As revolution advanced, Cuban peasants’ lives were transformed
https://themilitant.com/2021/06/19/as-revolution-advanced-cuban-peasants-lives-were-transformed/
June 28, 2021
Working people and Rebel Army fighters line up at field hospital in
Sierra Maestra, Cuba, 1958. Revolutionary forces’ policy was to treat
peasants, combatants, wounded enemy soldiers without distinction.
Working people and Rebel Army fighters line up at field hospital in
Sierra Maestra, Cuba, 1958. Revolutionary forces’ policy was to treat
peasants, combatants, wounded enemy soldiers without distinction.
The Spanish edition of Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution
Within the Revolution by Vilma Espín, Asela de los Santos and Yolanda
Ferrer, three leaders of the Federation of Cuban Women, is one of
Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for June. Their interviews explain how
the revolution as it progressed transformed the lives of workers and
peasants and the role of women before and after the Jan. 1, 1959,
popular triumph over the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. De los Santos
said that the Second Front — the liberated zone established near
Santiago as the Rebel Army advanced in 1958 — set a precedent for the
workers and farmers government that followed. The extract is from the
chapter “It Gave Us a Sense of Worth.” Copyright © 2012 by Pathfinder
Press. Reprinted by permission.
BY ASELA DE LOS SANTOS
It was in the Sierra Maestra that preparations began on a large scale to
teach literacy to Rebel Army combatants. It was in the Sierra Maestra
that Fidel [Castro] made sure teachers were assigned to all the tiny
rural schools that had been closed by the tyranny.
From the moment the Second Front was established, Raúl [Castro] had the
same concern. He issued instructions stating that in all the camps,
combatants who were illiterate had to be taught how to read and write.
And he ordered the reopening of every small rural school that had been
closed because of the war.
Carrying this out was the assignment I was given when I arrived in August.
Within the first months of the establishment of the Second Front, a wide
swath of territory was liberated. After the defeat of Batista’s
“encircle and annihilate offensive” by early August, those areas were
largely free of Batista’s ground forces, making it possible to open more
than four hundred small schools, old and new. This was also due to
Raúl’s organizational capacities and to his insistence — whatever the
demands of war — that there would be no neglect of something so
important to the lives of the fighters and children as education. …
No one in the Rebel Army could confiscate anything from the peasants.
Everything was bought and paid for. The peasants were respected. That
was part of the ethical standard set by the Rebel Army. So Raúl created
a group to manage finances, to manage the small amount of economic
resources we had at the beginning. Out of this came a financial plan to
support the expanding war.
There were also sugar plantations and mills in the area governed by the
Second Front. Fidel, as commander in chief in the Sierra, ordered that
for each 250-pound bag of sugar produced, the plantations had to pay 10
centavos to the movement in that territory. …
We organized hospitals and medical units. Medicine was supplied by the
July 26 Movement in the cities. These units even performed surgery.
The Health Department provided health care to the population, peasants
and combatants, without distinction, including wounded enemy soldiers.
For the most part, people living in the area of the Second Front had
never had the chance to see a doctor before. Many had that opportunity
only when the Second Front was established. For the first time they were
treated like human beings.
That was the Health Department.
Another department was Propaganda. It was important politically, because
we had a radio station that could be heard throughout the country. It
reached as far as Venezuela. Through its transmitters, the radio station
broadcast news and advanced the struggle. It refuted all the lies being
spread to demoralize the Rebel Army and the people. It was also a way of
communicating with the other fronts.
Then there was the Justice Department. It performed marriages and
settled disputes among people in the area. It also regulated legal
matters in the camps. There were even trials for misconduct. Some
combatants were expelled from the Rebel Army. Discipline and order
reigned in the life of the camps.
And finally there was the Education Department.
In History Will Absolve Me, Fidel denounced the existence in Cuba of
widespread illiteracy. Illiteracy is a tool in the hands of the
exploiters. If you are ignorant, if you don’t know how to read or write,
you’re not free. Not knowing even how to sign your name makes people
feel inferior.
The rural population in the Second Front was poor, exploited, hungry.
Many young people joined the Rebel Army, so the number of combatants who
were illiterate grew. And this was a challenge.
That’s how the education effort started. Raúl issued orders that we
teach all these young combatants to read and write. …
So we set about teaching both Rebel Army combatants who were illiterate
and school-age children. When peasants heard and saw what we were doing,
they became interested. They asked about it. We told them that if they
found the facilities, it was possible to organize small schools. So
people started to look for sites, to find chairs, and to organize schools. …
So the campesinos helped open schools in locations they themselves
found. After the triumph of the revolution, those new little schools
remained.
In wartime you can sometimes achieve things that in normal times can’t
be done so easily. In the Second Front, change was in the air. There was
very little resistance there.
It’s true that in the old rural schools peasants often kept their
children back. There was a high rate of absenteeism. One reason was that
children went to work in the fields with their parents to sustain family
income. There were other reasons also: distances that were too long,
lack of shoes and clothing, and health problems.
But the new political motivation, the new hope, had a decisive influence
not only on the willingness to build little schoolhouses, to make
benches and improvise blackboards, but also on school attendance. This
despite the danger from bombing runs by the dictatorship, which at times
directly targeted civilians in murderous raids. …
A peasant congress was held in September 1958. Questions of the future
were discussed, a future that was imminent — things like the right to
land, the guarantee that the land belonged to those who worked it. In
fact, following the triumph of the revolution, one of the first acts was
the agrarian reform. More than 100,000 peasant families received titles
to the land they worked.
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Irvin D. Yalom “Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through
disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were
so! Your patient's wish to be in God's hands is not truth. It is simply
a child's wish—and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a wish for the
eveastingly bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'! Evolutionary theory
scientifically demonstrates God's redundancy—though Darwin himself had
not the courage to follow his evidence to its true conclusion. Surely,
you must realize that we created God, and that all of us together now
have killed him.” ― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept