This unnamed (for safety reasons) leader of the Cuban Communist Party speaks at a mass anti-war gathering in New York City asking U.S. comrades to aid in preventing the Roosevelt administration from sending marines to shore up the new government in face of the immense revolutionary pressure of the Cuban workers and peasants then in motion.

‘Cuban Communist Party Asks for U.S. Workers’ Support’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 10 No. 242. October 9, 1933.

Delegate at U.S. Congress Against War Urges American Masses to Fight Intervention and Prevent Landing of Marines in Cuba

In a stirring appeal for the support of the American masses, the representative of the Communist Party of Cuba outlined the program of the revolutionary Cuban workers and peasants and called for “Hands Off Cuba!” in his address before the United States Congress Against War, held In New York City a week ago.

“Any attempt at military Intervention will be met by the bitterest mass resistance,” the Cuban representative declared. “We appeal to you to prevent the destruction of our cities and villages. Prevent the war of your bankers against the Cuban people!

“In the name of the workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors, students and anti-imperialists of Cuba, who are engaged in a revolutionary life and death battle against the whole system of feudal and colonial oppression, who are engaged in an historic fight for bread, land and freedom, the Communist Party of Cuba warmly greets this Congress of anti-war fighters.

“Brothers, Sisters, Comrades!

“The Cuban Revolution is on the march! The Cuban people is awakening with lightning rapidity from their century-old existence of misery and want, to achieve an independent, happy existence. They are breaking the chains which keep them bound to the enslaving chariot of exploitation and oppression.

“The horrible regime of Machado has crumbled before the revolutionary action and will of the toiling masses. The working class of Cuba, which carried out the general strike of the August days, has stood in the very center of this struggle. The Communist Party of Cuba has led the working class in this great mass movement which resulted in the overthrow of the bloody regime of economic ruin, starvation and terror!

“But the end of Machado is not the end of misery and starvation in Cuba. The railroad and tobacco workers, the workers of the sugar mills and plantations, the Negro toilers, native and West Indian, live under conditions of semi-serfdom, they are downtrodden, exploited and oppressed. The peasants are still deprived of their land. They toil under a barbarous, feudal system, bound hand and foot through the taxation of the bourgeois-landlord government. The fall of Machado has not given and cannot give work to the half million unemployed. Cuba is not free from foreign domination.

“These are the underlying reasons for the onward march of the Revolution. This is why we see today, before our very eyes, mounting strikes in the sugar mills and plantations, in the tobacco factories and fields, among the railroad workers, port workers and seamen, among the textile and shoe workers. This is why the workers, in their desperation, are even seizing mills and factories.

“The peasants are fighting for land and against the millstone of debt, taxation and other feudal tributes which weigh on them. In the Oriente Province, the Negroes are rising against national oppression.

“Ours is a historic struggle against feudal slavery, for the radical betterment of our economic conditions and for freedom. Ours is a fight against the native capitalists and landlords and their government of Grau San Martin, and the domination of American finance capital.

“The native Cuban exploiters and their political parties and cliques: the A.B.C., the Union Nacionalista, the Menocal faction, the Directorio Estudianttl and its San Martin Government, cringe before the rising tide of the revolution. Terror-stricken, they strive to check its onward march and will call upon Wall Street to land its marines In order to defeat the revolutionary aspirations of the masses. They are quickly gathering the forces of counter-revolution in order to crush the rising revolutionary wave headed by the National Confederation of Labor and the Communist Party of Cuba.

“The Grau San Martin Government represents the Cuban propertied classes. It crawls before American imperialism and is preparing a military bloodbath for the Cuban people in order to safeguard these vested interests.

“The Roosevelt government has sent thirty warships to Cuban waters. They have been sent not to “protect American lives,” but rather to crush our revolutionary movement and safeguard the huge Investments of Wall Street. Not a single American in Cuba has suffered injury. No one will suffer injury who does not take the lives of the Cuban toilers, who does not actively stand in their way in the battle against hunger and for freedom.

“The Communist Party of Cuba offers the only solution to the anarchy and ruin brought about by the native and foreign exploiters. It shows the way to bread, land and freedom.

“But this solution will only be by the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois-landlord government which serves the interest of a handful of oppressors and the establishment of a Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, representing the interests and aspirations of all toilers. Only the power in the hands of the workers, peasants and soldiers can be a, guarantee against the revival of the bloody rule of the Machados and their like.

“The workers’ and peasants’ government of Cuba will radically better the conditions of the workers, peasants and the toiling masses. It will guarantee the 8-hour day to all workers on the plantations as well as in the cities, it will give land to the peasants and sweep away feudalism in the countryside. It will give work to the unemployed. It will establish a system of social insurance.

“The workers’ and peasants’ government of Cuba, knowing itself the pangs of colonial oppression, will unhesitatingly give the right to self-determination to the point of separation to the Oriente Province where the Negroes are in the vast majority, at the same time guaranteeing full social, political and economic equality to all Negroes throughout the Island.

“The workers’ and peasants’ government will fight for and secure real Independence for Cuba, the age-long dream of the masses.

“The Workers’ and Peasants’ Government will expropriate without compensation the estates belonging to the large landowners of Cuba and to foreign capitalists for free distribution among the peasants. It will nationalise the great Industrial, banking, transport and other undertakings In possession of the Imperialists.

“This Workers’ and Peasants’ Government will be achieved by the forging and cementing of the revolutionary alliance of the workers and peasants with the support of the and sailors’ committees.

“We appeal to you, and through you, to the workers and farmers of the United States, to all honest men and women, for support at this decisive time. Remember the fight you waged against British rule in 1776. Ours, too, is a fight for independence. Do not believe that we are “anti-Americans.” We know that the overwhelming mass of the people in your country are toilers, our brothers and sisters who suffer under the rule of the same exploiters as we. The strike wave and the farmers’ battles in your country, this very gathering representing tens of thousands of anti-war fighters prove this to us conclusively.

“The Communist Party of Cuba warns all enemies of the Cuban masses that any attempt at military intervention at this time or when the power of the workers and peasants is established, will be met by the bitterest mass resistance. We will put every man into the fight. We will find allies among the millions of toilers of South and Central America. We will stand our ground to the left in the face of all of the warships and the menace of destruction. We will not cede an inch of our soil, a bit of our freedom

“Brothers, Sisters, Comrades!

“We appeal to you to prevent the landing of marines in Cuba. Prevent the destruction of our cities and villages; prevent the war of your bankers against the Cuban people. Prevent the repetition in Cuba of the hell wrought by Japanese Imperialism in China. Though a small nation, with every resource at our command we will fight to win and win our independence.

“All power to the workers and peasants of Cuba!

“Forward to a Workers’ and Peasants’ Government in Cuba!

“Long live the workers and farmers of the U.S., who will support our fight for national liberation!”

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1933/v10-n242-oct-09-1933-DW-LOC.pdf