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The United States sets annual quotas on sugar imports from Cuba and other countries. In this way the Big Business interests exercise a stranglehold on the country since the U.S. is by far the largest buyer.

The U.S. government built and owns a hundred million dollar nickel refinery which is exploited by the National Lead Company.

International Telephone and Telegraph Company has twenty million dollars invested and operates through its subsidiary, the Cuban Telephone Company.

Standard Oil of New Jersey has a refinery at/Belot with a capacity of 35,000 barrels a day.
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Wages of the Cuban workers are on fourth of those paid in the U.S., while prices are about the same as in our country. About 500,000 Cuban workers are dependent on seasonal employment in the sugar industry.

A substantial part of the population of Cuba are Negroes.

The overwhelming majority of the people of Latin America, and this applies to Cuba, live in miserable conditions. "They are subject to a high incidence of disease, malnutrition, and illiteracy....Two thirds of the people are physically undernourished." (U.S. over Latin America, International Publishers, 1955)

The tuberculosis mortality rate in Cuba is 169.4 per 100,000. (In the U.S. in 1953 it was 12.3 per 100,000.) Based on 1954 census figures, infant mortality was 99 per 1,000 live births. (In the U.S. it was 29)

IV. THE PEOPLE'S LBIERATION MOVEMENT -- ITS CLASS COMPOSITION

The opposition to Batista began soon after his coup of March 1952. It grew in strength and embrace the vast majority of people. It was given great force by Castro who on July 26, 1953, led an attack on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba. This was the origin of the July 26 movement by which name the Castro followers are known. This failed. Castro was captured and imprisoned but released in a general amnesty in 1954. From his exile in Mexico he organized an expedition and in 1956 landed with 90 men on the Southern coast of Orient Province. All but a dozen were killed or captured. Castro and the few rebels went into the Sierra Maestro mountains and organized the struggle.

At first his numbers were a mere handful of youth but this gradually grew with the enrollment of workers, peasants, intellectuals, small and medium bourgeoisie. The whole youth were behind Castro and the liberation forces.

"The tyranny was overthrown because the entire people opposed Batista and his regime and fought actively for its overthrow in every possible way and on all fronts: in the armed struggles, in strikes and in the final general strike, in numerous civilian struggles, in mass struggles of the workers and farmers, by means of propaganda, by boycotting the fake elections and fighting against the entire Batista agents in the various organizations (such as the treacherous and corrupt gang of Eusebio Mujal in the trade unions). Ninety percent of the rebel forces are composed of farmers, agricultural workers, city workers, and students of every revolutionary trend." (From the thesis of the Popular Socialist Part on the Present Situation.) 

While the national bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie had hegemony in the movement, a decisive part was played by the working class, as the nation-wide general strike indicated, and by the Communists (the Popular Socialist Party). Leading Communist trade unionists were murdered by the Batista forces.

The Popular Socialist Party was an active force in establishing a loose coalition of all liberation forces. This party has along history of struggle against reaction and imperialism. It arose in 1925 and was in the front ranks of struggle in overthrowing the Machado dictatorship through the general strike in August 1933. Among the organizers and leaders of the party from its inception were people who embody the best traditions of struggle of the working class of Cuba, such as the organizers of the Party, Carlo Balino, friend of Jose Marti, the great Cuban liberator, and Julio Antonio Mella, Cuban youth leader and fighter against imperialism. Mella was assassinated by orders of Machado in Mexico City on January 10, 1929. Other well known leaders include Lazar Pena, tobacco workers' leaders and later general secretary of the Confederation of Labor; Blas Roca ,