Maceo’s rejection of surrender lives on in Cuba

Born on June 14, 176 years ago in Santiago de Cuba, with two greats of Cuban independence as parents, General Antonio Maceo Grajales led Mambi troops across the island from East to West battling the Spanish colonial yoke, along a trail of courage, dignity and patriotism, which continues to illuminate our sovereign country before the world

Eduardo Palomares Calderón

Granma | June 14, 2021

Antonio Maceo Plaza de la Revolución in Santiago de Cuba, the work of Alberto Lescay.

A Titan was born on June 14, 176 years ago in Santiago de Cuba, with two greats of Cuban independence as parents. General Antonio Maceo Granjales led Mambi troops across the island from East to West battling the Spanish colonial yoke, along a trail of courage, dignity and patriotism, which continues to illuminate our sovereign country before the world.

Hand in hand with his mother Mariana Grajales, along with his father Marcos Maceo and brothers, Antonio de la Caridad took the road to the scrub just two days after Céspedes launched the struggle at the Demajagua, and would only cease after 28 years of hard battle, when his 26th wound left lifeless his “bronze” body which had withstood some 800 combat actions.

Vilma chose to live on the side of duty

On the 14th anniversary of Vilma Espin’s death, Cubans recall her as someone in love with life, who long after abandoning this world, continues at our side

Madeleine Sautié Rodríguez

Granma | June 18, 2021

Death is a definitive word, but there are beings for whom it is hardly fitting, since dying means that something has ended. Vilma is among those who, in love with life, would give it up for her people, to live on in glory. Even after abandoning this world 14 years ago, she continues at our side.

We could say a great deal about what she did, about the girl from Santiago – the second Cuban woman to graduate in Chemical Engineering – who chose a path that took her away from a comfortable existence, to Revolution.

Among the many images that come to mind is that of the young student conspiring to put an end to a corrupt, subservient regime, who began writing pamphlets and went on to become a member of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee and Political Bureau and president of the Federation of Cuban Women, the FMC, a huge organization fighting for women´s rights and dignity.

Martí, Cuba’s moral sun

REMEMBERING JOSÉ MARTÍ

Mailenys Oliva Ferrales and Eduardo Palomares Calderón

Granma | May 20, 2021

Photo: Eduardo Palomares

It is difficult to avoid a watery eye or an accelerated heartbeat when reconsidering, in all its details, the tragic day of our national hero’s death, May 19, 1895, in Dos Rios.

“My first thoughts this May 19, are for José Martí, 126 years after his fall in battle and his political testament: To prevent in time, with the independence of Cuba, the expansion of the empire over the lands of America,” tweeted Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, on a day filled with patriotic sentiments for Cubans.

Ramsey Clark: An Essential Voice of Dissidence from the Center of U.S. Power

REMEMBRANCE 

William Camacaro

Council on Hemispheric Affairs | April 14, 2021

“There will be some who will remember Ramsey Clark as an outsider. There are many more who remember him as a friend of justice, the oppressed, the exploited, and the rule of law. Perhaps he himself would like to be remembered merely as someone who used the law to help others.”

Curtis Doebbler, International Law Attorney

During the heat of the Gulf War under the George H. W. Bush administration, I had the opportunity in New York to meet an extraordinary human being: Ramsey Clark. It was an event to protest the State Department and Pentagon’s arrogantly labeled “Operation Desert Storm.”

The Eternal Rose: Rosa Luxemburg

REMEMBERING ROSA

If Rosa Luxemburg’s “Reform or Revolution” showed us her vision, the letter she left to mankind gives us the hope it enshrines. Hope for an equal society between men and women, rich and poor, opponents and dissidents. Hoping for peace versus violence, that mankind will always choose the righteous path, even though it may be the harder one.

March is the month of miracles. March is the month of Rosa Luxemburg.

Remembering Leo Panitch

REMEMBRANCE 

Socialist Project | January 31, 2021

Moderated by Michael Lardner. Presentations by:

• Stephen Maher: “Remembering Leo Panitch and Beyond Capitalism.” Stephen is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa, Canada, and Assistant Editor of Socialist Register.
• Greg Albo: “Leo Panitch, the Socialist Register and Beyond Digital Capitalism.” Greg teaches in the Department of Politics at York University. He is co-editor of the Socialist Register.
• Ursula Huws: “Reaping the Whirlwind: Digitalization, Restructuring, and Mobilization in the Covid Crisis.” Ursula is Professor of Labour and Globalization at the University of Hertfordshire.

Rosa Luxemburg at 150: a revolutionary legacy

TRIBUTE TO A REVOLUTIONARY 

James Plested

Red Flag | March 5, 2021

Rosa Luxemburg, one of the great leaders in the history of the socialist movement, was born in Poland (then a province of the Russian empire) 150 years ago this month, on 5 March 1871. Luxemburg cut her teeth in the Polish revolutionary underground, but as an immensely talented political leader, she was drawn to the centre of the European workers’ movement in Germany, where, from the late 1890s, she became the driving force of the revolutionary wing of German socialism.

‘What is Your Name?’ ‘Azad!’

REMEMBRANCE

Remembering Chandrashekhar Azad(1906–1931)

Prabal Saran Agarwal

The Citizen | February 21, 2021

The revolutionary freedom fighter Chandrashekhar Azad is usually remembered only by the famous photograph in which he is twirling his moustache bare-chested, and wearing a janeu ritual thread, a symbol of masculine nationalism.

Deeper research into his life and political career reveals not only the truth behind this photograph but the progressive political ideas of Azad, who led the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, a revolutionary socialist organisation founded by Bhagat Singh and others in September 1928.

Remembering Ed Rooksby

REMEMBRANCE

An interview with Ed Rooksby

Interview by Alex Doherty

Tribune | February 24, 2021

Writer and academic Ed Rooksby passed away last week at the age of just 46. We republish one of his final in-depth interviews – and remember his contributions to socialist thought in Britain.

In July of last year, the socialist writer and academic Ed Rooksby, who has tragically passed away at just 46 years of age, wrote on the reemergence of communism and Marxism as commonplace terms of political discourse. Having first developed his political outlook during the 1990s and early 2000s—when End of History narratives were at their height—Ed recalled the sheer level of amused derision that describing oneself as a socialist often provoked in those years:

Lenin

REMEMBERING LENIN

Ernesto Estévez Rams

Granma | January 21, 2021

Photo: Pinterest

Describing the October Revolution in Russia, John Reed, in the prologue of his extraordinary book Ten Days that Shook the World, describes the forces vying for power, in the midst of a Revolution that had not yet managed to define its destiny.

On the one hand, what he calls the possessing classes who aspired to remove the Czar and replace him with a bourgeois power, in the style of the Western democracies of the United States and France; on the other, the Bolsheviks, who saw the Revolution as based on the class struggle and insisted on the necessity of the Soviets taking power.