Cuba

The Communist Party of Cuba held its 8th congress in Havana from 16 to 19 April, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the proclamation of the socialist character of the revolution on the eve of the attempted invasion of Playa Girón [Bay of Pigs]. The congress was the culmination of the process of replacing the historical leadership in a context of serious economic crisis and of dangerous economic reforms.

In the following polemic, Jorge Martin (editor for marxist.com) responds to a pair of articles in a Cuban magazine, which mischaracterise the 27N movement as being left wing. In fact, this movement of artists and intellectuals for ‘democratic freedoms’ is liberal at best, and openly counterrevolutionary at worst. We also include a letter by Martin, addressed to the Comunistas blog, laying out our differences and calling for communists to stand unequivocally on the side of defending the Cuban Revolution and its conquests.

Today is the birthday of Julio Antonio Mella: a Cuban revolutionary and founder of the Cuban Communist Party, who was assassinated in 1929. We celebrate the legacy of this outstanding young Marxist, who embodied the best traditions of the communist movement, and gave his life in service of the working-class of Latin America and the whole world. The following text was first presented at the first International Seminar on the Life and Ideas of Leon Trotsky in Havana, Cuba, in May 2019.

On 12 October, the Cuban Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil Fernández appeared on the television programme Mesa Redonda [Round Table] to talk about the economic strategy “to boost the economy and overcome the global crisis caused by COVID-19." A central part of it is the "monetary reorganisation" that has generated so many rumours and uncertainty in Cuba in recent months.

After Donald Trump came into office, Washington’s position on the Cuban Revolution has become ever-more belligerent, in a radical change of policy from that followed by President Obama. Although the ultimate objective of both administrations was the same – the destruction of the Cuban Revolution – Obama recognised that the politics of direct aggression had failed, and so pursued the same goal in the economic sphere instead. The objective was to restore capitalism through the penetration of the market into the Cuban economy. Trump, it

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Despite a great many difficulties, an international seminar on Leon Trotsky was held in Cuba on 6-8 May. The event was convened by the Institute of Philosophy and with the participation of the Leon Trotsky House Museum in Mexico. The International Marxist Tendency’s presence was felt through the Carlos Marx Socialist Studies Centre and a message from Alan Woods.

On 6-8 May, Cuba will host for the first time an international event on the life and ideas of Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky. The academic event reflects the growing interest in the ideas of Trotsky on the island since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

US-sponsored terrorist Luís Posada Carriles has died today in Florida. He never paid for his many crimes thanks to the support he received from Washington. This is what Alan Woods wrote about his track record in 2007 when a US court decided to release him.

On October 9th, 1967 Ernesto “Che” Guevara was killed by the Bolivian army, backed by the United States. Fifty years later, Guevara remains one of the most popular revolutionaries amongst workers and youth around the world. To commemorate the figure of Che, but also, and most importantly, to understand the relevance of his life and ideas to today's struggles, we are publishing an edited version of an article written for the Italian Marxists’ theoretical magazine ten years ago on the 40th anniversary of his death.

This is the text of an essay presented at the Conference on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Pensamiento Crítico (Critical Thought) magazine which took place in Havana on February 21, 2017. Pensamiento Críticowas a monthly magazine published in Cuba from 1967 until 1971. Edited by Fernando Martínez Heredia (1939-2017), the magazine was part of an open discussion about Marxism within the Cuban revolution, in which many rejected the stale Stalinist approach taken by the Soviet manuals on “marxism-leninism”

On November 25th 2016, Fidel Castro passed away in Havana, Cuba. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released a statement expressing his “deep sorrow” with the death of this “legendary revolutionary” and “remarkable leader” who “made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.”

At 10.29 pm on Friday, November 25, the Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro died at the age of 90. His brother Raul Castro announced the news to the Cuban population and the world around midnight in a televised speech. His death was not unexpected, as he had been ill for a number of years and had already stepped down from his formal political responsibilities, but still it came as a shock to both friends and enemies.