The Latin American Bureau of the Fourth International publishes this first declaration after the reception of a communique from the Partido Obrero Revolucionario (trotskyist) of Cuba, denouncing the fact that the police have seized the print-shop where "Voz Proletaria", paper of our Cuban Trotskyist comrades, is printed, and that the latest issue has been destroyed. An edition of "Revolution Betrayed", by Trotsky, was also in preparation, and the print has been destroyed. The print-shop has been seized and the May 1961 issue of "Voz Proletaria" has been banned. The Partido Obrero Revolucionario Trotskista presented its protest to the government of Fidel Castro.
We have no news yet of this answer. No comrade of our Cuban Party has been imprisoned. The seizure of the printing-shop has been done by an official of the Labor Ministry, who said that he was acting on behalf of the Ministry. Up to May 27th (the last day of which we have news), the Labor Ministry had refused a request to have a meeting with our comrades.
The officials who seized the print-shop and destroyed the issue of "Voz Proletaria" and the print of "Revolution Betrayed" are members of the Cuban Communist Party (P S P).
We do not know specifically yet what were and what are the scope and the intentions of the Cuban government in taking these measures. We do not know if it is part of a plan of repression against Trotskyist ideas, or a measure by Stalinist governmental officials who profit from their position to take repressive measures against the Trotskyist Press.
Later we shall amplify our analyses and opinions, meanwhile we wait for other news and communiques from Cuba.
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"We address ourselves to the Cuban government demanding the right of the Cuban Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Trotskista) to publish its papers and books and to fully use the revolutionary democracy. One of the basic reasons why the Cuban revolution receives the support of the exploited masses of the whole world is that these masses desire and wait for the right to speak, to discuss, to express their ideas without any obstacles being placed in their way, and without fear of repression. It is because they hope and want to push forward the revolution, that they hope, and that they want, to feel themselves the owners of the revolution and a part of the revolution. The Cuban revolution is anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist. The Cuban Trotskyists have developed and do develop their activities and their publications, as do the Trotskyists all over the world, in unconditional defense of the Cuban revolution, and for an intransigent fight against imperialism and capitalism.
They are the ones who throughout the world started the campaign for the defense and the support of the Cuban revolution, at the same time as the Communist Party was opposed to Fidel Castro's movement, saying that it was an adventure. The Trotskyists have been and are proposing and fighting for revolutionary measures to drive out imperialism and capitalism from Cuba and who are calling on all the Latin-American masses to drive out imperialism and to overthrow capitalism, just as the Cuban masses have done
They are those who inside and outside Cuba, have proposed a whole series of social, political and financial measures against imperialism and capitalism and for the advancement of the revolution, measures that have since been taken partially or fully by the Cuban government and the Cuban revolution.
The Trotskyists were the first ones, and the only ones up to May Day, who have claimed that Cuba is a workers' state and who have called for its defense as a workers' state. Meanwhile, the Communist Parties are still trying to present the Cuban state and the Cuban revolution as though it were only a patriotic revolution, a revolutionary capitalist front.
The Cuban and world Trotskysts understand and feel the enormous difficulties through which the Cuban revolution government and workers' state go and will have to go. To go through them, to overcome them, the Trotskyists think — and they have often repeated it in the past — will only be possible through the pushing forward of the revolution.
For the revolution to go forward at this stage, the main way is the soviet form of organisation: the soviet organisational way through workers', soldiers' and peasants' councils, and the full enjoyment by the masses of their democratic rights to defend the revolution, to support it as the prime necessity in their lives and also to obtain and impose the right of their free expression of ideas, of tendencies and of political positions. This is the way in which the masses will express their ideas, their initiatives, and in which they will particpate actively in the leadership of the revolution, making it unconquerable.
We call on the Cuban government and revolution to lift the measures taken against the paper of the Cuban Partido Obrero Revolucionario Trotskista. We call on all the masses of Latin-America to protest against the repressive measures taken against the revolutionary democratic rights of the Cuban P O R (T), to demand of the Cuban Workers' State government the stopping of these measures and the punishment of the functionaries who adopted them, and to ask for the revolutionary democratic rights of the revolutionary anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist tendencies which defend unconditionally the Cuban workers' state.
The Cuban revolution will enter a new phase full of dangers. Imperialism is studying and preparing with Latin American governments and bourgeoisies, a new assault against the Cuban revolution and the Cuban workers' state. It can take the form of new invasions, sabotage, economic sanctions, or combining invasion and blockade of Cuba, whilst they look for conciliatory tendencies towards Imperialism inside the Cuban state and government itself. Stevenson's trip is a part of these preparations. The mass struggles in order to form militias in defense of the Cuban revolution, campaigns, mobilizations, agitation, continual meetings in defense of Cuba, are all part of the struggles of the masses of Latin America and of the world — especially of the masses of the colonial and semi-colonial countries — for the defense of the Cuban revolution and workers' state.
The alliance with and the unconditional support for Cuba by the Workers' States against Imperialism and Capitalism, is also a part of this struggle. But the main basis for the defense of the Cuban revolution is the advance in every country of the struggles of the masses for the driving out of imperialism and capitalism and for the establishment by the masses of their own governments and their own workers' states. The Cuban revolution advances unceasingly. In a contradictory and partial way, it reflects its own strengths and its own weaknesses. The Cuban masses feel profoundly for their revolution and they defend and will defend it as they have already done, defeating the counter-revolutionary invasion organised and led by imperialism.
This attack against the revolutionary democratic rights of the Partido Obrero Revolucionario Trotskista is a part of and an expression of the contradictions through which the Cuban revolution and workers' state goes forward. While we call on the masses to support and defend with their own lives the revolution, and the Cuban Workers' State, so we also call on them to demand full revolutionary democratic rights for the Trotskyists and their press in Cuba. Without the publication of their press, there cannot be full revolutionary democratic rights for the Trotsyists in Cuba.
For the Workers' and Peasants' Trade Union Federation of Latin America
For the Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Capitalist United Front
For the Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Capitalist fight in each country
For the unconditional defense of the Cuban revolution and workers' state
For the driving out and the defeat of capitalism and the establishment of workers' states in each Latin-American country and for their unification into the Federation of Soviet Socialist Republics of Latin America."
LATIN AMERICAN BUREAU OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
14 June, 1961