Dear compas and friends
Happy 2019 to one and all!
Please find attached my kernel of corn {grano de mais} in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the January 1959 victory of the Cuban people against the Batista dictstorship, led by the July 26th Movement.
My personal way of commemorating those events is to send to compas and friends a handful of articles and links about Cuba’s achievements; about the international struggle waged by the Cuban people to advance the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle; and to promote their socialist course as the necessary and only way to escape the barbarism that capitalism has inflicted on humankind.
The off-hand attached selection includes the text of a panel presentation I made to the 2017 national convention of the Canada-Cuba Network, together with Sandra Rodriguez of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP).
It also includes former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s letter to the Cuban people thanking them for the work of their doctors in Brazil; because of hostility from the new neo-military president-elect Jair Bolsonaro Cuba found it necessary to withdraw its doctors and other Cuban volunteers from Brazil.
A good way, if you have the means and the time, to celebrate the 60th anniversary year of the July 26 triumph is to visit Cuba, to combine a good vacation’s R. & R. with political solidarity with America’s only state of the toiling classes — workers, peasants, students, and members of the revolution’s armed forces.
Another way is to buy and drink Cuban coffee — we get ours from London Drugs. It is marketed under the label Cubita, in 460 gram nicely designed polished paper bags, and is 100% Arabica.
Every purchase counts towards helping the Cuban people defeat the U.S. embargo against their country and its international trade. And, what’s more, it’s the best coffee on the market!
Happy 2019 everyone – compas all!
Let it be a year we can all chant, with Che and Fidel, “Hasta la victoria siempre” {Ever onwards to victory}.
Felipe Stuart Courneyeur