BY GREG McCARTAN
Pathfinder Press announced on December 7 that its new English-language edition of Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58, by Ernesto Che Guevara, will be available in early 1996.
This book provides crucial insights into how a communist vanguard was forged in Cuba, one that has continued to lead working people in the fight for socialism over the past 35 years. It helps show why Cuba remains at the center of world politics, and why the Cuban people continue to fight to maintain their independence and socialist revolution. Episodes was first written by Guevara as a series of articles for the Cuban Armed Forces magazine Verde Olivo, beginning in February 1961.
Guevara takes the story from the organization in Mexico of an initial cadre of fighters led by Fidel Castro who took the boat Granma to Cuba to initiate the armed struggle to overthrow the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship, to the military battles and political campaigns through which Guevara and other combatants in the Rebel Army were transformed by their experiences and forged into a tested leadership of working people. He describes the growth in the countryside and cities of the revolutionary movement that toppled the dictatorship by a mass armed insurrection.
Episodes is a careful account of "personal reminiscences of the attacks, skirmishes, and battles in which I participated," as Guevara puts it in his prologue to the series, reprinted above. Engagingly written, it draws the reader into the deep popular roots of the Cuban revolution.
Guevara was born in Argentina and traveled extensively through the Americas, ending up in Guatemala in late 1953. He was drawn there by the popular upsurge that accompanied the limited land reform program being advanced by the government of Jacobo Arbenz. This threatened major corporations such as the United Fruit Company - one of the large U.S.-owned corporations with extensive landholdings - and Washington organized a mercenary army to topple the Arbenz regime. Guevara involved himself in the political struggle to oppose the CIA's eventually successful attempts to overthrow the Arbenz government.
Forced to leave Guatemala, Guevara escaped to Mexico in September 1954. The following August he met Fidel Castro, who selected Guevara as one of the first members of the force organized by the Cuban July 26 Movement to overthrow the Batista dictatorship. "I remember that our first discussion was about international politics," Guevara writes. "Within a few hours - by dawn - I was one of the future expeditionaries."
After the revolutionary victory on Jan. 1, 1959, Guevara shouldered a number of responsibilities in the new government. He frequently represented Cuba internationally, including at the United Nations and other world forums. Guevara served as head of the national bank and minister of industry, in which his practical work, writings, and speeches serve as enduring contributions to the connection between economics and politics in the construction of socialism.
Chapter titles of Episodes give a good sampling of the scope of the narrative: "A Revolution Begins"; "Surprise Attack at Altos de Espinosa"; "Bitter Days"; "Reinforcements"; "Caring for the Wounded"; The Struggle Against Banditry"; "War and the Peasant Population"; and "From Batista's Final Offensive to the Battle of Santa Clara."
This edition of the book, the first in English to carry the complete Verde Olivo series written by Guevara, contains a wealth of information to aid the reader in getting the most from the account.
From the original series and from careful reconstruction by the Cuban Armed Forces, the Pathfinder edition presents a wealth of maps and battle sketches to enable the reader to trace the progress of the most important military events. A full 32 pages of photos will be included in the book, bringing to life scenes from the revolutionary war, protests and strikes in the cities, the brutality of the Batista regime, and the mass character of the struggle.
A chronology presents the major political turning points in the revolutionary struggle, from protests in the 1940s through the triumph of the revolution on New Years Day, 1959. It gives a broad sweep of the protests and mobilizations out of which the revolutionary movement organized by Castro emerges, and of the battles, uprisings, strikes, and other events from the landing of the Granma to the entry of the rebel forces into Havana.
A number of items appear in the Pathfinder edition for the first time in English. A detailed and well-researched glossary of names, places, and organizations provides an invaluable resource for readers delving into the text.
Additional sections contain letters, reports, and other documents written by Guevara, including "Portraits of Revolutionaries" and Military Order No. 1 on the agrarian reform in Las Villas province. Design of the book cover, photo insert, and maps make the book attractive and the wealth of information accessible.
The book is edited by Mary-Alice Waters, editor of the Marxist magazine New International, who provides a political introduction to the Episodes. Waters is also editor of the new Pathfinder edition of The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara, published in 1994.