Here is the God the Spaniards worship. For these they fight and kill; for these they persecute us and that is why we have to throw them into the sea... They tell us, these tyrants, that they adore a God of peace and equality, and yet they usurp our land and make us their slaves. They speak to us of an immortal soul and of their eternal rewards and punishments, and yet they rob our belongings, seduce our women, violate our daughters. Incapable of matching us in valor, these cowards cover themselves with iron that our weapons cannot break...The blurb accompanying the painting explains that, having been captured, about to be killed, Hatuey was approached by a missionary who asked if he wanted to go to heaven. Probably about to offer baptism or last rites, expanding the colonialists' military win into an ideological one. The guerilla leader turned this around on his captors, though, responding with a question of his own: "Are these white men going to heaven also?" The missionary responded in the affirmative, to which Hatuey answered that, in that case, "I don't want to go to heaven."
In Paris, Pogolotti became close to the Revolutionary Writers and Artists Association, led by Louis Aragon. He showed his works alongside theirs on a couple of occasions, without abandoning the formal achievements of Futurism. He kept painting factories and machinery, now incorporating the “human pulse” of work and of the class struggle, expressed in relationships of dominance, subordination, and symbiosis between those machines and human subjects, and in the tension of diagonal lines.
Throughout Lam’s travels through the Spanish countryside, he developed empathy for the Spanish peasants, whose strife, in some ways, mirrored that of the former slaves he grew up around in Cuba. Therefore, at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Lam sided with the Republicans where he used his talent to fashion Republican posters and propaganda. Drafted to defend Madrid, Lam was incapacitated during the fighting in late 1937 and was sent to Barcelona.With the Republican defeat Lam took up residence in France, until the Nazis invaded, at which point he returned to his native Cuba.
You can fool some of the people some of the time...POLITICS-IRAN: Islamist, Socialist Revolutions Don't Mix
By Kimia Sanati
Credit:Max Strohmeier/Wikimedia
TEHRAN, Oct 3 (IPS) - An attempt to rope in the son and daughter of the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara to forge a parallel between Iran's Islamist revolution and the socialist revolution in Latin America through a four-day conference has ended in fiasco.
After Aleida Guevara protested from the podium against perceived distortions of her father's ideology by the first Iranian speaker, Haj Saeed Ghasemi, the four-day 'Che Like Chamran' conference, that started Sep. 25, was aborted and the Latin American guests whisked away.
'Che Like Chamran', the title of the conference, was chosen for the alliteration in the names of the two revolutionaries and because both Che and the Iranian, Mostafa Chamran, fought alongside revolutionaries in other countries. But the similarities end there, no matter what the organisers intended to promote.
Chamran, a United States-educated engineer and Islamist, helped Mousa Sadr found the Amal Movement in southern Lebanon and fought alongside Amal guerrillas in the late 1970s. Appointed the young Islamic Republic's defence minister by Ayatollah Khomeini, Chamran organised and led paramilitary forces during the early phase of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) and was killed in battle in the Khuzistan province in 1981.
"We feel responsible towards all of humanity...unity is of especial importance to us. The reason for the relations established between our student group and the children of Che Guevara and the Latin American countries is what we have in common," Morteza Firoozabadi, secretary of the Pro-Justice Student Movement (PJSM), explained to the Islamic Students News Agency (ISNA).
"We are never afraid of death and that is what Americans are most scared of. They cannot accuse us simply by citing things like terrorism, seeking war or breaching human rights. We only aim to free the oppressed and to restore the rights of all the people of the world so we do not recognise borders and do not care what names Americans use for this," Firoozabadi was reported by ISNA as saying.
Organised by the student militia of Tehran University, the conference was attended mostly by counterparts from various other universities as well as members of hardline student groups such as the PJSM that strongly support President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's policies. These groups regularly organise demonstrations and protest rallies against the US and other western countries.
But Ghasemi, who is associated with Iran's Esteshhadiyoun (volunteers of suicide operations) must take credit for scuttling the conference. Referring to a translated version of a Che Guevara book that he held in his hand, he said Che Guevara was religious and believed in God. "The people of Cuba, Fidel (Casro) and Che Guevara were never socialists or communists. Fidel has several times admitted that he and Che and the people of Cuba hated the Soviets for all they had done.''
''Today communism has been thrown into the trash bin of history as it was predicted by Ayatollah Khomeini," Ghasemi told the conference and added that the only way to save the world was through the ''the religious, pro-justice movement''.
An indignant Aleida, however, started her own address "in the name of the people of Cuba". "We are a socialist nation," she asserted. She also said the people of Cuba were grateful to the Soviet Union and there had never been any discord between the two nations, as mentioned by Ghasemi. She advised him to "always refer to original sources instead of translations to find out about Che Guevara's beliefs".
"My father never talked about God. He never met God. My father knew there was no absolute truth,'' Aleida said, responding to Ghasemi's speech. The coverage of her address by state-sponsored news agencies like ISNA was brief and excluded most of her contradictory remarks.
At a meeting later with students of Amir Kabir University of Technology,where the leftist groups are particularly strong, Camilo Guevara told students he approved of all that his sister had said at the conference, ISNA reported.
The other main speaker, Mehdi Chamran, brother of Mostafa Chamran, avoided mention of Che Guevara or his ideology in his address. Chamran, who is chairman of the Tehran City Council is a loyal supporter of Ahmadinejad.
''President Ahmadinejad's promotion of closer ties with certain Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia called for some kind of identification of his brand of Islamist militant ideas with those of the leftists in Latin American countries,'' a leftist student activist from Amir Kabir University told IPS on the condition of anonymity.
"Ahmadinejad has visited several Latin American countries over the past two years. He has brought (Hugo) Chavez and (Daniel) Ortega here. Belief in socialism is considered a crime in the Islamic state, punishable by death. Ahmadinejad's slogans against the West and the U.S., his pro-justice rap, and his promises of economic assistance bring them here -- much to our disappointment," she said. "Daniel Ortega and other leftist leaders too must clarify their position about their relations with Iran. We feel greatly betrayed when for their countries' economic benefit they choose to support extreme rightists, fascists like Ahmadinejad," she added.
Following Aleida's outspoken address to the conference, the organisers took flak from their own comrades. "It is appreciable to commemorate Che Guevara as a revolutionary figure. Otherwise, our former perspectives on his ideas, methods and attitude are still the same. We are Muslims and he is non-Muslim. The difference will always remain," Mohammad Sedaghat, the leader of Student Militia of Shahed University was quoted by ISNA as saying.
"Chamran was a revolutionary Shiite Muslim whereas Che Guevara was totally atheistic. The only thing they had in common was their spirit of fighting injustice. For choosing friends we must meet other criteria, such as being God-loving -- besides being anti-American," Sedaghat was reported as saying.
Mohammad Jaffar Irani, a reformist student activist, was quoted by ISNA as pointing out that the same group that organised the conference had always considered Che Guevara an atheist. "If anyone other than the (hardline) group that organised this event had done so they would have gotten into a great deal of trouble,'' he was quoted saying.
"The organisers of the event were hardline supporters of Ahmadinejad who have nothing in common with leftists, even the Islamic leftists of the early days of the (Iranian) revolution. President Ahmadinejad has in fact much in common with President Bush, although he may sound very 'leftist'," an observer in Tehran told IPS on condition of anonymity.
"Leftist countries must realise that if the issues that make the Iranian hardliners confront the West such as its demand to be accepted to the nuclear club are resolved, today's leftist allies may instantly turn into their common enemies," he said.
"Unfortunately some wrong approaches (remarks) diverted the course of the conference from (discussing) commonalities to the differences (between the two revolutionaries). This caused the conference to be deviated from its main course,'' Sajjdad Saffar Harandi, leader of the Student Militia (Basij) in Tehran University, told the pro-Ahmadinjead website Raja News, explaining the fiasco.
The following from Associated Press (byline ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer Fri Nov 17, 4:50 PM ET):
HAVANA - William Lee Brent, a Black Panther who hijacked a passenger jet to communist Cuba in 1969 and spent 37 years in exile, has died on the island, his sister said. He was 75.
Brent died Nov. 4 from bronchial pneumonia, Elouise Rawlins said in a telephone interview from her home in Oakland, Calif.
Rawlins said she learned of her brother's death through telephone calls and messages from friends and acquaintances, but has not received official word from the U.S. or Cuban governments.
Rawlins said she had not seen her brother since he used a handgun to hijack TWA Flight 154 from San Francisco to Havana on June 17, 1969, but said they stayed in contact through e-mails and telephone calls.
"We didn't even know he was ill," Rawlins said. "I don't know about the burial or anything — just that he passed away."
The telephone rang unanswered Friday at Brent's Havana home, which he shared with his wife, travel writer Jane McManus, until her death last year. They had met and married in Cuba.
Brent lived a relatively isolated life during his nearly four decades in Cuba, spending much of his time in his later years listening to his beloved jazz music collection in his apartment.
In a 1996 interview with The Associated Press, he said he missed the United States and the American black community. But he was unwilling to return home to face certain life imprisonment for aircraft piracy and kidnapping, and had resigned himself to never seeing his country again.
"I miss my people, the struggle, the body language," Brent told the
AP. "The black community in Cuba is very different."
Still, he said he had no regrets about hijacking the plane. "I was a soldier in the war for black liberation," he said.
A decade ago, Times Books published his memoirs, "Long Time Gone," which told of his coming of age on Oakland's streets and of joining the Black Panthers when he was 37, rising to become a bodyguard for leader Eldridge Cleaver.
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in October 1966
in Oakland, by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. They called for an end to police brutality in the black community, and carried guns as they patrolled the city documenting police behavior.
In his book, Brent chronicled a July 1968 police shootout in which two police officers were critically wounded. Cleaver ordered him kicked out of the revolutionary group.
To avoid trial the following year, Brent used a .38-caliber handgun to hijack the plane to Cuba, where he believed he would be treated sympathetically as a militant black leftist. None of the 76 people aboard the Boeing 707 was harmed.
He also told of stepping off the plane in Cuba to be immediately hustled away by Cuban police.
Although never formally convicted, he spent 22 months in an immigration jail while Cuban authorities tried to figure out what to do with him. Eventually they let him stay to live out his exile.
Brent earned a Spanish literature degree from the University of Havana and taught English at junior and senior high schools, but he never became a Cuban citizen.
"I am an American, an African-American, a black man," he said in the 1996 interview with the AP. "And my fight was always in the United States."
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