[Marxism] Four million Cubans join defense exercise

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(Excellent report on Bastion 2004, Cuba's 
military preparedness exercises which that
took place in mid-December. Lots of first
hand interviews in this article.)
=========================================

THE MILITANT
Vol. 69/No. 2 January 18, 2005

Four million Cubans join defense exercise

BY MATILDE ZIMMERMANN

HAVANA??A United People. And With Tanks!? read the banner
headline on the newspaper of the Union of Young Communists
on Sunday, December 19. Juventud Rebelde was celebrating
the successful completion of a full week of large-scale
military exercises to test and sharpen Cuba?s preparedness
for resisting a U.S. invasion.

The exercise, known as Bastión 2004, was launched December
13. It involved 100,000 people in the first five days of
strategizing and simulated attacks and over 4 million
Cubans in the final weekend of national mobilization.
Bastión 2004 was the first nationwide military mobilization
in this nation of 4 million in 18 years, and the first time
in more than a decade that heavy tanks and MIG fighter
planes have been brought out.

?For many years our principal objective has been to avoid
war,? said Minister of the Armed Forces Raúl Castro when he
initiated Bastión 2004 on December 13. ?And we know that
the only way to avoid an invasion is to make it clear that
if it happens Cuba will be converted from one end to the
other into an enormous wasps? nest, which no aggressor can
conquer, no matter how strong he is. In the end, the
invader will have to retreat, bloody and defeated, because
this would be a war of the entire people.?

?Better to spill rivers of sweat now than rivers of blood
later,? became one of the slogans of the mobilization.

Active-duty members of the armed forces, reservists, and
civilians organized into the Territorial Troop Militias
were placed on alert status all over the country. They went
into action with their weapons in response to announcements
of bombing attacks, incidents of sabotage, or the landing
of U.S. troops. Although the weapons were real, they fired
blanks, in order not to waste precious ammunition.

Julio César Arteaga, a young first sergeant from Camagüey,
told the press he had received six years of advanced
weapons training. ?What sets us apart from an invading army
is our background and the values we have acquired,? he
said. ?There could be soldiers with a material and
technical support system superior to ours, but they could
never have our commitment to our revolution and our
nation.?

Rafael Ramos Traba, an agricultural worker and reservist,
made a similar point. ?We aren?t just prepared physically
and militarily but also psychologically and above all
ideologically, which makes us stronger and even invincible
against an enemy that needs to draw the lesson that we
shouldn?t be underestimated.?

According to Mercedes Valdés, a young soldier in her first
year of anti-aircraft artillery training, ?These days have
helped me a lot in every way. First because I know I am
being useful, and secondly because, even though it?s not an
exam, for me Bastión 2004 is my first trial under fire.?

One difference between this year?s mobilization and the
military alerts that took place in Cuba during the 1980s is
that now there are many more young women who are officers
in the army and more women of all ages leading the work of
the Cuban Communist Party, Union of Young Communists, and
Civil Defense Councils in different municipalities and
provinces. This was clear in the television and press
reports on Bastión 2004, as was the case during
preparations to confront Hurricane Ivan three months ago.

Several million Cuban workers, peasants, students, and
others are organized into the voluntary Territorial Troop
Militias. Bruno Guerra, 53, who has been a member of the
militias for more than 30 years, said, ?When Playa Girón
happened and the struggle against the counterrevolution in
the Escambray mountains, I was just a boy. My Girón, my
Escambray, my Sierra Maestra has been the Territorial Troop
Militias, and that?s where my post is when it comes to
defending the homeland.?

Guerra was referring to the 1961 mercenary invasion of Cuba
at the Bay of Pigs, which was organized by Washington and
crushed by Cuba?s Revolutionary Armed Forces and popular
militias within three days. The Sierra Maestra is a
mountain range in eastern Cuba from which the Rebel Army
and July 26 Movement led the revolution that overthrew the
U.S.-backed dictatorship in Cuba on New Year?s Day in 1959.
A counterrevolutionary campaign by U.S.-backed rightists
was organized in the Escambray mountains in the 1960s and
was defeated by the country?s armed forces and militias.

A key part of Cuba?s defense system is an elaborate system
of tunnels for refuge and organizing resistance. These
underground fortifications, in and near the city of Havana
and other urban areas, are maintained with ventilation,
light, water, medical services and sometimes even
classrooms. There are also field hospitals and refuges in
natural caves in various parts of the island. The province
of Holguín celebrated the early completion of its plan for
expansion and fortification of the tunnel system with an
act honoring the tuneleros, or tunnel-builders.

An important aspect of the training exercise was
guaranteeing supplies of water, food, and medical care to
the population and continuing industrial and agricultural
production in the event of war. During Bastión 2004, every
national industry drew up plans to protect or move
machinery and supplies, and to continue production under
conditions of extreme hardship.

One garment factory in Havana Province trained workers to
continue producing with pedal machines if electricity was
lost. ?And if the factory is bombed,? said plant director
Rosalina Lago Hernández, ?we have workers chosen to
continue working in their houses and in the people?s
tunnels.?

A steel factory in Havana that normally produces medical
equipment devised a plan to change over to weapons
production. Bakers at the La Flor factory in Camagüey
organized to produce bread without their electric mixing
machines and ovens, kneading the dough by hand and baking
it with wood-fired stoves. ?This is my job if the enemy
invades,? said young baker Kilbert Alvarez. ?The Americans
should realize that children and fighters here can count on
getting their pieces of bread, because even without
electricity and in a war, La Flor won?t stop.?

Although Bastión 2004 was announced only a week before it
began, military preparedness has long been part of the
routine of life for millions of Cubans. Most workers and
professionals do voluntary overnight guard duty every four
to six weeks at their workplaces or in their communities.
School children get target practice, starting in about
seventh grade. The country also has an extremely efficient
and well-organized civil-defense structure to deal with
natural disasters such as hurricanes.

The last two days of Bastión 2004 were designated as Days
of National Defense and involved the mobilization of a
large part of the Cuban population and detailed plans for
evacuation of the most vulnerable sectors.

On Sunday morning, about 8 a.m., a woman came down the
street where I was staying in Havana, calling loudly for
?evacuees? to gather on a nearby corner. Retirees and
people who were sick or disabled assembled to receive
evacuation instructions, following a short presentation
about the danger that our neighborhood would be the target
of bombing in an invasion, because of the proximity of
government buildings, and tunnels and bridges across the
Almandares River. The gathering point for children was at
their schools. A few hours later I talked to a young mother
who was taking her daughters?Anabel, 5, and Mabel, 3?to
perform in a children?s chorus. She explained that when she
arrived with the girls at the school early that morning,
she was told that in the event of a real war, they would be
taken first to nearby John Lennon Park and then in buses to
a refuge in Matanzas province, and she was given a list of
supplies to pack.

Near the end of the weeklong exercise, Raúl Castro directed
an operation of heavy-armored tanks and then addressed
residents of a nearby working-class neighborhood of Havana.
Bastión 2004, he said, ?involved Cubans of all colors, a
beautiful rainbow of people. But all speaking the same
language, all with one goal, one ideal: our most powerful
weapon is our unity.?



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