Celia came to London in June 2006 to speak at a conference on Latin America which Socialist Resistance had organised. To coincide with her trip we published It’s Never Too Late To Love Or Rebel, a collection of her writings on the Cuban revolution. The revolutionary processes, particularly in Venezuela and Bolivia, were a reminder that socialist revolution was as possible and necessary in the twenty first century as in the twentieth. That was the motivation for organising the event. Celia was the flesh and blood link between the old and the new revolutions. Her mother and father Armando Hart and Haydée Santamaria were leaders of the Cuban revolution and you can see photographs of them in Havana’s Museum of the Revolution.
Celia stayed with me for the week and it wasn’t obvious that there would be clear communication. My Spanish is poor. Her English was pretty basic and she had a habit of reaching for German words when she was stuck so most of the time we could work out what the other was trying to say. She had studied physics in the German Democratic Republic and that’s where she encountered Trotsky’s writings. She was later to say “I always felt that there was something missing in my thinking about the revolution. That’s what I’ve found through reading Trotsky: I discovered that social justice and individual freedom were not contradictory and that we weren’t condemned to choose between them, that socialism could only be built by walking on both feet.”
Cuba’s revolution has given the island a joy for life. Celia had this in abundance. Without skipping a beat she would break off from discussing the internal life of the Cuban Communist Party to burst out laughing as one of our cats planted its two front paws on the dinner table as if to demand that he should be allowed to join us. On the Friday night before our conference she got me worried about whether or not she would make it there in a state to talk coherently. Our drinking session, that had been intended as a relaxing hour in a typical English pub finished some time closer to one in the morning than to midnight. She’d developed a taste for Guinness more quickly than anyone I’d ever seen and handled it well. The East German education probably helped.
From what Celia told me there are only about a dozen people in Havana who describe themselves as Trotskyist so she was astonished by the superabundance of British Trotskyist groups. She had picked up a leaflet for a meeting on China that the pre-split Workers Power were holding and was very keen to go to it. Her nightmare was that the Cuban revolution would emulate the Chinese model and she was clear that a section of the Cuban leadership sees this as an attractive option. She was enthralled by the introductions and the discussion at the Workers Power meeting. For her it was exhilarating to see a group of socialists discussing what was happening in China and discover that she agreed with much of what they were saying and felt that she had learned something from the evening. Another evening with some Guinness only added to the political satisfaction.
The next and final time I saw her was last year in Havana. Our meeting nearly didn’t happen because she was on holiday. I’d brought over a few cans of Guinness and believing that we’d missed each other sent them to her house in a taxi. They got there! As luck would have it we did meet up. She was about to head off to Caracas to talk at a conference on Trotsky. We did an interview and talked about Venezuela, the changes in Cuba and what would happen after Castro. I could never have imagined that Celia would die before Fidel. Then when the interview has finished we returned to the business of beer. Coincidentally comrade Roy was on holiday in Havana too and a running joke of the evening was that his daughter should meet up with Celia’s son. She was under the impression that all young English women are “nice ladies”. I took it for granted that we would meet again.
Celia has died much too young. She was as exuberant and passionate about life and revolution as a twenty year old. Her infectious commitment to the achievements of the Cuban revolution was regularly punctuated with the laughter of someone who is sure of their ideas and frightened of nothing. She could have had an easy life relying on her parents’ prestige to secure a comfortable state job. Instead she took the harder path and became the truth teller, the honest friend and defender of the revolution. Revolutionary socialism has suffered a terrible blow with the loss of Celia. Her family has lost a wonderful woman and my heart goes out to them.
A translation of Celia’s last article is here.
¡HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!
Liam redux 
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