle it is possible to push the majority of the people resolutely behind goals of liberation which unite the spirit of the working class, the peasants, the intellectuals workers, the petty bourgeoisie and the most progressive layers of the national bourgeosie. These sectors comprise the immense majority of the pop-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL ulation and join together great social forces capable of sweeping out the imperialist and reactionary feudal rule. In that broad movement they can and must struggle toge ther for the good of our nations, for the good of our peoples, and for the good of America, from the old militant Marxist, right to the sincere Catholic who has nothing to do with the Yankee monopolists and the feudal lords of the land. PRIMARY TASK
That movement would pull along with itself the most progressive elements of the armed forces, also humiliated by the Yankee military missions, the betrayal of national interests by the feudal oligarchies and the sacrifice of the national sovereignty to Washington's dictates.
Where the roads for the peoples are closed, where the repression of workers and peasants is fierce, where the rule of the Yankee monopolists is strongest, the first and most important task is to understand that honorable nor correct to beguile people with the fallacious and convenient illusion of uprooting — by legal means which don't exist and won't exist — ruling classes who are entrenched in all the state positions, monopolizing education, owning all media of information, possessing infinite financial resources - a power which the monopolies and oligarchies will defend with blood and fire and with the might of their police and armies.
It is the duty of every revolutionist to make the rev. olution. It is known that the revolution will triumph in America and throughout the world, but it is not for revolutionists to sit in the doorways of their houses waiting for the corpse of imperialism to pass by. The role of Job doesn't suit a revolutionist. Each year that the liberation of America is speeded up will mean the lives of millions of children saved, millions of intellects saved for culture, an infinite quantity of pain spared the people. Even Yankee imperialists prepare a bloody drama for America, they will not succeed in crushing the peoples' struggles, they will only arouse universal hatred against themselves. And such a drama will also mark the death of their greedy and carnivorous system.
No nation in Latin America is weak - because each forms part of a family of 200 million brothers, who suffer the same miseries, who harbor the same sentiments, who have the same enemy, who dream about the same better future and who count upon the solidarity of all honest men and women throughout the world.
Great as was the epic of Latin-American independence, heroic was that struggle, today's generation of Latin Americans is called upon to engage in an epic which is even greater and more decisive for humanity. For that struggle was for liberation from Spanish colonial power, from a decadent Spain invaded by the armies of Napoleon. Today the call for struggle is for liberation from the most powerful world imperialist center, from the strongest force of world imperialism and to render humanity a greater service than that rendered by our predecessors.
But this struggle, to a greater extent than the earlier, will be waged by the masses, will be carried out by the people: the people are going to play a much more important role now than then, the leaders are less important and will be less important in this struggle than in the one before. MASSES MAKE HISTORY
This epic before us is going to be written by the hungry Indian masses, the peasants without land, the exploited workers. It is going to be written by the progres sive masses, 'the honest and brilliant intellectuals, who so
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL greatly abound in our suffering Latin-American countries. Struggles of masses and ideas. be carried forward by our people, despised and maltreated by imperialism, our people, unreckoned with till today, who are now beginning to shake off their slumber. Imperialism considered us a weak and submissive flock; and now it begins to be terrified of that flock; a gigantic flock of 200 million Latin Americans in whom Yankee monopoly capitalism now sees its gravediggers.
This toiling humanity, these inhumanly exploited, these paupers, controlled by the system of whip and overseer, have not been reckoned with or have been little reckoned with. From the dawn of independence their fate has been the same: Indians, gauchos, mestizos, zambos, quadroons, whites without property or income, all this human mass which formed the ranks of the "nation", which never reaped any benefits, which fell by the millions, which was cut into bits, which won independence from the mother country for the bourgeoisie, which was shut out from its share of the rewards, which continued to occupy the lowest step on the ladder of social benefits, continued to die of hunger, curable diseases and neglect, because for them there were never enough life-giving goods - ordinary bread, a hospital bed, the medicine that cures, the hand that aids.
But now from one end of the continent to the other they are signaling with clarity that the hour has come — the hour of their redemption. Now this anonymous mass, this America of color, somber, taciturn America, which all over the continent sings with the same sadness and disil. lusionment, now this mass is beginning to enter conclusively into its own history, is beginning to write it with its own blood, is beginning to suffer and die for it.
Because now in the fields and mountains of America, on its slopes and prairies and in its jungles, in the wilderness or in the traffic of cities, this world is beginning with full cause to Anxious hands are stretched forth, ready to die for what is theirs, to win those rights which were laughed at by one and all for 500 years. Yes, now
21 history will have to take the poor of America into account, exploited and spurned of Latin America, who have decided to begin writing history for themselves for all time. Already they can be seen on the roads, on foot, day after day, in endless march of hundreds of kilometers to the governmental "eminences", there to obtain their rights.
Already they can be seen armed with stones, sticks, machetes, in one direction and another, each day, occupying lands, sinking hooks into the land which belongs to them and defending it with their lives. They can be seen carrying signs, slogans, flags; letting them flap in the mountain or prairie winds. And the wave of anger, of de mands for justice, of claims for rights, which is beginning to sweep the lands of Latin America, will not stop. That wave will swell with every passing day. For that wave is composed of the greatest number, the majorities in every respect, those whose labor amasses the wealth and turns the wheels of history. Now they are awakening from the long, brutalizing sleep to which they had submitted.
For this great mass of humanity has said, "enough!" and has begun to march. And their giant march will not be halted until they conquer true independence — for which they have vainly died more than once. Today, however, those who die will die like the Cubans at Playa Giron. They will die for their own, true and never-to-besurrendered independence.
Patria o Muerte! Venceremos! THE PEOPLE OF CUBA Havana, Cuba Free Territory of America February 4, 1962
The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba resolves that this Declaration be known as the Second Declaration of Havana, translated into the major languages and distributed throughout the world. It also resolves to urge all the friends of the Cuban Revolution in Latin America that it be widely distributed among the worker, peasant, student and intellectual masses of this continent.