A CubaNews translation by Walter Lippmann.
April 30, 2017.
FARC-EP commander Andres Paris announced Sunday that the FARC-EPplanned to hold the founding congress of its political party next August 7, a step that should occur once the disarmament of the Colombian guerrilla has ended.
The leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) commented that such a meeting will be a forum for social justice, peace and democracy.
Referring to the implementation of the agreements signed last November 24, Paris said that, although some phases or aspects contained in the historic document have been fulfilled, there are still many outstanding issues and in some cases there is deep irresponsibility.
Some 7,000 men and women of that group remain concentrated in 26 places in the country where they will leave the weapons in their possession and will be prepared with a view to their reincorporation into society.
The FARC-EP leadership has criticized the government’s delay in enabling such sites, which also delayed the early stages of the abandonment of arms, which is overseen by a United Nations political mission.
Despite the setbacks, we are persisting in the discussion of all the mechanisms and instances established to carry out the treaty and its implementation, he said.
Asked about the possibility of this disarmament ending on the initial date (at the end of May), he replied that he also doubts whether the Executive will honor the commitments contained in the November 24 consensus.
The FARC-EP can not be subjected to unilateral compliance, but we have expressed our willingness to solve problems in the best possible way so that the implementation period can continue satisfactorily, he insisted.
The former fighter said that, so far, only about 20 percent of the agreement has been carried out.
Paris attended the closing of the National Peace Congress held in the emblematic Bolivar Plaza after the presidents of the Senate and the House of Representatives vetoed the entry of both guerrilla commander Iván Márquez and one of the leaders of the rebel National Liberation Army (ELN) to the salons of the highest legislative body.
We were not allowed to enter Parliament but we took Bolivar Plaza a scenario more suited to continue fighting for the peace process. In that event we achieved a congruence of our proposal with the desire of the Colombians to end the conflict in all its expressions, he said.
According to Paris, the reaction of the heads of the House of Representatives and the Senate shows that there are sectors hiding in both institutions.
The Peace Congress, he added, achieved a convergence of civil society with the aim of demanding that the current administration comply with the agreement.
The November 24 pact includes among its measures the establishment of a bilateral cease-fire, already in place, as well as the transformation of the countryside through a comprehensive rural reform associated with the gradual replacement of illicit crops by other crops with the cooperation of the communities.
The text provides for the creation of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) under which courts will be established to investigate, prosecute and punish those responsible for confrontation under the premises of zero impunity for crimes against humanity, but grants benefits of pardons and amnesties in cases of political and related crimes.
A similar agreement with the ELN, which is less numerous than the FARC-EP but active for over half a century, remains in the search for a more lasting and more encompassing detente scenario.
Talks with the latter group began on February 7 in Quito, Ecuador.
Prolonged for more than five decades, the internal war has left some 300,000 dead, almost seven million displaced from their places of origin and at least 60,000 disappeared.
By Francisco Rodriguez Cruz, from his blog
A CubaNews translation by Walter Lippmann.
Around half a hundred LGBTI activists and workers from the National Center for Sex Education (Cenesex) paraded again together with the Cuban people this May Day in front of the Plaza de la Revolución, in a demonstration that if Our strength is in unity, We also defend Unity in Diversity.
With large and small rainbow banners, signs of Me included – an allegory to the Cuban Day against Homophobia and Transphobia that begins next May 3 -, and t-shirts that identify the communication campaigns of Cenesex, we join together as already Is traditional in the block of Public Health workers.
In the gathering and en route to the Plaza de la Revolucion from early hours of the morning, sympathizers and activists of various nationalities, such as the Homosexual Community of Argentina (CHA), greeted us and conveyed their solidarity.
The networks of trans people and their families (Transcuba) and the Humanity for Diversity (HxD) network stood out for their participation, with the presence of members of the Oremis group, lesbian and bisexual women, among others that integrate community social networks Linked to Cenesex.
When we were ready to cross in front of the Plaza de la Revolucion a few minutes of eight in the morning, my son Javier called me on the cell phone, as I used to do at home on his 17th birthday, this May Day – He used to come with us to the parade-to tell me that he had just passed the platform along with the youth and student block.
Now we can say that the celebration of the Tenth Cuban Conference against Homophobia and Transphobia has began.
A CubaNews translation by Walter Lippmann.
On May 1, 1890 thousands of Havana workers of Havana observed their its day for the first time.
The origin of what later became a world labor festival was at the International Socialist Congress held in Paris in 1889. There it was agreed to turn the first day of May into a tribute to the workers.
It all began three years earlier, when police fury erupted against a workers’ demonstration in Chicago, United States. As a result of these facts, after an unfair and rigged trial, eight workers were convicted. Three of them to long prison sentences and the other five to be hanged. From that moment the world knew them as the Chicago Martyrs.
In this city of the state of Illinois, on the shore of Great Lake Michigan, despite the enormous riches it amassed, the living conditions of the workers and their families were extremely desperate.
Police arrested eight of the marchers, protesting the subhuman situation in which they worked and lived. There were wounded and dead. Of those accused and brought to trial, four were finally taken to the gallows: Adolf Fischer, George Engel, Auguste Spies, three journalists of German origin; And Albert Parsons, an American, a Civil War veteran and former US presidential candidate.
Oscar Neebe, born in Philadelphia of German parents and a seller of yeast, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Louis Lingg, a German carpenter, the day before the sentence was carried out, committed suicide in his cell.
To Michael Schwab, a typographer, and to Samuel Fielden, Methodist pastor and textile worker, of English origin, the night before the sentence was passed, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
Martí correspondent
Our Apostle José Martí witnessed an exception and dedicated a constant follow-up to these events that shook the world, while denouncing the crime. He covered them as correspondent of several Latin American newspapers, among them the Nation, of Buenos Aires. Let us see some excerpts of his, after the sentence had been carried out:
“New York, November 13, 1887.
Mr. Director of the Nation:
(…) This republic, because of its excessive worship of wealth, has fallen … in the inequality, injustice and violence of the monarchist countries … Three hundred prisoners in one day! The whole country is frightened, the prisons full … The whole press, from San Francisco to New York, distorting the process, paints the … condemned as harmful beasts … “.
In the newspaper La Nación, January 1, 1888, Marti described the hanging of the condemned: “(…) A signal, a noise, the trap yields, the four bodies fall at once in the air, circling and colliding. Parsons has died as he falls, he spins hastily, and ceases to move. Fischer sways, tries to remove the noose from his neck, stretches and shrugs his legs, dies. Engel wiggles in his floating saucer, he raises and lowers his chest like the swell, and drowns: Spies, in dancer dance, hangs spinning like a sack of grimaces, hunches, leans sideways, occurs on the forehead with his knees, raises one leg, extends both, shakes arms, drum: and finally expires, rotates the back of his head, nodding to the spectators.
In his article, the Teacher opined: “These are not abominable felons, thirsting for disorder, blood and violence, but men who wanted peace, had hearts full of tenderness, loved by all who knew them and saw the power and the glory of their lives (…) their dream, a new world without misery and without slavery: their pain, that of believing that selfishness will never yield to peace and justice: O cross of Nazareth, that in these corpses It has been called a scaffold! (…) ‘.
Quoting Martí a German publication that alluded to the crime: “… And the Arbeiter Zeitung of the night said:” … We have lost a battle, unhappy friends, but we will see at last the world rearranged according to justice: let us be shrewd Like serpents, and harmless as doves! “
From protest to proletarian party
During the first half of the twentieth century, the Cuban trade union movement kept the workers’ banners high. Every celebration to date has served as a protest against the situation on the island, which suffered from the outrages of corrupt governments and sell-outs.
For example, in 1930, together with the strike of March 20 and the student demonstration on September 30, the workers’ mobilization was part of the beginning of the final stage of the struggle against Machados’s tyranny.
But it is not until the revolutionary triumph that the workers have before them sufficient reason to celebrate and to pay homage to the martyrs of that massacre that shook the world proletariat andwas so well described by Martí.
That is why in 1959 two major May Day celebrations were held: one in Havana and the other in Santiago de Cuba. The Commander-in-Chief was then visiting Argentina to participate in the Economic Conference of 21.
On that day, in what was then Havana’s Civic Square, the popular militias, made up of workers and peasants, paraded for the first time. The conclusion of the act in the capital was led by Commander Raul Castro Ruz, who presided over it. The one of Santiago de Cuba was headed by Commander Ernesto Che Guevara.
Since then, every year the Cuban people, throughout the country, have observed this date as a true workers’ festival, to the rhythm of songs and hymns like The International , performed by dissimilar proletarian voices around the world.
It has invariably been a day of reassertion of support for the Revolution and its leaders, and of repudiation of imperialist hostility.
(With information from Juventud Rebelde )
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