From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Cuban Students React Against Torricelli
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 00:42:12 GMT

/** reg.cuba: 193.0 **/
** Topic: Cubans React Against Torricelli **
** Written  9:24 pm  Sep 30, 1992 by kwald@tinored.cu in cdp:reg.cuba **
From: kwald@tinored.cu (Karen Wald )
Subject: Cubans React Against Torricelli

CUBAN STUDENTS REJECT TORRICELLI 
 
Karen Wald
Havana
 
In what promises to be the first in a long series of popular 
demonstrations against US tightening of its economic blockade, 
thousands of Cuban students massed at the University of Havana 
(Sept.29) shouting their rejection of the US government's latest 
attempt to impose its will on the Cuban people: the Torricelli bill. 
 
Speakers from schools around the capital city added their voices to 
those of University leaders and guitar-playing folk singers, as 
students chanted "Cuba Si, Yankee No", and "Fidel, Fidel, Fidel". 
 
Several themes were repeated in their hastily-prepared speeches. 
Many compared this latest maneuver with the US' successful attempt 
to dominate Cuban political life throughout the first half of this 
century via the Platt Amendment, added to the Cuban Constitution in 
1901 at the end of the Spanish-American War.
 
All insisted that rather than be cowed or weakened, the Torricelli 
Law would arouse them to further efforts to withstand the blockade 
and defend the independence and sovereignty of Cuba's Revolution.
 
A huge red and white banner of the University Students Federation 
(FEU) undulated in the center of the crowd, as strains of Pablo 
Milanes, SIlvio Rodriguez and other popular Cuban singers filled the 
plaza with songs like "Yo me quedo..." (I'm staying here...).  Many 
of the hand-painted signs expressed crude or angry rejection of 
"yankee supremacy". One declared "We may lack supplies, but we've 
got more than enough balls to resist". 
 
Some of the students wore militia uniforms, medical or nursing 
school garb, but most were dressed casually for classes, and many 
carried books under their arms, the demonstration having been 
announced only hours before. 
 
A nursing school student, Yainery Diaz Vazquez, drew warm crowd 
response when she stated "We know that vissicitudes, privations and 
sacrifices are inevitable, but we will know how to face them. ... 
We'll make more efficient use of every resource, and above all, we 
will be acting on our conviction that we possess the greatest of 
all riches: the unity of our people." 
 
Thousands of voices chimed in with her when she repeated the 
well-known quote of fallen revolutionary leader Camilo Cienfuegos, 
which included the lines "because to stop this totally Cuban 
Revolution, an entire people would have to die", and ended with the 
poem "If some day my flag should be shredded into bits/ our 
dead, raising their arms, would still know how to defend it." 
 
Mesy Bolanos read a statement by the University of Havana student 
body:
 
"The US government hopes to suffocate us by applying economic 
sanctions on other countries, on US subsidiaries, by preventing 
ships from reaching our ports, thus depriving our people of food, 
medicine and other vital resources," the statement began. In doing 
so, she went on, the United States was violating every aspect of 
international law relating to the right of development, the right to 
self determination, to soveriegn equality -- all the while cynically 
and hypocritically charging Cuba with "violating human rights". 
 
The statement derided the US government's pretense that it was 
concerned with "democracy" in Cuba. "What democracy?" she asked. 
"Theirs? The democracy of exploiters, of millionares? The democracy 
of the dollar?  We don't want it," she went on. "We want OURS".
 
Bolanos insisted that "far from weakening us, laws like these will 
strengthen us, because democracy is the power of the people. This 
demonstration is an expression of that form of democracy. Noting 
that other peoples in the world look to the Cuban Revolution for a 
ray of hope, the statement went on "As long as our flag is 
still flying, the hopes of all those who struggle for liberty and 
independence will be kept alive."
 
The students claimed that no "domino theory" would apply in Cuba 
because the people have "roots, history, faith and optimism -- and a 
reason to fight: our country, the Revolution and Fidel." 
 
Carmen Rosa Baez, president of the nationwide University Student 
Federation, declared that the Torricelli bill is a "more inhuman, 
more aggressive and more offensive" Platt Amendment carried out by a 
country that feels it can impose its will on all other countries 
because it owns the whole world.
 
She called on students of other countries to reject "this law that 
also robs them of their sovereignty and independence."
 
Addressing herself to her fellow students, she commented wryly that 
"while ex-patriots buy Senators and Congressmen in the elegant 
salons and hallways of the US Congress, the legitimate sons and 
daughters of Marti' and Fidel know well how much it costs in this 
unjust world to maintain equal opportunity, and we've learned it by 
sharing our portion of sacrifices. Our table and our clothes are 
humble," she stated, "and may not be the most modish styles. But 
they bear the honor of having been bought with the sweat of each and 
every one of us, without bartering one single principle."
 
Cuban popular reaction to Torricelli is mounting. Those who 
previously looked primarily at their internal problems or the 
disintegration of the socialist countries as the source of their 
current problems are now focusing once more on their age-old enemy: 
the US blockade. While the strengthening of the blockade may create 
almost intolerable new hardships for the Cuban people, it may well 
have given the Revolution the moral and political boost it needed in 
these hard times.
** End of text from cdp:reg.cuba **

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