US Labor Must Weigh in on Cuba [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

MAY 15, 2024

BY W. T. WHITNEY

Taking note of International Workers’ Day, several Latin American news sources this year cited José Martí’s 1886 essay “A Terrible Drama;” two of them republished it, here and here. There Martí reports on events in Chicago in 1886 and the fate of the so-called Haymarket Martyrs – seven labor journalists and agitators railroaded to prison and given death sentences. Another received a 15-year prison term.

Martí, who would become Cuba’s national hero, was living in exile in the United States. He relates how strikes for the eight-hour day were underway on May 1, 1886 in Chicago and nationwide, how the Chicago police killed one striker and wounded others on May 3, and how a mass protest against police violence took place the next day in the Haymarket area. There, a bomb exploded, seven policemen and four workers were killed, and dozens were wounded.

The court lacked evidence that the defendants, anarchist by inclination, were involved in the violence of May 4. Martí describes the execution of four of them and the suicide of another. An appeals court judge commuted the sentences of two defendants to life in prison. In 1893, Illinois Governor John Altgeld pardoned those two and the remaining prisoner.

The Socialist International in 1889 declared May Day to be an annual celebration of labor militancy.

José Martí’s account, “A Terrible Drama,” is a foundational contribution to the history of the U.S. labor movement. Martí defended working people – U.S. workers in his writings, and Cuban workers in words and deeds, from 1886 on. The combination of author and story points to a connection between U.S. labor activism and workers’ struggles in Cuba. Its time has come.

The U.S. economic blockade of Cuba, lasting decades, has led to shortages, misery, and despair. Nations of the world voting annually in the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly condemn the blockade. It violates international law.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/05/15/us-labor-must-weigh-in-on-cuba/