By Pete Seidman

MIAMI — Activists here made significant advances towards unity in action and in winning new people to the struggle against the U.S. Blockade of Cuba over the weekend of March 8-10.

On March 8, International Women’s Day, some 40 people attended a film showing at Florida International University (FIU) saluting the fight for equality by women and LGBTQ+ people in Cuba. Speakers explained that the blockade was a major obstacle to that struggle.

The large majority at the meeting were students from FIU, many of whom introduced themselves as young socialists of Cuban descent. A layer of older, long-time activists also attended, including Max Lesnik from Radio Miami, and leaders of Alianza Martiana and the José Martí Cultural Association.

The mood in the room was buoyant, as earlier in the day, five of seven candidates in a slate backed by the campus chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) won election to the student government.

Excitement grew when several young people joined the event after participating in a campus protest against a speaking engagement by two Israeli soldiers that took place earlier that evening.

The meeting was co-sponsored by the YDSA and the Miami Coalition to End the U.S. Blockade of Cuba. The Miami Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the Miami Caravan to End the Blockade, the Green Party of Miami-Dade County, and the José Martí Youth also sponsored the event.

YDSA president Oscar Alvarez chaired the event and introduced the evening’s double feature: Mariposas en el Andamio (Butterflies on the Scaffold) and Maestra (Teacher).

“Butterflies” is an award-winning 1996 documentary directed by Margaret Gilpin. It offers a rare view of day-to-day life for gays and trans people in Cuba during the difficult years following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The documentary follows a group of working-class drag queens in the Havana suburb of La Güinera. It shows how they gained their neighbors’ respect and became an integral part of the community by forging an alliance with the female leaders of the local construction brigade and performing in the workers’ dining room.

“Maestra,” a 2012 documentary directed by Catherine Murphy, interviews women who were among the youngest female teachers of the 1961 Cuban literacy campaign.^[1] Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker narrates the film in English.

Other YDSA members offered Power Point presentations on the themes of the evening. A number of students who identified themselves as trans spoke about why they found the film inspiring.

In brief remarks, Miami Coalition member Pete Seidman urged the students to think of themselves like the youth depicted in Cuba’s literacy campaign, who went to the countryside with their lanterns to help improve literacy.

“There are hundreds of thousands of Cubans in Miami who have expressed opposition to the blockade,” he noted. “Our job is to carry our lanterns out to bust through the fog of lies and intimidation here to mobilize them in effective actions that can impact U.S. foreign policy.”

The meeting was covered by Radio Miami, a website widely used by Cubans in the United States and on the island.

Teachers’ march

Two days later, on March 10, the Miami Coalition to End the U.S. Blockade took part in an action organized by the United Teachers of Dade County to protest attacks on democratic rights and unions initiated by Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

About 300 unionists and supporters marched from Miami Circle (a site marking a nearly 2000-year-old village built by the indigenous Tequesta people in what is today Miami) to a rally at the Torch of Friendship in downtown.

Coalition members carried a specially made banner reading: “End the Blockade of Books in Florida! End the U.S. Blockade of Cuba!”

The banner expressed opposition to HB 1069, a measure the Florida state legislature passed, and DeSantis signed, last year. Since the law took effect on July 1, 2023, school districts have begun restricting student access to books referencing “sexual conduct,” a term newly defined by the state in this law — in effect censoring many books, keeping them from library shelves or out of classrooms.

At the rally, Miami Coalition members also displayed a 20-foot-wide banner calling for an end to the blockade of Cuba in English and Spanish.

Almost everyone at the action received the Miami Coalition’s written statement of support for the protest. The statement linked the educators’ struggle to other undemocratic attacks on anti-blockade caravans and anti-embargo activities, perpetrated by rightist organizations, often with tacit cooperation from the police and city authorities.

A small number of Cuban right-wingers argued at the coalition’s table that there is no such thing as a blockade of Cuba, that this is an “excuse used by communists” to justify the problems of the Cuban economy.

Apart from this handful, most demonstrators received the flyer with interest and appreciation. One Cuban teacher identified herself as a follower of Puentes de Amor, the anti-blockade and material aid organization led by Cuban activist Carlos Lazo.

Miami Coalition member and YDSA president Oscar Alvarez was among the speakers at the rally. Alvarez blasted the blockade of Cuba among a long list of other crimes by U.S. imperialism.

The Cuban daily Granma covered both activities of the Miami Coalition.

The Miami Coalition to End the U.S. Blockade of Cuba can be contacted at: endblockade305@gmail.com

NOTES

[1] The Cuban literacy campaign was a sweeping and successful year-long effort to abolish illiteracy in Cuba after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. It is estimated that more than 1 million Cubans were directly involved, as teachers or students, in this massive effort. About 250,000 volunteers fanned out across Cuba’s rural areas as teachers. They included more than 100,000 youth, ages 10-19, who took a break from school to live and work in the countryside where they taught peasants and others how to read and write, while learning about rural life. About 13,000 factory workers held classes for their illiterate coworkers after work hours. Literacy teachers also included 15,000 adult workers who continued to get paid after they moved to remote rural areas to teach literacy classes, through an arrangement that their coworkers would fill in for them so production would not suffer; and some 15,000 professional teachers who oversaw the technical and administrative aspects of the campaign.

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