Brigadista Ezequiel Morales

Ezequiel Morales (left) in 1961.

Here is a photo of Ezequiel Morales (on the left) when he was a ten-year-old school boy who volunteered for revolutionary Cuba’s first literacy brigade in 1961, an historic campaign that took the Cuba’s literacy rate from 60% to 96% (one of the highest in the world) in just one year.

So how did this 10-year old join the 100,000 students who fanned across the countryside teach the peasant farmers how to read and write? I asked him this question after a meeting in the Sydney Resistance Centre on the reforms being discussed in Cuba today.

Ezequiel was the oldest of five children in a poor peasant family in the eastern part of Cuba. Before the revolution against the Batista regime the family could not afford to send the children to school. Ezequiel worked shining shoes for the richer people and the money he earned went towards the family’s survival. But he managed to save a little bit to pay someone who knew how to read to teach him a little.

After the revolution he could go to school and he was in Grade II when the literacy brigade was launched. When a young teacher was killed in the countryside by counter-revolutionaries for daring to teach the peasants to read, it fired Ezequiel and many other students to make their contribution to the revolution.

“I was only 8 when the revolution took place so I could not join it then but in 1961 through the literacy brigade I could play my part for the revolution.”

Ezequiel bluffed his way into the brigade by pretending he was 12 years-old and in Grade IV (a bluff that later meant he had to work extra hard to complete his education because he had to compress several years study to catch up).

He also convinced the head of the literacy campaign recruiting unit that his school teacher had recommended that he join the brigade and at the same time he convinced his teacher that the literacy unit leader had done the same.

He was accepted into the literacy brigade, given an allowance (“more money than I had ever had before”)  and a set of new clothes to replace the rags he had worn before.

“I got my very first pair of underpants then!”

With his mother’s blessing he finally was sent, after a short training, into the countryside to teach a peasant to read.

“When I got there the villagers teased me: ‘Are you a brigadista or just a scale model?

“Others in the village laughed at my task. They said this peasant would never read and write because his hands were too big and rough. And they were big.

“Even my new ‘student’ was doubtful. He said that he had got by up until then just marking ‘X’ instead of writing his name.”

But before he could try to disprove these taunts, he discovered was that this peasant was very short-sighted and couldn’t even see the letters on a page. So Ezequiel had to go back to town to arrange spectacles for his student. Only then the teaching could begin.

“When he got his spectacles he was amazed at what he could see!”

Working in the fields with his  student, Ezequiel sparked the peasant’s interest by reading to him about the land reform, explaining that when he was given his own land he would have to read and count so he could take his products to market, etc. It was the approach of the lengendary Paulo Freire – though at the time Ezequiel had never heard of him. And it worked!

Later, Ezequiel went back to school, then university and became a teacher. He was the Secretary General of various branches of the Union of Educators until 1996 when he began to work at his current position with the Cuban Institute for Friendshipwith the Peoples (ICAP) where he works to build bridges between Cubans and people in other parts of the world.

It was a privilege to meet Brigadista Ezequiel Morales, 50 years later.

Ezequiel Morales addressing a meeting at the Sydney Resistance Centre on April 18, 2011. Photo by Peter Boyle.

We know now that Israeli apartheid fears BDS

Supporters of Israeli apartheid painted swastika symbols of Greens election billboards in Marrickville. Photo by Peter Boyle.

A ferocious media campaign, led by the Murdoch press, has been unleashed against Sydney’s Marrickville Council over a motion it passed endorsing the global campaign of boycott, disinvestment and sanctions targetting Israel.

– Green Left Weekly, April 18, 2011

Whatever happens tonight when a bullied, threatened and smeared Marrickville Council faces motions to rescind its support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli apartheid, we will know one thing for sure: The apologists and supporters of Israeli apartheid fear BDS.

And the conclusion that the movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people should draw from this is to persevere with BDS and take the campaign to more councils, trade unions, universities and other institutions.

The campaign against Marrickville Council’s support for BDS included smears, abuse and even death threats against Greens Mayor Fiona Byrnes. Swastika symbols were sprayed on Greens election billboards and vicious lies were spread that the supporters of BDS were racist and anti-Semitic. A prominent blogger on the Daily Telegraph website posted a graphic which featured the Marrickville Council logo and the words “Jew-free since 2003″ beneath.

The anti-BDS campaign was bullying, deceitful and criminal. The apologists of Israeli apartheid have exposed their nasty side.

The long-string of right-wing politicians, shock jocks, columnists and commentators — and the powerful and reactionary Murdoch media empire — who joined the campaign have made a layer of people uncertain about this issue quite a bit uneasy. These people need to reflect on the question: Whose side are you on in this conflict? On the side of the rich, powerful and reactionary oppressors or on the side of the oppressed and the likes of Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and and host of other voices for human rights and justice.

The attempt to slur BDS as “anti-Semitic” is being demolished as more and more Jewish people with conscience and courage, many from within Israel,  declare their support for BDS and Marrickville Council’s principled stand.

The movement should learn from the history of the boycott and other non-violent resistance tactics that were used so powerfully in the long struggle against South African apartheid. The Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign in the 1950s, the defiance of the hated Pass Law, the rent boycotts, economic boycotts, the school boycotts,  the international sanctions, divestment, and boycotts, the sporting boycotts, all were met with violent attacks from the apartheid state and from other states. However, this violence and intimidation failed to kill off the popular defiance. On the contrary, the bloody massacre in Sharpville 1960 became a turning point in the struggle.

If the movement against Israeli apartheid today perseveres we can expect to be ruthlessly attacked, as Marrickville Council was, by an alliance of powerful and reactionary forces determined to silence any rational and justice-focussed debate on Palestine. But we can used these atacks to expose the oppressors and broaden the alliances against them.  That’s how the BDS tactic works. That’s how it can become a powerful movement.

I began my political life as an anti-racist campaigner in the early 1970s and while campaigning against South African apartheid heard arguments that have been regurgitated by the supporters and apologists for Israeli apartheid today.  Back then they said you should not criticise South Africa or white-supremacist Rhodesia because there was repression going on in African-governed Africa states.

It was not a good excuse then and it is not a good excuse now.

And a tumultous political development in the Middle east today is smashing this argument. A new generation has launched a democratic wave of struggle right across the Arab world, in Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq and so on. And amidst all this the Israeli government sided with the Arab despots!

The fence-sitters should think about this, draw the right conclusion and take the side of those fighting oppression and repression.

Palestinians and supporters outside Marrickville Council meeting April 19.