With Cuba & Fidel

Fidel Castro is an extraordinary revolutionary whose life’s work has been to liberate Cuba from U.S. imperialism’s voracious control and build a society in which the masses can live in dignity. He is an inspiration especially to the peoples of Latin America, but his name and socialist Cuba’s generosity resonate with the oppressed everywhere.

Now, for the first time, he has tempo rarily delegated his functions as leader of several bodies in the Cuban government to other responsible comrades, including Defense Minister and First Vice President Raúl Castro and Political Bureau members José Ramón Balaguer, José Ramón Machado, Esteban Lazo Hernández and Carlos Lage Dávila.

In an Aug. 1 message to the Cuban people, Comrade Castro explained that a grueling schedule in recent weeks, when he visited several cities in Argentina and then attended commemorations in Cuba of the 1953 guerrilla attack on dictator Batista’s Moncada Barracks, led to his health “breaking down.” He was operated on for intestinal bleeding and is now recuperating, in the capable hands of the Cuban medical establishment.

It testifies to the strong revolutionary institutions built up in Cuba since the revolution that the island is calm, even though it continues to face blatant hostility from the world’s most dangerous imperialist power, just 90 miles from its shores. It is calm despite the deep sadness among the Cuban people over their leader’s health crisis. There is enormous affection for Fidel, as he is universally called. He has been the commander in chief of the epic struggle that propelled his small and beleaguered country into a world-class example of how, even under adverse external conditions, a socialist revolution can liberate the resources of society to be used first and foremost to advance the health, education and security of the people.

Even capitalist newspapers here have to admit the great respect and love of the Cuban people for Fidel, although most television images focus on the discredited counter-revolutionary exiles in Miami who, like monarchists after the French Revolution, yearn in vain for a return of the old days.

Fidel will be 80 years old on Aug. 13. He has asked that official celebrations be postponed until December, when he expects to be up and about again. In the meantime, we join the multitudes of progressive people around the world who wish him a speedy recovery. We offer our heartfelt solidarity to Comrade Raúl Castro, himself a veteran and indispensable organizer of all the great struggles that liberated Cuba, and to the rest of the Cuban leaders who are shouldering additional responsibilities in this period of Fidel’s recuperation.