Statement from the Cuban Communist Party at the commencement of the 1933 anti-colonial Revolution which saw the overthrow of U.S. puppet Gerardo Machado.

‘Manifesto of the Communist Party of Cuba’ from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 13 No. 39. September 8, 1933.

Manifesto of the C.C. of the C.P. of Cuba and Y.C.L. of Cuba

The following Manifesto was issued at Havana on August 3, before the overthrow of Machado, when the bus workers had already gone out on strike under the influence of the Communist Party and the National Labour Confederation, and when the strike had already spread to important sectors of the working class. The Manifesto appears immediately after the August 1st demonstrations which throughout Cuba reached higher levels than ever before. Machado’s troops murdered and wounded workers, among them active members of the Communist Party and of the Young Communist League. The bourgeoisie-landlord opposition press was attacking the Communist Party as accomplices of Machado, merely because the Party was unmasking these leaders as agents of American imperialism. In Washington, steps were being taken to reduce the sugar quota for import into the United States. Welles was actively engaged in trying to establish a government satisfactory to the Wall Street-Roosevelt government.

To the workers, poor and middle peasants, poor professionals and students, public and private employees, small business people and shopkeepers; to the toiling masses in general.

Comrades:

From one extremity of the country to the other, the working class has gone on strike for its demands. The workers on the bus lines are engaged in struggle against their exploiters, against Pepito Izquierdo and his forty thieves in the local Havana government, to win better conditions from the bosses and to force them to recognise the National Transport Workers’ Union.

While these great struggles were developing, other workers also got together to demand better living conditions. Among these were the workers of the Santa Isabel sugar plantation and of the Ramona sugar mill, the tobacco workers of Placetas, Fomento and of other towns of the provinces of Santa Clara and of Pinar del Rio, the longshoremen of Tunas de Zaza, Jucaro, Antilla, Havana and other ports, the railway workers, and the workers of the various industries of the country and of entire cities, including Sanjose de las Lajas, Pinar del Rio, Matanzas, Santa Clara and Clego de Avila. In addition, the barbers are already on strike in Havana; and the commercial employees and certain sections of the public service workers and of private business employees are about to join the strike.

These numerous strikes in solidarity with the strike movement of the Havana bus workers and for the winning of the immediate demands raised by the workers in the different industries soon grew into a nation-wide general strike, as the form of struggle of the workers and of the toiling population in general, for better living conditions, as advocated by the Communist Party and by the National Labour Confederation of Cuba in their agitation and propaganda in mobilising the masses.

Strikes Challenge Imperialism

This exceptional movement of the toiling masses in struggle. against the boss offensive of the imperialist and native exploiters comes into direct conflict with the terror apparatus of the murderous Machado government, and is an outright challenge of the masses to the imperialist manœuvres of the interventionist “mediator” Welles and to his lackeys, the bourgeois-landlord opposition leaders.

Machado and his bloody henchmen are attempting to use this situation in order to demonstrate to their Wall Street masters that they are their lackeys who cannot be substituted. They do this by letting loose a terrible wave of crimes in an effort to drown in blood the heroic struggle of the working class and of the toiling masses, at the same time allowing the bourgeois-landlord opposition, the would-be executioners of the masses, to carry out freely their demagogic manoeuvres to mislead the masses, and allowing the pen prostitutes of the bourgeois press to foam rabidly with indignation and fear against the independent struggles of the masses for their own demands, as has been done by the venomous Hornedo from the columns of “El Pais.”

On August First, Anti-War Day, Luisa Abadi, a young Communist girl, was shot down in cold blood in Santiago de Cuba. On the streets of Havana, on the same day, the Machado “porra ” assassin gang, barricaded in the barber shop of Segundo Brito, shot into a demonstration, killing Carlos Alfonso Camacho, a rank and file member of the A.B.C., and seriously wounding Marcio Mandulay and Armando Chapelli, members of the Young Communist League and leaders of the student “Left” wing (Ala Izquierda Estudiantil), who are on the verge of death. Armando Herrera and a young Pioneer, as well as four other Communists, were wounded by bullets. In Santiago de las Vegas, San Antonio de los Banos, Hoyo Colorado, Camaguey, Fomento and in other places throughout the country, the demonstrations were attacked by the thugs of the butcher Machado, wounding participants, beating, crushing and massacring the masses.

Press Conceals Struggles

While Machado and his lieutenants, following the instructions of Welles himself who interviewed Herrera for this purpose, are concentrating the police and army in order to commit even greater crimes; and while the “mediation” imperialist Welles is instructing Machado to let loose his machine guns and mow down the masses who are demanding bread; the leaders of the bourgeois-landlord opposition, leeches who are about to burst from the blood sucked from the toilers, fill their infamous, lying press with appeals for calmness, resignation, patience and similar virtues, in order to hurl confusion into the ranks of the masses.

The same bourgeois newspapers which only yesterday lent themselves to songs of praise of the glories of the butcher Machado, concealing his crimes, and concealing also the struggles led by the Communist Party and by the National Labour Confederation of Cuba, although these struggles were of tremendous significance, such as the sugar strike which mobilised 20,000 workers during the recent milling season under the banner of the National Sugar Workers’ Industrial Union; this same mercenary press is now carrying out a conspiracy of silence against the National Labour Confederation and the Communist Party, filling its pages with reports of the struggles led by these revolutionary organisations, without the least mention of the names of these organisations. This same press tries, through their lying reports, to identify the Communists with the provocateur thugs and assassins of the Machado “porra” gangsters, reports written by such scoundrels as the one who signs himself Pizzi de Porras, who certainly lives up to his name by organising a “porra” of slanderers which the A.B.C. is about to transform into a fascist, anti-Communist shock brigade.

Slanders Against Communists

Slanderers in the service of the bourgeois-landlord opposition! Lies and reptile venom from the fangs of your masters, the exploiters, are the only weapons you can use! It is not the National Labour Confederation of Cuba and the Communist Party who need to answer your insidious and prostituted pens. It is the raised fist of the murdered railway worker Varona; it is Alfredo Lopez from the depths of Havana Bay; it is Brouzon with his accusing arm; it is Yalob, whose body is weighted down by chains in Havana Harbour; it is Mella, on hunger strike and almost on his death bed in 1925 (when many of you were supporting Machado)–Mella bleeding to death from the wounds inflicted upon him in Mexico by the Machado paid assassins Magrinat and Lopez Valino; it is Manduley and Chapelli, battling against death in these very moments. A whole legion of heroes and martyrs for the cause of the Cuban working class–it is they who give the most eloquent answer to your infamous slanders that the Communist Party supports the assassin Machado.

Neither the sham programme of the A.B.C. nor the clownish acts of the bourgeois-landlord opposition leaders can fool the masses. The workers and peasants, all toilers, are facing starvation and they know well that they have with them the National Labour Confederation and the Communist Party, vanguard of the working class, in their struggle to win the bread of which they are deprived by the exploiters.

Sugar Quota Is Hunger Quota

From Washington Welles has brought with him a new hunger quota in the form of plans for further restrictions of the Cuban sugar output, which are accepted by Machado as well as by the leaders of the bourgeois landlord opposition. Even the trading and commercial bourgeoisie has protested against this hunger plan, which is fought resolutely and openly, as an imperialist attack, by the revolutionary organisations, under the leadership of the Communist Party.

Neither Manach, ideological leader of the A.B.C., nor his most shameless colleagues in the leadership of the bourgeois-landlord opposition have said a word against this sinister quota introduced by Welles on behalf of the sugar barons and of Roosevelt; on the contrary, they bow before their masters. It is clear that if they should speak up even with demagogic phrases, the same imperialist bandit, Welles, who is imposing the starvation sugar quota, would not give them the opportunity of shaking the hand of Herrera and Company, and become the future ministers who would hand out “justice” to the toiling masses of Cuba.

The lackeys of the bourgeois-landlord opposition are supporters of the Machado regime, that is, of the regime of open and bloody dictatorship in favour of the interests of imperialism, and of the native bourgeoisie and landlords. They are hirelings who are giving their co-operation to the imperialist intervention regime which Welles is introducing and to the imperialist agent Machado, to a regime which is dripping with the blood of workers and peasants, to a regime which at any moment may become naked intervention, through the military boot of Yankee marines.

Opposition Protects Imperialists

The opposition is trying to cover up the imperialist nature of the Welles intervention, even though Roosevelt admits it. This intervention follows the same policy of American imperialism from the Constituent Assembly of 1901 down to the regime of Machado. All the wailing of these groups of bourgeois politicians, of Machado as well as of the bourgeois landlord opposition, over the loss of “sovereignty,” are nothing but mockery by those who are speculating with the myth of the independence of Cuba, “a people that has never been free,” as Julio Antonio Mella said, since it passed from the Spanish colonial yoke directly to the ruthless rule of the imperialism of the stars and stripes.

Workers of Cuba! Continue your struggle! Struggle for your immediate demands, drawn up by yourselves, in the factories, on the plantations and other places of work, for better working and living conditions, against wage cuts, for wage increases, against lay-offs, against rationalisation.

Organise yourselves into trade unions of your industry, under the leadership of the National Labour Confederation of Cuba.

Machado, with the same blood-thirstiness as ever, has grasped his murderous sword, to bury it once more in your wounded flesh. The leaders of the bourgeois-landlord opposition are trying to cure your ills by means of demagogic injections. Welles with one hand directs the arm that holds Machado’s sword; while with the other he directs the opposition which utilises demagogy to the full.

Amnesty! They speak of amnesty, when the jails are filled with political prisoners; and when, to top all, a judge belonging to the A.B.C. sentences to jail in Aldecoa a young girl, Josefina Maderos, for the crime of being a Communist.

Constitutional Reform! When a bloody reign of terror is continually let loose against the toiling masses, against the workers, teachers, students and veterans.

Your “saviours'” masks have fallen from your faces. The masses know what they mean by restricting the vote to only those who can read. At first they tried to exclude all the workers from voting; now they intend to exclude all the toiling youth, particularly the negroes. Their women’s suffrage is restricted; it is one more “democratic” farce.

Workers! Beware of the renegades Junco and Villareal, who come to your meetings accompanied by police with the purpose of keeping you from carrying on a struggle.

The Communist Party and the National Labour Confederation has organised a series of strikes for the immediate demands of the workers. These strikes have developed into a general strike. The Communist Party calls upon all workers of those industries which are not yet involved in the movement, to join the strike, for the immediate demands.

Communist Programme of Action

The Communist Party calls upon all strikers, upon the working class in general, upon all toiling masses, to link up the struggle for their immediate demands with the fight for the following programme of action drawn up by the Communist. Party; and to remain firm in this glorious struggle for the immediate demands raised by the workers in the various industries:

For the eight-hour day in the sugar industry, in the commercial establishments and in all other industries in the country; for the payment of back wages to the sugar workers, to the teachers and to all government employees; for immediate unemployment relief; for workers’ control of the administration of the old age pension laws; for social insurance against unemployment–all at the expense of the bosses and the government.

For the payment of back debts to the sharecroppers (colonos); against robbery of land from the peasants; and for the cancellation of the debts of the peasants.

Against the hunger quota imposed on Cuban sugar consumed in the United States; against the revision of tariff rates in favour of the Yankee exporters; against the payment of debts to the Yankee bankers; against the new taxation laws and the present Emergency Taxation Law.

For Negro equality; and the right of self-determination of the Negroes in the black belt of Oriente, where the Negroes constitute the majority of the population.

Against the bloody Machado regime; against his terror; for the immediate freedom of political prisoners; for the right of assembly, press, strike and organisation; for the legality of all revolutionary organisations, including the Communist Party.

For the support of the struggle of the insurgents; against the leaders of the bourgeoisie-landlord opposition; against the “diplomatic” intervention of the “mediator” Welles and his threat of military intervention; against the Platt Amendment; for the withdrawal of the Yankee marines from Guantanamo; for the national liberation of Cuba.

Only a Soviet government of workers and peasants will liberate Cuba from the yoke of Yankee imperialism and of its native agents.

Workers and Peasants! Form self-defence groups, which will defend your mass actions from the attacks of the armed forces!

Soldiers and sailors! Fraternise with your class brothers, the workers and poor peasants, and refuse to persecute and attack them!

Workers!

Long live the general strike for your demands! All toilers!

Demonstrate in the streets!

Long live the united front of the masses against the economic offensive, against terror, and against the imperialist war which the exploiters are letting loose.

Down with the reformist, anarchist and stool pigeon leaders, who are participating in the struggles only to be better able to betray them.

Down with Machado and the leaders of the bourgeois-landlord opposition!

Oust Welles and the Yankee marines from the national territory!

Down with the military intervention threatened by Yankee imperialism through its mouthpiece Welles!

Long live the agrarian, anti-imperialist revolution!

Organise into the Transport, Sugar, Tobacco and Marine. National Labour Unions and into the red trade union oppositions, under the banner of the National Labour Confederation of Cuba! Join the Communist Party and the Young Communist League! Organise Communist nuclei in the factories and in other places of work!

Central Committee Communist Party of Cuba.

Central Committee Young Communist League of Cuba.

Havana, August 3, 1933.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1933/v13n39-sep-08-1933-Inprecor-op.pdf