La Joven Cuba Responds

El Yuma just received the following interesting and inviting comment from Harold, one of the administrators at La Joven Cuba:

Harold said...
The blog La Joven Cuba was an idea of a few young people at the Matanzas University. As an administrator, I can tell you that we try to approach Cuban topics in 2 areas: 

-Defend our political system (without giving up our critical point of view).
-Debate our internal troubles and limitations. To criticize all that it needs to be changed. 

Our visitors are mostly foreign, that makes the controversy very difficult for us, anyhow... we don't give up talking about hot, difficult topics. 

We expect you there...

The site also recently added a section called "Cartas a LJC," where they make space for "Letters to the Editor," allowing for "the promotion of a respectful exchange of ideas so that people with other ideological positions can express their opinions." If you want to send them a letter or extended comment, use this e-mail address: colaboradores.lajovencuba@gmail.com.

Here's their original Spanish statement:

"Nuestra intención es propiciar un intercambio respetuoso en el que personas de otras posiciones ideológicas tengan también derecho a expresar sus opiniones."

Let the debate begin...

Keep reading to learn a bit more about the man and movement who inspired the name La Joven Cuba, Antonio Guiteras Holmes (1906-1935) [an outtake from my book on Cuba].

The revolutionary Cuban government set up in September 1933 as a result of the sergeant’s revolt was not only divided between civilian Ramón Grau and military Fulgencio Batista. It was also internally divided between moderates from the Student’s Directorate and the more radical members of the Unión Revolucionaria led by Antonio Guiteras Holmes. In many ways, it was Guiteras’ revolutionary program that was quickly put into place in the short-lived 100 days of Grau’s incumbency. Guiteras was essentially the motor that gave direction to the administration, serving as its minister of the interior, war, and navy, positions that allowed him nominal civilian control over the country’s armed forces (military and police). However, it was also Guiteras’ radical goals that caused U.S. envoy Sumner Welles to refuse the rebel government American recognition.

As a political leader, Guiteras had the same single-minded, austere style that distinguished both José Martí and Fidel Castro. However, unlike Martí but presaging Castro, Guiteras was especially enamored of using direct violent action in a context where electoral politics itself was thinly veiled gangsterism. Though not a Communist, Guiteras was perhaps Cuba’s most radical and resourceful political leader between Julio Antonio Mella of the 1920s and Fidel Castro after the 1950s. After fleeing into exile when the revolutionary government of 1933 was overthrown by Batista, Guiteras returned clandestinely and founded a new nationalist/socialist-oriented political movement that he named Joven Cuba.

Like Che Guevara after him, Guiteras and his movement was often attacked by the Soviet-oriented Cuban Communist party for being overly “voluntarist” and for placing too much confidence in the efficacy of direct violent action. However, under the first Batista pseudo-dictatorship, Guiteras reasoned that electoral politics was a fraud and that the only option for the true opposition was sabotage, assassination, and bombings. By 1935, these tactics combined with the ever increasing repression coming from the Batista government, led to an explosion of violence and the declaration of Martial law in the country. It was during these years that many leftist/nationalist Cubans fled to the short-lived protection of Republican Spain to avoid almost certain government arrest, torture, and assassination. In the end, Guiteras died as he had lived, trying to escape into exile once again while caught up in the orgy of urban guerrilla warfare and military repression that engulfed Cuba in 1935.