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The first Cuban Communist party

Events on August 16-17, 1925, forever marked Cuba’s destiny

Our Party has never failed to play a leading role in every struggle, every accomplishment
Events on August 16-17, 1925, forever marked Cuba’s destiny. On these dates, a group of courageous men founded our first Communist party, the indispensable link between patriotic thinking of the 19th century, fundamentally that of Martí, and the ideals of social emancipation of later eras.

Author: Ángel Freddy Pérez Cabrera | freddy@granma.cu
august 20, 2020 10:08:15

Photo: Dunia Álvarez
Events on August 16-17, 1925, forever marked Cuba’s destiny. On these dates, a group of courageous men founded our first Communist party, the indispensable link between patriotic thinking of the 19th century, fundamentally that of Martí, and the ideals of social emancipation of later eras. They understood the value of continuity.

Two exceptional Cubans played a key role in the Party’s founding, Carlos Baliño and Julio Antonio Mella.

The first was a member of a patriotic generation that took to the scrub to wage an armed struggle against Spanish colonialism, and an unconditional friend of José Martí, with whom he founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party, the new organization’s valuable predecessor; while the young Mella, at only 22 years of age, represented the best of the generation that would give continuity to the struggles of Céspedes, Agramonte, Gómez, Maceo and Martí.

The principal mission of these visionary individuals, upon establishing the Party and joining the Third International founded by Vladimir I. Lenin in 1919, was to set about developing a program of demands for workers and campesinos; work actively in trade unions; and defend the rights of women and youth.

This was a difficult era and, on a daily basis, Cuban revolutionaries faced the iron fist of dictator Gerardo Machado, who organized brutal repression of the newly founded organization. The Party’s elected first secretary, José Miguel Pérez, was forced into exile, while other members, like Mella, faced trumped-up charges for crimes they did not commit.

But the nascent organization continued its work valiantly, with the leadership of individuals of the stature of Rubén Martínez Villena and others.

With the world stage dominated by the historic struggle against fascism and the creation of popular anti-imperialist fronts, the Party, known at that time as the Revolutionary Communist Union and later the Popular Socialist Party, defended the people’s rights in the bourgeois parliament.

No less important was its work during the struggle against the Batista dictatorship, under very dangerous conditions, with most efforts carried out underground.

After the triumph of the Revolution, January 1, 1959, under the leadership of Fidel and Blas Roca, a process began to unify the Party and the two political organizations that had carried the most weight in the revolutionary struggle against Batista – the July 26th Movement and the Revolutionary Directorate.

Thus, in 1961, the three groups merged to form the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI), as the antecedent to the constitution in 1963 of the United Party of the Socialist Revolution of Cuba (PURSC), which on October 3, 1965, adopted the name it has maintained to date, the Communist Party of Cuba.

Since then, our Party has never failed to play a leading role in every struggle, every accomplishment, as the vanguard of Cuban society during the most important moments the nation has faced.

If the Party has earned one merit in its history, it is to have preserved the nation’s unity, which has allowed us to confront persecution, genocidal blockades, wars, and threats of all kinds – and emerge victorious.

For this and other reasons, Fidel described the Party as the soul of the Cuban Revolution, as the organization that synthesizes the dreams and aspirations of a people over more than 100 years of struggle.

Today, as the homeland faces new challenges as a result of the pandemic that is ravaging the world and affecting us, as well, aggravating the impact of the vicious U.S. blockade, the Communist Party of Cuba stands firm and guarantees the historic continuity of the Revolution.

Fidel Castro Ruz

Fidel Castro: another battle, another victory

Fidel: another battle, another victory
On the 94 anniversary of his birth, Fidel’s contribution to science and life is as relevant today as ever, and will be into the future

Author: Elson Concepción Pérez | internet@granma.cu
august 13, 2020 11:08:17

Photo: Archivo de Granma
He taught us to wage battles and emerge victorious. Ever the great strategist, he foresaw all the variables that could appear. He prepared the forces, conceived possible scenarios, studied the enemy and was always present on the front lines with his troops.

Today, his ashes resting within a boulder extracted from the bedrock of the Sierra Maestra, he would be contemplating what has been done, what remains to be done, the imperfections and the victory. He would know – he warned us –

of existent and possible behaviors by persons who, amidst a new battle, could take advantage of any lack of vigilance to steal, misappropriate resources, and illicitly re-sell essential products, regardless of the titanic effort undertaken to make what we have available to all – be it a great deal or just a little, honestly obtained.

This is the context in which our people and leadership have unleashed the current battle to control the coronavirus pandemic and make the greater challenge – recovery of the national economy – a goal that is achievable if everyone works in a unified manner, making his or her own individual contribution to the colossal task.

In the struggle against COVID-19, Fidel is ever-present. His advice, warnings, strategies, and also his conception of a war of the entire people is very much present in the current situation. The offensive underway today is being conducted by the entire people, with Fidel’s leadership.

In the Moncada program itself, he foresaw the development of the country’s human resources as key to the provision of health care and education. He went further, and in the first months following the triumph of the Revolution, organized a medical brigade to send to Algeria to support a sister people in need.

Fidel studied law at the University of Havana, but when he participated in designing the new health programs to be implemented, he gave the impression of an experienced doctor.

He conceived Cuba’s public health system and set about building it from the ground up. To offer just two examples – very visible during in the COVID-19 battle – he developed the idea of the family doctor and nurse closely tied to the community, and was convinced that science must play a role in the nation’s everyday life, leading the establishment of research and development poles.

This project thus conceived has nothing in common with the modern institutions created in capitalist countries, based on private, for-profit medical systems, producing supplies and medications for those who can pay for them.

The training of human resources to staff health care and educational programs, and the development of new revolutionary curricula to support our medical professionals’ work around the world, was also key to Fidel’s thinking. On more than one occasion, he commented that we could never train too many doctors, that they would always be needed.

Today with tens of thousands of our professionals offering solidarity, health care and humanism in more than 60 countries, expression of gratitude to Fidel and recognition of Cuba appear in the most remote communities, among all segments of the population, in many different languages.

This is a country that sends our best to offer health and save lives, asking nothing in return, regardless of the political affiliation or religious beliefs of patients. They are human beings and deserve the altruistic attention of this great army in white lab coats.

Fidel conceived of the Henry Reeve Contingent, aware of its importance in responding to pandemics and natural disasters. Difficult challenges would come to validate the Comandante’s foresight: earthquakes in Pakistan, Haiti and other countries; Ebola in West Africa; and finally COVID-19, caused by a lethal virus that within a few months’ time has ravaged the planet, taking the lives of half a million human beings.

If many more have not died, if thousands have recovered after being infected, Cuban medicine and solidarity have contributed to this victory, and Fidel can be thanked for this, as well.

Without Cuba making any such request, and amidst a ferocious defamation campaign by the Trump administration and its mercenaries against our internationalist brigades, many people of good will around the world are advocating the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Cuban doctors in the Henry Reeve Contingent.

Individuals and organizations in many different political currents, languages and cultures are insisting that our professionals are more than deserving of this international distinction.

Fidel is also leading this medical brigade and those who have benefitted from Cuban solidarity express gratitude to him, as well.

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed another battle, that Fidel is winning, too. The national articulation of all sectors in the effort, and the capacity of the country to prevent the numbers of deaths seen in other lands, offer testimony to the concrete application of Fidel’s thinking, continued under the leadership of President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel, with the wise guidance of Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, who provides certainty and confidence, as well.

This August 13, on the 94th anniversary of the Comandante en Jefe’s birth, with his ashes resting in a monumental boulder in his beloved Santiago, his great battles and victories will continue to be of obligatory reference for a people who, as a matter of principle, have assumed the construction of our own destiny – the destiny he charted for us that we will always defend.

Cuba Venezuela Solidarity

Venezuelan can count on Cuba’s solidarity

The largest field hospital in Venezuelan history can count on Cuba’s solidarity
The Polyhedron sports arena in Caracas is now a huge field hospital, with 88 Cuban health collaborators treating COVID-19 patients, as part of the Bolivarian government’s effort to the pandemic

Jorge Pérez Cruzaugust 7, 2020 14:08:12

Photo: laverdad.com.ve
The Caracas Polyhedron sports arena, now the largest field hospital in Venezuelan history, is treating COVID-19 patients as part of the Bolivarian government’s effort to address the pandemic, according to Delcy Rodríguez, the country’s Executive Vice President, who added that the facility which opened August 2 has a capacity of 1,200 beds, with 300 in individual cubicles, to provide free, quality health care.

President Nicolás Maduro said the center will function as a special intermediate hospital, and includes an intensive care unit with trauma services, mobile X-ray equipment, a laboratory, a pharmacy, and a break room for medical and nursing staff, among other areas.

The role played by the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB) and the People’s Power Ministry of Internal Relations, Justice and Peace was decisive in completing the transformation of the site and adjacent areas, to install the hospital.

Patients are being treated by the 10th Brigade of the Ernesto Che Guevara contingent, composed of 88 Cuban health collaborators.

During an inaugural ceremony to welcome the collective, assembled by the Cuban Medical Mission in Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez thanked Cuba for its solidarity and praised “the immense love you have for the peoples of the world, crossing borders to give health and life.