In 1998 five members of Cuba’s intelligence agency were arrested in Miami and indicted on 26 counts. Their crime? Risking their lives to prevent the deaths of innocent civilians at the hands of unscrupulous murderers. In May 2009, on behalf of President Barack Obama, Solicitor General Elena Kagan filed a brief asking that the review of their trial be denied and on June 15th, 2009 the Supreme Court denied the review.

We have received this article from Ron Ridenour, which was originally published in the Havana Times. The article is a report on a series of workshops that have been held in Cuba, such as one held under the title, "The significance and meaning of the revolution in our lives", where different opinions are expressed. We publish it for the interest of our readers.

On February 19 and 20, Alan Woods spoke to students at the International School of Cinema and TV (EICTV) in San Antonio de los Baños, the Raul Roa Higher Institute of International Relations, to the national and Havana provincial secretariats of the Federation of University Students (FEU). In all the meetings there was keen interest in the genuine ideas of Marxism, highlighting the fact that among the youth there is a determination to discover the real essence of Marxism and defend the Cuban revolution.

At 3.30pm on Saturday, February 21, more than 50 people gathered at the F. Engels Foundation stand at the Havana Book Fair to participate in a brief but moving homage to Celia Hart. The tragic death of comrade Celia Hart and her brother Abel, in a car accident last September was a great shock to her many friends and comrades all over the world.

Following from Part One, Jorge Martin looks at how Cuba resisted the pressures to follow the capitalist road as happened in the Soviet Union and China, undergoing a serious crisis in the process. Now, however, there are growing pressures also inside Cuba to adopt the so-called “Chinese model”, i.e. changes that would eventually lead to the re-establishment of capitalism in Cuba. There are also those who resist this idea and are seeking ways of building socialism on the island.

In this first part of his article Jorge Martin looks at how the Cuban revolution, starting out as a bourgeois democratic revolution, was forced to move against capitalism in order to achieve its aims, a brilliant confirmation of Trotsky’s theory of the Permanent Revolution. He also looks at the contradictory tendencies within Cuba in the early years after the revolution.