Letters
Bikes in Cuba Gather from the opening of her article ["Can Biotechnology Save the Cuban Revolution?" May, 1993] that Julie Feinsilver drives a car to work. That scientists in Cuba ride...
...Yet a response is necessary...
...farmers are plowing with oxen instead of tractors...
...Hundreds of thousands of bicycles have replaced autos...
...her public execution was intended to terrorize the citizens of Villa El Salvador, Lima's largest, most complex and democratic squatter movement...
...Those who sign such answers may find themselves targets of death threats or assassination...
...In fact, it currently has 14 centers for ant production...
...The cutoff of oil and economic aid from the Soviet Union has forced Castro to make Cuba a model environmental nation...
...Between the two are the clay-like masses of the misled, yet to be molded in the image of the leader...
...Cuba is successfully using ants to combat pests in the production of bananas and sweet potatoes...
...The Ministry of Agriculture has made biological pest control a priority in its new five-year plan...
...Given these circumstances, it will take some time and effort to find people able to reply to the Shining Path charges retailed by Carol Andreas...
...In addition, the shortage of foreign exchange has forced Cuba to find alternatives to chemical pesticides...
...She was secretly and summarily accused, tried, judged and executed by Shining Path...
...Sugar is still a major source of foreign exchange, but it is also being increasingly used as a raw material for domestic industry, as a fuel, and as feed for cattle...
...The principal contributor to global warming is the carbon dioxide we put in the air by burning coal, oil and natural gas...
...John Peck Madison, WI According to Saul Landau ["Clinton's Cuba Policy: A Low-Priority Dilemma," May, 1993], there is widespread agreement that in order to change our Cuba policy, alternative domestic constituencies with some clout must materialize...
...Many of her immediate friends and comrades-also well-placed to defend her-have been terrorized, and forced into exile or hiding by Shining Path...
...Peter Waterman The Hague, The Netherlands...
...That scientists in Cuba ride bicycles instead is by no means "ironic," "arduous," or symbolic of "rapid deindustrialization" or "primitive work processes...
...The people of Cuba have every right to be proud that Havana has become the "Bicycle Capital of the Americas...
...Like many fundamentalist movements, it believes that it alone can possess or create Truth...
...I would like to have met this three-dimensional, independent, spirited, fallible human being...
...and the use of electricity in homes and factories has been curtailed...
...Shining Path represents a dogmatic, authoritarian, totalitarian, militaristic and secretive response to failed modernization strategies in Peru...
...The Saved paint gigantic Maoist murals of their godhead, and stage 1960stype Chinese revolutionary operas...
...LETTERS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2 nism to the Left press in the U.K., I would like to respond to Carol Andreas' justification of Shining Path's assassination of Maria Elena Moyano [Letters, July/August, 1993...
...To avoid global warming, we must reduce our use of energy from these fossil fuels...
...It is obviously not willing to debate, far less engage in dialogue, with elected popular leaders like Moyano with whom it disagrees, and who evidently stand in its way...
...For Carol Andreas, who prefers the icy logic of the "Peruvian Revolution" to the complexities and contradictions of the democratic popular organizations, I have no appropriate words at all...
...It seems to me that one such constituency may be those environmentalists who believe that global warming is likely to cause catastrophes in the next century...
...I am horrified by Shining Path for reproducing authoritarian Communism at a time when it is in crisis or disappearing elsewhere...
...Continued on page 46 LETTERS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 45 This is a separate planet--or separate epoch-from the mass black uprisings or gay demonstrations of the United States, or from the world of that lone Chinese citizen confronting the Chinese Revolution with his briefcase in Tienanmen Square...
...Operating with a Manichean world view, Shining Path divides people into the Saved-who accept in toto and religiously repeat the words of the self-anointed leader of the World Revolution-and the Damned, to be crushed or eliminated...
...May, 1993) misidentified the site of the photo...
...John Burton Washington, NJ Shining Path sa one-time apologist for Stal"Inism, who used to send letters defending authoritarian CommuContinued on page 45 Erratum The caption of a photograph showing Cubans riding bicycles to work ("Can Biotechnology Save The Cuban Revolu- tion...
...If Cuba can survive under these conditions, it will be a useful model, because we may all be forced to do so one day...
...In fact, a similar phenomenon occurs every day in progressive cities of the North, such as my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin...
...The world would be much better off today if all of us had responded to the "energy crisis" as successfully and creatively as Cuba has...
...The charges against her should really have been answered by Maria Elena herself, but Andreas' "Peruvian Revolution" gave her no chance to respond...
...It was taken in the city of Cienfuegos...
...Such appropriate technology not only saves the country an estimated $50 million annually, but it also reduces urban pollution by retiring inefficient automobiles, provides new employment as bicycle factories open, fosters green space by narrowing road ways, and strengthens neighborhood solidarity as people commute together...
...Cuba is thus setting an environmentally sustainable example for struggling Third World nations...
...Unfortunately, superpowers like the United States would rather shed blood for oil than change their unsustainable lifestyle...
...I am angry with Maria Elena for putting her body where her heart was...
...This is exactly what Cuba is now doing...
Vol. 27 • September 1993 • No. 2
