The ACRC brings together in a single mass organization more than 330,000 Cubans of all ages who have been on the front lines of revolutionary battles from the 1930s to today.  
 
Several generations of combatants
Included among its members are veterans of the volunteer brigades who fought against the fascist forces during the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War; combatants in Cuba's 1956-58 underground struggle and revolutionary war against the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship; members of the militias and armed forces who defeated the mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and wiped out the counterrevolutionary bands organized by Washington in the Escambray mountains and elsewhere; and hundreds of thousands of Cubans who have participated in internationalist missions as teachers, doctors, and military personnel in countries from Nicaragua and Bolivia, to the Congo, Ethiopia and Angola, to Vietnam. In the last years such internationalist efforts have been reinforced by thousands of doctors and other medical volunteers who have offered their services in countries from Honduras and Haiti to South Africa.

The association also includes many active-duty and retired members of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and the Ministry of the Interior, who are eligible for membership after 15 years of service.

Villegas, a brigadier general of the Cuban armed forces, who until his recent retirement from active duty directed political education for Cuba's western army, now heads the political work of the Patriotic-Military and Internationalist Front in the ACRC. In an interview here at the end of November, he spoke of the work of the association, and especially of the efforts it leads in winning a new generation in Cuba to the defense of Cuba's socialist revolution. Brigadier general Delsa Esther Puebla, the highest ranking woman in Cuba's armed forces, and brigadier general Gustavo Chui Beltrán, the association's national finances secretary, also joined the discussion with the Militant's reporters.

Villegas is known around the world as Pombo, the nom-de-guerre given him during the 1965 campaign led by Ernesto Che Guevara in the Congo to support the national liberation struggle there. He also fought alongside Che during the 1966-67 revolutionary campaign seeking to overthrow the dictatorship in Bolivia and forge a revolutionary movement in the Southern Cone of Latin Amer-ica, and served in numerous internationalist missions in Angola between 1975 and 1990. He is now a deputy to the National Assembly, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, and has been named a Hero of the Republic of Cuba.

The ACRC was founded during the most difficult days of what in Cuba is known as the Special Period. That is when the protagonists of more than five decades of revolutionary battles, inside and outside Cuba, organized themselves into the ACRC to help confront the challenges "by setting an example through our comportment," as Villegas said.

In 1993 the Cuban economy was still spiraling downward under the combined blows of intensified economic aggression by the United States government, and the sudden loss of 85 percent of Cuba's international trade due to the disintegration of the Soviet-led economic bloc of which Cuba was a part. Washington sought to take advantage of the fact that Cuba was no longer partially sheltered from the exploitation of the world capitalist market as it had been for nearly 30 years. In Cuba, working people and their government were adopting policies put forward by the revolutionary leadership to address the crisis, limit the extent of the retreat forced on the revolution, and defend the gains of the socialist revolution.  
 
Political work
About 50 percent of the members of the ACRC belong to the Communist Party of Cuba or the Union of Young Communists, Villegas explained, "and we don't duplicate the work of any other mass organization or institution. Our job is not to help them carry out their tasks. Instead, we join their activities to complement them, to 'inject' a historical, a political ingredient. Cuba has a wealth of revolutionary history."

One of the ACRC's central tasks is to pass that legacy of struggle on to new generations. In doing so "we link together the youngest and the not-so-young," Pombo pointed out. Work in Cuba's schools is one of their primary activities. In fact, every school in Cuba is linked to a neighborhood group of the association, and each day ACRC members participate in the activities of the country's 12,300 schools.

As young people study the weight and character of Cuba's participation in the 1980s victory over the military forces of the South African apartheid regime trying to overthrow the government of Angola, for example, "members of the association can give them firsthand accounts of that military feat," Pombo noted.

Along similar lines, Villegas added, April 2001 will mark the 40th anniversary of the victory over the U.S.-organized invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. In neighborhoods and schools across the country, those who fought in the historic battle of Playa Girón, as it is known here, will make that triumph over U.S. imperialism come alive.

General Chui Beltrán joined the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the Batista dictatorship as a teenager; he was part of the underground in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, and joined the Rebel Army forces in the Sierra Maestra mountains in 1958. He served twice on internationalist missions to Angola, where he was wounded by an anti-tank mine and lost a leg.

"The great events and most outstanding figures" in our history are familiar to most Cubans, Chui said in an earlier interview. "But there are actions and martyrs on the local level that are virtually unknown." One of the tasks taken on by members of the association is to recapture that history and make it known to those living in each neighborhood today.

"Take the events in Cienfuegos," said Pombo, referring to the Sept. 5, 1957 military conspiracy against the Batista dictatorship. In collaboration with the July 26 Movement, naval officers "led their forces in revolt," explained Villegas. Originally planned as part of a nationally-coordinated action, the uprising was quickly crushed, however, and 39 revolutionary fighters were killed by Batista's forces. Workers in the city had also joined the battle in the streets. "What we are doing is part of rescuing that legacy," said Pombo.  
 
Defense readiness
Known to everyone as Teté, brigadier general Delsa Esther Puebla was 17 when in June 1957 she joined the Rebel Army. She was one of the first members of the Rebel Army's first women's unit, the "Mariana Graja-les Platoon," created by Fidel Castro in September 1958. By the end of the revolutionary war she had earned the rank of captain. Currently a deputy to the National Assembly, Puebla is responsible for the Combatants' Aid Group of the FAR, which oversees assistance to veterans of Cuba's decades of struggles and their relatives, and is a member of the national executive board of the ACRC. (A more extensive interview with Puebla will appear in an upcoming issue of the Militant.)

"Every single person--every man, woman and child--knows what they will have to do in case of war," Puebla underscored, as she discussed the importance the ACRC places on strengthening Cuba's military preparedness as a deterrent to Washington's ever present determination to overturn the revolution. "And every single one of them prepares for that possibility, everybody knows where they will have to be in such an event."

Villegas also noted that while the ACRC is not a military organization, some 97 percent of its members are linked in one way or another to the country's military defense: in active duty, in the reserves, as members of the militias, or as part of the People's Defense Brigades. Only those whose health precludes it are not organized into one or another military unit, active or in reserve, Villegas added. And even they join in the country's system of revolutionary vigilance, which means that no institution or neighborhood is without volunteers taking part in organized guard duty every night.

"There are a lot of comrades retired from active duty," said Puebla. "However, each one of them knows how to operate a tank, a cannon, or an antiaircraft gun. When it comes to the defense of the homeland, everyone is on active duty."

Defense readiness, moreover, is seen as another vehicle through which ACRC members strengthen ties with youth and members of the mass women's, trade union, and other organizations.

Last October, for example, commemorating the month in which Camilo Cienfuegos and Che Guevara, two of the best known leaders of the revolution, died, the province of Cienfuegos celebrated its second People's Recreational Target Practice festival. During these events, students and teachers from elementary and high schools joined association members in target practice contests. In a similar fashion, but in collaboration with the mass organizations, ACRC members help organize what they call "mass target practice." These types of activities, the leaders of the association emphasized, strengthen their links to more than 2 million students, as well as fellow workers and farmers across the country. Festivals include collective birthday celebrations and academic competitions on knowledge of the particular historic date being commemorated. The first festival in Cienfuegos was held last April, around the celebration of the victory at Playa Girón.  
 
A self-financed organization
Organized through 12,224 locals that cover all of the country's 169 municipalities, the combatants' association is fully self-financed. "Annually, on the day of the Territorial Troop Militias, every member donates the equivalent of one day's wages. And everyone pays 10 pesos a year in membership dues," explained Pombo.

There is a national directorate made up of 46 members, he added, presided over by Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida, whose revolutionary activity goes back to the struggle against the dictatorship from 1952 on. He took part in the 1953 assault on the Moncada barracks, was one of the expeditionaries on the Granma in 1956, and led the Rebel Army's Third Front in the revolutionary war. He has been a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party since its foundation in 1975, and of the National Assembly since 1976.

"But above all, we function guided by the principle that every member is an activist. In each municipality there is only one full-timer!"

"Many of our members who are retired were complaining about having little to do," Pombo commented. "That's not natural after a lifetime of intense work." The responsibilities of the association are one of the ways they can continue to make an important contribution to the revolution.

"We are combatants, not veterans," Chui stressed. "We're not like those who sit around talking, holding social events and living from their memories of history. We're engaged in the day-to-day struggle for the unconditional defense of our socialist revolution."

"We show we are combatants by always striving to be the best in everything," Villegas remarked. "We try to be a catalyst" to help bring out the best in everyone.  
 

Militant readers have for many years been contributing regularly to our "Books for Cuba" Fund. The fund makes it possible for Pathfinder Press to fill the frequent requests it receives from libraries, schools, political organizations, and others in Cuba for complimentary copies of a broad range of Pathfinder titles. The fund also makes it possible for Pathfinder to send a large selection of titles to Cuba for the Havana International Book Fair, which will take place this coming February 2-10, and to sell them in pesos at prices most Cubans can afford.

This year the Books for Cuba Fund aims to make possible an additional special donation.

Making History, a Spanish edition of which, entitled Haciendo historia, will be published by Pathfinder this month, is a much-sought-after book among members of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution. A collection of interviews with four generals of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces published last year by Pathfinder Press and Editora Política in Cuba, the book tells the story of the ordinary working people, most still in their teens when they began, who transformed Cuba--and, in the process, transformed themselves into disciplined revolutionary soldiers--as they opened the door to the first socialist revolution in the Americas.

Three of the generals interviewed were commanders of the victorious Cuban forces that 40 years ago this April inflicted on Washington its first military defeat in the Americas at the Bay of Pigs.

A donation of 300 copies of Haciendo historia would enable the combatants association to make a copy available to each one of its municipal groups. As part of this year's Havana International Book Fair, the Books for Cuba Fund is making a special appeal for contributions to make this possible.

Checks can be made payable to the Militant, earmarked "Books for Cuba Fund," and mailed to the Militant, 410 West Street, New York, NY 10014.  
 
 
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