The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.63/No.25           July 12, 1999 
 
 
`We Are A Political Army, Fully Aware Of What We Are Defending'
Interview with Brigadier General Harry Villegas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba  
Brigadier General Harry Villegas was born in 1940 in Yara, a small village in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra mountains of eastern Cuba. As a teenager he joined the struggle against the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and in 1957 joined the Rebel Army, fighting under the command of Ernesto Che Guevara.

After the victory of the revolution in January 1959, Villegas served as head of Guevara's personal escort. In 1961, following Cuba's nationalization of imperialist- and domestically-owned industry, he worked with Guevara as a factory administrator, in the broadening effort to organize Cuban working people to take more direct control of the organization of the economy. He returned to active military duty the following year.

In 1965 Villegas volunteered to take part in an internationalist mission in the Congo, where he served as chief adjutant to Guevara, who led the front. It was during this campaign that he received the nom de guerre he has since come to be known by - Pombo.

Villegas is best known around the world as one of the Cuban revolutionaries who fought alongside Guevara in Bolivia, in what Pombo describes as "an epic chapter in the history of the Americas." In July 1966 he was sent by Guevara to Bolivia to help coordinate advance preparations for the effort to establish a revolutionary front in Latin America's Southern Cone. In November of that year he became part of the guerrilla unit there led by Guevara, serving on its general staff throughout the course of the eleven-month campaign. After Guevara was killed in October 1967, Villegas commanded the group of surviving combatants that was able to elude the encirclement jointly organized by the Bolivian army and U.S. military and intelligence forces. After numerous battles, the three Cuban combatants crossed the border into Chile in February 1968, and arrived in Cuba the following month.

Villegas is author of Pombo: A Man of Che's `guerrilla,' his diary and account of the 1966-68 revolutionary campaign in Bolivia. Additional recollections of the Bolivian campaign by Villegas are included in the appendix to The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara and in the pamphlet At the Side of Che Guevara. All three titles are published by Pathfinder.

From 1975 until 1990, Villegas served most of the time in Angola, as part of the leadership of the Cuban volunteer military contingent that was there at the request of the Angolan government, helping to defeat an invasion by the apartheid regime in South Africa. The responsibilities he carried out included serving as front commander and a member of the general staff; member of the general staff of Operation Olive (the struggle against right-wing bands in Angola); liaison between the military mission and the armed forces command in Havana; and head of operations. Villegas was awarded the medal of Hero of the Republic of Cuba, the country's highest honor, by the Council of State.

In recent years Villegas served as head of the Political Section of Cuba's Western Army, and was a member of the Political Directorate of the General Staff of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR). Currently he heads the Secretariat and is ideological director of the Patriotic-Military and International Front of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution. He is also a deputy in the National Assembly of People's Power, and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.

The following interview with Harry Villegas was conducted in Havana, Cuba, on November 10, 1998, by Mary-Alice Waters and Martín Koppel. Waters is editor of the Marxist magazine New International. Koppel is editor of Perspectiva Mundial.

Copyright (c) 1999 Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission.

*****

Mary-Alice Waters: The region of eastern Cuba where you were born and raised has historically been the cradle of revolutionary struggle in Cuba, the stronghold of the independence forces for more than a century and a half. How did these traditions affect you as a youth? What experiences led you to join the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the Batista dictatorship?

Harry Villegas: Oriente has been the birthplace of all of Cuba's independence struggles. In fact, this was even where the first rebel in Cuba, and the first Cuban internationalist, you might say - the Indian Hatuey - started fighting. Hatuey was a native of the island of Quisqueya - or Española, which was the name given it by the colonizers; today it is the Dominican Republic.(1)

Oriente's revolutionary traditions
I think there are two major reasons why the people from Oriente have played a decisive role from the beginning in our struggles for independence, both of which are closely interrelated. One is economic. Oriente was one of the poorest areas, with the highest illiteracy rate, cut off from social development. Here in Cuba we say that struggles come from the east -that independence came from the east - but culture comes from the west. The revolution has evened this out somewhat, making things more equitable. But Oriente was really much more backward than the western provinces. The other factor was that exploitation by the powers that be, and the repression, were more intense there. This generated dissatisfaction and protests. It generated acts of violence.

If you go back to 1868, to the first independence war, the people from Oriente were the ones who adopted the most radical positions. Their starting point was always the need for independence. There were other tendencies, such as the annexationists and the reformists, but the people from Oriente always fought hardest for independence.(2)

Over time traditions developed. The war of 1868, led by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes,(3) began in Oriente. The war of 1895 spread a little more to other parts of the country - there were uprisings in Havana, Matanzas, Las Villas, and elsewhere. But the deepest and most determined uprisings were in Oriente - not only in Baire,(4) but also in Guantánamo and several other places in the province.

The traditions of struggle in this region continued, passed along through families and schools.(5) Jesús Menéndez, the "General of the Canefields," was murdered in cold blood in Oriente in 1948. He was from Santa Clara, not Oriente, although he had support there. And they killed him while he was visiting the sugar mills there.(6)

In 1952, when Batista's coup d'état took place, resistance in Oriente was boiling. People hoped somebody would step forward to lead the fight. Then came the attack on Moncada in 1953, the Granma landing in 1956. The struggle exploded everywhere. Oriente was on a war footing.(7)

By then, Celia Sánchez's influence had been greatly felt in the area where I lived.(8) And the July 26 Movement - Celia, that is - had won over a number of peasants to support the Granma landing. In Manzanillo and surrounding urban areas, there was some organization in the underground struggle, fostered by Celia. The incorporation of the first peasants in the Sierra Maestra didn't come about spontaneously. Celia had made contact with Guillermo García, with Crescencio Pérez, with Ciro Frías.(9) In other words, she had organized a whole group of peasants who quickly stepped in to support the Granma expeditionaries.

I had a brother who belonged to a cell of the July 26 Movement. So when the tyranny reacted to the revolutionary struggle by intensified repression, we really felt it firsthand.

The upsurge in revolutionary struggle in response to these epic events, these legendary battles, had a profound impact on the young people of the region. That's why there were very few young men in the vicinity of the Sierra Maestra who did not go up to the mountains to join the Rebel Army. That explains why there were so many combatants from Yara and Bayamo and Manzanillo. This direct influence led people to join the revolutionary struggle.

My participation began in an underground cell, carrying out small actions like throwing chains over electrical wires in order to cut power, planting small bombs, distributing propaganda, selling bonds to raise money. In a small town, the normal things one does become known very quickly, and the authorities singled us out, trying to stop these actions. They arrested me two or three times and slapped me around. A cousin of mine and my mother stepped in. They would automatically go down to the garrison to see what was happening. Because you know how these small towns are. Yara was a tinderbox. Word spread rapidly. "So-and-so is in jail," they would say. Right away the entire family headed over to the garrison.

It was getting harder and harder to live there. It was a very small town, very tiny. And the army maintained a permanent presence in the vicinity. It became an important center for the army, with battalions of troops stationed there. There were more soldiers in Yara than residents. You couldn't go anywhere without running into a soldier.

At one point, early in the struggle, the general staff of the tyranny's army was in the Estrada Palma sugar mill, now called Bartolomé Masó. It's right next to Yara, in the same foothills. To get to Estrada Palma, you had to pass through Yara.

So we asked for authorization from the movement to go up to the Sierra. They didn't give it to us, but since we were a little undisciplined, we went and joined up anyway.

Waters: Earlier today you mentioned informally a fact I found very striking - that six generals currently in the Revolutionary Armed Forces come from Yara.

Villegas: Among the many fighters that Yara produced - and it produced a lot of them - six have attained the rank of general.

Waters: Did you all know each other back then?

Villegas: It's a very small town, so it would be pretty hard not to have known each other. Division General Leopoldo Cintra Frías, a Hero of the Republic of Cuba, came from that town. You also have the first and only woman to have earned the rank of general in Cuba, Teté Puebla - Delsa Puebla, but we call her Teté. Then there's Manuel Lastre, brigadier general; Miguel Lorente, also a brigadier general. And there's Orestes Guerra. Plus myself. There are six of us. The town of Yara really did produce a lot of fighters for the Rebel Army.(10)

Fight against racist discrimination
Waters: What differences were there between blacks and whites? Was the struggle against racial oppression part of your rebellion against the existing social, economic, and political conditions?

Villegas: Discrimination in this region was not very severe. Its effects were not greatly felt. I don't know the reasons why. It might be because we had a little money. I come from a poor family, but my mother had a store and we were slightly better off.

But Oriente wasn't like Las Villas, for example. If you went to a park in Las Villas - just to point out the kind of discrimination there - blacks walked through one part of the park and whites through another. This was not the case in Yara. There blacks and whites walked together, and blacks and whites mixed at the fiestas.

There were separate social circles, of course. White clubs and black clubs were separate. Places where whites went for parties and dances, blacks could not go. But they played sports together. They went to the same schools. In other words, discrimination there wasn't as severe as in other parts of the country.

Perhaps it was because my region was more isolated. Perhaps because Yara was very close to where slaves were first freed in Cuba, right there in La Demajagua. Or perhaps because the first slaves who fought for Cuba's independence were those from Yara, on October 11, 1868.(11) These things too may have had an influence.

My grandfather was a sergeant in the mambí army. He fought in Maceo's invasion column.(12) He was one of those who fought for independence in the region around Yara. So he was very respected in town. He was regarded with a great deal of affection. Perhaps these were all reasons why we didn't suffer much discrimination, why we didn't experience its full effects.

After the triumph of the revolution, however, I had a chance to see what discrimination really was. I remember returning to Havana en route from Yara. It was the first time after the victory of the revolution Íd gone home. They had given me a pass, and I had gone to see my family. I was nineteen years old at the time. We stopped at one town in Las Villas, the last one you come to on the Central Highway going west before getting to Matanzas - I think it's called Los Arabos. A dance was going on and we went in. I was with Alberto Castellaños, who is white. Both of us were in Che's personal escort, and we went around together.

When we walked into the hall, we saw everybody going "shhhhh," making comments to each other. I really didn't notice at first. They sent for a police officer who was black to come tell us we couldn't be there because that club was for whites only. "Who says this is for whites only?" we replied. "And why did you, a black man, agree to be sent here?" Castellaños added. We were wearing our officers' uniforms, and we started asking young women to dance with us, and they did. But then we thought, perhaps it wasn't such a good idea, nor was it the right thing, to go to this place from which they wanted to kick me out.

Castellaños stepped in and said no, they couldn't kick me out. He couldn't accept that; that if I had to leave, he would do so as well. We caused a stir. But in the end we had a huddle and decided to leave. Blacks were not expected to show up at their club.

The same thing happened to us here in Havana, in Tarará. After Che left La Cabaña, we moved to Tarará.(13) There was a club in Tarará that blacks were not permitted to enter. One day we went for a walk, and we went into the club. They sent for General Bayo to get us out. We respected Bayo; he was the general who served as instructor for the Granma expeditionaries in Mexico.(14) And he told us we had to leave, because blacks could not be there. We asked how it was that he, who was so well respected and so well liked in the army, could fail to understand that we had not fought so blacks would continue being oppressed. But we left.

When I got home and told the story to the other members of the escort, however, they grabbed their rifles and went out and took over the club. They made everyone leave saying, "This is now the Rebel Army's club." Later Bayo went and told Che about it. Che then spoke to us, telling us we shouldn't do things like that, because they could be utilized by the enemy. He said the revolution had not yet progressed far enough for people to understand that there were neither blacks nor whites, but rather that we are fighting for all Cubans, for equality, against discrimination.(15)

Martín Koppel: What soldiers took over the club?
Villegas: The soldiers under my command. I was head of Che's escort and I had a platoon there, at the beachfront in Tarará.

Waters: On your orders?

Villegas: No, they did it spontaneously. I didn't get involved. But these were more or less my experiences with discrimination. This was as close as I came to being directly affected by it.

Discrimination is always a rather complex phenomenon. It might not affect you directly, but you feel it. You could say it's a problem that lies in people's subconscious, and they have to be educated. There are people, friends even, who have told me, "I'll give my life for you, but I wouldn't let you marry my daughter because you're black."

Can you believe that?

Waters: It seems that at that time in Oriente, blacks also owned land. That must have affected social relations as well.

Villegas: There were regions of the country, like Las Villas, where discrimination was very severe. Blacks had their place as blacks. In Havana, too.

In Yara you didn't see really rich people. When I go to visit people now, for example, I realize I used to think so-and- so was rich, but now I realize he wasn't; he didn't have anything. He was a storekeeper just like us. With the same things, the same status, the same conditions of life. But he was white, and whites always had a little higher status. That's still the case in Cuba today. The revolution has created the conditions to end discrimination and is fighting to do so, but there are still those who will insult you to your face.

This also happens with women. We're fighting to end discrimination against women. But there are still people in the armed forces itself who think that women only cause us problems. When they have children, they take a maternity leave. The woman's job remains unoccupied for up to a year, and that causes conflicts. Of course, that doesn't mean we shouldn't have women in the armed forces; we've got many.

But they are not treated the same. We don't take disciplinary action against women. If a woman is absent, it's not the same as a man being absent. Women are not put on trial, but men are. It's a question of courtesy, and courtesy toward women is part of the revolutionary ethic.

The forging of a revolutionary
Waters: As a young person you certainly didn't imagine that one day you would be a general in the Revolutionary Armed Forces. When you were growing up, what did you think you would do?

Villegas: We Cubans don't like to be military men.

I never wanted to be in the military. I wanted to be a pilot. That was what I longed for, what most interested me. At home they wanted me to be a storekeeper like my mother, but that's not what I wanted.

My father was a worker, a carpenter. He had a shop where they made furniture and did construction work. He was in the army for a while when he was young. I never knew him when he was in the military, but my older brothers did. His family came from the Canary Islands and he was a very educated man for our small town, uncommonly so. Very good at chess. He sat us down and taught us how to play. He used to play chess with all the kids in the neighborhood. My mother Engracia was of African descent. She had a shopkeeper's heart, and liked business, commerce. She started out making candy. Then she set up a little store in Yara Arriba, and later expanded it. After that she bought a little store in Las Tunas. Later on, with her sister in Palma, they started a bakery.

They were two completely different types of people. My father was extremely kind. He had nothing. Everyone loved him. He was the best-loved person in town. Whenever he saw something that needed to be done, he did it. My mother put her family first, took care of her family, saw that the kids went to school. She was more self-centered, you might say. My father was a little more socialist, more open, kinder.

Koppel: How did your aspirations, your expectations, change with the revolutionary struggle?

Villegas: When we went to the Sierra, pushed by the expanding struggle against the dictatorship, we didn't have a well-defined Marxist or Leninist political outlook. Simply a sense of justice. Our aim was to fight the system that existed, that was imposed on us, and to fight things that were wrong. Generally that's what motivated us and many others. Often people didn't even know why they went exactly. They simply got caught up in the spirit of the struggle and joined the people who were in the Sierra.

My brother had been a member of the Cuban People's (Orthodox) Party, the same party Fidel had belonged to. It embodied the most progressive section of Cuban youth at that time. Theoretically speaking, you might say, the most progressive elements should have been in the Socialist Party.(16) But from the point of view of the masses, the most progressive elements among Cuban youth at the time were in the Orthodox Party. And those young people in the Orthodox Party later joined the July 26 Movement under Fidel's leadership, my brother among them. As one might expect, he dragged me along with him toward those ideas - I was the youngest child, while he was the oldest.(17) And when my brother left town to join the Rebel Army, I stepped forward and threw myself into the work of the cell.

That was when my revolutionary activity began, without any theoretical foundation. Later, over time, reality itself took hold of my consciousness. When you arrived in the Sierra Maestra, you saw how the peasants lived, how they lacked everything, how they were truly exploited. When you spoke with them, they told you stories about how they had ended up in the Sierra Maestra, since they had no way to make a living, no way to support themselves, searching for a piece of land to provide for themselves by the sweat of their brow.

All these things had a radicalizing effect. When I met him, Che was concerned about the people's health. He would explain to us his ideas of justice and equality. How one had to work with the peasants to win them over, from an ideological point of view. How we had to engage in armed propaganda. How we weren't allowed to mistreat the peasants. These concepts would form part of the basis of our socialist ideas.

Later on, when the distribution of land began, Che explained to us why it was so urgent, why land distribution was a necessity. He was the first one to argue for agrarian reform. Che was the one who participated in drafting the first agrarian reform law in the Sierra, and later he drafted one with Humberto Sori Marín.(18) Fidel was seeking a balance. Not just the communist tendency, not just the capitalist tendency. Sori Marín was a lawyer, and Fidel paired him with Che, and this is how the first agrarian reform law was drafted. It was pretty much balanced between the two tendencies.

All these things had an influence on us. Later, the revolution itself, as it dramatically unfolded, continually pushed us to become more and more conscious of the importance of building a different society.

In my case, I was forced to read and study. I was very young and wanted to hang out and have a good time. But Che said, "Your first duty is to raise your educational level." He explained that we had to raise our educational level in order to be more useful to the revolution and to our people.

Then one day, he said to me, "You're a factory intervener."(19) I said, "Me?" "Yes, you. You're a factory intervener." Che sent me, with no training and little more than a sixth-grade education, to Sanitarios Nacionales, a factory just outside Havana (today it is in the municipality of San José) that produced bathroom fixtures and other ceramics. It was the first company we acquired that had been jointly held by foreign and domestic owners. It belonged to a Mexican and a Cuban. The revolution seized the assets that belonged to the Cuban, and left the part belonging to the Mexican alone. Those were the conditions under which I went there.

Playa Girón, October Crisis
Waters: Several months ago we had the opportunity to interview three other generals of the Revolutionary Armed Forces about their experiences during Playa Girón(20) and the October Crisis. We talked with division generals Néstor López Cuba and Enrique Carreras and Brigadier General José Ramón Fernández. Each one had a unique perspective on those historic events, of course. And your experience during the days of Playa Girón adds another element. You were working at the ceramics factory you just mentioned and were not on active duty as an officer of the FAR. How did the working class respond to the invasion?

This is important because Washington's hand was not stayed primarily by Cuba's military strength, but by politics - they feared the determination of Cuba's working people to defend their revolution. They feared the price the U.S. armed forces would have to pay. They didn't want to run the risk of invading Cuba, because the casualties would have been so high.

From your perspective at that time, working as intervener at the ceramics factory, how did working people respond to news of the invasion at Playa Girón?

Villegas: At the time of the mercenary landing at Girón, I had recently left Che's personal escort. In essence, I felt more like a guard than a worker. So when they landed, I automatically reported to Che, ready to go there with him and participate in battle. Che had done the same thing.(21) He intended to go fight. But everyone was ordered to stay at their assigned post. Fidel told Che that he had to be at his assigned post in Pinar del Río. The whole thing was totally organized. And Che told me the same thing Fidel told him. "Stay in the factory," Che said. "You must remain at the helm, organizing the defense, the security of the factory, and maintaining production."

Who responded when Cuba needed to be defended? Who was called to service? The workers. Those mobilized in their volunteer militia battalions were sent off. One of those who was killed at Playa Girón came from our factory, and it was subsequently named after him.

It's difficult to describe. Yoúd have to have lived through it to see how every Cuban, every worker, wanted to go to Girón. The workers wanted to leave the factory, and I had to stand there telling them that everyone had to carry out the task they were assigned to. Their task was to remain there and produce, because it was also important to maintain production. It was the same thing I had been told by Che. I had been convinced of it, and now in turn I had to convince others.

Nevertheless, many workers were pulled out. All those who were members of militia battalions and sub-battalions were sent to Girón. Everyone was anxious to know exactly what was happening. It was a challenge to maintain discipline, because every time the tanks went by, or the transport vehicles filled with men went by, everyone wanted to come out and watch, to cheer for them and wave, to see the militiamen off. My task was a very pedagogical one.

Koppel: And where were you in 1962 at the time of the October Crisis?

Villegas: The October Crisis came when I was at the school for administrators.(22) I was one of those who had become an administrator without ever even having been told what a factory was, so they told me that I had to study. Che took me out of the factory and sent me to a school, a school for administrators, where there were about 400 compañeros. While I was there at that school, the crisis hit.

Officers from the FAR general staff came there and explained to us that we were being formed into a unit of the reserves. They organized us and kept us on alert, waiting to see how things went. An officer came by frequently to brief us. But at first we didn't know exactly what was happening.

Soon we were given more complete information, about the blockade of the island ordered by the U.S. government. About our decision, the government's decision - which by that time had been made public - to not allow them to inspect us.(23) That would have been a humiliation, an affront to our dignity and our sovereignty. All those questions were explained to us.

One thing the revolution has always done is explain things to those who don't fully understand. In that sense, Fidel has been a patient teacher, concerning himself with reaching even the least informed citizen. That's why people say that Fidel is an educator, and it's true. He's a master at helping people understand. And people have seen that his ideas correspond to reality. That is why they trust him. When he explained why we couldn't let ourselves be inspected, why we could neither give in nor give up, the people understood.

Che was right when he said an entire people was prepared to sacrifice themselves. It didn't matter that the enemy had nuclear weapons, or that it had the military might it did. That has never really mattered to us. Today, when I think back on those days, and with the degree of military training I now have, I realize that we truly had great courage, great determination, great bravery. This is what has always forced the enemy to stop and think. When a people is determined to defend itself, there is no weapon that can defeat them. Fidel has said moral weapons can be more powerful than nuclear weapons. Martí said the same thing:(24) "trenches of ideas are stronger than trenches of stone." The Cuban revolution has eloquently proven the truth of Martí's assertion.

Waters: That was the decisive factor in the resolution of the October Crisis. It was not Kennedy and Khrushchev who decided the outcome. It was the Cuban people. Kennedy and his advisors understood what was happening here in Cuba. The Pentagon told them they could expect 18,000 losses in the first ten days of an invasion. That's more than they were later to suffer in the first five years in Vietnam. When Kennedy learned that, he changed course and began searching for a way out of the crisis.

Villegas: I think those two historical moments were decisive in consolidating the revolution. And the attitude and character of Fidel during both events was decisive. We can't imagine a struggle without someone in charge, and Fidel has always led. Che talked about this, about why Fidel is so important.

Fidel led the troops at Girón. He got there, although our people didn't want him to be there. But he knew it was important not only to command those who were going to fight, but to go himself to fight along with them. And the people knew he was there. This gave each combatant extraordinary moral courage, to know their commander was there with them. That he hadn't just given them orders, but was sharing their fate. That was decisive.

The decision during the October Crisis that under no conditions would we accept being inspected was also important. There was no fear during either of these two events. We were fully convinced we were right and would triumph. Just like we're convinced now that we are right and that, sooner rather than later, we'll win, we'll overcome the situation we're in.

Waters: How did the working people respond when the October Crisis ended? How did they view the settlement between Washington and Moscow?

Villegas: The response was one of great unity. It wasn't a matter of not knowing the risks. The Cuban people were fully aware of the risks. We also knew that to give in entailed even greater risks. We maintained the same stance as our leaders.

The strong identification between Fidel and the people - which continues today - meant that everyone understood and supported the position of our government. For that reason, some of us didn't understand the Soviets. The vast majority of Cubans never understood why the Soviets caved in.

I've read some of the analyses that have been made of the crisis. In truth, the Soviets did not have their feet on the ground, because at the time their intercontinental nuclear weapons capability was extremely low. The relationship of forces was totally against them. The North Americans had much greater capacity in intercontinental weapons. That's why the Soviets brought their weapons here.

But we didn't expect the Soviets to back down. For the Cuban people, who are well-informed, it was a great disillusionment that they backed down. We had the image of the Soviets from World War II, men of sacrifice, effort, courage. The general image was one of warmth and respect.

Our decision to stand firm, to not back down, was understood perfectly by the people. Later they didn't understand why the Soviets hadn't maintained the same position we had. That's the truth.

Social aims of the Rebel Army
Waters: Íd like to go back to the early days of the revolution and your experiences as a young soldier under Che's command at La Cabaña.(25) There is a very specific thing related to culture and education, to the social aims of the Rebel Army, that we'd like to ask you about.

One of the recent "biographies" of Che quotes from some dispatches sent by U.S. embassy personnel to Washington during the first months of 1959. The communique's express concern over what was happening in the garrison at La Cabaña. Che, they reported, was doing something with very disturbing implications. He was organizing a department of culture within the Rebel Army and teaching soldiers to read! The Department of Culture was also doing things like organizing concerts, poetry readings, and ballet performances right there in La Cabaña, not for the officers but for all the soldiers. The dispatch said this was very worrisome, because it showed Che's communist tendencies.(26)

I think this captures something very important, on both sides. The U.S. government had good reason to be afraid, of course. When education and the cultural conquests of all previous civilization become the property of the working class, when working people take this as their right, their prerogative, the rulers should tremble. A new ruling class is in the process of asserting itself. The incident also captures the importance that not only Che but the entire leadership of the Rebel Army gave to education, to broadening the cultural horizons of working people. It captures the class character ...

Villegas: ...of the revolution.

Waters: Yes, and the aspirations of working people to transform themselves, to educate themselves, to be the bearers of culture into the future that they alone can build.

Villegas: Che felt that the task of creating and developing the Rebel Army's Department of Instruction and Culture at the time was not only to encourage the creation of cultural works. Che was the first one to start a campaign for literacy. Because there is no culture without literacy.

The Rebel Army was an army of people with humble origins. If you read the book Secretos de generales,(27) you'll see that almost all the generals interviewed come from families of workers or peasants. That was the composition of the Rebel Army. That's why the first thing we did was set up schools to eradicate illiteracy. The Department of Instruction was created, and everyone who couldn't read and write was enrolled in these schools. Che looked for teachers and the work began.

As part of all this, a movement was created to bring cultural works to those who had never seen them before, to the members of the Rebel Army. We had a large theater in La Cabaña, a huge theater that could hold the entire garrison. Plays were put on there, ballet performances, and other cultural presentations. Movies were brought in, and other compañeros would join us for discussion after a movie was shown. The purpose of all this was to raise the cultural level of the army, which at that time was very low. Almost all of us were peasants.

I think the North Americans must have been worried, thinking that culture for workers and peasants was a sign of communism. But our purpose was to create a movement that later grew very powerful in the army, with the aim of becoming participants in culture, making it our own. So a group of amateurs developed, which put on plays, performed songs, held festivals. All these things were promoted as part of the process of creating a higher cultural level.

We are still fighting for this today. In the armed forces we're still fighting for soldiers not to become isolated. Because the life of a military man ends up isolating him from cultural events unless that is consciously combated. For example, I can tell you that one of the hardest things we face in the army is to get soldiers into the habit of going to museums from time to time. You've got to take people there. Soldiers don't spontaneously go to museums very often. The soldier has very little free time, and when he does he looks for other forms of entertainment. We're fighting hard for this, to get people used to going to museums, to have culture become ingrained in the military environment, to maintain a cultural level, to get people to like cultural events, to like poetry, to like theater. But also for them to be able to know when the poetry is not good, to be able to appreciate the quality of cultural works.

Che was a man with a very high cultural level. He was not just someone with a broad political knowledge. He also had broad cultural knowledge. He liked poetry, the theater, all these things, and he tried to get all of us to take part in it.

Today the entire population has a different cultural level. The Special Period, of course, has meant fewer performances being opened, but now we're beginning to see a resurgence.(28) We have real theater, like the Escambray Theater Company,(29) which brings plays directly to the countryside, and it's had a tremendous response.

There's an element of truth in what the North Americans were saying about this. Nobody writes or produces a play for the sole purpose of educating people about theater. In other countries, people usually do it for money. But in the case of the revolution, it wasn't for economic reasons The important thing was getting the message across. Culture enables man to be fuller, more complete, more human, and therefore more revolutionary.

I can tell you, for example, that I worked on Mother when I was in the school for administrators, and we presented that play.(30) Shortly thereafter we organized a theater competition at school, and we put on a number of plays.

So that's the assignment Che was given at that time, and I think he carried it out extraordinarily well. He developed a series of initiatives that were very good.

Later he founded a magazine, Verde Olivo, which many people followed because of its clear message from a political and cultural standpoint.(31) It was a weekly of the armed forces directed very much to the entire population.

At the time, when the party had not yet acquired a mass size, the armed forces was the most authentic representative of the people's interests, of the interests of the workers. That was where you found the best of the country's working people. The people trusted the armed forces, and they still do, Fidel once said, and Raúl repeats it every day, that the Rebel Army is the soul of the revolution. Raúl says that the armed forces continues to be the soul of the revolution. And it is true. The people see the armed forces as the representative of the revolution.

Of course, there are still a lot of people who were among the original founders of the armed forces, people of very humble origins. Raúl has been at the helm of the armed forces, and this has guaranteed that they do not go off track. Raúl is a very strict person; very fair, but he demands that those serving under him be held accountable for their errors. The people have tremendous trust in the armed forces.

Waters: The policy on education and culture that Che put in practice at La Cabaña was not his policy but the policy of the revolution. It was first implemented by the Rebel Army in the Sierra, wasn't it?

Villegas: Yes, Fidel and Che began it in the Sierra. As the guarantor of the revolution, the Rebel Army had to raise the educational and cultural level of the people. That's where the literacy campaign began. Then it was extended to the entire population. But it started with the Rebel Army.

Revolutionary Armed Forces
Waters: Your remarks concerning the trust the Cuban people have in the armed forces makes me think about what is occurring now in Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala, the terrible social disaster unfolding there following Hurricane Mitch.(32) It is useful to contrast this with the way the Cuban government responded when Hurricane Georges swept across Cuba a few weeks earlier. The armed forces took emergency measures, mobilized resources to help evacuate people and livestock and protect property. The kind of social disaster occurring in Central America would be inconceivable in Cuba because the government and armed forces represent the same class interests as the big majority of the people.

Villegas: In Guatemala, they are criticizing the president, among other things, for not going to the areas affected by the catastrophe. Compare this with what happened here during Hurricane Flora in 1963, which was one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to hit Cuba. Fidel was right there in the middle of the storm over the objections of the rest of the national leadership, putting himself at risk and nearly drowning. He was riding an armored transport vehicle and traveling aboard a helicopter, evacuating children. You can understand why the people of this country love Fidel so much.

This time he didn't go there himself, but you saw him on television, not sleeping day or night, following the status of the hurricane, keeping people informed about what was happening. He sent Raúl to the eastern provinces, however, as well as Machadito and Balaguer.(33) And knowing Fidel, I imagine that he was calling them on the phone every hour asking how things were going and getting information. He couldn't sit still at all, knowing that he wasn't there on the front lines. But he made absolutely sure that someone was there on the spot at all times, to say what had to be done to prevent damage. His direct instructions were that the party had to remain there on the scene. And the president, Fidel personally, was the one who was seeing to what had to be done, down to the last detail - how to prevent electric power lines from falling, how to guarantee that the people maintained discipline.

Koppel: What role did the FAR play in these mobilizations?
Villegas: The FAR helped out with helicopters, with armored transport vehicles, with the presidents of the Civil Defense units, who in Cuba report to the FAR and its minister. The head of Civil Defense is a deputy minister of the armed forces. So there's a direct link. When the general staff is activated in a municipality, you're actually activating the entire defense apparatus that we have in each of these regions, but for specific purposes, such as combating hurricanes, disasters, things like that. It's not like it was in the past when we would have to go and evacuate people. Now the population is more organized under the leadership of the Civil Defense, which is part of the armed forces. Our participation, the participation of the FAR itself, is less public, but it's more a leadership role. You also have the party and all the other institutions. When necessary, all the troops participate too. It must be remembered that the Revolutionary Armed Forces are the people in uniform.

Waters: This broad leadership role of the FAR has always been very important in Cuba. After the events with Ochoa, Abrantes, and the others,(34) Fidel called on the top leadership of the armed forces to take on more responsibilities in the leadership. That's when Furry became minister of the interior, I believe.

Villegas: Yes, after the Abrantes affair.

Waters: A year ago Division General Ulises Rosales del Toro, who was Raúl's second at the time, took over as head of the ministry of the sugar industry. Turning around sugar production is undoubtedly one of the most difficult challenges the country faces. Fidel often makes these kinds of demands on the leadership of the FAR. It's one of the differences with the top officer corps of imperialist armies. When they retire from active duty, with very lucrative business connections, they often become millionaires. The generals of the FAR exemplify the place of the army in Cuban society. They take on the toughest jobs, winning people's respect.

What has been the role of the armed forces in the Special Period, and how is the army responding to the more difficult material conditions Cuba has faced in recent years?

Villegas: Through its example the FAR is helping to solve a whole series of tasks. Because of the confidence people have in the army, as you were saying, whenever there's a need for a cadre who is a real sharpshooter, eyes turn to members of the FAR. That explains the example of Ulises, due to the situation we face at the present time with sugar.

Members of the armed forces are trained to provide an example of austerity, of honesty, of honor. Moreover, they are people who know how to lead. And that's extremely important. In a factory, an enterprise, an institution, you are leading human beings. That's why you need organizational ability - to be able to lead people. And this plays a big role in decisions to take cadres out of the armed forces and put them in such positions.

Fidel said something recently that's a source of pride for us: we don't have anyone from the armed forces who is rich. No member of the armed forces has utilized that position to get rich. Rather, every member of the armed forces who leaves does so under such extraordinarily humble circumstances that they have to look for another job in order to continue paying their bills. Because there are no privileges in our armed forces, no one who retires has privileges other Cubans don't.

What we receive is honor and recognition from the people for the work, the effort, and the sacrifice we've made in defense of the country. When I retire, in my neighborhood, the CDRs will throw a party for me.(35) In recognition of my work they will read a summary of my biography, and that's it. What the members of the armed forces need are incentives of a moral character. That doesn't mean our material needs are completely neglected. We still get a wage that you can pretty much get by on, although I wouldn't say it's easy now in the Special Period. Many who retire have to look for work in other places, and they keep working. They're still in good health, they have a lot of experience, and this enables them to continue feeling useful. We're also not accustomed to being idle. That's something we don't like. We like to always be doing something.

But among all the retirees from the armed forces, you won't find anyone who's gotten rich, anyone who's misused the position they've had in the armed forces. And if they're given leadership tasks, it's because of their ability from a leadership and administrative standpoint, because they have experience in leading others.

What a military person needs most, I think, is recognition by society. For example, currently, whenever people see things going badly, someone will ask, "Why don't they bring a military person here?" It's completely different from other countries. Camilo once said the Rebel Army is the people in uniform. And it's no different today in the slightest. That statement by Camilo still holds up. It's a great truth.(36)

Waters: Many readers of the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial read with great pleasure the interviews with generals López Cuba, Carreras, and Fernández that were published a few months ago.(37) A comrade who works in a steel mill in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, read them together with some of his coworkers who he said were very impressed. When I asked, "What is it that impressed you and your fellow workers about the interviews?" the answer was very interesting. After thinking a few seconds, he replied, "Two things. First of all, the political level of those generals." He said that we're used to the fact that Fidel's speeches are very political, but these interviews show there's a much broader political leadership cadre. He noted that generals in the United States are not thought of as being men of profound ideas. The second thing that impressed him and his coworkers, he said, was "the humanity of the generals."

Don't those two observations capture important leadership qualities, political qualities, that distinguish a revolutionary army?

Political education
Villegas: The political level of a general, of a soldier in our armed forces cannot be compared with that in a capitalist army. Because the capitalist army claims to be nonpolitical, while we are a political army. We are fully aware that we are a political army. And we're fully aware of what we are defending.

To give this awareness a theoretical foundation, we study. There is a thorough program of political education. We don't just educate ourselves militarily, at the military academy. A certain percentage of our officers have also graduated from the Ñico López School,(38) and have gotten their degree there, at the party school. They have a degree in political science or social science. This always gives you a different way of looking at questions, to always see them from a political standpoint, as a Marxist and a Leninist.

In the military academy, we have our political specializations. But within the armed forces, there is a political education system, in which the generals and the combatants participate.

In the army a series of lectures are given, for example, that take place every semester, lasting three days. In the Western Army government ministers and university professors are brought to speak on specific topics.

When we take the case of globalization, for example, we look at it from different angles. How the development of the productive forces led to globalization, as Marx explained. How, as Fidel has said, it is an inevitable process that will either be socialist or capitalist. How neoliberal globalization is capitalist globalization. We look at how it affects international communications, the influence of the Internet, the information superhighway, all those things.

That is one example, but we also have classes in Martí, in Marx, in Lenin. Twice a month there are classes with eight hours of instruction. There are also classes for rank-and-file soldiers, an entire system. But we don't leave it there. We also give classes to workers, to civilians.

The subject matter in the courses given in the army is recorded and taken to all the units. Lectures given by ministers, by leaders of the revolution, are recorded on video and later shown to all the units. The course material on a number of subjects from the perspective of the ideas of Marx, Lenin, and Martí, are collected together in a notebook. Last year the topics dealt primarily with Che. We analyzed all aspects of Che's ideas.

We also have a system for studying anniversary dates. We have what are called "encounters with history." These require real preparation. In the Western Army, for example, on August 13 (39) we study "an analysis of Fidel's political-military thought." On that date we have a discussion on the different aspects of Fidel's ideas. Each party nucleus(40) has to assign a team to research a particular aspect of Fidel's ideas and then give a presentation to the soldiers. The nucleus has to approve the presentation before it's presented - that is, the group of communists studies it collectively. They add to it, delete from it, and enrich it. This is also a part of political education.

Koppel: In the last year or so, we've noted the activities that veteran leaders of the FAR like yourself and other compañeros have been promoting, above all in meetings with young people in workplaces, in schools, in universities, in the community.

Villegas: This is very interesting work. We call it patriotic-military-internationalist work. In recent years, as a result of the Special Period, it has fallen to the armed forces to make sure this work doesn't drop off, but is kept up. The goal is to cultivate the historic, combative traditions of our people. Five years ago, the Association of Combatants of the Revolution was created. It is the only veterans' organization composed of three generations of Cubans encompassing various struggles for the defense of the revolution: the Rebel Army, the struggle against bandits and Playa Girón, and internationalists. It also includes active-duty members of both the armed forces and the Ministry of the Interior. Anyone with fifteen years active duty should belong - or can belong.

I said "should" because automatically, when the association learns that someone has fifteen years, we invite them to join the Association of Combatants of the Revolution. Members are given a schedule of activities in schools, with children, teaching about our combative traditions. This is important, because it's not just someone talking about a battle that took place many years ago. In most cases it's the combatants themselves telling children about what happened on a historic date. It's living history. For example, I am assigned to the school right here at the corner. I have been asked to go and meet with the students, to make a presentation about the meaning of the revolution's triumph, the Rebel Army, and then open it up for questions. It's another one of the methods we have of patriotic and internationalist education.

In a general sense, the party leads this work. It's the most concrete form of conducting ideological work among the people. Military law - I think it's Article 75 - says that patriotic-military and internationalist education is political work carried out among the population with the aim of defending the revolution. Why do we say "with the aim of defending the revolution"? Because we're creating a sense of patriotism, we're creating a spirit of defense of the homeland based in all our traditions and values.

Koppel: During the Special Period, the economic measures Cuba has been obliged to adopt have brought greater penetration of the world capitalist market and its values and social relations, which are the antithesis of the social relations and values the revolution has fought for. Revolutionaries in Cuba are waging a political battle against all these influences. What impact does this situation have on the type of living history you convey and the political lessons you try to bring to a generation of young people who have never been through the experience of making a socialist revolution and beginning to build a new society?

Union of Young Communists
Villegas: I believe what we're doing is vitally important. By itself, it doesn't solve the problem of the ideological struggle. There are a whole series of institutions that must also be a part of this fight, the whole ideological fight. But having people who are respected, who are highly regarded in their own neighborhoods, who are examples of sacrifice, work, and dedication, has a deep influence on young people.

I think the Union of Young Communists (UJC) should have more of a presence in the neighborhoods. Not only in the factories, not only in the schools, but in the neighborhoods too. Sometimes a young person is not in school and not working, yet he or she is in the neighborhood We can't leave them on their own like that, unattached. That's my opinion.

The party has neighborhood nuclei or cells, but the UJC doesn't. It has cells in the factories, the schools, the armed forces. Yet youth are the most numerous group of "unattached" people in the neighborhoods. In the Western Army, the UJC pays attention to nonmembers.

The UJC has formed the Panchito Gómez Toro Youth Brigades. It's a voluntary organization. In fact, to emphasize that it's voluntary they have to pay twenty cents to join. Members can participate in recreational activities and other events. Among them are UJC members who carry out recruitment work talking about what the UJC is, talking about our revolutionary history. UJC members get paired up with nonmembers. We say to a UJC member: "You look after so-and-so, pay attention to him, work with her." We have to do something similar with our youth who are neither in school nor working. We can't just ignore them, just leave them for the enemy to influence. If they like North American music, if they like dancing and things like that, we have to see to it that they have a life too. When I was young, I was a Boy Scout. I played volleyball, baseball. I had a series of activities that led me to have a healthy life.

Healthy activity has to be available to the youth. And it has to be organized without telling them what to do. Note that the Panchito Gómez Toro Youth Brigades are a separate group; it's not the UJC. A UJC member creates the group, organizes it, and UJC members join, but it doesn't belong to the UJC. They have to win their influence individually, as members of this organization, this brigade that encompasses almost everyone. Whatever influence they have, that's the influence of the UJC. There's no help from the local UJC committee, saying "you must do this." No. The local UJC committee carries out this work through its members who belong to the brigade. It has to guide its members in how to win over other young people to their ideas. Because unless you do so, you kill the spirit of participation by the youth. You have to win them over.

Waters: Where does the name "Panchito Gómez Toro" come from? Who was he?

Villegas: Panchito Gómez Toro was a son of Máximo Gómez. He died fighting with Maceo. (41) He's a symbol of Cuban youth, his story is a very beautiful one. He traveled with Martí through Latin America and was greatly influenced by Martí and Maceo. When Maceo fell, he went to defend his body and was killed.

Che and the Congo revolutionary war
Waters: In the last year some parts of Che's Episodes of the Revolutionary War in the Congo have been published here in Cuba in a book by William Gálvez, El sueño africano del Che [Che's African dream]. There have also been a number of articles in the Cuban press, including one that you wrote, about what had previously been a little-known chapter in the history of Africa and of the Cuban revolution.(42)

Villegas: Yes, I'm also preparing the diary I wrote in the Congo during this time.

Waters: There's a lot of commentary, especially by enemies of the Cuban revolution, who say Cuba's effort to aid the liberation forces in the Congo was a total disaster, an adventure. This type of criticism appears in several of the recent biographies of Che and in other articles. What is your evaluation?

Villegas: I think we have to view the events in the Congo from two sides: the political and the human.

First the human side. During Che's last trip through Africa and Asia between December 1964 and March 1965, he was able to evaluate the revolutionary potential in Africa, and consider how the Cuban revolution could help realize that potential. He proposed to Fidel that Cuba assist some of those African countries, such as Guinea, Angola, and the Congo. And Fidel believed this was correct.

At the same time, Che himself had already made his decision to leave Cuba. He had not decided to go to Africa. Anyone who thinks that is completely mistaken. Che wanted to go to Argentina, to his homeland, to fight for Latin America. But the conditions for this did not yet exist. So he was asked to postpone these plans for a little while. It was to be a brief postponement, and he felt he could use that time to help the Africans. Not as a combatant, but as an adviser.

Everything - including the information from compañeros who had been sent there earlier - indicated that suitable conditions existed. Che studied the situation in Mozambique, Guinea, and Angola, but it turned out that the Congo was really the place with the most battle-tested fighters, with more of a tradition of struggle, with the whole Lumumba experience behind them. We should also add that Che admired and felt a certain degree of commitment toward Lumumba and his legacy. Che was really inclined to try to help Lumumba's people above all.(43)

That wasn't the whole thing. The decision wasn't just for Che and his unit to go to Africa. The Cuban government also followed through with all the other commitments made during Che's trip. A group of Cubans, a battalion of troops, was sent to the French Congo to help. A group was also sent to Guinea. In other words, the commitments made were not left hanging.(44)

With the decision that Che would go, Víctor Dreke, who had earlier been chosen to lead the Congo group, was named second in command. Everyone in the unit was black, the only whites were Che -who was going for a short period of time, to assist - and his liaison with Latin America, José María Martínez Tamayo, Papi.(45)

It was thought that white combatants would not be accepted by the revolutionary organizations in Africa. That's why, Che and Papi aside, all the rest of the Cubans were black.

Once we got to the Congo, we found that things weren't at all like we had been told by the leaders there. For one thing, we thought that [Laurent] Kabila and [Gaston] Soumialot, the leaders of the struggle in that region, would leave their centers in exile and come join us at the front.(46) That didn't happen. The leaders didn't show up; not one of them came to the front. This was the situation when Che got there, and it didn't change.

We had made commitments, and we followed through with them, including sending doctors and others to help. Che had Fidel's complete backing. Fidel said, "We're going to support Che in whatever way we can." He sent a number of leading people who might help the organization of the struggle, including [Oscar] Fernández Mell, [Oscar Fernández] Padilla for the Cuban embassy in Tanzania, [Emilio] Aragonés.(47)

If a criticism can be made, I think it's that we didn't fully understand the characteristics and traditions of the Africans we worked with at that time. The ranks accepted us, but their leaders didn't. That's the reality. It wasn't the fault of any individual; it was a question of leadership traditions.

At a certain point, Che decided that any Cuban who wanted to leave should go, while he and those who wanted would stay, because he saw the possibilities of cadres developing among the fighters themselves.

Che's conviction was always that the struggle sifts out its own leaders. The struggle itself reveals who is willing and able to be a leader, and who is not. Che saw that among that group of thousands of men, their own leaders would emerge. He worked hard to find someone who would share that responsibility together with him. But in the end, he wasn't successful. He was unsuccessful, in my opinion, because there was not yet a deep enough sense of nationhood among them.

Those who had such a consciousness were not there at the front. Instead, there was a tribal consciousness, a regional consciousness. A sense of nationhood had not yet established roots. This, in my opinion, is the reason for the failure.

From the personal standpoint, during the period he was in Africa, Che was torn. He wanted to leave Cuba to collaborate with other fighters. He was unable to go to Argentina. So he decided to go where he felt he could be a help. His admiration, his esteem, the regard he felt for Lumumba, for those people in struggle, who really had considerable forces, weighed heavily. But the fundamental problem there, which he couldn't surmount, was tribal divisions. It was the lack of identification between the different groups. At its roots, it was a problem of social development.

What actually happened was that we managed to get around the divisions to some degree by putting a group of Cubans to work with each tribe. Then they had something in common - the Cubans who were advising them. This allowed Che to exercise leadership. Although people didn't speak the same language, although they couldn't understand each other, they more or less always had a link, because there were Cubans among them. This was the link that connected all of them to a leadership, and at certain moments it allowed everyone to work together.

But there was something we could not do, as a matter of principle: go around the leadership that invited us there. It's a complex thing. We could not pull everyone around us without dealing with Soumialot, Kabila, and the others, who never arrived at the front.

Therefore, up to the last moment we remained loyal to them. If one could say there was an error in going to the aid of the Congo struggle, one has to look at it from the standpoint of what we were attempting to achieve.

We were trying to organize them in a way that would help them develop the struggle much more broadly. This was Che's conception. And help them in whatever way possible. Our idea was not to make them communists, not to make them socialists. The idea was to help establish Lumumba's ideas and what he had been fighting for. As could be expected, our influence moved them a little to the left, made them more anti-imperialist, helped tie them to the most progressive ideas. And we were making progress in this.

Waters: You could not know what was possible, what could be accomplished, without trying. It would be decided in struggle.

Villegas: The fact is, we came smack up against reality: we had no one on whom we could lean for support.

A decision was made by the forces in the Congo to initiate combat at Front de Force.(48) It was done precipitously, before things were ready. More preparation and training were needed. In irregular warfare, if you do the basics, things can go well. But we had to start from zero.

We were up against ideological and religious concepts, a very complicated task. "Let's dig a trench," you might say. And the response would be, "No, we're not getting in. Holes in the ground are for the dead." You might say, "You can't shoot that way, you have to aim the rifle." But it's not just aiming. We had to show them how to close one eye and use a directing eye. We had to teach them how to close one eye, because there were some who didn't know how. All this required that we train them first, and for this great patience was needed.

You don't see these things in Che's book; what you see in it is a dialogue taking place based around the day's events. And when someone is as critical as Che, the things written down are always harsh, especially when things are going unfavorably.

Our group of Cubans still had many compañeros with a sixth- grade education. It was a challenge to understand the Africans' customs, behavior, and life. This situation led some people - not very many, two or three - to ask to leave and return to Cuba.

Che could not grasp this. You have to understand what being a Cuban revolutionary meant to Che. He always had a very high standard - like everyone holds today. Che believed that a Cuban revolutionary, above all, had to be consistent in word and deed.

First, there was his understanding of what it meant to be a revolutionary. A revolutionary, he once said, is "the highest level the human species achieves." But then he added the adjective "Cuban" to it. As he says in his letter to Fidel,(49) he would never renounce being a Cuban revolutionary. Following Che's lead, other Cubans there felt the same way. Che's dedication, his selflessness - these qualities are not easy for each and every individual to achieve. When someone representing the Cuban revolution lacked these qualities, Che was extremely critical of them.

Yoúd have to have lived through this to understand it. I often think I'm not really getting across when I try to explain it. And when I explain the conditions there, I don't do so just to defend Che. I'm speaking about reality. And our time there was very short, transitory.

Waters: At the beginning you said there were two sides, the political and the human. What about the political?

Villegas: Seen from the angle of world politics, the situation was very complex. We were on the continent of Africa, in a world that was much less globalized than it is today. There were organized regional groupings that pursued their own continental interests.

After combat began at the battle of Front de Force, in which we lost some combatants, Che decided to move to guerrilla warfare. We began to conduct ambushes and to utilize methods of irregular warfare, carrying out guerrilla attacks.

The government of the Congo, against which the Lumumba movement was fighting, appealed to the Organization of African Unity (OAU), requesting that the OAU intervene in this war because of the presence of Cubans. There were discussions within the OAU and among the African presidents at a meeting in Accra,(50) and they adopted a general line of not giving assistance to opposition forces in any domestic conflict. They decided they would only support forces fighting against a colonial power. This meant that in the future they would give support only to revolutionary movements in the Portuguese colonies - the only colonies that remained. This was a change from the previous position of the OAU, which had given open support to the pro-Lumumba forces.

Of course there was Namibia too, but it was not seen as a colony. It was supposedly held in trusteeship by the UN.(51)

The Congo groups weren't fighting directly against a colonial power. Formally the Congo was independent; the old colonial power, Belgium was gone. They were fighting their own brothers, even if the government forces were representatives of colonial and imperialist powers, the exploiters. It was a different situation, a struggle against Mobutu. And it was portrayed as if the two sides were massacring each other.

The OAU also exerted pressure on the revolutionary movement in the Congo, forcing them to say that outside forces had to leave. Pressure was put on Mobutu -actually Mobutu was gone at this point, Joseph Kasavubu was in(52) - to get all the forces there to leave, and to get the mercenaries out. In this context, they also pressured Tanzania to confiscate the ships, weapons, and other materiél destined for the pro-Lumumba movement forces.

Waters: The whole history of Africa would have been different if the conditions in the Congo had more closely resembled what you had originally thought.

Villegas: It would have been completely different if -apart from the conditions I explained earlier concerning the individual leaders - the basis had been laid to keep fighting. The presence of small groups of Cubans in each unit made this possible. So when this new political situation developed, Fidel left open the final decision. Fidel gave Che a free hand; Che himself would decide what to do. And he would always have Cuba's support. A senior delegation from the [Communist Party] Central Committee was sent from Cuba for discussions with the Tanzanians.

But the problem was with the OAU agreement. It wasn't a problem with the Tanzanians.

Che tried, he fought, he worked to see who would stay. He told the Cubans, "Whoever wants to leave can leave. Whoever wants to stay can stay." That was the decision he took. Still, not a single leader of the groups that were fighting in the Congo came to the front lines. Not one. At this point the idea arose of going in search of Pierre Mulele at the other end of the country.(53) We ourselves started to exert pressure by saying that the logical thing would be to go in search of Mulele.

Che told us to go look for Mulele. But Mulele was at the other end of the country. We would have had to cross all of the Congo, a country of something like three million square kilometers. Crossing it would have involved a journey like Mao Zedong's Long March.(54) That was his idea. Che wanted to go with four others. But we argued: How could Che know for sure that Mulele would be there at the front, that he was at the head of his fighters, given that Soumialot and Kabila hadn't come to the front. That made Che think. He really had no basis to be sure that Mulele would be found there, after this gigantic march. That was when he decided to leave the Congo.

I truly believe that Che's position, if we look at it from an individual point of view, was an example of selflessness. He subordinated himself completely, without any conditions. Most never realized who he was.(55) And when the leaders realized Che was there, it was very disconcerting for them. What should they do? They themselves had never been there at the front. They hadn't shown any interest in being there. And now someone had come to help them inside the country, while they were outside. This was a really difficult situation for them. By the time they were faced with this decision, the OAU pressure had already begun, demanding that we get out.

So you have to take into account the time and the place in which all this occurred. In the few brief months he was there, Che gradually realized there were no prospects for the thing to go anywhere.

Revolutions's reinforcement detachment
Waters: Last year, the remains of Che and several of the other compañeros who died in Bolivia were returned to Cuba.(56) You commanded the military honor guard for the solemn and impressive ceremony in Santa Clara. What seemed to us most important about those events was that they became a vehicle for the Cuban people to express their revolutionary commitment, to reaffirm their support for the proletarian internationalist course that Che and the other compañeros in Bolivia fought for.

The immense dignity of the ceremony, the spontaneous outpouring of emotion and respect, paid homage to all those who have fought and died for humanity's future. What impact did these events have inside Cuba?

Villegas: We're not a people who make a big deal when someone falls. We don't worship the dead. I think the reception for Che has a deeper political and ideological character. It's not simply respect for someone who died. It's really a show of love, of esteem, of identification with what Che represented. That's really what's behind the tribute paid to Che by our entire people.

Che helped bring this about by what he taught and through his personal example. That personal example had a deep impact on the people. There are some Cubans who know little more about Che than that he died. Many others wish that Che were at our side today, fighting during this difficult and complex time for our people. All this, I believe, is what led so many to turn out, not only in Santa Clara, but all along the way, in massive numbers. It was identification with his ideas and his principles.

It had a tremendous impact on me. I traveled in the jeeps that carried the remains of each of the combatants. I could see the extraordinary discipline of the people, the extraordinary organization. I can tell you that from the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana, all the way to Santa Clara, there were hardly any open spaces. The people came from towns a long way from the highway to pay tribute to him.

There were some very moving things. I remember when we were entering the province of Villa Clara, for example. I don't know how they were able to get everyone there. As we passed through, they sang Carlos Puebla's song.(57) They kept singing, it was played over loudspeakers, and the people were humming along. And it was endless, endless, endless. It was deeply moving.

Fidel's brief speech at the Santa Clara ceremony was a masterpiece. It shows why he has such an impact on our people. The thoughts on people's minds were summed up by Fidel when he said that this wasn't a farewell to Che. We were welcoming a reinforcement detachment.

A reinforcement detachment! To fight alongside us!

And now it is Tania who will join that detachment, meaning that women will become part of it.(58) This is important because of the decisive contribution women make to society. That is what Tania symbolizes. And along with Tania, nine other combatants will arrive to swell the ranks of the detachment, which as Fidel said is a Latin American detachment. And it is important for the entire continent to have a detachment of Latin American combatants here.

I am convinced these internationalists will give us much greater strength as we confront the struggles that lie ahead, the struggles we are waging.

Che's ideas are alive, and we're still fighting for these ideas, which he gave his life for. We're fighting today, during the Special Period, to achieve greater productivity, and to be more true to our principles. That's what these ideas mean today. They are the dreams and ideas that unite us.

NOTES
1. Hatuey, a Taino Indian chief who had fled the Spanish colonial forces from what is today the Dominican Republic, led an uprising in Cuba against the colonizers; he was captured and executed in 1511. Tradition has it that when he was offered last rites by a Spanish priest so his soul could go to heaven, Hatuey asked if that's where the souls of the Spanish conquerors went. When he was assured it was, he declined the rites, saying he preferred his soul go elsewhere.

2. There were two important Cuban wars of independence from Spain: the war of 1868-78, and the war of 1895-98 that ended in Spain's defeat. Cuba became an independent republic, but its government was in fact dominated by U.S. occupation forces.

Opposing the perspective of independence in the years before 1868 were two currents led primarily by wealthy Cuban- born landowners. These were generally referred to as the reformists and the annexationists. The reformists sought to win a certain degree of autonomy from Spain, while reforming the system of chattel slavery in order to maintain it. The other current favored annexation of Cuba to the United States. Most looked to the slaveholding states of the U.S. South, seeing annexation as a way to strengthen the slave system in Cuba. A smaller group looked to the U.S. North. After the U.S. Civil War, some opponents of slavery in Cuba were also attracted to annexationism, seeing it as a means to eliminate slavery. Slavery in Cuba was not abolished until 1886.

3. Carlos Manuel de Céspedes was the initiator of the Cuban independence war of 1868-78. He was killed in battle in 1874.

4. Cuba's second independence war was launched in Baire in 1895, in what became known as El Grito de Baire (the Cry of Baire).

5. Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro were both born in Oriente and spent much of their youth in this province.

6. Jesús Menéndez, general secretary of the National Federation of Sugar Workers and a member of the Popular Socialist Party, was murdered at the Manzanillo train station in January 1948 by police captain Joaquín Casillas. At the time the government of Cuba was under the bourgeois-democratic regime of President Ramón Grau San Martín.

7. On March 10, 1952, Fulgencio Batista organized a military coup against the government of Carlos Prío and canceled scheduled elections. Batista was a retired Cuban army general who had been strongman in successive governments in Cuba from 1934 - in the wake of a revolutionary upsurge that toppled dictator Gerardo Machado - until 1944. As the Cuban bourgeoisie and their Yankee patrons reconsolidated power following the initial battles of late 1933, Batista bought off most of the insurgent political leaders, using repression against those who resisted.

Following the 1952 coup, with support from Washington, Batista imposed a brutal military dictatorship that lasted until January 1, 1959. On that date Batista fled the country as his military and police forces surrendered to the victorious Rebel Army advancing under the command of Fidel Castro, with the growing popular support for the July 26 Revolutionary Movement, culminating in a general strike.

On July 26, 1953, some 160 revolutionaries under the command of Fidel Castro launched an insurrectionary attack on the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba, and a simultaneous attack on the garrison in Bayamo, marking the beginning of the revolutionary armed struggle against the Batista dictatorship. After the attack's failure, Batista's forces massacred more than fifty of the captured revolutionaries. Fidel Castro and twenty-seven others were tried and sentenced to up to fifteen years in prison. They were released on May 15, 1955, after a public defense campaign forced Batista's regime to issue an amnesty.

On November 25, 1956, eighty-two revolutionary fighters, including Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro, Juan Almeida, and Ernesto Che Guevara, set sail from Tuxpan, Mexico, toward Cuba aboard the yacht Granma, to initiate the revolutionary war against the Batista regime. The expeditionaries landed in southeast Cuba on December 2, 1956.

8. Celia Sánchez, a leader of the July 26 Movement in Manzanillo in Oriente Province, organized the urban supply and recruitment network for the Rebel Army. She became the first woman to become a combatant in the Rebel Army.

9. Biographical information on these and other Rebel Army fighters can be found in the glossary to Ernesto Che Guevara, Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War 1956-58 (Pathfinder, 1996).

10. In the late 1950s Yara had a civilian population of seven- to ten thousand.

11. On October 10, 1868, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, the owner of a sugar plantation at La Demajagua near the town of Manzanillo in southeastern Cuba, rang the sugar mill's bell and assembled the plantation slaves. Céspedes announced he was freeing the slaves, that they were free to join him or not in a fight to win Cuba's independence from Spain. He then formed up a contingent of fighters and attacked the nearby town of Yara. This act, known in Cuban history as the El Grito de Yara (the Cry of Yara), was the beginning of Cuba's first war for independence, which lasted until 1878.

12. Mambí refers to fighters in Cuba's wars of independence against Spain, many of whom were freed slaves or agricultural workers. The term "mambí" originated in the 1840s during the fight for independence from Spain in the nearby island of Santo Domingo. After a black Spanish officer named Juan Ethninius Mamby joined the Dominican independence fighters, Spanish forces began referring to the guerrillas by the derogatory term "mambíes." Later the related term "mambises" was applied to the freedom fighters in Cuba, who adopted it as a badge of honor.

Antonio Maceo y Grajales (1845-1896), a black Cuban known as the Bronze Titan, was a brilliant military strategist and political leader. He was a leader of the 1868-78 and 1895-98 wars of independence. He was killed in battle on December 7, 1896, after having led the invasion of Pinar del Río from Oriente.

13. Tarará in prerevolutionary times was an area of luxury beachfront homes outside Havana. Diagnosed with exhaustion and pneumonia, Guevara was moved there for rest and recuperation at the beginning of March 1959 on doctor's orders, together with his family and escort. He remained there until May 1959.

14. Alberto Bayo had been an officer in the Republican army during the Spanish civil war. In 1956 he provided military training in Mexico to the future Granma expeditionaries. He moved to Cuba after January 1, 1959, and worked for the Revolutionary Armed Forces. He had authored a number of books on military matters, including 150 Questions for a Guerrilla, which had been printed and circulated in several South American and Central American countries in the 1940s and 1950s. It was published in Havana in 1959 following the revolutionary triumph.

15. On March 22, 1959, around the time of the events Villegas is describing, Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro gave a speech that came to be known as the revolutionary government's "Proclamation against Discrimination," calling for a campaign against unequal treatment of blacks in employment and public facilities. In the weeks following the speech, all whites-only facilities in Cuba were rapidly opened to everyone. Those refusing were closed down. A translation of this speech was published in the April 19, 1999, issue of the Militant, and will appear in a forthcoming Pathfinder book containing key speeches and policy declarations by Castro from the early years of the revolution.

16. The Cuban People's (Orthodox) Party was formed in 1947 on a platform of opposition to imperialist domination of Cuba and government corruption. Its youth wing provided initial cadres for the Moncada assault and for what became the July 26 Movement. In the 1950s the official party leadership moved rightward and fragmented. The Popular Socialist Party (PSP) was the name taken in 1944 by the Communist Party of Cuba. It opposed Batista's coup, but from the time of the Moncada assault until the final months of the revolutionary war, the PSP rejected as adventuristic the political course of the July 26 Movement and Rebel Army.

17. At the time Villegas was 14 years old; his brother was 35.

18. On October 19, 1958, the general command of the Rebel Army issued Law no. 3, on the peasants' right to the land. The law abolished tenant farming and sharecropping in liberated territories, and recognized all those who worked the land, including squatters, as the legitimate owners.

Humberto Sori Marín was a lawyer who joined the Rebel Army in the Sierra Maestra in 1957. Shortly after the 1959 victory he went into opposition and joined an armed counterrevolutionary band seeking to topple the revolutionary government. He was captured and executed in 1961.

19. After the Cuban revolution came to power in 1959, the new government took over the running of a number of economic enterprises held by Batista's cronies, as well as some public utilities. These actions, known as "interventions," were in turn directed by "interveners." Following Cuba's nationalization of foreign- and domestically owned capital between August and October 1960, the term came to be used to describe the revolutionary cadres assigned to head the workplaces in the newly nationalized industries.

20. On April 17, 1961, some 1,500 Cuban mercenaries invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs on the southern coast. The counterrevolutionaries, organized and financed by Washington, aimed to declare a provisional government to appeal for direct U.S. intervention. The invaders, however, were defeated within seventy-two hours by Cuba's militia and its Revolutionary Armed Forces. On April 19 the last invaders surrendered at Playa Girón (Girón Beach), which is the name Cubans use to designate the battle.

21. At the time, Guevara was minister of industry. During the Playa Girón invasion, as well as the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, the revolution's central leaders were assigned command of troops in different regions of the country. On both occasions, Guevara was sent to head the defense of Pinar del Río, Cuba's westernmost province.

22. In the face of escalating preparations by Washington for an invasion of Cuba in the spring and summer of 1962, the Cuban government signed a mutual defense agreement with the Soviet Union. In October 1962 President Kennedy demanded removal of Soviet nuclear missiles installed in Cuba following the signing of that pact. Washington ordered a naval blockade of Cuba, stepped up its preparations to invade, and placed U.S. armed forces on nuclear alert. Cuban workers and farmers mobilized in the millions to defend the revolution. Following an exchange of communications between Washington and Moscow, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, without consulting the Cuban government, announced his decision to remove the missiles on October 28.

23. Following the October 1962 missile crisis, the U.S. government, with Soviet acquiescence, demanded that the United Nations conduct an "inspection" of Cuba to verify that the Soviet nuclear missiles were being withdrawn. Cuba unambiguously refused this demand. Cuba's position was expressed by Fidel Castro on October 23, 1962: "Anyone who tries to come and inspect Cuba should know that he will have to come equipped for war."

24. José Martí (1853-1895), noted poet, writer, speaker, and journalist, founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party to fight Spanish rule and oppose U.S. designs on Cuba. He organized and planned the 1895 independence war and was killed in battle in Dos Ríos on May 19 of that year. His revolutionary anti- imperialist program is part of the internationalist traditions and political heritage of the Cuban revolution.

25. Located in Havana, La Cabaña had been a garrison of Batista's army before the revolution. On the evening of January 2-3, 1959, Guevara's column took over La Cabaña, and he became commander of the Rebel Army base stationed in the fort. Batista's main garrisons were soon closed by the revolution and converted into schools.

26. The dispatch, dated March 20, 1959, is quoted on page 152 of Jorge Castañeda's biography of Guevara, Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997).

27. Secretos de generales, (Secrets of generals) a book written by veteran Cuban journalist Luis Báez, comprises 41 interviews with top officers of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces and was released in 1997 by Si-Mar Publishers of Havana.

28. The Special Period is the term used in Cuba for the extremely difficult economic conditions the Cuban people have faced since the early 1990s, and the policies the leadership has implemented to defend the revolution. With the disintegration of the regimes of the Soviet bloc that previously accounted for 85 percent of Cuba's foreign trade, much of it on terms favorable to Cuba, the island was brutally thrust deeper into the world capitalist market. The sudden break in trading patterns - which took place as the world capitalist crisis intensified, and has been exacerbated by the ongoing economic warfare organized by Washington - led to the most severe economic crisis in Cuba since 1959. By 1996, through the efforts of Cuban working people, the decline in industrial and agricultural production bottomed out. Shortages of food and other essentials, though still severe, have eased.

29. The Escambray theater group, based in a rural area of Cuba's Escambray mountains, is one of Cuba's best-known theater troupes. For thirty years it has staged plays in towns and villages across Cuba, including the most isolated areas.

30. Mother, by the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, recounts the atmosphere of utter poverty in which the Russian people lived under tsarism.

31. Verde Olivo was the weekly magazine of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, published in Havana beginning in 1959. It is currently published as a monthly.

32. The fall of 1998 saw two major hurricanes devastate the Caribbean and Central America.

Hurricane Georges slammed into the Caribbean in September 1998, killing over 300 people in Puerto Rico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. In Cuba, although the storm damaged 40,000 homes, because of the civil defense evacuations, the death toll was held to six.

Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in November, killing over 9,000 people, mostly in Honduras and Nicaragua.

33. José Ramón Machado Ventura (Machadito) and José Ramón Balaguer are members of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba. Both are veterans of the July 26 Movement and Rebel Army.

34. In June-July 1989 Arnaldo Ochoa, a division general in the Cuban army, and three other high-ranking officers of the Revolution Armed Forces and Ministry of the Interior were tried, convicted, and executed for hostile acts against a foreign state, drug trafficking, and abuse of office. Ochoa had organized the smuggling of ivory and other goods while heading Cuba's military mission in Angola and had established contacts with Pablo Escobar and other major international drug dealers. At the same trial, thirteen other Cuban army and Ministry of the Interior officers were convicted.

That same month, José Abrantes was removed as head of the Ministry of the Interior in connection with these events. In August he was convicted and sentenced to twenty years in prison on charges of abuse of authority, negligence in carrying out his duties, and improper use of government funds and resources. Abrantes was replaced as minister by Army Corps General Abelardo Colomé (popularly known by his nickname Furry) who at the time was deputy minister of defense and first substitute for the minister Raúl Castro.

A documentary record of the case of Ochoa and others convicted with him can be found in Case 1/1989: End of the Cuban Connection (José Martí Publishing House: Havana, 1989).

35. The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) were organized in 1960 on a block-by-block basis as a tool with which the Cuban people could exercise vigilance against counterrevolutionary activity. In subsequent years it has also served as a vehicle to organize participation at mass demonstrations, take part in vaccination campaigns and civil defense, the fight against petty crime, and other tasks.

36. Camilo Cienfuegos (1932-1959), a commander of the Rebel Army, was named chief of staff following the victory over Batista in January 1959. His plane was lost at sea in October 1959 while he was returning to Havana from a mission to combat a counterrevolutionary mutiny in Camaguey led by Hubert Matos.

37. These appeared in the June 22, July 6, and July 27, 1998, issues of the Militant.

38. Antonio "Ñico" López (1934-1956) was a veteran of the Moncada attack and a founding leader of the July 26 Movement. He participated in the Granma expedition in December 1956 and was captured and murdered by the army shortly after the landing. López had become a friend of Che Guevara's while the two were living in Guatemala in 1954, and he helped to bring Guevara around the July 26 Movement, which Guevara joined in Mexico. The advanced-level school of the Communist Party of Cuba is named after him.

39. Fidel Castro's birthday. Castro was born in 1926.

40. The nucleus is the basic unit of the Communist Party of Cuba, composed of party members in a given workplace or military unit.

41. Máximo Gómez (1836-1905), born in Bani, the Dominican Republic, was a military leader of the Cuban independence forces in the Ten Years War and the 1895-98 war. Following the defeat of Spain in 1898, he was dismissed as commander in chief of the Cuban army by the pro-imperialist regime imposed by the U.S. occupation army. He died in 1905.

Antonio Maceo was one of the chief military leaders of both independence wars who was killed in battle in 1896.

42. From April to November 1965, Guevara headed a contingent of more than one hundred Cuban volunteer fighters in the Congo. Harry Villegas was one of these combatants. The contingent went there to support liberation forces in the Congo who belonged to the movement founded by Patrice Lumumba, in their fight against the country's pro-imperialist regime.

Patrice Lumumba, founding leader of the independence movement in the former Belgian colony of the Congo, and its first prime minister, was the most intransigent of the leaders resisting the efforts to keep the new nation under the thumb of imperialism. He had been ousted in September 1960 in a U.S.-backed coup led by army chief of staff Joseph Mobutu, who later changed his name to Mobutu Sese Seko. Lumumba, who had been under the "protection" of United Nations troops, was captured and then murdered in January 1961 by imperialist-backed forces loyal to rightist figure Moise Tshombe.

In mid-1964 a new revolt broke out in the Congo led by pro- Lumumba forces. The rebels were able to gain control of Stanleyville (today Kisangani), the country's second-largest city. They were defeated in November 1964, however, with the help of Belgian and South African mercenary armies - politically and militarily backed by Washington - whose assignment was to prevent the vast mineral wealth of the Congo from escaping imperialist control. Thousands were massacred as the imperialist forces retook Stanleyville.

Nevertheless, large numbers of rebel fighters remained in several areas of the country. These were the forces whom the Cubans assisted. Owing to deep divisions and other weaknesses among the forces in the Congo and the decision of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to withdraw support from the fight against the proimperialist regime, the Cuban contingent was compelled to withdraw in November 1965. Most of the fighters returned to Cuba, but Guevara, Villegas, Carlos Coello, and José María Martínez Tamayo went to Tanzania, where they remained for several months while preparations were made to open a guerrilla front in Bolivia.

While in Tanzania, Guevara wrote Episodes of the Revolutionary War in the Congo, using as a reference the campaign diary he had kept. The complete manuscript was published in Spanish in April 1999.

Villegas's article on the Congo, "Con el arma de la autoridad moral" (Armed with moral authority), was published in Spanish (July 1997) and English (December 1997) in issue 137 of Tricontinental. It is available, along with other articles and interviews by revolutionists who knew and worked with Guevara, in the booklet, Celebrating the Homecoming of Ernesto Che Guevara's Reinforcement Brigade to Cuba: Articles from the Militant on the 30th Anniversary of the Combat Waged in Bolivia by Che and His Comrades. That booklet, available in both English and Spanish, can be ordered from Pathfinder.

43. For more on the esteem that Guevara and the central leadership of the Cuban revolution had for Lumumba and his leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle in the Congo, see the speeches by Guevara and Fidel Castro in To Speak the Truth: Why Washington's `Cold War' against Cuba Doesn't End, published by Pathfinder.

44. Following Guevara's trip, Cuban volunteers were sent to assist liberation fighters in a number of African countries, including Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, the Congo-Brazzaville (the former French Congo), and Angola. A number of participants' accounts of these missions are contained in Secretos de generales.

45. Víctor Dreke, during Cuba's revolutionary war, had been a leader of the Revolutionary Directorate column in Las Villas that collaborated with Guevara's Rebel Army column in the fall of 1958.

José María Martínez Tamayo, known alternately by the nom de guerres of Mbili, Papi, and Ricardo, was a Cuban revolutionary who worked as Guevara's liaison with revolutionary forces in Latin America beginning in 1962. He served with Guevara in the Congo and then Bolivia, where he was in charge of the advance preparations for the guerrilla front. He was killed in battle in June 1967.

46. Laurent Kabila and Gaston Soumialot were two leaders of the movement identified with Lumumba.

47. Oscar Fernández Mell was a commander in the Revolutionary Armed Forces. A medical doctor, he later served in various posts, including as head of the general staff of Cuba's Western Army, second in command of the army general staff, and Cuba's ambassador to Britain.

Oscar Fernández Padilla was a vice-minister of the Ministry of Industry at the time.

Emilio Aragonés had been July 26 Movement national coordinator in 1960, and subsequently played a central role in the national leadership of the political organizations that preceded the Communist Party of Cuba. He served on the CP's Central Committee from 1965 to 1991.

48. On June 29, 1965, a guerrilla unit composed of fighters from Cuba and Rwanda led an unsuccessful attack on a mercenary garrison at Front de Force (also known as Force Bendera) in the Congo. Fourteen Rwandans and four Cubans were killed in the battle.

49. Che Guevara's farewell letter addressed to Fidel Castro, written before he left Cuba for the Congo, was made public in October 1965, at the presentation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. It is available in many places, including in Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, published by Pathfinder.

50. Meeting in Accra, Ghana, October 21-26,1965, the Organization of African Unity decided to limit military aid by foreign powers.

51. In 1920, under the authority of a League of Nations mandate, Namibia (South-West Africa) came under South African control. In 1946 the United Nations called for South Africa to submit a new trusteeship agreement. This request was rejected by the government of South Africa, which maintained that the UN had no right to challenge its occupation of Namibia. In 1966 the UN General Assembly voted to strip South Africa of its mandate.

Namibia won its independence in 1990. A decisive factor contributing to this victory was the defeat of the forces of the South African apartheid regime in Angola at the hands of the Angolan army, Cuban volunteers, and Namibian independence fighters.

52. Joseph Kasavubu had been president of the Congo under Lumumba, and supported the coup that ousted Lumumba in late 1960. In July 1964 Kasavubu appointed Moise Thombe as prime minister, but dismissed him in October 1965. Kasavubu remained as president until November 1965, when he himself was ousted in a coup by Joseph Mobutu, who, as Mobutu Sese Seko remained president of the Congo (Zaire) until 1997.

53. Pierre Mulele had been minister of education in Patrice Lumumba's government. In January 1964 he had launched a rebellion against the pro-imperialist regime in the province of Kwilu, east of Leopoldville (today Kinshasa).

54. In 1934-35, during the civil war in China, troops of the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong were surrounded in south-central China by forces led by Chiang Kai-shek. To break out of the encirclement, some 90,000 troops undertook what came to be known as the Long March, traveling 6,600 miles on foot to northwest China. During the yearlong trek, their numbers were reduced to fewer than 6,000.

55. During his seven months in the Congo, Guevara took the nom de guerre Tatu, and was not publicly identified as leader of the Cuban contingent. Only a few leaders of the Congo liberation forces learned his true identity.

56. Ernesto Che Guevara's remains were found in Bolivia in July 1997, together with those of six other revolutionary combatants from Bolivia, Cuba, and Peru. All were killed in the course of the guerrilla campaign led by Che Guevara to topple the military dictatorship in Bolivia and link up with rising revolutionary struggles elsewhere in Latin America, especially in the Southern Cone. The remains of the seven combatants were brought back to Cuba, where hundreds of thousands of Cubans mobilized to pay tribute to their example and to express determination to remain true to that revolutionary course. At the October 17 ceremony in Santa Clara, where the remains were buried, Cuban president Fidel Castro told participants that he viewed the event as a homecoming. He saw "Che and his men as reinforcements, as a detachment of invincible combatants that this time includes not just Cubans. It includes Latin Americans who have come to fight at our side and to write new pages of history and glory." Castro's speech is available in the booklet Celebrating the Homecoming of Ernesto Che Guevara's Reinforcement Brigade to Cuba: Articles from the Militant newspaper on the 30th anniversary of the combat waged in Bolivia by Che and his comrades, distributed by Pathfinder. It is also available in the October 26, 1997, issue of Granma International.

57. Carlos Puebla was a well-known Cuban musician who wrote "Hasta siempre, Comandante," a tribute to Che Guevara that remains popular in Cuba.

58. In the closing months of 1998, the remains of ten other combatants who fought with Che Guevara were recovered in Bolivia. Among them was Haydée Tamara Bunke, known by her nom de guerre Tania, the only woman in Che's guerrilla, who fell in combat in August 1967. The remains were returned to Cuba and interred along with those of Ernesto Guevara and others at a December 30 military ceremony in Santa Clara. Raúl Castro presided over the event, and the honor guard was commanded by Brig. Gen. Delsa "Teté" Puebla. Harry Villegas was among the participants in the Santa Clara ceremony.

 
 
 
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