Celia Hart, 1963 - 2008

On September 7, Cuban leftist Celia Hart, along with her brother Abel, died in a car accident in the Cuban capital of Havana. Their parents, Armando Hart and Haydée Santamaría, were two historic leaders of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, which laid the basis for the overthrow of capitalist rule on the island and establishment of the Cuban deformed workers state.

Celia Hart regarded herself as a Trotskyist. But this stood in contradiction to her unwavering support for Fidel Castro’s Cuban Stalinist regime and her support to the bourgeois-populist regime of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, with which Cuba is currently allied. The eclectic and self-contradictory “trotsko-guevarist” politics she espoused were at a great distance from the revolutionary program embodied in Trotsky’s permanent revolution. But Hart did not ooze with the odious anti-Communism of the social-democratic left that liked to parade her around at their international conferences, like the recent Socialist Action-organized Toronto event, “A World in Revolt—Prospects for Socialism in the 21st Century” (see “ICL’s Trotskyism vs. Socialist Action Reformism,” WV No. 917, 4 July). Celia Hart was feisty and sharp, always willing to engage in open political debate. We always enjoyed our discussions with her. We are sorry that she’s gone.