A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution by Cushion Stephen; Cushion Steve;

Author:Cushion, Stephen; Cushion, Steve;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Monthly Review Press
Published: 2016-03-11T05:00:00+00:00

A Time of Transition

The Granma landing in December 1956 represents a qualitative change in working-class involvement in the revolutionary process in Cuba. Before this time, class-conscious workers had attempted to defend their interests by the more or less traditional means of strikes and demonstrations, and the government had, with some notable exceptions, successfully defeated them with the help of a corrupt trade union bureaucracy. The police and security forces had freely used clubs and fire hoses, only occasionally opening fire, but generally kept their use of force within bounds. From the beginning of 1957 there was an escalation in the level of state violence against civilians, particularly in the east. This intimidation significantly reduced the number of strikes, although it does not seem to have reconciled workers to accepting their lot. They may have been weakened, but they had not been broken and there is clear evidence of a search for an alternative strategy to defend their rights and livelihoods.

The strikes in textiles, the railways, and on the Havana buses were essentially defensive, seeking to preserve traditional bonuses, to prevent the victimization of local union activists, or stop threatened redundancies or closures. Unofficial industrial action can be very effective in defending the status quo; it is much less so when offensive action is required, for instance in the case of wage claims, which are most successful when there is organization extending beyond the individual workplace. This requires either the support of the trade union bureaucracy or a well-established and widespread unofficial network. Thus, although the PSP’s campaign for a 20 percent wage increase received widespread support, the CTC official structures were not going to organize the industrial action required, and the PSP itself did not have the capability of setting strikes in motion unofficially in the face of escalating state terror.

A closer look at the list of those workers supporting the 20 percent claim shows them to be largely Havana-based. However, by 1957, workers in the east of the island were becoming more concerned with government repression, which was much fiercer in Oriente and Camagüey, as well as being increasingly accompanied by torture and death squads. The mounting repression during 1957 and early 1958 affected both organizations equally, with frequent reports of PSP militants joining the MR-26-7 members among the missing, murdered, arrested, or tortured.70 The ability of the MR-26-7 to offer a possible solution to the problem of government-organized violence accounts for the spread of its sección obrera network in the east and its increasing attractiveness to ordinary communist workers.

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