Blas Roca: A Communist's role in Black Civil Rights in Cuba

While the Cuban Communist Party was founded in 1925, and this year marks its 100 years of struggle, this member of the Communist International was not legalized in Cuba until the putsch of 1937. Like its sister Party in the US, the Communist Party USA, the Cuban party - eventually known as the Partido Socialista Popular - was a unique force confronting white racism as a major task of its work.

Unique, of course, outside of Black radical forces which existed in both Cuba and the US long before white, mainstream society embraced this cause.

In his 1943 groundbreaking book, Los Fundamentos del Socialismo en Cuba, Blas Roca Calderio, the young militant trades-union organizer and general-secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, dedicated a specific chapter to anti-Black racism on the island and the importance of confronting it, noting "Blacks are discriminated against socially, economically, politically, and culturally. Racial discrimination is advocated by capitalists and landowners as a means of dividing the people and keeping them in slavery."

Roca, described in various sources as either "mulatto" or a "negro," was a young, successful labor organizer from Manzanillo who rose quickly in the Party and became its general secretary in 1933. He was succeeded in that role by Fidel Castro in 1961.

In an analysis of Roca's anti-racist work, A Nation or All, Alejandro de la Fuente writes this "In 'The Foundations of Socialism', Blas continues to delve into this problem, and raises important considerations aimed at overcoming racial prejudices that retain current value."

Early in his tenure as general secretary and taking a cue from the Communist International directives of the early 1930's, the Party and Roca advocated a Black Belt theory similar to the one advocated by the US Party. In the US, much of the Deep South was designated as a place for Black workers. In Cuba, Oriente Province, at the far east of the island, was so designated. But, as with the US Party, this proposal was rejected in 1935 after the 7th Congress of the Communist International in Moscow, where Georgi Dimitrov outlined what became the Popular Front strategy.

In fact, in 1944, the Party changed its name to Partido Socialista Popular and its youth wing to Juventud Socalista. Among the young recruits to Juventud Socialista was Raul Castro, not his older brother.

Under Roca's leadership, the Party's membership grew into the tens of thousands, controlled the main labor unions, like the Federation of Cuban Workers [CTC], a newspaper, Hoy, and a radio station, Mil Diez [Radio 1010].

Furthermore, according to Fabio Grobart's "Una emulacion de tipo especial," Fundamentos 2, November 1942, Black Cubans made up 35% of the new recruits to Cuba's communist party by that year, and 40% of the Party's affiliates by 1946.

Grobart was a Polish-born Marxist-Leninist who moved to Cuba in the early 1920s and is one of the founders of the Party. Anti-communist sources indicate he recruited a young Fidel Castro in 1948, but this is doubtful.

Among Roca's writings on the subject of race in Cuba are the following:

* "Penas y educacion contra la discriminacion racial," Fundamentos 4, May 1944

* "Interesan del Congreso," Noticias de Hoy, October 1944

* "El decreto sobre la discriminacion racial y la masas," Hoy, November 17, 1951

In "El decreto sobre la discriminacion racial y la masas," Roca takes to task in a front-page missive the hypocrisy of those who pretend to want racial justice but are nowhere to be seen when several Black militants are assassinated or cosigned the elimination of Black workers from labor leadership positions of unions that are "80% Black."

This growth in the Party's membership overall, but especially the growth of Black comrades, alarmed US authorities, which began surveillance of the Cuban Party. It authored "Report Concerning the Development of the Communist Party of Cuba in August 1946 and began monitoring in particular its Black members. As reported by Carol Rosenberg in the Miami-Herald, in 2004, this surveillance included establishing a file on a young Radio 1010 singer named Celia Cruz who had reportedly been recruited by Roca and joined the Party in the early 1940's.

In Roca's "The Cuban Revolution; Report to the Eighth National Congress of the Partido Socialista Popular,"1960, more than a year of the triumph of the Revolution has passed, and he reflects on the past decade and looking to future struggles.

The convention elected Fidel Castro to succeed Roca as general secretary. Roca is elected head of the Cuban parliament. In 1965, the PSP reverted to its original name, the Communist Party of Cuba, which it retains to this day - 100 years later and still fighting for socialism.

Further Reading:

Blas Roca, communist leader and exceptional revolutionary [Radio 26 - Matanzas]

Blas Roca Calderío: “Un hombre de extraordinario talento” [Trabajadores]

Blas Roca Calderío, un pilar de los comunistas cubanos [Granma]

Blas Roca, vocación de revolucionario [Granma]

The Watergate Moment and What the Left must do

As Donald Trump, in plain view, lays out his plans for fascism, aided and abetted his cabinet of criminals, it's disappointing the lack of organized response to meet and liquidate this threat.

Our movements - what we had of them - are in disarray. They've been in disarray since the late 80's and earl 90's when the destruction of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, had the West declaring victory.

The West had been declaring victory ever since.

The broad left never knew its place in that victory. The broad left had been sold the lie that they too were now free of this Red Menace.

The heightened attacks on the poor and working class escalated in the wake of this so-called "victory."

Reagan. Bush. Clinton. Bush. Obama. All these men served their neoliberal masters, enriched the rich, and impoverished the poor.

Trump is an escalation of these same forces, and we on the broad left - even the radical left - are not meeting this moment. History is not making us fast enough into a fighting force to stop Trump, his MAGA movement, and the real threat of fascism in this country.

The Democrats, a false ally and a source of much of the Left's confusion, is showing once again they don't have the back's of the poor and working class. They don't even care for the base - to stretch this metaphor too much.

When a previous president crossed constitutional lines and used the powers of the Oval Office to menace the people, the Democrats sat on their hands. They sat on their hands until they themselves were attacked.

Richard Nixon should have been tried to a myriad of crimes - using federal agencies, like the IRS and FBI - too attack, undermine, assassinate members of political movements in this country.

He was not impeached for any of that. The Democrats sat by and essentially let Nixon attack us.

A burglary at the Watergate Hotel brought Nixon down. 

His organizing a break-in of the Democratic National Committee's offices and theft of its strategies made the Democratic Party stand up and turn on Richard Nixon.

The parallels today are obvious.

Trump came out of the gate attacking us, our unions, our cities. The Democrats said there was nothing they could do.

His US Supreme Court stripped our voting rights and women's rights. The Democrats were powerless to respond, they said.

Then Trump, emboldened by this, directs the governor of Texas to "find him five more Congressional seats." That governor obeys.

Democratic congressional seats are threatened. Now the Democrats find their feet to stand on and their voices to complain!

This is the Watergate moment

But the Left needs urgently to unify. In our faces, and in broad daylight, Trump is rehearsing the lockup of masses of people without due process, the liquidation of our unions under the pretexts of "emergencies," the occupation of our cities by federal and military police.

He wanted ballot boxes seized in a prior election. He will get his wish on the next election if he's not stopped. That day will be too late.

The Democrats have already shown us - in the post-USSR 40 years, and in the last postwar years - their are very strict limits to its alliance with the poor, with women, with Chicanos and Blacks, with lesbians and gays, and workers in this country.

We on the Left cannot let this Watergate movement dull us [even further] into mistaking that for our movement. 

We must unify, and we must fight.