Cuba’s Other Revolution http://alainet.org/active/64594&lang=es
“Thanks to all its revolutionary history, which dates back to the XIX century, the Cuban peasantry has accumulated very many experiences”, says Brazil’s João Pedro Stédile, one of the leaders of his country’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). “Apart from having gone through the green revolution, it has maintained its people’s revolution alive and has for fifty years been resisting against all aggressions of imperialism. For this, it is today the campesino sector that’s most ideologically and scientifically prepared to help us all campesinos and campesinas of the world to deal with the challenges imposed by capital”. (7)But observers should not romanticize or idealize Cuba’s reality. Agroecology in Cuba faces serious challenges and contradictions (8). The government does not intend to do away with conventional industrial farming, and it is pushing ahead with the development of genetically modified crops (9), something that Funes and other Cuban agroecologists have vocally opposed (10). Some in the top levels of the Communist Party view agroecology as no more than a temporary band aid, to be discarded once the Special Period ends. But Funes, Vásquez and many other Cuban farmers are convinced that agroecology is the way to go today and will also be the way to go tomorrow. In the words of Funes, “Let’s do organic farming now, not out of necessity but rather with the conviction that it really is the path to take”.
[ED NOTES:LONG PIECE JUST CITING ONE EXCERPT,GOOD READ,CLICK LINK FOR WHOLE PIECE HAS GOOD CRITIQUES