Cuba Persecutes Workers

[Morpheus]

Confirmed sentences of independent syndicalists

Havana, June 19

The appeals filed by the defense attorneys representing Carmelo Diaz Fernandez and Pedro Pablo
Alvarez Ramos against the sentences levied against the independent syndicalists were confirmed by
the Supreme Popular Tribunal with sentences of 16 and 25 years respectively.

The judges Placido Batista Veranes, Pedro A. Perez Perez, Guillermo P. Hernandez Infante, Jorge
Pinera Ugarte and Ada Iris Marino Larramendi concluded that "treason to the motherland" is the
gravest of crimes.

According to the judges, it was proved that the accused worked and collaborated "in favor of a
foreign superpower in activities to deliberately change the economic, political and social regime
of Cuba."

Sentence number 26, corresponding to the appeal, was dictated on June 5 at the courtroom for
crimes against state security of the Supreme Popular Tribunal. Carmelo Diaz Fernandez, 66 years
old, independent journalist and member of the Centro Nacional de Capacitacion Sindical y Laboral
(National Center for Labor and Syndical Advancement), serves his sentence of 16 years at the
Guanajay prison, in Havana province. Perdo Pablo Alvarez Ramos, general secretary of the Consejo
Unitario de Trabajadores Cubanos (Unitarian Council of Cuban Workers) serves his sentence at the
Canaleta prison, in Ciego de Avila. Both union activists, besides working for the defense and
respect of workers and human rights in Cuba, denounced violations to the accords of the
International Labor Organization (ILO) by Cuban authorities.



Worker fired for demanding safety protections.

Havana, June 11 - Julio Diaz Ferreiro was fired on May 9 by the administration of the baked goods
factory Gerardo Abreu Fontan, formerly La Estrella, located in the capital's district of El Cerro.
Diaz Ferreiro was thrown out of his job as head of the department of electricity and maintenance,
accused of being disrespectful to his superiors and of endangering the productive process in part
of that factory.

"That allegation is false" said Ferreiro. "What happened was that I was asked to do work on a
three-phase line. Since we didn't have the protection gloves and insulators, and the work had to
be done "hot"- without turning off electrical power - I told the chief of production that it could
not be done. He then told me to invent, because it had to be done as production was jeopardized.
Then I told him: 'Do it yourself if you know how and can do it. My life is worth more than your
commercial interests' and that's why they applied such drastic measure."

When he went to the state union, the secretary of social and labor affairs told him he was unable
to intercede on his behalf. "Remember -he told Ferreiro- that your job is of extreme trustability,
and that the administration reserves the right to terminate you whenever they deem it convenient.
Furthermore, don't stir things up too much, or you might be subject to political treatment with
this wanting to be free and form independent unions and it will be worse for you."

At the moment Julian Diaz Ferreiro's appeal against the decision ratified by the labor law base
tribunal has been adjudicated to the El Cerro municipal court, labor section, to be tried
according to the labor legislation in force.

Ferreiro is 59 years old and for 40 years has worked at this job. In case the termination is
confirmed in this municipal court, it can be appealed to the Provincial Court, where the case
would he heard. In this case Julian Diaz Ferreiro will become part of the list of unemployed
workers in the island, without the right to receive retirement benefits until he works the year he
needs to complete before retirement.



Worker fired for demanding better work conditions

Nueva Gerona, July 22 - Estanislao Perez Reyes, who worked as custodian at the Zoological Park in
Isla de la Juventud, was fired after demanding improvements in the working conditions. The Pinero
Committee for Human Rights, an organization for the defense of civil liberties in the region,
denounced the arbitrary termination of the worker before the local delegation of the illegal
Confederacion Obrera Nacional Independiente de Cuba (CONIC) [National Independent Workers
Confederation of Cuba].

At the zoo in Isla de la Juventud, custodians don't have the right to breaks or lunch periods and
don't have a place of shelter against the weather.

Perez Reyes, 39 years old, has been -since 1995 - victim of systematic terminations at other state
institutions where he has worked for demanding his rights and for denouncing the corruption of
government functionaries, particularly in the case of Jose Montalvo Romero, ex-delegate of the
Ministry of Transportation in the region. The worker, who resides at C Street no. 4005 between 6
and 8 Reparto Micro 70, Nueva Gerona, the municipal center, has denounced the terminations in
letters sent to the Central Committee of the Comunist Party of Cuba (PCC), the National Assembly
of Popular Power, the Attorney General of the Republic and the state's Central de Trabajadores de
Cuba (CTC) [Cuban Workers Central], but his demands have been refused.

"In Cuba workers are in a state of total defenselessness, to demand your rights in the land of
Jose Marti has a price, which in my case I'm already paying" said Perez.

[Morpheus]

Declaration of Principles
Cuban Libertarian Movement
Mexico, Fall 2003

Since it has always been an inescapable duty, consistant with our principles and agreements, the
Cuban anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists have been, and are in a struggle for liberty, social
justice and libertarian socialism. Since the moment in the 19th century when we pioneered the
worker's movement in Cuba, we continue the social struggle started by those generations against
colonial oppression, imperialist North American intervention, international capitalism, bourgeois
republics, the dictatorships of Machado, Batista and the totalitarian government of the last forty
four years; we remain committed to a series of social concepts and ideas which we will not
renounce for any reason.

As Cuba lives through one of the most painful periods of her history, we Cuban anarchists present
this document, continuing the tradition of denouncing and fighting state power, be it colonialist,
capitalist, dictatorial or today's totalitarian system. We have fought and denounced these wrongs
before the founding of the Asociacion Libertaria de Cuba and later, in the First Congress of 1944,
the Second Congress of 1948, the Third Congress of 1950, the International Libertarian Conference
of 1955, the Declaration of Principles of 1960 and those from the exile since 1965, the
Declaration of the Libertarian Movement of 1975, the editorials in the Libertarian Information
Bulletin until 1979, the Guangara Libertaria until 1994, and in many declarations and speeches in
diverse fora in 1979, 1988, 1993 and 1995, denouncing as well the Castro regime at international
encounters in Italy, France, Mexico, Spain and the United States.

WHEREAS:

1 - Since 1959 until today the Cuban government, self-proclaimed "socialist" and represented only
by the personality of its "Maximum Leader" in a fascist fashion, oppresses and assassinates our
class brothers and sisters, assuming the functions of Sole Tyrant in the name of the Cuban
people.

2 - After over forty four years of despotism without equal in this hemisphere, the Cuban people
find themselves mired in poverty, corruption and forced obedience, without rights of any kind,
brutally and inhumanely threatened and terrorized by the regime's political police, with a
judicial and correctional system comparable to that of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Gulags.

3 - The long-suffering Cuban proletariat (industrial and agricultural workers), falsely
represented by vertical and fossilized unions of fascist ideology, finds itself trapped inside a
social system that persecutes and imprisons for such acts as trying to organize freely; a system
that exploits and discriminates, racially and politically, without the right to strike, protest
and boycott. Against so much abuse, it needs to free itself of the infamous chains that oppress
it.

4 - As men and women committed to freedom, we have decided to make public this document and to
struggle from our barricades with all our strength to obtain freedom, to the last of our comrades
and to the end of our lives.

WE DECLARE THAT:

1 - The Cuban crisis is our first priority.

2 - As internationalists we have the duty to support our anarchist comrades throughout the world
and those class brothers and sisters who, from the ranks of other ideologies akin to our
principles, ask for our solidarity.

3 - We are against all states and their representatives, against all governments and empires that
attempt to globalize, centralize or dominate the rest of Humanity.

4 - We are not interested in the fight for political power, but we always oppose any fascist,
capitalist or clasist enemy, now or in the future. Consistent with the idea that all political
governments have their roots in religion, we manifest our opposition to all religions and churches
as well as those philosophies and ideologies that oppose the critical development of all human
beings.

5 - We aspire to the total emancipation of the working class, giving the Cuban proletariat our
main attention and interest, given the socio-political situation it finds itself: a tragic
quagmire without parallel in our continent.

6 - We will offer our fraternal solidarity to any group, sector and/or movement anywhere in the
world that adopts as its beginning and end goals liberty and social justice for their own people.
Internationalism always starts at the closest place of struggle. We support all oppressed and
exploited people's struggle for their liberation from domination, whether imperialist or domestic.
We celebrate the beauty of human diversity and acknowledge the social and cultural contributions
of all communities on the planet. We will keep all kinds of free and fraternal relationships with
said sectors, anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist, in or outside Cuba.

7 - We are enemies of capitalism and consumerism. We support all forms of resistance to the
current capitalist exploitation: strikes, sabotage, workplace struggles, the squatting of
buildings, rent strikes, and struggles for the communal control of resources. We desire the
abolition of the wage and production system; therefore we are opposed to Capital recovery and the
continuation of the system of production in any shape or form, including the imposition of state
capitalism. We understand that if production is the basis for the exploitation perpetuated by
Capital, changing the forms of production means changing the forms of exploitation, not their
elimination.

8 - We are against the state in all its forms. We are opposed to all states without distinction of
ideology and we fight to abolish them. The objective of the state is to maintain and regulate
domination. The state has the monopoly on violence, the mechanisms to impart "justice" and
organized terror: the police, the army and the prison system.
8.1 - We are against the prison and "social adaptation" systems, seeing them as ways of control
by the state to perpetuate the privileges of the ruling class.
8.2 - We are against immigration systems and declare freedom of travel beyond our fictitious
state boundaries a basic human right.
8.3 - We are against the ideology of the authoritarian left that pretends to "transform" the
state, recovering its structures in order to keep power via the so-called "proletarian state", as
well as the current discourse of the democratic left that postulates "the need to democratize
the state" inferring that "an strategy in accordance with the times must arrive at the occupation
of the state" instead of its old proposal to "conquer it". This position of expecting everything
from the state and within the state logically brings the postponement of all social struggles and
perpetuates the democratic game offering "everybody" the possibility to "participate" in the
electoral farce.
8.4 - We are against the regressive pretensions of the conservative reaction (clasist, clerical,
fascist) that aspires to return to a disgraceful and corrupt past.

9 - We fight for a society based on equity and equality among people without distinctions of
gender. We are for the liberation and self-determination of women; therefore we oppose the
patriarchal and androcentric system of domination.

10 - We fight against racism. We favor cultural diversity. We are conscious of the historical
discrimination against the Afro-Cuban people, since the days of the slavery to the present, and we
affirm our struggle for the self-determination of Black people. Likewise we acknowledge the
historical oppression of the indigenous peoples of America. We stand in solidarity with their
libertarian struggles for self-management, control over their resources, justice and dignity.

11 - We reject mandatory heterosexuality imposed by patriarchal culture and recognize sexual
diversity in human relations. We support the self-determination of lesbians, homosexuals and
bisexuals.

12 - We are against the capitalist industrial system, built on the exploitation of the planet and
its inhabitants. We fight as well against the savage destruction of the Cuban ecosystem by
Castro's dictatorship. We support the struggle of all movements of resistance against the
continuous destruction of the environment. We acknowledge the need for revolutionary
transformation of our relationship with the planet and the species that inhabit it.

13 - We will fight on all fronts to reestablish in the proletariat the anarcho-syndicalist ideals
that were trampled by authoritarian "socialism" and torn away by the Castro's regime. Socialism
must always go hand in hand with liberty.

WE AFFIRM THAT:

1 - We object to the political repression established by the Castro fascist state.
2 - The political police must be disbanded.
3 - The death penalty must be abolished immediately.
4 - All political and social prisoners must be set free immediately.
5 - The military service must be abolished and the military institution disbanded. In its place
there will be organized, free and spontaneously, self-defense collectives, empowering links with
those antimilitarist sectors that inform their actions from a libertarian point of view.
6 - The abolition of the state is an immediate and realizable necessity. We acknowledge the
people's ability to organize their lives and their communities without the need for political,
economic, and military parasites.

CONCLUSIONS:

The Cuban Libertarian Movement, consistent and coherent with its ideals of libertarian socialism,
social justice, self-management, class organization, autonomous municipality, individual and
collective freedom for the Cuban people, is once again confronting Castro's fascist
totalitarianism. We live in times of resurgence of the libertarian ideal, where the growth of the
international protest movement is evident; today, more than ever, we glimpse the dawn of freedom
and we deem it necessary to fight against Cuba's totalitarian despotism, with our comrades in the
island as well as with anarchists throughout the world.

We urge all revolutionary libertarian groups to coordinate their efforts with ours in the struggle
for a libertarian socialist society. It is not about adding up ideological coincidences, but to
sum our efforts in committed revolutionary praxis, in real confrontation on all levels and all
planes, in the face of neocolonialist attacks and global militarism and capitalism. The social
revolution that we must bring about comes out of the real needs of the oppressed, out of the real
movement of the exploited, affirming their desire to live in a free and humane society that will
once and for all break with all ideologies of death, product of exploitation and oppression in the
name of progress. Comrades, let's be what we really are and take on the struggle. Let's assume the
consistent and revolutionary practice of Anarchism.

[Weidt]

Where did you obtain that Statement of Principles? Does the Cuban Libertarian Movement have a website? I searched Google and found a site, http://www.libertario.uni.cc, but it sells books from Amazon.com that are very much pro-capitalism, like books by Ayn Rand. I assume that is not them.

[Morpheus]

Both of these were posted to the syndicalist listerv, where I got them. The Cuban Libertarian Movement does not currently have a website. I believe their e-mail is [email protected], not sure though. They used to have a member on the syndicalists (http://www.anarchosyndicalism.org/as.php) listerv, they may still.

[redstar2000]

Confirmed sentences of independent syndicalists

Havana, June 19

What year?

Is this "old news"?


According to the judges, it was proved that the accused worked and collaborated "in favor of a foreign superpower in activities to deliberately change the economic, political and social regime of Cuba."

Well, did they do that? Were they "hanging out" with the American "diplomat" in Havana?

If they were, their credibility is shot.


Worker fired for demanding safety protections.


Worker fired for demanding better work conditions

These seem to be quite plausible reports...only to be expected in a class society.

However, they are not in prison or (seemingly) under any threat of that. In fact, they are pursuing their grievances in much the same fashion as would be done in the U.S. or any other capitalist country...except here they would probably have to hire an attorney.


As Cuba lives through one of the most painful periods of her history...

This doesn't make sense unless it was written shortly after the collapse of the USSR and the serious economic deprivations that followed in Cuba. It is self-evidently not true now.

The "most painful period" of Cuba's history was under Spanish colonialism and, following that, under U.S. imperialism.

The Castro era is a very distant third place.


After over forty four years of despotism without equal in this hemisphere...

Come now. Despotism has been, for the most part, the standard in Central and South America...and nearly all of them have been far more brutal and exploitative than Castro.


...with a judicial and correctional system comparable to that of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Gulags.

I don't imagine Cuban prisons are very pleasant places...but the comparison is rhetorical "over-kill". The Nazi practice was to deliberately work people to death; the practice in the Russian gulags was almost as bad. I've not heard anything remotely approaching that scale about Cuban prisons.


We fight as well against the savage destruction of the Cuban ecosystem by
Castro's dictatorship.

An odd charge...in light of Cuba's low level of industrialization, it seems implausible.


...the Castro fascist state.

That's just plain wrong.

Prior to 1995 or so, Cuba was a "state monopoly capitalist" society--much like the old USSR. Now it is clearly moving towards a "mixed economy" with a growing international capitalist presence.

The use of the word "fascist" in this context simply undermines the credibility of the entire statement.


All political and social prisoners must be set free immediately.

Even the ones who were working for the United States?


The abolition of the state is an immediate and realizable necessity.

In Cuba? Really?

I don't suppose one could completely rule out the possibility...but it doesn't sound terribly realistic.

What material and ideological pre-conditions must be met for the practical abolition of the centralized state is, of course, a topic of frequent controversy on this board.

I think it can be done by proletarian revolutions in advanced capitalist countries.

I'm quite skeptical that it makes much sense in a place like Cuba...at least not for a very long time.


...Castro's fascist totalitarianism

*Shakes head in disbelief*

http://anarchist-action.org/forums/images/smiles/redstar.gif

The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas

[Mick Black]

Can anyone provide background and documentation of the above mentioned cases?

The Cuban state convicted some of them of being paid US agents, so one would think that information would be available.