Revolution from Minorities Needed in the USA, Says Koppel

Havana, Feb 14. – The United States needs a revolution from the minorities to change the system of exclusion and exploitation it sells to the world, said US researcher and activist Martin Koppel, who is visiting Cuba on occasion of the International Book Fair.

During a panel on writing and contemporariness in the Caribbean, held at Havana-based Casa de las Americas cultural center, Koppel, who is also the Spanish language editor of the Pathfinder Press publishing house, said that US progressive forces need to forge combative alliances.

"Only in that way, if we are able to integrate ourselves, we can think of the possibility to stage a great left-wing revolution within Capitalism," he said in remarks to Prensa Latina.

"In my country there are large blocs of resistance, but they have been dispersed by power and by the lack of common projects," he said.

In Koppel´s opinion, the model to follow resides in so-called "governments of radical reconstruction" existing in the late 19th Century in the region of the Mississippi delta, considered part of the Greater Caribbean.

He said that those local powers, mainly made up of Caribbean immigrants, formed the first cores of authentic left-wing practices existing in the United States. He added that people´s struggles of those sectors led to the first demand for a radical land reform in the United States. They founded industrial trade unions, established public schools and hospitals and even put pressure on Congress to add three amendments on equality to the Constitution.

According to Koppel, that is the reason why that part of the US history is not taught in schools, as "they fear it might be repeated," he said.

The Forum "The Caribbean, Writing and Contemporariness" is being held in Havana as part of the 21th International Book Fair, dedicated this year to the Greater Caribbean.(Prensa Latina)