Brigade No. 5-The In-Between Generation

THESE are our eight Cuban comrades in Brigade No. 5 of the Venceremos Brigade. We work with them every day, travel with them, talk with them. From them, more than from anything else, we get a sense of what changes the revolution has brought to people's everyday lives, to their work, and to their ways of thinking.

This is the in-between generation. They did not grow up under the Revolution, like their children and the children we talk to in the schools we visit. They grew up with the Revolution, like their children and the children we talk to in the schools we visit. They grew up with the Revolution. In 1959, when Fidel's Rebel Army entered Havana after the collapse of the U. S.-backed Batista dictatorship, Pedro was 11 and Hugo was 22. None of the eight was communist, and none was engaged in productive work for the Cuban people. Today all are dedicated communists, and all are working to lift Cuba out of underdevelopment. The course of their lives, the change they went through, is the course of the Revolution.

"Batista-Murderer"

Their youth was dominated by the resistance to Batista. Carlos went to the mountains to join the Rebel Army, and fought under Raul Castro. Pedro carried messages for his father, who was a member of the revolutionary underground of peasants in Havana province. Alberto took part in student strikes:

"I remember one very acutely. It was in 1957 in the secondary school near the school where I was studying. I was 13. A group of us went, carrying a big piece of cloth that said 'Batista-Murderer.' Then the police came, and started with the clubs. You know-clubs, big pieces of steel. I remember, I escaped by a miracle. I ran into a bus and could escape."

Juan was in Miami, where he and his parents had gone in 1953 to escape conditions under Batista. While he was gaining an amazing repertoire of mid- and late-fifties rock-and-roll songs, his parents were raising money for Fidel's 26th of July Movement.

Then came the triumph of the Revolution. As Lazara remembers. "Our people always waited for that success. When Fidel was in the Sierra Maestra, all the people knew he was there, and waited for night to listen to the news on the underground radio, about the battles and all the activities of the Revolution. When Fidel and his comrades won, all the people went to the streets and waited for him."

The Revolution

For Juan, the first result was that his parents began making arrangements to return to Cuba. They returned in 1960, and Juan hasn't been back to the U.S. since.

For Alberto, the Revolution immediately meant a chance to finish high school. "I was studying in the private school. All the government schools were closed because of the student strikes and everything. My father was a truck-driver and he didn't earn much money; my mother had to work in the morning, afternoon, and evening also, to pay for my studies. I wouldn't have been able to continue if the Revolution didn't come and open the national schools."

Like the political direction of the Revolution, the political outlook of the eight was vague at the time. Raul's father was a member of the old Communist Party, and "he always tried to make us see communist ideas. The first day of the triumph of the Revolution my brother and I went out into the streets with the flag of the 26th of July movement and celebrated. But the general idea was hatred of the dictatorship; I didn't have very much of an idea at that time of what else the Revolution meant."

Most of the others came from honor even anticommunist families, of the type that made up the bulk of the 26th of July movement. Juan says frankly. "I was basically interested in music and girls and fooling around. I didn't know what socialism was; I didn't even know what capitalism was." In four years, Hugo would be elected to the Party by fellow-workers in the clothing factory where he worked, but at the time "I always argued with my friends in the pre-Revolutionary Communist Party. I told them communism couldn't work."

The Literacy Campaign

Carlos immediately went to work in the new government. For many of the rest, real work in the Revolution began in 1961, with the literacy campaign, Lazara, Raul, and Juanito were among the thousands of teenagers who went to the countryside to teach the peasants to read and write. So was Alberto's sister, and his mother worked in the campaign as well. Carlos helped to administer it.

The campaign began with a week at a beach resort, where the volunteers were given training in teaching. Lazara lived in what used to be the mansion of the DuPonts. She describes the campaign that followed:

"I was fifteen. I went to the province of Cameguey, and worked with a farmer all day. At night we studied the abe; I taught four farmers-two women and two men. The campaign was like a battle, because we had one million illiterate people. And we had to begin to teach them, because we had to go out from underdevelopment. It was the first activity of the Revolution. All the youth of our country were in that campaign. We were very young people-12, 13, 14, 15 years. We lived all the time with the farmers, teaching them what the Revolution is, what we will do in the countryside, what are the laws-all the meaning of the Revolution. Fidel said we did very good work."

Raul remembers, "I saw how these people, even though they had difficulties like being old and finding it hard to learn, all of them had an intense interest. As the weeks passed, their expressions changed, like they were waking up from a long sleep."

At the end of the campaign, Cuba was 99 per cent literate. Next came scholarship programs, and adult education at all workplaces. But Cuba's development was not entirely quiet.

The Bay of Pigs

In these three years, the revolutionary government began to take control

of the economy, to use the resources of the country for the people. It gave land to the peasants; slashed rents and utility prices: regulated foreign-owned industries and when they refused to comply, nationalized them. Cuba refused to accept U. S. dictates about foreign or domestic policy, and began political and economic relations with socialist as well as capitalist countries. With each new revolutionary law, it became clearer that the only road to freedom and economic development was socialism.

The U.S. grasped this lesson as quickly as the Cuban people. The forces of U.S. imperialism which had supported Baustia, which had controlled the Cuban economy for a hundred years, prepared the counter-attack: economic blockade, political pressure, massive propaganda, and finally in the beginning of April 1961. Cuban cities were bombed by U.S. planes supplied to the counter revolutionaries by the C. I. A.

Juan was in the process of joining the militia. "We knew the U.S. was planning something, and by then I had gained enough consciousness to get an idea of what was going on." Pedro was too young to join the regular forces; once again he was entrusted with carrying messages. Alberto was already in a militia unit, which was later called to active duty.

The Bay of Pigs invasion came on the morning of April 17. Alberto's unit like much of the national militia, got to the battle zone on the night of the 17th. By the 19th, the invasion had been smashed. Alberto's unit stayed another month for cleaning up operations in the nearby swamps and to await another attack. The Revolution had demonstrated its determination and ability to survive.

At the same time, the Revolution defined its political direction. On April 15, two days before the invasion, Fidel spoke at the funeral for the victims of the CIA bombings. He declared for the first time that Cuba was a socialist country. Alberto was part of Fidel's guard at the speech. "We stood below the podium where he was speaking. What he said was not a surprise. We already considered, ourselves socialist. For most of the Cubans it wasn't a surprise."

In the U.S. this speech was reported as one more step in Fidel's process of selling out the Revolution to Russia and communism, one step away from the people who had supported him.

Lazara says, "That is a lie. At the beginning, our people, like all the people of Latin America, didn't know what communism was. In the first year of the Revolution... nobody would have said it was communism, but the people felt that something different was happening. We didn't know what name to give to that thing, but we felt it was good. Later, when Fidel said, 'Okay, we are communist,' we said, 'Okay, that's good!' The people understood. First we have the communist activities, then we say 'That's communism.'

Work, Study, Defense

During the period of the invasion and Fidel's speech, Lazara, Juanito, and Raul were still in the countryside working on the literacy campaign. The end of the campaign, like the other big events of 1961, marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the Revolution. Raul describes the end of the campaign:

"After the campaign we had a big rally where Fidel spoke to everyone who had participated. Fidel told us we should keep on studying, and proposed to us a scholarship plan. This became the general study and scholarship plan for everyone, but we were the first to implement it."

The new stage was the one of actually building socialism, of developing the technology, the economic base, and the organization of work necessary for Cuba to fight its way out of underdevelopment. That fight is still going on. Batista had been defeated. Now, as Fidel said, "Our enemy is underdevelopment."

For a whole generation that fight has meant three main activities. One of the first things Juanito told me in the camp was the slogan of the Young Communists: "Work, study, and defense." Everyone works, in regular jobs and in voluntary labor. Everyone studies, to acquire more advanced skills and to raise their cultural and political level. Everyone defends the Revolution, in the army, the militia, and the neighborhood committees, and everyone is ready to defend the people of other countries against imperialism as well.

What has this meant for the members of this generation? The Cubans in our brigade are sons and daughters of barbers, truck-drivers, mechanics, farm workers, and factory workers. Through study, they have all become technicians and teachers. Raul became a radio technician, Carlos an administrator, Lazara a Russian teacher, Alberto and Juanito history teachers, Hugo was sent to Russia to study economics.

Moreover, the process of study and gaining new skills never ends in Cuba. Lazara has gone back to school to become a journalist, Alberto to study literature and art. They will help to create the new communist culture, what Che has called "the culture of the twenty-first-century man." Juan will begin studying political science after the harvest.

These are not exceptional cases, individuals rising "above" their class as they would be in the U. S. Literally everyone in Cuba studies. At the in adjuration of a new own in the countryside we met a peasant woman and her daughter, a sixteen-year-old chemistry teacher. The older people study too-workers who were illiterate before the Revolution reach sixth grade or even secondary school graduate level through adult education.

The effects of this study are reflected in work. The youth are mechanizing the jobs of their parents out of existence. In five or ten years there will be no cane-cutters, only machine operators and technicians.

What is more, students do not form an elite group, shut off from the people who work, as they do in the U.S. As long as there is manual labor in agriculture, it will be shared by students, technicians, planners, everyone. Lazara has worked in ten harvests, Hugo in eight. Pedro in five. Alberto thinks the volunteer work he did plating eucalyptus trees was even harder than cane-cutting. "It wasn't planting the trees that was so hard-it was digging the holes."

Voluntary labor aside, students work while they study, workers study while they work. When Alberto went back to school he didn't stop teaching. "We need secondary school teachers. But we can work as teachers and go to school at the same time. I was doing that until I came here. Now I will start working in the design studio, making posters for cultural activities, at the same time as I study culture."

Juan went to work at 17, repairing adding machines for a newly-nationalized firm. At the same time he studied, reaching a university level in statistics, philosophy, and other subjects, though he had never formally graduated from high school. By the time he had become a Young Communist and learned to tell the difference between socialism and capitalism, he was ready to go to work as a translator and guide, explaining communist Cuba to North American visitors. Next year he will take political science courses in the university, while continuing to work as a guide. And he still fixes the adding machine at our camp.

Raul began studying radios in the army, just like the ads in the States promise. Only in Cuba he really learned in the army, and when he get out he was paid to go to school to learn more; while he studied in civilian school he began working at his present job.

Pedro drives a truck for eight hours during the day and studies for three hours at night. In 1972 he will go to the university to study medicine. When he becomes a doctor, he will make the same salary as truck-drivers. Like all doctors, he will spend the first two years in the countryside.

At the same time as work and study, Lazara served in the army for three years, Juan for one. Raul for three. All the younger members are or were in the militia, where they receive training and weapons, and are activated in times of emergency or for guard duty in their local area.

The New Man

Political development is part and parcel of this process of life and work. When the Cubans speak of political development, they are not talking only about learning to support a socialist economy or to oppose imperialism. As Lazara explained, that part came automatically, Pedro says, "I always supported the Revolutionary laws as they were created, and my father taught me to understand them, so there was nothing complicated about becoming a socialist." He also saw that the bourgeoisie and the American corporations did not support the laws which diminished their profits. Fidel came to Pedro's school and his workplace to discuss the Revolution. "He is always going around and holding conversations just like he did here at the camp."

Political development means something more. Pedro explains, "The most important thing is that during my work in the Revolution, the Revolution has been building me as a new man, taking out capitalist ways of acting and building communist ones." Hugo, the oldest, describes this as "fighting inside myself against the old ways of thinking." To become a Young Communist or Party member one must of course meet certain ideological standards. But primarily, the members of our brigade were nomi-

nated by their fellow workers to the Young Communists, and chosen by Young Communist officials to come to the Venceremos Brigade camp, on the basis of the way they work. A communist defines himself by working and acting for the collective good.

An example is Ranl's attitude toward the harvest. "Naturally I am nostalgic for home. I am used to going home after work and playing with my children and all that. But this work is for the Revolution, which means it is for my children at the same time-to get for them and everyone in the Revolution all the things they need. The main thing I have had to learn in the Revolution is to live in collectivity and comradeship. Something that helped me very much was the scholarship school, where I had to live with others, and being in the literacy campaign, and work like that."

Likewise, individuals do not dominate each other. After the harvest, Pedro will get married. His fiancee is 24, and also a Young Communist. Though the wives of many of the older men in the camp do not work, Pedro says, "My fiancee studies French, and she will continue to study after we get married. When she finishes, maybe she will work as a translater, maybe she will study something else. That is her business. I don't decide what she does."

Fidel describes the political process in Cuba as "simultaneous construction of socialism and communism." The new ways of acting and reading-what Ch? labeled "the new man" -must be built simultaneously with the new technology and economic structures. Otherwise, in Cuba, neither will succeed. The aim, according to Fidel, is "to create wealth through social awareness and not the other way around."

The eight Cubans in our brigade had never known each other before-the separate paths of their lives had gone through similar territory, but had not crossed. What brought them together to do voluntary work in the harvest of 1970. "The Year of the Ten Millions," is precisely that social awareness that Fidel speaks about.

As Hugo explained once, "We have no stages for building the new man, as we do for the economy. We do not know at exactly what point we have developed enough to act in new ways, we only know by experiment." The ten million harvest is a culmination of 11 years of economic development, but even more it is a test of 11 years of political development. On one of our first days in the fields I asked Juan whether Cuba would pass that test, whether they would make the ten million, and he said yes, without a doubt. Once I got to know the Cuban people. I never had to ask that again. Los Diez Milliones Van!