IN PORTUGAL
Solidarity with Cuba and Venezuela
By
John Catalinotto
Oporto, Portugal
Published May 5, 2006 8:41 PM
People filled an
auditorium in downtown Oporto April 27 to applaud the release of two new
books—an occasion that enabled them to express solidarity with two
countries under attack by U.S. imperialism: Venezuela and Cuba.
Ellen Catalinotto reads solidarity message.
WW photo: John Catalinotto
|
The two
books, translated into Por tuguese and just published, are “Hugo
Chávez: A Man, a People,” by the progressive journalist Martha
Harnecker, and “The Admirable Campaign of Bolivar,” by Juvenal
Herrera Torres, a Colombian historian from Medellin.
The Cuban ambassador
to Portugal, Jorge Castro Benitéz, and the Venezuelan ambassador to
Portugal, Manuel Quijada, addressed the meeting, as did the meeting’s
organizer, Portuguese journalist and author Miguel Urbano Rodrigues. The
presence of the two ambassadors and a speech by Urbano attacking the U.S.
government as the “Fourth Reich” made it clear that to honor the two
books meant also to oppose U.S. threats against these two revolutionary
countries in Latin America.
Urbano said that the threat from U.S.
militarism is “the main menace to humanity today. It threatens not only
war and economic dislocation, but also the destruction of the
environment.” He also mentioned the exemplary role of Cuba—only 90
miles from its greatest enemy—and Venezuela in “mobilizing the
people of Latin America against neoliberal, privatizing economic policies pushed
by the U.S.”
Quijada, who worked together with Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez long before the charismatic Latin American leader was elected
to office, discussed the progressive role of Simon Bolivar in the 19th-century
anti-colonial struggles that liberated much of Latin America from direct
European rule, and also the current threat to Venezuela from the U.S.
The
Cuban ambassador noted that the Cuban Revolution, despite 47 years of hostility
from U.S. imperialism, had a major advantage in contrast to the situation in
Venezuela: “Our bourgeoisie all fled to Miami. Venezuela still has a
relatively powerful capitalist class living in the country and capable of
threatening the revolution.”
“If you want to show solidarity
with Cuba,” he added, “then help defend Venezuela’s
revolution.”
The gathering heard a message from Berta Joubert-Ceci
of the May 20 Hands off Cuba and Venezuela Coalition in the United States, a
broad group organizing a Washington, D.C. demonstration on May 20 in solidarity
with the two countries. Anti-war U.S. activist Ellen Catalinotto read the
statement.
Joubert-Ceci wrote that even “in the belly of the
beast” there was solidarity with the two revolutions, and that it was
especially important to build that solidarity at a time when immigrants were
rising up in the millions inside the U.S. “This,” she wrote,
“is the echo of the uprisings in Latin America that the U.S. rulers were
unable to stop at the border.”
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