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<h1 id="reader-title">Revolutionary Transgressions: an Interview
With Margaret Randall</h1>
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<p><span class="post_date" title="2016-01-01">January 1,
2016</span></p>
<p>Margaret Randall is a poet, essayist, oral historian,
translator, photographer and social activist who was
born and raised in New York City. She lived in Latin
America for 23 years. In México from 1962 to 1969, she
and Mexican poet Sergio Mondragón co-edited <em>El
Corno Emplumado/The Plumed Horn, </em>a bilingual
literary quarterly that published some of the best new
work of the sixties. She lived and worked in Cuba 1969
to 1981, then in Nicaragua until she returned to the
United States in 1984, settling in Albuquerque. She
spent the rest of the 1980s fighting a US government
deportation order, because it found some of her writing
to be “against the good order and happiness of the
United States.” With the support of many writers and
others, she won her case in 1989. Throughout the late
1980s and early 1990s, she taught at several
universities, most often Trinity College in Hartford,
Connecticut.</p>
<p>Randall’s most recent poetry titles include <em>My
Town, As if the Empty Chair/Como si la silla vacía</em>;<em>
The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones</em>; <em>Daughter
of Lady Jaguar Shark</em>; and <em>About Little
Charlie Lindbergh</em>, all from Wings Press in San
Antonio. Two of her most recent books are from Duke
Press: <em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0822355922/counterpunchmaga">Che
on My Mind</a> </em>(2013), which she calls a
feminist poet’s reminiscence of Che Guevara, and <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0822359626/counterpunchmaga"><em>Haydée
Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary</em>: <em>She Led
by Transgression</em></a>, published in 2015.</p>
<p>Margaret Randall lives in New Mexico with her partner
(now wife) of 29 years, the painter Barbara Byers, and
travels extensively to read, lecture and teach.</p>
<p>In this interview, Randall talks about her new book on
Haydée Santamaría, about Che, about feminism, about her
years living and raising her children in Cuba, about the
draconian US immigration policies she experienced, and
about the possible future of Cuba free of US boycott.</p>
<p><em>RDO: Why did you decide to write a book on Haydée
Santamaría?</em></p>
<p>MR: I don’t think I decided to write about Haydée. She
has long been there, in the wings, waiting as it were
for me to take her on. I met Haydée on my first visit to
Cuba, in January of 1967. Casa de las Américas, the
cultural institution she headed, invited a number of
poets from different countries to celebrate the
hundredth anniversary of the great Nicaraguan modernist,
Rubén Darío. The event was called “Encuentro con Rubén
Darío” (Meeting with Ruben Dario, in English), and many
years later, when the US government was trying to deport
me because of ideas expressed in some of my books,
during my deportation hearing the prosecuting attorney
accused me of “having traveled to Cuba in 1967 to meet
with Ruben Dario”–who of course had been dead for many
years. Haydée impressed me as much as anyone or any
thing on that first visit. She was a country woman with
a sixth-grade education, who nevertheless was the only
woman who had taken part in every phase of the
revolutionary struggle. Upon victory, and despite not
having studied art history or having earned any
university degree, she was charged with founding and
running an institution that would cut through the
cultural part of the many-pronged blockade being
launched even then by the United States. She quickly
made Casa into an institution respected throughout the
world, one that brought artists, writers, thinkers and
others to Cuba, and made Cuban art and writing known
beyond the country’s borders. Haydée was a visionary.
And it wasn’t only how she created cultural bridges that
was so astonishing; she ran Casa in a highly unusual,
absolutely horizontal way. For Haydée, inclusion was
paramount. During sad periods of repression, she
protected gay artists and writers, giving them a place
to work and space to create. I was immediately attracted
to her energy, her openness, her brilliance. I returned
to Cuba, to attend the Cultural Congress of Havana, in
January of 1968. On that visit I deepened my
relationship with Haydée. And when my family and I went
to live in Cuba, at the end of 1969, our friendship
continued. I remember her once spontaneously telling me:
“Get in the car” and driving me out to her home. She led
me upstairs to her bedroom, opened her closet door, and
showed me a collage of children’s faces there.
Immediately I saw the faces of my own four children, in
a couple of snapshots I had sent her the year before. I
was incredibly moved to see those snapshots inside her
closet. I started suffering from asthma in Cuba, and
Haydée had suffered from the disease most of her life.
That was something else that brought us together.</p>
<p>These few personal anecdotes only scratch the surface.
My book is filled with many more–and also with the much
more important story of Haydée’s life, her struggle,
profound losses, creativity and the enormous energy she
expended on changing society. For me, personally, she
was a friend and mentor. In the larger world, she was
probably those things for many… perhaps almost everyone
who had the privilege of knowing her.</p>
<p>When I finally realized it was “now or never” with
regard to the book, I sent a proposal to my editor at
Duke University Press. She loved the idea and encouraged
me. I went to Cuba in 2014 to do the necessary
fieldwork. The Cubans were immensely generous. They
opened their archives, arranged interviews with family
members and work colleagues, made it possible for me to
go to the sugar plantation in the middle of the island
where Haydée was born and spent her first years. They
made hundreds of photographs available, gave me films
and videos… in short, were forthcoming in every way.</p>
<p>The book I wrote is mine, my interpretation of Haydée’s
life and dramatic death by suicide. I am sure all those
of us who were privileged to know Haydée has his or her
own version of her life and death. I hope mine will be a
contribution toward understanding a complex and
astonishing woman.</p>
<p><em>RDO: Death by suicide can cast a shadow over the
life well-lived; however you don’t frame Haydée’s life
in the context of ultimate suicide. Was that difficult
coming to terms with?</em></p>
<p>MR: Not at all. Because I knew Haydée, knew the people
she worked with, knew her life over many years, her
suicide never cast a shadow over her life for me. It was
tragic, yes. And shocking for those who knew her as
exuberant, playful, possessed of an enormous energy, the
energy that made it possible for her to take such an
important role in so many phases of revolutionary
struggle, to found and for 20 years run one of the most
exciting arts institutions on the Continent, raise two
biological children and many more orphaned by the Latin
American wars of the 1960s-’80s, and never stop fighting
for what she believed in, no matter the circumstances.
To those who didn’t know her well, Haydée managed to
hide her deep depression, a depression that plagued her
at least since the loss of her brother and her partner
at Moncada. Those who did know her well, understood the
energy it often took for her simply to get out of bed in
the morning.</p>
<p>Sadly, Haydée’s suicide did cast a shadow over her life
for the Cuban Revolution as an institution. Like
Catholics, whose lives belong to God, the lives of
Communists belong to the Party. This was the way suicide
was seen (condemned) in 1980 Cuba. And depression was
little understood as well. Many felt they could only
explain Haydée’s fatal decision by believing she must
have been mad in her final moments. And even then, the
fact that she took her life precluded the Revolution
taking its leave of her as they would have another
comrade with a similar history. Instead of laying her
body out and mourning it in the Plaza of the Revolution,
her wake was held at a commercial funeral parlor. I was
there, along with perhaps 3,000 others. It was a time of
grief and there was also an edge of confusion, even
anger in that somber hall. Those who loved her could not
understand why she had not been accorded full
revolutionary honors. But the next morning thousands
followed her casket on its slow journey to the cemetery.
The people were showing their affection.</p>
<p>In every interview I did for my book, I asked the
interviewee what he or she thought about Haydée’s
suicide. Most explained it through the idea of momentary
madness. I disagree. For me, Haydée simply could not
live any longer. Her ghosts were too present, the
business of living too painful. For me, her suicide was
a final act of freedom. I believe she knew her work was
done, and that she could leave confident in the will of
others to carry it forward. And they have. What she
created at Casa de las Americas remains: the horizontal
structure, the respect for difference, the
inclusiveness, and the knowledge that art is the highest
form of social change. Walking through the building’s
broad doors, those who knew Haydée feel her presence.
Those who only know her story, or may not even have
heard it, feel something different: a true space of
freedom and creativity.</p>
<p><em>RDO: This was a difficult time for the Cuban
Revolution, Haydée’s suicide right in the middle of
the 6 months–April to October, 1980–exodus of tens of
thousand of Cubans to the United States, the so-called
“Mariel boat lift.” During the second half of July
1980, I was in Copenhagen at the second United
Nations’ World Conference on Women, having been one of
the organizers of the parallel non-governmental
conference. My hotel roommate was a young Cuban woman,
a member of the Cuban delegation staying in that
hotel. She was devastated that her own brother, a
lawyer, had left. Then, the news came of Haydée’s
suicide. There was a delegation of thirty or so Cuban
women at the conference, and they were in shock and
thought it might have to do with Mariel. Do you think
there was a connection?</em></p>
<p>MR: When someone commits suicide, people always wonder
why. What may have been the tipping point? Could I have
done something? It was no different in Haydée’s case,
perhaps more intense in fact because she was such a
well-known and beloved figure. You are right, the Mariel
exodus of 125,000 Cubans began just prior to Haydée’s
death, and I am sure she found it unsettling. She must
have wondered why the Revolution couldn’t have made a
better life for those who felt the need to leave. But
other important events–personal as well as public–also
affected Haydée around that time. Her dear friend Celia
Sánchez died of cancer in January of 1980. Many said
that Celia, because of her own history, was the only
woman who really understood Haydée and could lift her up
when she was down. Haydée’s husband, Armando Hart, also
left her after twenty years of marriage, and he did so
in a particularly painful way when she was traveling.
And she had also suffered a serious automobile accident
several months before. So, there were many different
things that could have contributed to her decision. With
all of them, I still tend to believe that she was tired
of living or, better said, could not continue to live.
Her losses–at Moncada and of other comrades later,
including Ché Guevara, who had been murdered in Bolivia
at the end of 1967, all weighed heavily on her. I
explore all these possibilities in the book. I
transcribe a particular conversation a friend of mine
overheard two days before Haydée’s death, which I
believe explains a lot. But I won’t give that away here,
because I want people to read the book.</p>
<p><em>RDO: Let’s go back to the Cuban revolutionary
movement in the 1950s; as we are well aware, women’s
liberation and feminism were not on the agenda of
social movements and revolutionary movements during
that time. How is it that Haydée and the other
revolutionary Cuban women were able to be an essential
element of that movement and the ultimate victory? </em></p>
<p>MR: This is a complex question. I address it in the
book. Not only were the 1950s a particularly restrictive
time for women in general, they were even more so for
someone like Haydée who came from a rural environment in
which women were expected to marry, have children, or
become “spinsters” who did charitable work in their
communities. Those were basically the options open to
them. One of the first questions I asked, when I went to
Cuba to do my fieldwork, was why a woman as brilliant as
Haydée had not gone on to middle or high school… or
university. I can only say that Haydée was exceptional.
She felt suffocated in her childhood environment, and
was determined to escape it. Her younger brother Abel,
to whom she was always very close, understood her
anguish, and when he went to Havana to live in the early
1950s, he quickly called for her to come too. Several
books and articles have assumed that he wanted her there
to cook and clean for him. I don’t think so. I believe
he knew what she was facing and wanted to give her the
opportunity to be involved in the revolutionary movement
he was discovering. Although there were few women in
that movement at the beginning, there were some. Haydée
and Melba Hernandez were the only two who participated
in the attack on Moncada Garrison, but others were
involved in other ways. Once Haydée had experienced
battle, there was no stopping her. She hated violence,
but was determined to see the struggle through to
victory. In prison, in the underground, in the
mountains, and outside the country when she went to the
United States to buy weaponry from the Mafia, she often
used what we used to call “feminine wiles” to pass
unobserved or do what she needed to do. On more than one
occasion she also said that although she was a very
forward-thinking woman for her time, she felt that she
had to be careful not to act in a way that might reflect
negatively on the movement–there were so many prejudices
around how women were supposed to dress, speak, act.</p>
<p>As the revolutionary struggle continued through that
decade, more and more women took part. As you know, the
Cuban Revolution did a lot for women, in terms of
education, jobs, equal pay for equal work, healthcare,
and more. It could have done more if it had been willing
to look at power as a political category and done a
gender analysis of Cuban society. They are beginning to
do this now, but they lost a lot of time. In my opinion,
Haydée was a feminist before the word was spoken in
Cuba. She had a natural sense of justice that embraced
all groups and individuals. She railed against gendered
language. On several occasions she went to Central
Committee Communist Party meetings dressed as a man, to
protest the male chauvinism she saw. Had she lived
longer, I have no doubt she would have embraced the most
sophisticated feminist ideas.</p>
<p><em>RDO: Your prior book with Duke University Press was
<a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0822355922/counterpunchmaga">Ché
on My Mind</a>. Talk a bit about Che in the Cuban
Revolution and how did Haydée relate to him. </em></p>
<p>MR: Che was, of course, a major figure in the Cuban
Revolution. In fact, he was the figure that most
profoundly shaped my generation of social change
activists. There has been so much talk about Ché over
the years in terms of his relationship with Fidel… Was
there a conflict between the two men? Was there room for
both in the Cuban Revolution? Why did Che go to Bolivia,
to a spot so poorly chosen for guerrilla warfare? Was
Fidel glad or sorry to see him go? And so forth.</p>
<p>My book pays attention to those dramatic–but in my mind
ultimately secondary—questions, and I do come down on
one side or another on most of the major issues. But I
am much more interested in probing Che’s mind, his
ethical stance, which is where I believe his great
contribution lies. <em>Che on My Mind</em> is really a
series of meditations: poetic and feminist in nature.
One of them is about Che and Haydée.</p>
<p>I think they were astonishingly alike, although on the
surface they couldn’t have seemed more different. Both
were romantics whose dream of continental liberation was
paramount in their lives. In fact, Haydée always said
that Che promised to take her with him when he went on
to other lands, and she did not forgive him the fact
that he didn’t. They were close friends. They shared a
certain “purity” if you will, an absolute commitment to
revolutionary values that seemed rigid to many. And both
lived their ideas fully.</p>
<p>I think Che’s death in Bolivia affected Haydée
profoundly. It may even have been one of the things that
made her realize she could not live any longer.</p>
<p>Both books, <em>Che on My Mind</em> and <em>Haydée
Santamaría,</em> <em>Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by
Transgression</em> have long passages about both
revolutionaries. Of course Che is known in every corner
of the world, while Haydée–being a woman–is known almost
nowhere outside Cuba.</p>
<p>I hope my books remedy that to some small degree.</p>
<p><em>RDO: In this same period that you were friends with
Haydée, the 1970s, you were a single mother of four
children living and working in Cuba; as such, how did
you experience Cuban society during that time?</em></p>
<p>MR: I wasn’t really a single mother by then. I was
living with Robert Cohen, a US American poet who was the
father of my fourth child, my daughter Ana. He assumed
the joy and responsibility of fathering the other three
as well. And Sergio Mondragón, who was Sarah and
Ximena’s father, also loved all the kids. He came to
Cuba a couple of times during that decade, to visit
them.</p>
<p>But in some ways you are right. I had given birth to my
oldest, my son Gregory, on my own in New York in 1960.
He came with me to Mexico, where we lived in the 1960s,
during which time he accepted Sergio as his father, and
later also Robert. (Gregory’s biological father, with
whom he would develop a relationship later in life and
one that lasted until his progenitor died, was the US
poet Joel Oppenheimer.) So I was certainly the
“constant” in my children’s lives.</p>
<p>Your question is particularly interesting in the
context of parental roles among revolutionaries of the
era. We were all deeply involved in trying to create a
new society, one that would be more just in terms of
national independence, class and race relations, and–at
least in our discourse–also as regarded gender. This was
long before LGBTQ issues were raised, of course. Gender
was raised, but as I say, more in discourse than in our
day to day lives.</p>
<p>But I discovered feminism in Mexico, at the end of my
time there, when the first articles from US and European
feminists began to appear. One of those was your own,
Roxanne, “Motherhood: Fragments of an Autobiography,”
and I included it along with other texts in a small book
I prepared for Siglo XXI Editores, called <em>Las
mujeres</em>. Feminism wasn’t academic theory to me,
but something to be lived. I needed it.</p>
<p>And so, when I got to Cuba at the end of 1969 I was
already trying to incorporate feminist values into my
family life. This meant that my mothering was
circumscribed in two ways: as a revolutionary involved
in trying to make the world a better place for all
children, and as a feminist who demanded from my partner
equal involvement in household tasks, and wanted to
imbue my children with those values as well–my son as
well as my daughters.</p>
<p>The Cuban Revolution, on the other hand, although
promoting change in many important areas, rejected
feminism as bourgeois and as being against the unity of
the working class. Additionally, Cuban society was still
quite old-fashioned when it came to how male and female
children were raised. So I experienced quite a bit of
conflict in terms of my ideas and goals. I gave my
children much more freedom than most Cuban children had,
something looked down upon by other parents. Their
father and I sent them to boarding school, because we
believed it was the most revolutionary education and of
course it allowed us to work long hours. In retrospect I
believe we put them in those schools much too young, and
a couple of them still resent it. I can remember
discussions with neighbors, in which I was all but
termed “an unnatural mother” because of some of my
ideas.</p>
<p>Having said all this, to answer your question more
directly I experienced Cuban society as exhilarating,
exciting, and amazing. I loved being part of a project
that was making itself from the inside out. I felt
privileged to be living in a place where real equality
seemed to be the collective goal. I thrilled to meetings
in which drafts of new law were discussed, and my
neighbors or colleagues and I could have input into
those laws. I also felt privileged, especially as a
mother, to live in a society that saw health and
education as basic human rights, and that was developing
an outstanding system of universal health care that
freed me from worry when my children were ill. One of my
daughters, Ximena, came to Cuba with a serious ear
infection. She had had it almost from birth. An
operation that would have cost thousands in Mexico and
tens of thousands in the United States dealt with her
problem successfully and without any cost to us. My
children got good educations for the time. Two of them
finished their undergraduate university degrees in Cuba,
and when my son went on to Paris and studied for his
Ph.D, his professors were impressed with the depth of
his knowledge.</p>
<p>The issue of how revolutionary parents may have failed
our own children is still with me to some degree. And it
is with many others, especially women (who always seemed
to be expected to do more than the men). A number of
important books have been written by some of the
children who grew up in such environments. One of them
is <em>Every Secret Thing</em>, by Giliam Slovo (South
African revolutionaries Ruth First and Joe Slovo’s
daughter).</p>
<p>I think about these things, of course, even today. But
all in all, I think we revolutionaries of the 1960s,
’70s, and ’80s gave our children love and a sterling set
of values.</p>
<p><em>RDO: The second half of the 1970s was a time of
developing revolutions in Nicaragua and El Salvador
culminating in the Sandinista victory in 1979. Had
Haydée and Casa de las Americas and you worked with
Central American revolutionary writers and artists?</em></p>
<p>MR: Yes, very much so. And I would say that in large
measure the fact that I had so many contacts with
Central American writers and artists was because Haydée,
and Casa, brought them to Cuba. Although I will also say
that I knew a number of important Central American
revolutionary writers and artists from my time in
Mexico, prior to my arrival on the Island. Through <em>El
Corno Emplumado</em>, the bilingual literary journal I
co-founded and co-edited for eight years in Mexico, I
came to know many of them and their work. For example,
the great Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal, who would
later be the Sandinistas’ first Minister of Culture (and
with whom I would work my first year in Nicaragua) was
someone I met through <em>El Corno</em>. He published
in our first issue (1962). I also met Salvadoran Roque
Dalton in Mexico, when he appeared at our International
Gathering of Poets there in February 1964. In Mexico I
already knew of the work of Guatemalan Otto-Rene
Castillo, who had just been murdered in the jungles of
his country. I translated a book of his poems, <em>Let’s
Go, Country</em>, which came out a couple of years
later in London (from Cape Goliard). Mexico had a long
history of giving refuge to political exiles, and there
were many in that country during the 1960s and 1970s.
Miguel Donoso Pareja from Ecuador was another good
friend who, incidentally, recently died back in the
country of his birth.</p>
<p>Once I moved to Cuba, of course, I met many more of the
brave men and women fighting for the liberation of their
countries… both Central Americans and those from other
parts of the continent. And many of them were writers or
artists. Manlio Argueta became a good friend. Juan
Gelman and Eduardo Galeano were frequent visitors to our
home. And we knew many of the Sandinistas, including
Doris Tijerino, with whom I wrote a book in 1975. (The
United Nations had named 1975 The International Year of
the Woman, and I did the book with Doris hoping to bring
attention, through the life of a single woman combatant,
to the Sandinista struggle about which few in the US
then knew.)</p>
<p>The list of names is a long one, and if I try to
complete it I’m sure I will only succeed in leaving many
out. Casa de las Américas was, in fact, largely staffed
by Central and South American artists and writers
fleeing repression in their countries. The Guatemalan
Manuel Galich was a founding member; when I got to Cuba
he headed Casa’s theater section. Galich had been a
member of Jacobo Arbenz’s short-lived cabinet. Mario
Benedetti, Carlos María Gutiérrez and Eduardo Galeano of
Uruguay, René Depestre of Haiti, and Roque Dalton of El
Salvador were all members of Casa’s advisory committee.
Depending upon how long each of these writers had to
stay in Cuba, they might hold positions at the
institution.</p>
<p>Additionally, Casa always featured visits and traveling
shows from Latin American artists and writers,
photographers, sculptors, and theater people. All these
events were free, and we got a great education in the
continent’s artistic tendencies by attending those shows
and lectures or performances. During my years in Cuba,
frequent visitors to Casa included Gabriel García
Márquez, Laurette Séjourné, Roberto Matta, María Esther
Gilio and others.</p>
<p>All of the above meant that my life continued to open
to the influences of what was going on in the arts in
the southern part of the Western Hemisphere. It was such
a rich time. I owe my broad perspective to Haydée, and
those like her, who battled every obstacle to break
through the cultural blockade that the United States
worked so hard to erect. The US waged its war with money
and arms. Cuba, Haydée, Casa, et al waged theirs with
passion, outreach, and enormous hard work.</p>
<p><em>RDO: That certainly was my strong impression of
Cuba when I first visited in 1970, as it seemed the
whole world was, or the best of the whole world either
had been or was or would be in Cuba, so cosmopolitan
and international. In your recent trips to Cuba, do
you find that some of this political and cultural
vibrancy has survived the past 25 years of continued
US sanctions along with the loss of economic
assistance from the socialist bloc countries?</em></p>
<p>MR: That’s a good question, because obviously a great
deal has changed: due to the US blockade, the implosion
of the Socialist Bloc, the wear and tear of time. But
Cuba continues to be culturally vibrant against all
odds.</p>
<p>And this is not only because many of the world’s most
exciting artists and writers and others continue to
visit and perform and show there, but because Cubans
themselves have developed a cultural vibrancy, based on
a creative exuberance that predates the Revolution but
that the Revolution has been able to nurture and
promote. In Cuba there are a whole series of “cultural
hot spots.” These include, but are not limited to, Casa
de las Américas, UNEAC (the Artists and Writers Union),
ICAIC (the film industry headquarters), Vigía (a
publishing collective in Matanzas) and other provincial
endeavors, more museums than any country its size can
be expected to have, great theaters, parks, and other
cultural spaces. Cubans love to sing, dance, play music,
revel in the yearly carnival (which is also the scene of
tremendous creativity, with traditional neighborhood <em>comparsas</em>
and richly costumed participants). Cubans link culture
and revolution, art and revolution, creativity
and revolution… which is why I think they will always
possess a tremendous cultural vibrancy.</p>
<p>In using the words cosmopolitan and international,
you’re signaling something important. One of the great
things the Cuban Revolution has done, is making Cubans
aware of the rest of the world, and its place in that
world.</p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have gone and continue
to go on internationalist missions to places around the
globe that need their services, where terrible natural
disasters have taken place or pandemics threaten the
very survival of their societies. The Cuban
internationalists returning from those places bring with
them an appreciation for other cultures, other music,
other dances, other languages and literature. This too
contributes to the cosmopolitan nature of a very small
island in the middle of the Caribbean.</p>
<p><em>RDO: One continuing historical issue, derived, not
just in Cuba, but the whole western hemisphere under
European and Euroamerican colonialism, is the legacy
of the transatlantic slave trade and nearly 4
centuries of chattel slavery, with Cuba as one of the
longest lasting slave colonies. In light of Cuba’s
majority Afro-Cuban population, why are Cuban
political, military, and cultural institutions
dominated by Euro-Cubans? What were Haydée’s views on
the problem of racial discrimination, and how did you
deal with it while living there? </em></p>
<p>MR: I believe Haydée was utterly devoid of racism. At
least that is what I felt from seeing her in public and
private, observing the racial integration of Casa, which
had many more Afro-Cubans than most other Cuban
institutions, and by reading her comments on the issue.
In <em>Haydée Santamaría, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led
by Transgression, </em>I quote her reminiscences in
this regard: her memories of playing with Black children
on the sugar plantation on which she grew up, and how
that led people to accuse her of “communism” and so
forth. In my book I go into some detail about Haydée’s
innate sense of justice, which led her to take an
advanced position–in actions as well as words–on all
such issues: race, class, gender, even her inclusionary
attitude toward gay Cubans (something not talked about
openly at the time).</p>
<p>There are many differences of opinion regarding Cuba’s
racial makeup. Some consider the population majority
Afro-Cuban, as you do. Certain scholars say Afro-Cubans
make up as little as 12% of the population. In the
United States any Black blood identifies a person as
Black. But in Cuba, long before the Revolution came to
power, Cubans identified as Black, White and Mulatto,
with separate social clubs for each group. This also
contributes to the difficulty in establishing a precise
statistic.</p>
<p>In 1975, when Cuba decided to send troops to Angola,
Fidel spoke passionately of Cuba as a country built by
African slaves, and that fighting in Africa would be a
way of paying that old debt. It might be argued that
this was official rhetoric, but I don’t think so. Three
hundred thirty thousand Cubans fought in Angola alone,
and more than 2,000 died there. Hundreds fought in other
Black African countries. I witnessed the frustration of
many who volunteered to go and were rejected because
they didn’t have the physical or psychological qualities
needed. There’s no doubt in my mind that the Cuban
campaign in Angola, named “Carlota” after a slave who
had rebelled at the Triunvirato sugar mill in Matanzas
province in 1843, was genuine and meant a great deal to
everyone involved.</p>
<p>Having said all this, it is absolutely true that the
Cuban Revolution has done far less than it should have
in dealing with racism. You are right: Cuban
institutions still LOOK overwhelmingly White, whatever
the true percentages may be. This is shameful by any
standard. Racism still exists in Cuba, and so does
colorism.</p>
<p>There are pockets within the Cuban Revolution that have
always seemed to me to be particularly revolutionary–as
I understand that word. That is to say, more inclusive,
more outspoken, more creative, more of a reflection of
what we all hope the new man and new woman will be. Casa
was, and remains, such a place, and this is Haydée’s
legacy. But there are others.</p>
<p>Still, the nation as a whole has a lot of catching up
to do. Cubans of color have begun to discuss this
problem openly, something that didn’t happen when I
lived in Cuba in the 1970s. This leadership on the part
of Afro-Cubans themselves, will be important I think, in
achieving progress in this area.</p>
<p>On the other hand, Cuba’s current economic problems,
and the big changes it is going through as a result of
US world hegemony and the renewal of diplomatic
relations with the United States, may diminish these
struggles, or at least continue to push them into the
background for awhile.</p>
<p><em>RDO: During the 1980s, the United States welcomed
Cubans and Nicaraguans who left their countries as
political refugees, while the terrorized populations
of El Salvador and Guatemala, US allies making war on
their peoples’ demands for democracy, were blocked
from immigration. US government manipulation of
political refugee status and immigration continues
today. Tell about your immigration case.</em></p>
<p>MR: The case is narrated in detail in my book, <em>Coming
Back to the USA: Peace without Complacency</em>,
published by West End Press. My immigration case was
1985 to the end of 1989. I returned to the US in 1984,
hoping to get a green card and then reapply for
citizenship. I had inadvertently lost my US citizenship
in 1967 when, for purely economic reasons, I had taken
out Mexican citizenship. I was married to a Mexican at
the time, living in Mexico, with three young children,
and my husband never had much work. I knew Mexican
citizenship would make it easier for me to find a job. I
told the people at the US consulate that I did not want
to lose my US citizenship, but they said I already had.
In those days you could not have dual citizenship–though
actually that was just beginning to change. So my
predicament all those years later came because I had
lost my US citizenship and had to reapply for it. But of
course in the interim I had written a number of books,
some of them containing opinions opposed to US policy in
Vietnam and Central America. When I was called in to the
immigration office in Albuquerque to be interviewed
regarding my application, I found myself in a small room
with a large table on which seven of my books were
opened to different passages, all of which were
underlined in yellow magic marker. I answered all
questions honestly. I believed I had a right to my
opinions, whether or not they coincided with US
government policy. Furthermore, they were opinions
shared by millions of US Americans. After that
interview, though, it was obvious it wasn’t going to be
a smooth ride. It was then that the Center for
Constitutional Rights agreed to defend me. In October of
1985 I received a response to my request for residency
from the INS. It told me my request was denied, and gave
me 28 days to leave the country. I opted to stay and
fight.</p>
<p>I was charged under the 1952 McCarran-Walter
Immigration and Nationality Act, a law that had been
passed by Congress over President Truman’s veto.
McCarran-Walter at the time listed 34 reasons why a
person could be denied entrance into the US: these
included being a member of a Communist, Socialist or
Anarchist Party (being a member of a Fascist Party was
not grounds for exclusion), having “meaningful
association” with members of such parties, being
mentally ill, being gay. This latter was an issue for
me, because I actually came out to myself as a lesbian
right in the middle of my case, and began living with
Barbara soon thereafter. The McCarran-Walter clause
under which I was charged was popularly referred to as
“the ideological exclusion” clause. My deportation order
stated that my work was found to be “against the good
order and happiness of the United States.”</p>
<p>As you may remember, I had a great deal of support from
many quarters: writers, artists, public intellectuals,
academia, and lots of just plain ordinary people who
respect freedom of opinion and dissent. CCR helped me
establish some 25 defense committees across the country,
that held raffles, house parties, did direct mail
campaigns, had bowl-a-thons, speak-ins and so forth to
raise the money needed for my defense. All in all, it
cost a quarter of a million dollars to defend me, not to
mention our taxpayer’s money the government spent on its
prosecution. I received hundreds and hundreds of
donations, ranging from $5 to $5,000. I personally
answered every one of them.</p>
<p>I also traveled back and forth across the country
during those almost five years, appearing on TV shows
such as USA Today, Nightline, and so forth. I was
working full time, trying to bury the PTSD I had brought
home with me from the war in Nicaragua, living without
my children for the first time, and fighting my case. I
had also discovered that my maternal grandfather
incested me when I was an infant. And of course I had
come out as a lesbian. Nevertheless, I continued to
write–a number of books–and I always felt it was a
privilege to fight for my right to remain in this
country because I knew how many thousands of immigrants
were being thrown out without the support I enjoyed.</p>
<p>My first trial was in the spring of 1986, at the
immigration court in El Paso, Texas. That trial lasted
four days. Many people came to support me in the
courtroom, including some of the survivors of the 1954
Salt of the Earth Strike (who lived in nearby Bayard,
New Mexico), Adrienne Rich, Jules Lobel and others. My
lawyers–Michael Ratner, David Cole and Michael
Maggio–were fantastic. But we lost. Then the case wended
its way up the ladder from one court to another. I kept
on losing. But then, in August of 1989, very
unexpectedly, I won. The Court of Immigration Appeals in
Washington DC rendered a 3-2 decision in my favor,
restoring my citizenship at the same time as awarding me
residency. Five years had passed. I was happy that my
case could set a precedent for subsequent immigration
struggles. But of course US immigration law remains
outrageously unjust, as we know. Today the boogyman (or
woman) is no longer a Communist but a Muslim.</p>
<p><em>RDO: </em><em>Your concern about growing US
American corporate and cultural presence in Cuba as
relations between the two countries are normalized
brings me to my final question: What other concerns do
you have about this future, and can you suggest how
the longtime Cuban support apparatus in the US might
play a role if any?</em></p>
<p>MR: You know, Roxanne, I have a lot of concerns about
Cuba… although not necessarily those that others
express. Some analysts are afraid of US influence, and
influence by the Cuban exile community–both economic and
cultural. I see this influence as pretty much
inevitable, as Cuba moves toward an economy with a
greater market input. But I have a lot of confidence in
the Cuban Revolution being able to retain its greatest
achievements, or at least to do so to a large degree:
universal healthcare, free education, greater equality
in access to work and in working conditions, respect for
other countries, and the internationalist solidarity for
which the Revolution is known.</p>
<p>Things change. For example, whereas Cuban doctors and
teachers once worked without being paid by the countries
that received them, today they still do in cases of
natural disasters or when the receptor nation is very
poor, but when a country can afford to pay for these
services, it does. Cuban professionals are greatly
sought after around the world, for their expertise,
dedication and sense of sacrifice. They no longer go
everywhere for free, but the spirit of their
collaboration remains the same. So this is an example of
how some things have changed with the times, but
essentially remained the same.</p>
<p>Here in the United States, because of the way
information (and misinformation) about Cuba has been
given in the press for so many decades, people have a
tendency to put too much emphasis on the United States
and not enough on Cuba. I even see this on the Left.
Many people simply assume that the US will be calling
the shots and our government will determine what happens
next in terms of the opening begun on December 17, 2014.
I tend to put more stock in Cuba. I believe the
Revolution will have to make some concessions, but that
it will choose them carefully; and that it won’t give in
on questions of principle. For example, I believe the
Revolution will be careful about US companies once again
wielding inordinate power with regard to business in
Cuba. I don’t believe that Cuba will give up political
refugees such as Assata Shakur.</p>
<p>I do believe that our longtime Cuban support apparatus
has an important role to play. It played a big role in
helping get things to their current state, although they
were a long time in coming. US solidarity with Cuba did
a lot to free the Cuban Five. Its most important ongoing
task is to continue to work to lift the blockade, which
will be very difficult given the composition of
Congress. But it is clear that the blockade is the
greatest obstacle to Cuba being able to occupy a level
playing field internationally. And even after the
blockade is lifted, the playing field will hardly be
level, because the nefarious effects of more than five
decades of blockade have been extremely costly.</p>
<p>Most of all, I have learned to expect surprises from
Cuba. The Revolution has shown itself to be creative and
resilient.</p>
<p><em>RDO: Thank you Margaret.</em></p>
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