When the Cuban people, under the leadership of Fidel Castro and the July 26th Movement, overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in 1959, it heralded a new day. Within a few years, the revolution began a major literacy program, overcame massive unemployment and inaugurated the most far-reaching healthcare plan in Latin America.

 

This generated an obsessive desire by then-President Eisenhower's administration and all those that have followed to destroy this revolutionary process. Forty-five years of economic blockade, endless terrorist actions generated by the CIA, as well as outright invasion (Bay of Pigs, 1961) have been methods used by the U.S. government to subvert and destroy the Cuban Revolution.

 

Yet this revolution remains strong and is a source of inspiration for people throughout the hemisphere. When the people of South Africa, Haiti, Nicaragua and elsewhere called, Cuba answered with the support of its healthcare and educational services and with volunteers who participated in the military struggle against the South African apartheid regime's aggression against Angola and people throughout southern Africa.

 

The Bush administration has engaged in a dramatic escalation of covert destabilization tactics against Cuba. This includes encouraging hijackings and other terrorist acts, imposing harsh new restrictions on travel and issuing a new order giving the government more power to stop ships leaving the U.S. for Cuba. The Bush Administration openly talks about "regime change" in Cuba.

 

The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition believes that the U.S. anti-war movement must take these threats very seriously.