Cuba
The Posadist group in Cuba gained importance due to the Cuban Revolution in which it had a minor role. Posadist guerrillas fought alongside Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in 1959. When the Posadists split from the Fourth International in 1962 they took the Cuban section with them leaving meaning no other Trotskyist group was represented in Cuba in the 1960s.
In 1961 the Posadist section in Cuba argued that the Cuban government should forcibly expel the American military base at Guantanamo Bay. It organised workers in the town of Guantanamo to march on the nearby military base, a move which the Fourth International considered to be ultra-left. The demonstration irritated and alarmed some in the Cuban government which looked the other way when, in April 1961, a small Stalinist group, the Partido Socialista Popular, raided the headquarters of the Posadist group and smashed its printing press which was in the process of printing an edition of Trotsky's The Permanent Revolution.
Guevara, when asked in an interview about this event, commented:
- "That did happen. It was an error. It was an error committed by a functionary of second rank. They smashed the plates. It should not have been done. However, we consider the Trotskyist party to be acting against the revolution. For example, they were taking the line that the Revolutionary Government is petty bourgeois, and were calling on the proletariat to exert pressure on the government and even to carry out another revolution in which the proletariat would come to power. This was prejudicing the discipline necessary at this stage."
The Cuban Posadist section became increasingly militant and was banned by the government, Castro denonunced them as "pestilential" at the Tricontinental Congress held in January 1966. Cuban Posadists went on to claim that Castro had Guevara killed when, it turned out, he was actually in Bolivia fighting with the guerrilla movement there. Conversely, after Guevara was executed by Bolivian authorities, Posadas claimed in 1967 that Che Guevara wasn't actually dead but was being kept in prison by Castro's government.
Read more about this topic: J. Posadas
Famous quotes containing the word cuba:
“Bernstein: “Girls delightful in Cuba stop. Could send you prose poems about scenery but don’t feel right spending your money stop. There is no war in Cuba. Signed Wheeler.” Any answer?
Charles Foster Kane: Yes—Dear Wheeler, You provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1985)
“Education is a necessity, it helps to understand life. Like that compagnero in Cuba who talked about politics, back when they were on strike. He knew many things, that hijo de puta, and he unraveled the most confusing situations in a marvelous way. You could see each point in front of you on the line of his reasoning like rinsed laundry set up to dry; he explained things to you so clearly that you could grasp it like a good hunk of bread with your hand.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“Warmest climes but nurse the cruelest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)