[Marxism] The Menendez Mission of 1947, A Cuban worker sought support in the US

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a fascinating story which I'd never heard previously.
Cuba's efforts to reach out to the working class of the US today
haven't reached a broad audience, unfortunately. One of the most
important parts of the blockade is the prevention of people from
the US being able to visit the island and to see it for themselves.
Links between Cuba and the US are long and deep. Jose Marti spent
decades in the United States, working as a journalist while also
organizing the Cuban independence struggle. Other Cubans such as
Antonio Guiteras, a leader of the revolution in the 1930s had been
born in the United States. Carlos Balin~o, a founder of the first
Cuban Communist Party in 1926 had also lived and worked in the US
as a journalist and even translated Scott Nearing's famous book
DOLLAR DIPLOMACY into Spanish, for which he write a foreward.

When we learned recently the name of Henry Reeve, after whom the
new Cuban specialized disaster relief team has been named, we 
found yet another in the numerous progressive and revolutionary
links between the people of the United States and Cuba, yet one
more in a very long chain of common links between the peoples.
The very first chapter of Howard Zinn's PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE
UNITED STATES focuses on Colombus's arrival in Cuba and many of
the dreadful consequences for the Cuban people of that link.

Some day someone will write a book on the history of the Cuban 
sugar quota, a pre-revolutionary practice under which the United
States agreed to purchase a substantial amount of the procuct in
a way completely unrelated to anything like a "free market". One
of the ways Washington attacked Cuba was by cutting off this big
US committment to buy sugar from the island. Jesus Menendez, the
leader of the Cuban sugar workers union, who headed up this major
effort, was also a leader of the Popular Socialist Party, which
was the pre-revolutionary Communist Party, and one of the island's
most prominent black public officials. In the United States at the
time, the only national labor organization headed by a black person
was the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters headed by A. Phillip
Randolph.


Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
http://www.walterlippmann.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews
 
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http://www.cubanow.net/global/loader.php?&secc=5&item=736&cont=show.php

MENENDEZ MISSION
CUBAN WORKER DEMANDS IN THE US CONGRESS
By Angelina Rojas Blaquier

CUBANOW WEBSITE
November 2005

Cubanow.- It was named: Menendez Mission and few people remember it
and still fewer ever heard about it.

We are used to hearing about the blockade and the hostility of the
United States toward Cuba. But an American story of solidarity with
the Island is scarcely mentioned. It happened as far back as 1947.

The Menendez Mission was started on US territory, by a black Cuban
sugar worker, named Jesus Menendez, against the new sugar law
approved in August of 1947. Menendez was murdered a year later in
Cuba.

This legislation, part of the American protectionist measures in
favor of the producers in the postwar period, reduced the Cuban sugar
participation in the American market to 28,6%, when the Island used
to cover approximately 60%.

Cuba depended almost entirely upon this export product. Such a
drastic reduction would bring hunger to the Cuban sugar workers.

The law included the Clause 202-E, quickly popularized as the new
Platt Amendment (in reference to the measure which imposed, at the
beginning of the 20 th Century, after the war against Spain, Cuba?s
subordination to Washington).

This new clause established the retention or withdrawal of any
increase in the country?s quota, which denied a just and equitable
treatment to Americans and their commerce, navigation and industry.

The response of the National Union of Sugar Workers, led by Jesus
Menendez, was immediate. He traveled to the United States to wage a
battle not only for the rights of the workers but for the whole
nation.

He traveled through New York and Washington, where he met with
workers and union leaders, both national and international, and
explained to them the cataclysm that the Cuban economy would suffer
and its consequences for the population, which depended heavily on
that industry.

During his meetings, he received important support from his American
counterparts. It was an extended solidarity gesture. He also
published several articles to support his huge effort in American
newspapers.

Menendez called a press conference, in which, as AP news agency
stated, he declared that the new sugar law violated the US
government?s Good Neighbor policy, and was a downward review of the
American sugar market with disastrous effects on the predominantly
Cuban sugar economy.

The World Telegram newspaper devoted that day?s editorial to the
Menendez campaign and, on July 27 th, 1947, the New York Herald
Tribune published an article signed by Menendez and another Cuban
union leader, Lazaro Peña, under the title Keep Cuba a Good Customer
by Raising the Sugar Quota, demanding a major quota and fair and
reciprocal treatment to the commercial relationship between both
countries.

The New York Times and other influential papers reproduced similar
articles. In one of his public lectures, Menendez said: ?The sugar
workers are not the only ones on our side. Ours is the battle for
Cuba, for its well-being, for its salaries and high employment
levels?.

To carry-out his task, the union leader also presented himself in the
US Congress to gain support for his cause from some of the
Congressmen who could decide the approval of the law. With that in
mind, he stood between the columns of the Capitol in Washington, and
addressed the Congressmen, surprising them and starting a lobby
action.

This was, perhaps, seen for the first and only time in Congress,
because it was being done by a Black Cuban worker, a leader of the
island?s Communist Party.

Menendez reached out to some Senators to introduce his amendment to
the law S-1584, elaborated in the head office of the Cuban Sugar
Union. It proposed the concession to Cuba of a 50% participation and
other benefits for the Cuban sugar industry, without damaging the
interests of other countries.

None of the members of the Congress accepted to introduce it,
although Democrat Dennis Chavez had the courage to declare that the
new law represented the restoration of the Dollar Diplomacy and the
conclusive death of the Good Neighbor policy.

Chavez added that the Menendez Mission represented a fair demand and
symbolized the deepest and purest patriotic feelings of the Cubans,
because it was a historic crusade in favor of Cuban independence, its
progress and development.

The Mission was not successful, but it was certainly a historical
effort in defense of the workers and the people, and in favor of
Cuban independence, which found an echo in parts of American society.

It is remembered as one of the events which awoke the greatest
solidarity in sectors of the United States and moved the public
opinion, even in the midst of that period?s tense political
environment.

The events were widely spread in workers? circles, whose leaders
backed up Cuba with all their hearts, including organizations such as
influential as the CIO.

By then, Jesus Menendez had become one of Cuba?s most important
communist and worker leaders, especially in the sugar sector, and he
was elected a member of the Chamber of Representatives, where he
fought in favor of the Cuban workers? interests.

He excelled by his eloquence and his enormous influence in the most
influential worker sector of the country. The sugar industry was
always the principal and almost only branch of a monoculture nation
dependent on the United States.

Menendez was killed a year later, shot in the back, while descending
from a train in Manzanillo, by an army captain (who ?eleven years
later- was captured and condemned at the triumph of the 1959
Revolution.

His burial was a huge mass act throughout the country, condemning the
crime. His body was transported by train from that eastern city
through the island?s principal cities to Havana, receiving tribute
all along the way.

The man who fought the battle inside the United States, and came to
protest between the columns of the US Congress, is remembered in Cuba
as one of the greats of Cuban history.

November , 2005



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