Women and the Cuban Revolution: Speeches and Documents by Fidel Castro, Vilma Espín, and others - Softcover

Fidel Castro; Vilma Espín

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0873486080 ISBN 13: 9780873486088

Publisher: Pathfinder Press, 1981

Synopsis

Central leaders of the Cuban Revolution present the road forward in the fight for the emancipation of women. The revolutionary victory, said Fidel Castro in 1966, “has meant a double liberation” for women, “who were discriminated against not only as workers but also as women.”

Appendixes: Cuba’s 1974 Maternity Law and 1975 Family Code.

“Accounts of the early years of women’s involvement in the Cuban Revolution.” —Research Book News

About this title

About the Authors

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) – A student leader at the University of Havana from 1945. Founding member of the Orthodox Party in 1947 and central organizer of its revolutionary-minded youth.

Fidel Castro led the July 26, 1953, attack on the Moncada and Bayamo garrisons and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Released in May 1955 after a mass amnesty campaign, he organized the founding of the July 26 Movement. From Mexico, Castro prepared the Granma expedition, which returned to Cuba in December 1956. He commanded the Rebel Army during the 1956–58 revolutionary war and from May 1958 headed the July 26 Movement.

Castro was prime minister from February 1959 to 1976, when he became president of the Council of State and Council of Ministers. He was commander in chief of the armed forces from 1959 to 2008 and first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from its founding in 1965 to 2011.

Among his writings published by Pathfinder are:
Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own (coauthor, 2013)
Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs: 1961, Washington’s First Military Defeat in the Americas (coauthor, 2001)
U.S. Hands Off the Mideast! (coauthor, 1990)
In Defense of Socialism (1989)
Cuba Will Never Adopt Capitalist Methods (1988)
Nothing Can Stop the Course of History (1986)
War and Crisis in the Americas (1985)
Our Power Is That of the Working People
Building Socialism in Cuba (1983)
Fidel Castro on Chile (1982)
Cuba’s Internationalist Foreign Policy (1981)
Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro (1979)

Vilma Espín (1930–2007) was a founding member of the Communist Party of Cuba and its Central Committee from its founding in 1965 until her death. She was a member of the party’s Political Bureau from 1980 to 1991, a member of the Council of State from 1976, and the president and principal leader of the Federation of Cuban Women from its founding in August 1990 until her death.

In 1955 Espín became one of the first members of the July 26 Movement. In February 1957, she took part in the first national leadership meeting of the July 26 Movement held in the Sierra Maestra mountains. In June 1958, she joined the Rebel Army’s Frank País Second Eastern Front, where combatants under Raúl Castro began to establish a civilian governmental structure. There Espín’s responsibilities included serving as an instructor in the school training combatants as teachers.

After the triumph on January 1, 1959, Espín led the efforts to launch the Federation of Cuban Women. She was director of the National Center on Sex Education, founded in 1989, and the National Commission for Attention to and Prevention of Social Problems, founded in 1986.

Espín is a coauthor of Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution within the Revolution (2012).

Elizabeth Stone (1939– ) is a leader of the Socialist Workers Party, serving on its National Committee from 1965 to 1990. She is editor of Women and the Cuban Revolution (1981), editor of Fidel Castro on Chile (1982), and contributor to Independent Black Political Action 1954–78 (1982).

Edition details

• Publisher: Pathfinder Press
• Publication date: 1981
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0873486080
• ISBN 13: 9780873486088
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 206