The effects of this study are reflected in work. The youth are mechanizing the jobs of their parents out of existence. In five or ten years there will be no cane-cutters, only machine operators and technicians.

What is more, students do not form an elite group, shut off from the people who work, as they do in the U.S. As long as there is manual labor in agriculture, it will be shared by students, technicians, planners, everyone. Lazara has worked in ten harvests, Hugo in eight. Pedro in five. Alberto thinks the volunteer work he did plating eucalyptus trees was even harder than cane-cutting. "It wasn't planting the trees that was so hard-it was digging the holes."

Voluntary labor aside, students work while they study, workers study while they work. When Alberto went back to school he didn't stop teaching. "We need secondary school teachers. But we can work as teachers and go to school at the same time. I was doing that until I came here. Now I will start working in the design studio, making posters for cultural activities, at the same time as I study culture."

Juan went to work at 17, repairing adding machines for a newly-nationalized firm. At the same time he studied, reaching a university level in statistics, philosophy, and other subjects, though he had never formally graduated from high school. By the time he had become a Young Communist and learned to tell the difference between socialism and capitalism, he was ready to go to work as a translator and guide, explaining communist Cuba to North American visitors. Next year he will take political science courses in the university, while continuing to work as a guide. And he still fixes the adding machine at our camp.

Raul began studying radios in the army, just like the ads in the States promise. Only in Cuba he really learned in the army, and when he get out he was paid to go to school to learn more; while he studied in civilian school he began working at his present job.

Pedro drives a truck for eight hours during the day and studies for three hours at night. In 1972 he will go to the university to study medicine. When he becomes a doctor, he will make the same salary as truck-drivers. Like all doctors, he will spend the first two years in the countryside.

At the same time as work and study, Lazara served in the army for three years, Juan for one. Raul for three. All the younger members are or were in the militia, where they receive training and weapons, and are activated in times of emergency or for guard duty in their local area.

The New Man

Political development is part and parcel of this process of life and work. When the Cubans speak of political development, they are not talking only about learning to support a socialist economy or to oppose imperialism. As Lazara explained, that part came automatically, Pedro says, "I always supported the Revolutionary laws as they were created, and my father taught me to understand them, so there was nothing complicated about becoming a socialist." He also saw that the bourgeoisie and the American corporations did not support the laws which diminished their profits. Fidel came to Pedro's school and his workplace to discuss the Revolution. "He is always going around and holding conversations just like he did here at the camp."

Political development means something more. Pedro explains, "The most important thing is that during my work in the Revolution, the Revolution has been building me as a new man, taking out capitalist ways of acting and building communist ones." Hugo, the oldest, describes this as "fighting inside myself against the old ways of thinking." To become a Young Communist or Party member one must of course meet certain ideological standards. But primarily, the members of our brigade were nomi-

nated by their fellow workers to the Young Communists, and chosen by Young Communist officials to come to the Venceremos Brigade camp, on the basis of the way they work. A communist defines himself by working and acting for the collective good.

An example is Ranl's attitude toward the harvest. "Naturally I am nostalgic for home. I am used to going home after work and playing with my children and all that. But this work is for the Revolution, which means it is for my children at the same time-to get for them and everyone in the Revolution all the things they need. The main thing I have had to learn in the Revolution is to live in collectivity and comradeship. Something that helped me very much was the scholarship school, where I had to live with others, and being in the literacy campaign, and work like that."

Likewise, individuals do not dominate each other. After the harvest, Pedro will get married. His fiancee is 24, and also a Young Communist. Though the wives of many of the older men in the camp do not work, Pedro says, "My fiancee studies French, and she will continue to study after we get married. When she finishes, maybe she will work as a translater, maybe she will study something else. That is her business. I don't decide what she does."

Fidel describes the political process in Cuba as "simultaneous construction of socialism and communism." The new ways of acting and reading-what Ch? labeled "the new man" -must be built simultaneously with the new technology and economic structures. Otherwise, in Cuba, neither will succeed. The aim, according to Fidel, is "to create wealth through social awareness and not the other way around."

The eight Cubans in our brigade had never known each other before-the separate paths of their lives had gone through similar territory, but had not crossed. What brought them together to do voluntary work in the harvest of 1970. "The Year of the Ten Millions," is precisely that social awareness that Fidel speaks about.

As Hugo explained once, "We have no stages for building the new man, as we do for the economy. We do not know at exactly what point we have developed enough to act in new ways, we only know by experiment." The ten million harvest is a culmination of 11 years of economic development, but even more it is a test of 11 years of political development. On one of our first days in the fields I asked Juan whether Cuba would pass that test, whether they would make the ten million, and he said yes, without a doubt. Once I got to know the Cuban people. I never had to ask that again. Los Diez Milliones Van!