Havana Greets the Latin-american Solidarity Conference

from a special correspondent On July 28th until August 5th, the Organisation of Latin-American Solidarity (OLAS) is to hold its inaugural conference in Havana, and for weeks the city has been festooned with posters, flags and banners welcoming OLAS and proclaiming the necessity for armed struggle. OLAS was born at the Tricontinental Conference held in Havana in January 1966, when it was formed by the twenty-six Latin-American groups attending the conference, In its summons to the conference, OLAS declares its aim as "not to hold yet another formal gathering to express our relative discontent, but to face the global strategy of imperialism with a bold strategy of the peoples." It rightly equates the prerogative of people to face, with revolutionary violence, the violence of imperialism and reaction. Such a summons echoes the call of Che Guevara's recent letter to the Tricont— inental, in which he characterised the Vietnam war as the centre of confrontation between imperialism and the colonial countries, and called for "more Vietnams" in Latin America as a means, not just of helping the Vietnamese revolution, but of assisting the cause of the Latin-American countries themselves, The delegates to OLAS will find not only the Cuban leadership but the entire Cuban nation firmly committed to the armed struggle, Che's portrait accompanies Fidel's on every street corner, and over the entrance to the Habana Libre Hotel a massive poster portrays Fidel and his comrades, with guns in hands, bearing the slogan from the declaration of the Tricontinental: "It is the duty of revolutionists to make the revolution," With such commitments so firmly expressed, the OLAS Conference promises to be a pivot point in the alignment of forces in Latin America,