[Author's note: this piece is an extract from the book, Imperialism, War & Revolution, Brian Lyons,2024, which is available on all Amazon platforms ]
The speeches, interview and photographs contained in this book tell a story that is at once full of drama, hope, despair and heroism. This is a story whose ending has yet to be told because it is one whose pages have been written by millions of ordinary Cuban men and women who, like the David of old, have stood up to the US Goliath and are still alive to tell the tale.
In 1990, thirty years after the young Cuban rebels led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara carried through a national and social revolution against the US backed tyranny of Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban revolution appeared to be alone in the world. As one after another of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe were toppled by popular protest and the Soviet Union itself disintegrated, the Caribbean Island of Cuba lost the main source of its world trade.
Virtually overnight, Cuba forfeited 75 per cent of its imports and half of its oil imports which were its main source of energy. By 1993, production in Cuba was down to 15 per cent of total capacity, transport ground to a near halt and the population of Havana were facing power cuts of up to 8 hours per day.
It marked what the Cuban government then described as "a special period", one which has since returned with a vengeance almost 34 years later in 2024. With the election of Trump to the White House, all the strengths and weaknesses of the revolution will inevitably come to the fore.and invaluable lessons drawn from this previous period.
In Washington and Miami, expectations were high. After 30 years of a relentless economic and trade embargo, military intervention, sabotage and various assassination attempts against Castro, US aggression against the island at last appeared to be bearing fruit. The predictions were that Cuba could not possibly survive and, just to make sure, Washington introduced new legislation to further tighten the noose of the trade embargo.
Today, in 1997, against all the forecasts, Cuba has not only survived this onslaught but has demonstrated important progress. In economic terms alone, the year 1996 registered a 7.8 per cent growth in the economy with important increases in sugar production and tourism - its two main sources of revenue for funding further development. Another index of this progress was the announcement that its existing low levels of infant mortality had fallen to 7.9 deaths per 1000 live births, thus placing Cuba in the top twenty countries in the world with an infant mortality rate of below 8 per thousand.
Under normal circumstances, this is an extraordinary development for a Third World country, all the more so for one that has been blockaded and abandoned by its former allies. Only a fool, or someone blinded by hatred, could fail to ask the question: how is such a development possible? In a speech given to the ]congress of the Pioneros (the organisation of the Cuban school students) Castro poses this question for the world to consider:
"How is it possible to explain the miracle, the real miracle, that despite all that has happened...... in Cuba not a single school has closed, not a single children's club, nursery school, Pioneer's palace, scout centre, library, museum? How is it possible to explain that a blockaded country, which is talked about as if it were dying of hunger, has not thrown a single teacher onto the street, and that every day there are more teachers with more experience and more training?
No government in Europe or in the USA can ask such questions of themselves and answer them in such a forthright manner as Castro does before his young audience:
"The miracle I am talking about," retorted Castro, "is called Revolution; the miracle I am talking about is called Socialism."
For those who don't even dare to ask the question, the answer will undoubtedly sit uncomfortably and be dismissed for its apparent simplicity. But how else can Cuba's survival and progress be explained?
The simple fact is that, in contrast with the present global fashion for free market economics and their inevitable marriage to education and health cutbacks, only the socialist revolution in Cuba has consistently devoted such a high proportion of its budget on these decisive areas of human need. That, of course, is one of the key differences between capitalism and socialism - the latter prioritises human need whilst the former is geared around fattening the bank balances of the super rich.
Unlike the regimes in Eastern Europe and the former USSR which called themselves Communist, the Cuban revolution has always depended for its survival and progress upon the active participation of working people and youth in carrying out decisions and confronting new challenges. Over a 6 year period this participation grew ever deeper and assumed myriad forms. Between 1994 and 1996, for example, the whole of Cuba became a parliament as tens of thousands of assemblies of workers, farmers, students, teachers and others, drew millions of Cuban people into discussing the economic crisis and how to resolve it.
At the centre of this process of an ever-widening participatory democracy, were the talents, energies, enthusiasm and an extraordinarily high level of political consciousness of Cuban youth who now comprise a majority of the island's 11 million population. Were it not for this, it is doubtful whether the Cuban revolution could have survived its most critical moments.
A Defining Moment for the Revolution
One of these moments came in August 1994, when, for the first time in its history, the Revolution was faced with street protests. What began as a peaceful demonstration turned into a riot along the Malecon, the long Havana seafront, where hundreds of people, mostly young, charged along the streets smashing hotel windows and attacking government buildings.
Taken in isolation, the riot itself may not appear particularly significant. What made it such a defining moment in recent Cuban history was the context in which it occurred and the response to it.
The August 5th riot occurred amid a wave of illegal emigration from Cuba when over 30,000 Cubans took to the seas in makeshift rafts to make the crossing over the Florida straits to the USA. In other incidents, boats and ferries were seized by armed hijackers seeking to leave the country. This wave of emigration was prompted by a carefully crafted US policy. Seeking to exploit the economic difficulties facing the island, the US government systematically denied Cubans entry visas whilst, at the same time, exhorting them to leave the country illegally.
With the US government tightening the blockade even further, some US voices calling for a total military blockade of the island, and Clinton carrying out bellicose naval maneuvers just outside Cuban territorial waters, the situation in Cuba was highly charged and primed for the type of incident which could justify US military intervention.
On the day of the Malecon riot, Castro appeared on Cuban television and explained the nature of the US strategy:
"Naturally they wanted bloodshed, gunfights and people killed first of all as use for propaganda, secondly as an instrument of subversion and thirdly as a means of intervention in our country
“The US strategy is to create a situation, to promote as much discontent as possible in our country, to divide the population, to create the most difficult conditions possible, to cause a conflict, a bloodbath. They dream about this, they long for it."
If the US government was going to realise its dream, then this would have been the time. The Cuban economy was nearly paralysed, the population was facing wide ranging scarcities of fuel, food, clothing and domestic goods, and the country was gripped by the drama of the rafter crisis. But there was no bloodshed or gunfights. Nobody was killed or beaten in battles with Cuban riot squads or border police.
Instead of sending in tanks and riot police with all the repressive paraphernalia of modern crowd control, the August 5 riot on the Malecon was ended by a spontaneous counter-mobilisation of thousands of workers and youth, some of them armed with improvised batons and stones of their own.
The response to the Malecon was part of an outpouring of popular support for the revolution, in which Cuban youth played a particularly prominent role. Two days later, in the centre of Havana, an estimated half a million people demonstrated their support for the revolution. This was followed on September 7 by youth rallies all over the county where young supporters of the revolution laid claim to the streets. Two days later, a new emigration agreement between Cuba and the US was announced whereby Washington agreed to take 20,000 legal emigrants each year. The young Cuban revolutionaries had won an important battle.
Part of a Proud History
Youth in Cuba have always added much of the yeast to the island's national and social revolutions.
Ever since the foundation of the Federation of University Students in 1923, the University of Havana has hosted a proud tradition of student rebellion against the various dictatorships. It was the students who acted as the catalyst for the 1930s movement of rebellion against the Machado dictatorship, which spawned the Cuban People’s Party.
It was from the left wing of this Party that Castro recruited the students - particularly those of a humbler origin - who would help form the nucleus of his future revolutionary organisation known as the July 26th Movement.
Of the 200 or so young rebel fighters who initially formed the July 26th Movement, most of them were students or recent graduates. Castro himself was only 26 when he led the assault on Moncada and 32 when he led the triumphant rebel army into the streets of Havana in January 1959.
The victory of the Cuban revolution in 1959 changed forever the bleak social and economic landscape of a country which hitherto had been blighted by absolute poverty, poor health, illiteracy and underdevelopment. With the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship, this social structure was torn asunder by a series of dazzling reforms whose scope and sheer pace of implementation were breath taking.
Within 3 years the revolutionary government had carried through the most widespread agrarian reform ever witnessed in the Western hemisphere. As the US became increasingly belligerent, Cuban workers pushed the government to carry through widespread nationalisations of US controlled businesses. The system of racial segregation with its white-only rules of education, employment and leisure opportunities, was eliminated. In a similar vein, equal rights were established for women, leading to the world's most progressive legislation on abortion, contraception and divorce. A system of health care, free at the point of use, was also established during this period, and eventually became the pride of the entire continent.
The socialist revolution in Cuba convincingly demonstrated that it was possible for a Third World country to eradicate the main features of underdevelopment caused by imperialist domination and a capitalist social structure. But the Cuban revolutionaries were not content solely with liberating their people from material poverty. To advance they also believed it necessary to carry through something akin to a spiritual revolution to create a new kind of human being free from prejudice, selfishness, violence, and the dog-eat-dog competitiveness bred by capitalism. At the centre of such a transformation would be the education of the younger generation around a new praxis of liberation.
The first and most brilliant exposition of this project was the 1961 literacy crusade.
Revolution in Education
It was April 1961 and all secondary students aged 13 and over stopped school and joined a 100,000 strong army of young teachers which fanned out across the length and breadth of the island to live and work amongst Cuba's poverty stricken and partially illiterate rural population. For the next 6 months, armed with 3 million improvised books and paraffin lamps, these literacy brigades fought an energetic and inspired war against illiteracy.
For Cuban youth this literacy campaign was fueled by a vision of transforming their country and, in the process, transforming themselves into better, more rounded human beings. The recruits were mostly middle class and white from the capital and other cities. The illiterate population of the countryside, on the other hand, were mostly poor blacks or mestizo (mixed race).
The campaign was not just a one-way street where young, educated whites taught poor blacks. Rather, it was a two-way process in which the brigadistas learned about the land, the lives and the history of the rural population. From the older peasants or agricultural labourers, the young teachers would garner many a story, passed down through generations, about slavery and Cuba's struggle for independence.
This change in consciousness of the brigadistas was recorded 16 years later by Armando Valdez, himself a 12 year old brigadista at the time of the campaign:
"I could never have known that people lived in such conditions, I was the child of an educated, comfortable family. Those months, for me, were like the stories I have heard about conversions to a new religion. It was, for me, the dying of an old life and the start of something new. I cried, although I had been taught that men must not cry, when I first saw the desperation of those people, people who had so little - no, they did not have 'so little', they had nothing! It was something which at first, I could not quite believe.
"I did not need to read of this in Marx, in Lenin, in Martí. I did not need to read what I saw before my eyes. I wrote to my mother and my father. I was only 12 years old. I was excited to be part of something which had never happened in our land before."
(Armando Valdéz, cited by Theodore MacDonald, Schooling the Revolution, Praxis Press, 1996.)
The entire nation was galvanised by the crusade as the television, radio and newspapers urged "every Cuban to be a teacher and every house a school". In just six months illiteracy in Cuba was practically eliminated, being reduced from 23.6 per cent to just 3.9 per cent. In recognition of this fantastic achievement, the government planned a victory celebration with sports, cultural activities and a huge parade to welcome the return of the brigadistas. The scene was described by an observer as follows:
In the remnants of their uniforms, often wearing peasant hats and beads, and carrying their knapsacks and lanterns, the brigadistas swarmed into the capital, singing and laughing and exchanging stories of their experiences. The similarities between the joyous return of the literacy army and the triumphal entry of the guerrilla troops only 3 years earlier was not lost on the population. It was one of the revolution's finest hours.
With the brilliant success of the literacy crusade as its foundation, the government carried out a remarkable change in education provision within Cuba. From a situation of education being the privilege of a small elite, Cuba now enjoys a comprehensive system from pre-school nursery education through to university.
The material contained in this book, especially Castro's address to the 2nd Congress of the Young Pioneers, demonstrates a real continuity between the radicalism of the first years of the revolution and the consciousness, outlook and practice of today's younger generation. No wonder Castro could say with such pride that "we have more confidence in you than in anyone else in the world".
This wasn’t always the case, however.
Early Errors
Between the dazzling radicalism of the 1960s and the new generation of young revolutionaries confronting the difficulties of the Special Period, the revolution and its leadership committed a series of errors which severely undermined the prestige of the revolution and drove many young people outside of its ranks. These errors consisted mainly of a growing intolerance towards signs of dissent or so-called social deviance such as homosexuality and the adoption of "extravagant foreign fashions, customs and behaviour"
This is common knowledge in Cuba nowadays and is clearly expressed in Cuban films such as Fresa y Chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate) where the 1970's persecution of a young homosexual is accompanied by a general ignorance, intolerance and fear of works of art, literature and music not sanctioned or promoted by the authorities.
Fortunately, these errors were eventually corrected but not before they began to seriously sap the revolution's most precious resource - the energy and creativity of youth who would guarantee its future.
The corrosive effect of these and other errors had become so extensive that, according to a 1986 report by Cuba's National Directorate of Police, a study showed that some 48 per cent of citizens under the age of 25 expressed "apathy, disillusionment or even, in some cases, hostility towards the government.".
In part these errors were a product of excessive enthusiasm and over zealousness in pursuing the idea of moulding a new society of communist men and women from the clay of the younger generation. This was coupled with a view of the communist youth organisation as one which was merely a transmission belt for the ideas of the government and the Party. As early as 1962, when the Association of Rebel Youth developed into the Union of Young Communists (UJC), Che Guevara was already pointing to the danger of the youth organisation becoming too docile an instrument of the Party:
"Nevertheless, compañeros, there have been many problems along this difficult road, big difficulties, gross errors, and we have not always been able to overcome them all. It is obvious that the Union of Young Communists, as a young organisation, a younger brother of the Integrated Revolutionary Organisations*, must drink from the fountain of experiences of compañeros who have worked longer in all the tasks of the revolution.
"And it is obvious that they should always listen, and listen with respect, to the voice of that experience. But the youth must also create. Youth that does not create is really an anomaly. And the Union of Young Communists has been a bit lacking in that creative spirit. Through its leadership it has been too docile, too respectful, and not decisive in looking at problems on its own.
Like some of the other ideas of Che Guevara, his observations on youth became a victim of a much broader problem which was beginning to envelop Cuban society.
The undeniable economic and social progress of Cuba between 1959-89 was underpinned by its very favourable trade relations with the Soviet Union, including substantial amounts of aid. While this aid was materially beneficial, it did bring with it some negative influences.
Beginning in the early 1970's, Cuba progressively incorporated Soviet economic management and planning methods into the heart of its economy which steadily drained the lifeblood of the revolution over a ten year period. In place of the revolution's earlier reliance on mobilisations, volunteer labour, social solidarity and socialist norms of distribution, the new methods introduced criteria of profitability based upon meeting and surpassing production targets within each state enterprise.These were not presented as temporary concessions but as a desirable model for economic development.
The scale of this was enormous and permeated nearly every aspect of the island's life. This was registered in the flourishing of a large layer of technocrats and bureaucrats who enjoyed material privileges associated with their managerial and professional status. Although their salary may not have been qualitatively greater than the national average, there were many perks such as cars, holiday apartments and access to luxury goods. The system fostered the growth of corruption and profiteering in the distribution of goods, materials and food also. Favouritism in work assignments and opportunities for bonus earnings became widespread, often with the complicity of trades union officials.
Investment decisions were also warped, with less and less emphasis being placed on social projects such as housing, child care centres and new health facilities. Accordingly, during the 1970's and early 1980's what Castro later described as the decade of shame - there was a rise in cynicism among the workers, especially younger workers, and increased rates of absenteeism; common features which were deeply embedded in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
In his subsequent indictment of these developments in 1986, Castro stated that this process resulted in "the masses starting to get skeptical, discouraged, and demoralised, and the ideas and objectives of our revolutionary process becom[ingl discredited."
Fortunately, these errors were recognised and halted before the rot had fully set in.
Internationalism and Renewal.
In the middle of this "decade of shame", two events combined to both invigorate and challenge the revolution. The first of these was the 1979 revolution in Nicaragua which toppled the US henchman Anastasio Somoza. This revolution was the first successful popular insurrection in Latin America since the Cuban revolution itself. Its impact within Cuba was absolutely electrifying.
Just one week following the victory celebrations in Nicaragua, 26 commanders of the rebel Frente Sandinista travelled to Cuba to participate as guests of honour in the annual commemoration of July 26th. A huge roar from a 20,000 strong crowd greeted their arrival as the young fighters, with arms in hand and still dressed in their battle fatigues, took pride of place on the speakers’ platform. And later, as the Sandinistas toured various parts of the island, they were greeted by jubilant crowds. For many it was like reliving the euphoric days of the Cuban revolution when the young, bearded guerrillas emerged triumphantly from the mountains.
At the July 26th celebration rally Castro dedicated virtually his entire speech to the significance of Nicaragua's revolution and stressed the powerful impulse which it had given to the process of change within Cuba itself.
"We thank the Sandinistas not only for their beautiful gesture, their unforgettable gesture, for the great honour they have conferred upon us with their presence and their affectionate and fraternal words. We also thank them for stimulating us in our own efforts, in our own struggle, because they help us to improve, to overcome our own shortcomings.
"They stimulate us in our task of perfecting our work, perfecting our Revolution, in the uncompromising struggle against weaknesses, against errors, against things badly done; this struggle is not a temporary campaign, a matter of one day, one week, one month, or one year, but rather a struggle that we must go on waging for many years."
Part of that ongoing struggle was the renewal of Cuba's internationalist foreign policy of providing unconditional material support to oppressed nations of the Third World. In the case of Nicaragua, Castro called for a worldwide emulation campaign of material aid and Cuba led the way by recruiting thousands of volunteer doctors and teaches to work in Nicaragua's most war-tom areas.
In contrast, the US response to the Nicaraguan revolution - and to the growth of other liberation struggles in El Salvador and Guatemala - was to embark on typically regressive course of covert warfare. In addition to arming and training the Salvadorean and Guatemalan dictatorships and bankrolling the contras in Nicaragua, the Carter administration once again raised the temperature of the cold war against Cuba through a series of naval war maneuvers and broadening of sanctions.
This climate of heated confrontation provoked an exodus of 125,000 people from Cuba in 1980. Some 41 per cent of those who left were young people aged 27 or under. Known as the Mariel boat lift, the exodus was sanctioned by the Cuban government which declared an open door policy of allowing all those who wished to leave to do so and facilitated a massive boat-lift operation of vessels arriving from Miami.
The size of the exodus was seized upon as a demonstration of the unpopularity of the revolution and as a sign also of a generalised disenchantment of Cuban youth. But this was only a small part of the picture because the vast majority of Cubans decided to stay and be part of the revolution, including that part which needed rectifying. A case in point was that of a gay man who was actually encouraged, indeed almost forced, to leave as part of the 1980 boat lift.
"A brother of one of my friends told us an interesting story. He ie gay and he has always been a revolutionary. When Mariel opened up some people in his Committee for the Defence of the Revolution filled out an application form for him to leave for Miami. He was outraged. He went to his job director and asked him to talk with the people in the CDR.
"The job director told them, This man is a revolutionary. We don't care who he sleeps with, you don't do such a thing to a revolutionary. I asked my friend, don't you think that other homosexuals would have left Cuba if this had happened to them?' He said, not if they were revolutionaries. " [Interview with Eva Chertov, Intercontinental Press, Vol 19, No 11, 1981]
The response of the rest of the Cuban population to the boat lift certainly validates this observation. On April 17, one million people marched past the Peruvian embassy at Mariel where many of the emigrants had gathered. The following month, 1.5 million attended a May Day rally and, just two weeks later, no less than 5 million people - half of the island's entire population - participated in a series of simultaneous demonstrations in support of the revolution. Baptised as the "March of the Fighting People", it was the greatest dsplay of unity, militancy and the people's support for the revolution, despite the growth of corruption and privilege.
Marches of the Fighting People: Left, October 1980. Right, December 2024
The broad scope of Cuba's internationalist aid during the 1980's was registered by some 15,000 Cuban civilians serving as doctors, teachers and building workers in at least 40 countries of the Third World.
The list of Cuba's generous aid and support for other peoples is almost endless. However, by far the greatest contribution made by Cuba was the massive participation of its volunteers in Angola's was against South Africa. This reached its high point in November 1987 when the South African army launched a huge offensive in the area of Cuito Cuanavale, threatening a major defeat of the Angolan army. In one of modern warfare's most intense battles, the mighty racist army of South Africa was defeated by the combined forces of Cuba, Angola and SWAPO of Namibia.
This victory would have been impossible without Cuba and changed the course of African history. The South African army's imperial dream was over. It was eventually pushed out of Angola and forced negotiate the independence of Namibia. When Nelson Mandela visited Cuba in July 1991, he explained the sigiifcance of this victory in front of hundreds of thousands of Cubans who turned out to see him.
"The crushing defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale was a victory for the whole of Africa," Mandela said. "The defeat of the apartheid army was an inspiration to the struggling people inside South Africa. Without the defeat of Cuito Cuanavale our organisation would not have been unbanned. The defeat......has made it possible for me to be here today!..... Cuito Cuanavale has been a turning point in the struggle to free the continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid. "
Within Cuba itself the war with South Africa had captured the imagination of young people - some 300,000 had volunteered to serve in Angola - and helped re-ignite the flames of revolutionary struggle. Tie significance of this was explained by Jorge Risquet who headed Cuba's negotiating team in the aftermath of Cuito Cuanavale.
"Our generation that was born after the revolution, or that was very young at the time of the revoluüon, would sometimes say, ‘There’s no place for heroism anymore, there's no imperial metropolis to battle, no tyranny to be overthrown.'
"But they showed with their internationalism, the highest sentiment a human being is capable of - the sentiment of solidarity, of helping a brother, of helping a fellow human being - by going to another country and being prepared to die at the side of whoever has asked for your help.
"That’s why the volunteers come back with the healthy pride of having fulfilled their duty. They know they have met the challenge facing their generation, and that their heroism is equal to that of the young heroes of the past.
"That's the sentiment I saw in their faces not only here but also each time I spoke with them in Angola. Those young people set an extraordi nary example. That‘s why I say they are our hope. With a young generation like this, we know the revolution is in good hands."
The involvement of so many young Cubans in internationalist missions across the world gave the new generation first hand experience of what capitalism had to offer the world's poor. Having laid their lives on the line for the cause of others, upon their return to Cuba these young fighters became a decisive force in reviving the revolution's deeply rooted traditions of social solidarity and sacrifice.
New Chapter
It was largely on this basis that the subsequent "rectification of errors" and the rejuvenation of the revolution commenced in the mid-1980s. This process opened a new chapter in the revolution's capacity to shake off the debilitating and corrosive influences of the Soviet Union and blaze a new frail that would once again place the revolutionary mobilisation of Cuban workers and youth at the centre of Cuba's efforts to construct a new society.
Such was the scope of the rectification process - comprising a widespread renewal of leadership, the reorganisation of key elements of the economy, a revival of volunteer labour to carry out essential public works, and major changes in the work of the UJC - that it has aptly been described as a revolution within the revolution.
The roots of this change took hold at the third congress of the Cuban Communist Party in 1986. There, following an extensive discussion of the issues, the delegates decided upon a wholesale renewal of the Party s leadership bodies to ensure a transition in leadership to a new generation of workers, women, youth and black people. This was registered in the election of a new Central Committee and Political Bureau, of which forty and fifty per cent respectively were elected for the very first time, and the reduction of the average age of Central Committee members from 51 to 47.
Equally encouraging was the reasoning behind this rejuvenation of the Party leadership. Describing this transition as a question of renewal or death', Castro motivated the change on behalf of the outgoing leadership:
"We have to have confidence in the youth. I mentioned earlier todav that the average age of those who began the armed struggle was twenty-two or twenty-three - and we thought we were capable of starting a revolutlon. I was a little older; I was twenty-six. When the revolution triumphed the great bulk of the combatants were around thirty years old. We were enormously inexperienced but we believed in our capabilities.
"Perhaps if we'd had a lot of experience we might have been inhibited, perhaps even converted into conservatives. But fortunately we weren’t aware of our inexperience. We decided without the slightest vacillation to take the road of revolution and, in the end, this proved to be the right decision. That is why we have to have confidence in the youth."
As part of this renewal process Castro also argued the case for positive action to secure a higher proportion of women and black people on the new leadership. Probably the best known product of this transition was the appointment of Roberto Robaina as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Robaina was a central leader at the start of the rectification process and was the person most identified with the changes in the nature and style of the work of the UJC itself.
From its foundaton in 1962, the UJC has evolved today to become a mass organisation of some 600,000 members. Besides its vanguard role as a youth movement which seeks to win young people to communist ideas and to set the highest standards of sacrifice and militancy, the UJC also seeks to resolve the most pressing needs of young people and to put these at the centre of the Cuban state as a whole.
Under Robaina's leadership, the UJC recognised that barriers had emerged between the young communists and young people as a whole. At its Fifth Congess in 1987, convened under the banner of “Without Formalisms”, the UJC ushered in a radical review of its functioning.
This included an overhaul of its principal journals, Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) and Somos Jovenes (We Are Youth), which now began to address some of the more immediate concems of youth and to reflect a growing cultural diversity. By providing a forum for debate and publication of dissenting views, the UJC sought to open a bridge of communicaton between the youth and the revolution - a genuine, two-way process of free and open dialogue.
In shedding its dogmatism, the UJC became less dismissive of those young people who didn't participate in the revolution's main projects and became more concerned with acting on behalf of all Cuban youth. Working with the appropriate Ministries and local authorities, the UJC began to promote beach parties, roller skating contests, arts events, discos and camping activities that all youth could participate in. One outstanding innovation was the September 1987 decision to establish Youth Computer Clubs, providing 'fun youth activity’. By March 1991, 106 of these clubs had been opened in different parts of the island.
In Cuba today - when the economic crisis is causing such huge shortages and investment is necessarily diverted to tourist facilities - this combination role of the UJC in fighting for and providing recreational and cultural facilities is a vital ingredient of its daily work.
When these changes began in the 1980s they paralleled the renewal process within the Communist Party. In the case of the UJC, particular emphasis was placed on correcting the very considerable discrepancy between the proportion of young women members, numbering 41 per cent, compared to just 19% of female leaders.
At its 1987 Congress this was radically altered at a single stroke so that 40 percent of the newly elected leaders were female. Additionally, some 32 percent were black or mestizo.
The rectification process was never completed. Just as it was building up a head of steam, it collided with the catastrophic economic effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe Nevertheless, were it not for this rejuvenation between 1986-90, it can be said without fear of contradiction that the revolution would never have been able to survive its next challenge.
It is largely thanks to the rectification process that the majority of Cuban youth today actively embrace the revolution's long traditions of patriotism, struggle and sacrifice. Today in Cuba you can witness for yourself in the schools, colleges and universities, how the names of Antonio Maceo, Jose Marti and Che Guevara are honoured and their place in Cuban history studied with fresh eyes. Outside the classrooms, torchlight processions and re-enactments of famous battles take place to mark the anniversaries of these national heroes.
These are much more than official rituals and, least of all, are they attempts by an ageing regime to hang on to outdated ideas. On the contrary, young people willingly embrace these traditions and act upon them. A recent example of this were the 67,000 secondary school and university students who voluntarily participated in the 1996 Brigadas Estudiantiles de Trabajo (Student Work Brigades) carrying out massive de-weeding programmes in the countryside.
This is not to suggest that all Cuban youth are supporters of the revolution or that they participate in its different activities and organisations. On the contrary, recent studies by Cuban organisations have confirmed that there are varying levels of involvement, understanding and commitment. It isn't difficult to find young Cubans who are openly critical of the government and its policies. It would be foolish to pretend otherwise, especially in a context of a deep economic crisis which has accelerated social inequalities and the search for individual solutions.
Of Cuba's current population of 11 million, nearly 60 per cent were born since the revolution. Today's teenagers between the ages of 13-19 have grown into adulthood at a time when the liberation movements in Latin America have been defeated and when the general levels of resistance by working people and youth in the region have at best been sporadic.
For this layer of youth, the Cuban revolution - as an example of a different society with radically different values - stands alone in the world. On the other hand, capitalism has mostly been something they have read about in history books or heard about from their parents and from news broadcasts. Only now, in the conditions of the Special Period, are they discovering for themselves the injustices and inequalities bred by the introduction, albeit limited, of market forces into Cuban society.
For those between 20 and 40 years old, the situation is somewhat different. A 30-year-old Cuban born in 1966 will have lived through the economic and social progress registered during the revolution's first 30 years. For them, the special period signifies a considerable clash of values and expectations, and a cultural shock as well. Amongst this group there has been a sizeable number of professionals who have abandoned their jobs as teachers, engineers and doctors to find work in the far more lucrative tourist industry,
Then there are today's school children whom Castro refers to as the 'children of the special period. Aged between 6 and 14, these very young people are growing into adulthood in the maelstrom of a profound economic crisis. For them the success or failure of the revolution's attempt to resolve the economic crisis, whilst simultaneously retaining socialist values, will have a direct bearing on their educational and employment prospects. More significantly, as the heirs and guardians of Cuba's future, their ideological response and development during this period is absolutely pivotal. As we shall see, it is on this terrain that the revolution has made measurable advances.
Such a breakdown of Cuba's younger generation is inevitably somewhat schematic, not least of all because criss-crossing these different age groups are the strands of an increasing social differentiation within Cuban society. Notwithstanding the revolution's unqualified success in eliminating class exploitation and discrimination based upon race and gender, the legacy of such oppression has left its mark.
For example, whilst Cuba is the most racially integated society in the world, there is still a disproportionate lack of black political and trades union leaders and of black people in senior managerial roles. At the other end of the scale, black people still suffer most from the legacy of poor housing, tending to predominate in areas of overcrowded and deteriorating housing stock.
Women face similar remnants of past oppression. Despite the most progressive laws on abortion, contraception and divorce, combined with an extensive programme of child care and an equal opportunities policy that has facilitated the entry of women into the labour force at nearly every level, most adult women still work the classical double shift as housewife and worker. Amongst industrial workers, women often occupy the lower-paid unskilled or semi-skilled posts.
These racial and gender differences continued to mark the broader income differentials between different categories of workers which existed during the revolution's first 30 years and now merge with the increasing class differentiation which has developed in the special period.
In his speech to the closing session of the Cuba Vive festival in 1995, Castro refers extensively to this class differentiation as a product of a necessary retreat in face of overwhelming odds.
A key feature of this growing Inequality are the increasing numbers of people with access to dollars with which to purchase sorely needed household items, clothing and food. According to Carlos Lage, the Minister of Industry, some 40 per cent of the Cuban population have access to dollars at some stage during the year. For many, these dollar earnings are very occasional and quite insufficient to offset the scarcity of goods available on the peso market. Most Cubans who are fortunate enough to receive money from relatives in the USA are white, reflecting the fact that it was the wealthy middle class and professional Cubans who left the country. For black workers toiling in the fields and the factories, dollar earnings are almost non-existent. The same can be said for many workIng women - especially single mothers - who only just get by on peso salaries.
Of course, there are not the extremes of wealth associated with capitalist society, and nobody in Cuba is abandoned without somewhere to live and something to eat. Nevertheless, there is an increasing social differentiation with the appearance of peso millionaires emerging from the ranks of some 200,00 self-employed workers. With the increasing value of the peso in relation to the dollar, such peso fortunes are not inconsiderable.
The poorest and most vulnerable sectors of Cuban society have been cushioned by measures guaranteeing social security payments, a minimum wage, milk for children and the retention of free health care and education up to university level. These measures are particularly important for the rural population which, in Latin America generally, are victims of neglect and brutal exploitation. With schools, roads, electricity, plumbing, hospitals together with guaranteed land rights, Cuba's rural population still stands head and shoulders above its regional neighbours.
Nevertheless, an essential feature of the new economic measures has been the application, albeit to a limited degree, of market criteria in determining investment decisions, employment opportunities and in the distribution of income and goods.
Today the state can no longer fully guarantee employment to workers or students in areas which they themselves would choose to work. The state cannot supply enough food through the ration books or guarantee reasonable prices for goods that are sold on the free market. And, with the decriminalisation of dollar holdings, the state no longer fully regulates income differentials.
To be sure, the state is still the dominant force behind most investment in jobs and in education, health, housing and other services such as water, electricity and telecommunications. None of these services have been privatised for the benefit of fortune hunters.
However, elements of a mixed economy are emerging and bringing with them an inexorable clash of ideologies; between, on the one hand, the socialist traditions and goals of the revolution and, on the other, the daily reality of market forces that push increasing numbers of people into competitive and individual modes of thought and action.
Young people in Cuba are not exempt from this clash. Students for example, who are now required to seek a loan if they live with their parents, can no longer expect a guaranteed job after graduating. Of the total 1996 crop of university graduates, only 84 per cent secured jobs immediately upon graduating. This compares with a figure of 92 per cent for the previous year. Judging by the numbers who subsequently found work, (by February 1996, only 240 of the 1995 crop were unemployed), there is no problem of long-term graduate unemployment.
Whilst giving cause for concern and uncertainty, youth unemployment in Cuba pales into insignificance when compared to the long-term, mass unemployment of youth in Britain, Europe and America - not to mention the Third World - where it is a weapon used to depress wages and to accelerate divisions based upon race, gender and nationality. The social differentiations that are now appearing within the Cuban population are of a different nature. Their primary effect is to accentuate competition around the type of work which is available and to corrode the cement of social solidarity which binds Cuban society together.
The ideological clash engendered by the conditions of the special period is clearly visible in the tourist industry which provides fertile ground for the growth of competition, corruption, prostitution and individual enrichment.
Competition for jobs within tourism is intense and, although the Cuban state has established clear mechanisms for the training and selection of tourist workers, there are still openings via friends or family in the industry or simply through bribing management.
A 1995 survey, carried out by researchers for the paper Juventud Rebelde, showed that whilst a majority (62 per cent) of the workforce in the principal hotels in Havana came from established training agencies, some 25 per cent "obtained the post through friends or relatives" and the rest "through their own efforts". In answer to the question, what would happen if you lost your job in a tourist facility, one young worker replies that the passport for a chef to get into tourism "is to have $400''.
The corrosive effects of this are particulary important for young people who comprise a majority of the workforce. Of the 62,000 workers in this sector, some 35,000 are young workers of whom 14,000 are members the UJC. According to Juventud Rebelde, some young people become active in the UJC because they believe it will help them get a job in tourism.
The UJC and the trades unions recognise the importance of tourism to the economy and the advantages it gives to the workforce - above all with dollar tips. In the course of waging an open fight against favouritism and corruption, the UJC sought to demonstrate the same standards of excellence, sacrifice and solidarity displayed by workers in the mines, fields and factories.
Part of this fight has been a campaign to convince young tourist workers to pool their tips and contribute a proportion of them towards the country’s health budget. A majority of tourist workers are reportedly in favour of this. According to a Juventud Rebelde poll, some 75 per cent of those surveyed were in favour of pooling tips whilst just 22 per cent believed in retaining them as a reward for their individual effort.
So even in this unfavourable terrain, the revolution can boast a modest success in upholding socialist work ethics. This is confirmed by the fact that since 1993, tourist workers have donated around $1.9 from their tips to the health service.
Democracy and Youth: The Children of the Special Period.
One important measure of any society's progress is its treatment of school age children. The worldwide abuse of children is now so common that it has almost become an accepted part of life. In Britain, where it has just been reported that one in three children are born into poverty, hardly an eyebrow is raised. In contrast, faced with the inevitable rise in juvenile crime which this induces, the British state is now proposing legislation to impose curfews and fines on young people under the age of 10.
In Latin America there is a curfew of a more macabre nature, with infanticide having become a common occurrence on many city streets. In the Third World generally, child abuse is the product of extreme poverty with young boys and girls begging in the streets or being sold into bondage. Child labour throughout the Third World is numbered at around 300 million.
The status of children in Cuba is qualitatively superior. Formerly, the victims of poverty under Batista, Cuban children now have decent food, clean water, superb health care and compulsory education up to the ninth grade. No child in Cuba is forced to sleep in the streets or face murder by death squads. In the last five years, a small number of children have resorted to street begging, car cleaning, and helping out with the growing number of family businesses that have been legalised. Sometimes this is sanctioned by the parents or justified by others on the grounds that it is the only way that the family can earn some dollars.
It is against the law and, particularly where the children are involved in petty crimes, rehabilitation centres have been established where the children continue with their schooling but receive specialist care and attention. The aim of these centres is for the children and their families to regain their dignity through education and work.
The love and care of children in Cuban society is of the highest order and that alone could do with being emulated in Britain or other industrialised capitalist countries. But there is more, much more, to be learned from the Cuban example.
Unlike any other country in the world, Cuban children actually have a say in their lives particularly with regard to the nature of their education. Like students, women, workers, and farmers, children have their own mass organisation called the Jose Marti Young Pioneers. This organisation is open to all school children between the ages of 6 and 14 and exists within every school.
In July 1996, these Young Pioneers celebrated their national congress, only the second such congress since the organisation was founded in 1961. I had the good luck to be in Cuba at that time and to meet with the Santiago provincial delegation to the congress. I was also able to attend the final day of the congress. After a long period of workshops and plenary discussions, the children celebrated the congress’s conclusion with a small festival of pantomime, song and dance.
The congress was attended by 1,000 delegates aged 7 to 14 years old. There were also 170 adult guides and Fidel Castro, Raul Castro and the Minister of Education also attended as observers.
A major feature of the congress was its genuinely autonomous character. From the start of the discussions in the island's many schools, through the local and regional gatherings and up to the plenary and workshop sessions, the congress discussions were led by the children themselves. The congress was chaired by the children and adult guides were there to give advice and help with the organisation. As far as I could see, nothing was imposed or controlled by adults - not the agenda, not the workshop topics and least of all the discussion.
Organised under the banner of Defend Happiness, the congress surprised everyone with the breadth and depth of the issues discussed. These covered a wide range of educational issues, culture, ideology, and even the issue of training to defend the country in the event of a US attack.
A major theme of the congress and pre-congress discussion was the criticism of the sometimes formal and monotonous teaching methods employed by the teachers - a hangover from Soviet educational philosophy and one that is compounded by major shortages of educational resources.
An example given by one delegate was how Cuban history was taught as a subject for memorising dates and places. In addition to using more imaginative methods to dramatise history, the children also felt that the teaching of history should develop their critical faculties for reasoning and understanding. One delegate argued that Cuban history could be understood better in the context of international history. Others thought that it would be good to have a more local focus. This kind of discussion would be normal amongst trained educationalists. The fact that it is being initiated by children is quite astounding.
Even more startling was the discussion around military training. Discussed it was, and with a keen level of interest by children whose complaint was that there wasn't enough attention and resources for them to be part of the nation's defence effort. This was expressed at the simple level of asking for a restoration of shooting practice with air rifles and for more resources being put into camping expeditions which teach youngsters how to live off the land in combat situations.
Children's participation in the country's defence preparations is part of the Cuba's strategy of a "people's war" to repel a U.S invasion. Besides their own experience, this is also based upon the Vietnam war where a small country successfully confronted and defeated Washington’s mighty war machine. In Cuba's case the willingness and readiness to fight of the entire population - from the very young to the very old - is seen as the most powerful deterrent to an invasion.
The discussions around education and military training were but two elements of a very wide-ranging discussion at a truly magnificent congress of children's power. Compared to what children cannot do in Britain or elsewhere, this congress fully justified Castro's confidence in the future. For my part, I certainly felt that not only was the revolution alive and kicking but also that with young people such as these, Cuba could have a brilliant future.
What is clear is that today's younger generation in Cuba are facing new challenges and contradictions within the revolutionary process. They are getting a taste of capitalism within their own country and - freed from the miserable dogma that masqueraded as communism within the Soviet Union - are learning afresh the ideas of revolutionary socialism.
It is this experience of the Cuban revolution and the role played by its. younger generation which offers a beacon for the world as it enters the 21st century.