(en) International Statement of Solidarity With Cuban Anti-Authoritarians: You Are Not Alone (ca)

Statement in support of Cuban Anti-Authoritarian/Horizontalist organizers, workers, activists, artists, musicians y mas in Cuba. Scroll down to see current list of endorsements and the original statement in Spanish. -- YOU ARE NOT ALONE -- The Communist Party of Cuba's VI Congress has just closed with an endorsement of the liberal reforms (“to each according to his labors”) promised in the realm of the economy: but along with these come cuts in social services and an increased presence for military and for technocrats in the machinery of government, with a reduction in the presence of intellectuals and workers. ---- In terms of rhetoric and deeds alike, efficiency, control and discipline replace equality, solidarity and partnership. Against this backdrop we have indications of a crackdown in the cultural realm, heralding yet another set-back to Cubans' exercise of their fundamental freedoms.

Performing artists find their names blackened by cultural officials-turned-censors engaged in frantic campaigns, the length and breadth of the country peddling false rumors and spurious accusations. A prestigious Cultural Theory Center finds its facilities and equipment being sabotaged again by “thieves” who forget to take anything and whom the authorities cannot seem to identify and punish. Poets and community activists are visited by police personnel who threaten to haul them before the courts as “counter-revolutionaries” and to leave them to the mercy of the “people's wrath”, thereby demonstrating that said wrath is not “of the people” nor independent of the powers that be who direct it.

Damage to social property, defamation and physical and psychological bullying (and violence) are not only offenses punishable under legal codes the world over – Cuba included – they are also considered acts of State Terrorism. For decades, the Cuban people gave their best efforts to their children and to the world in order to build up a fairer country with universal and high quality culture, health and education despite the irrational and begrudging bureaucracy that always depicted the people's gains as its own creations. Are the repressiveness and lying of such “apprentice Stalins” to go down in History as the features by which the Cuban process is to be remembered, rather than the day to day heroism of the Cuban people? This is not justice.

But if we are to ensure that this is not the case, then, from below and from the left, we must banish the silence and the self-censorship that underpin the impunity of the censors, that we should never open ourselves up to the charge that we are allegedly “playing into the enemy's hands.” The people who today are finding their integrity and their jobs threatened by these actions of the Cuban authorities are deserving of our utter respect, for we have seen them at close quarters in a range of different times and circumstances. They are not, as the official propaganda line has it, hirelings of the CIA, as they just about subsist on the same dismal income as the vast majority of the Cuban people. When they go on trips, they spend their meager savings on publicizing their humanistic creations and on the purchase of the materials they need in order to carry on with their efforts on behalf of a more cultivated country with greater freedom.

Whatever help they get from us (in the shape of some DVD, art equipment or the proceeds of some modest fund-raiser) represents solidarity from us male and female workers, artists and students who, in our own countries, resist the neo-liberal, authoritarian policies of the capitalists and their gendarmes in Seattle, Mexico City, Paris, Caracas, San Francisco and Buenos Aires.

What a contrast between our comrades and the bureaucrats comfortably traveling the world in Solidarity Drives, paid for with the Cuban people's money, bureaucrats who defect to Miami at the earliest opportunity and parade their repentance on TV as “freedom fighters”! What a contrast with certain “friends of Cuba” intellectuals who, naively or for hire, mistake the ideals of the Revolution for the policies of the Cuban state and deny to our Cuban comrades the very rights that they demand (and indeed, sometimes, enjoy) under their own bourgeois democratic regimes! The difference in quality, in terms of handiwork and spirit, from those “licensed reformists” who are ready to treat every wheel and turn of the Cuban regime with a fresh coat of theoretical gloss and to indulge in abstract (pseudo) critiques, as long as this suits the powers that be.

Our Cuban comrades' only sin is that they have the effrontery to contemplate (and change) their reality without waiting for promises from the Nanny State or Capital's siren songs. They believe in a fuller life, in a community where the unhindered growth of each is the precondition and measure of the unhindered growth of all. Dialogue with and lessons learned from our other worldly struggles, from piqueteros and from zapatistas have broadened their horizons and also allowed us to learn from their historical record of mistakes and popular resistance. They represent the liveliest, most splendid bequest of the Cuban Revolution which refuses to perish despite the canker of bureaucracy. They are (in body and soul) young marxists, anarchists, libertarian socialists, followers of Marti, humanists, feminists, ecologists, communitarians but, above and beyond any such labels and descriptions, they are decent folk who have risked their lives in the service of others. For which reason we shall not not allow them to stand alone.

We know that the forces of domination are mighty, that they control the billy-clubs and cyberspace, punishment and reward, the intimidated and the paid retainers. But we possess the sense of shame and hope against which – as popular anti-imperialist rebellions around the globe can testify – despotic power cannot stand. Hopefully there may, in the minds of the censor and the policeman, be some lingering memory of the original commitment given to the Cuban people that hoisted them into power: but, if not, we are ready to launch the mightiest solidarity campaign using every resource available to the law and to progressive public opinion worldwide.

We know our enemies are on the alert : but let them have no doubt of this: SO ARE WE.

Signatures of supporting groups:

– AK Internationalismus der IG Metall Berlin (section internationaliste du syndicat, Berlin) – (Germany)

– Asemblea Libertaria del Vallés Oriental – (Catalonia)

– Ateneo Arte y Cultura de l’Escale de l’Alt Empordà – (Catalonia)

- Biblioteca Popular Libertaria "Mauro Mejiaz" (Venezuela)

- Bre@king Borders/Rompiendo Muros (United States)

- Confederation National du Travail - C.N.T. Le Havre (France)

- Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo - C.N.T. (Spain)

- Colectivo Actores Sociales (Mexico)

- Colectivo Agentes de Cambio (Nicaragua)

– Colectivo A les Trinxeres – (Catalonia)

- Colectivo Editor de El Libertario (Venezuela)

- Colectivo Feminista Josefa Camejo (Venezuela)

- Colectivo Passapalavra (Brasil)

- Coordinación anarquista de Le Havre – (France)

– El Bloque Anarquista – F.L.L. – (Mexico)

- Equipo Editorial de Insurrectasypunto (Argentina)

– FALCLC (Federació Anarquista – Comunista llibertària Catalana) – (Catalonia)

- FAU Alemana (Freie Arbeiterinnen Union-AIT) (Germany)

- FAU (Federación Anarquista Uruguaya) (Uruguay)

- Federation Anarchiste – FA (France)

– Forschungs- und Dokumentationszentrum Chile-Lateinamerika e.V. – (Germany)

- Frente Anarquista Organizado (Chile)

- Friendly Fire Collective (United States)

- GALSIC – Grupo de Apoyo a los Libertarios y Sindicalistas Independientes en Cuba (France)

- ICEA (Instituto de Ciencias Económicas y de la Autogestión) – (Spain)

- International Solidarity Commission: Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

- Internationaler Arbeitkreis e.V. (Germany)

- iz3w – informationszentrum 3. welt, Freiburg i. Br (Germany)

- Le libertaire-periódico (France)

-Miami Autonomy & Solidarity (US)

- Movimiento Libertario Cubano

- NEFAC/FCLN (The Northeastern Federation Of Anarchist Communists) (United States)

- Organisation Communiste Libertaire (France)

– Red libertaria Apoyo mutuo – (Spain)

- Sección sindical de la Confederació General del Treball (CGT) de la Universidad de Barcelona (Spain)

- Solidarity Federation-British Section of the International Workers Association (Britain)

- Wooden Shoe Collective Bookstore and Infoshop (United States)

- WSA - Workers Solidarity Alliance (United States)

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