The subhead to the article reads: "On the occasion of the meeting in Havana March 21–23 involving U.S. historians and some members of Brigade 2506, the author of Girón no fue sólo en abril [Girón was not only in April] (Havana: Editorial Orbe, 1979) reviews the book Bay of Pigs just published by Pathfinder Press."

The meeting referred to was the March 22–24 United States-Cuba conference, "Girón: 40 Years Later." The exchange was one of the events being held in Cuba and the United States to mark the 40th anniversary of Cuba's victory, in which an invasion force of 1,500 Cuban counterrevolutionaries--trained, armed, financed, and deployed by the U.S. government--was crushed in less than 72 hours by Cuba's revolutionary militias, police, and Rebel Army.

Several books on the subject were presented at the conference, including Pathfinder's new title, which had just been released in both English and Spanish editions.

We are also publishing here the full text of an April 9 letter to the editor of El Diario sent by Pathfinder's president, Mary-Alice Waters, in response to the review.  
 

Pathfinder is characterized editorially by a left-wing perspective toward the complex political problems of Latin America.

The book is based primarily on the testimony of José Ramón Fernández, a high-level Cuban government official who was one of the principal leaders of the troops that fought and defeated the Cuban exile Brigade 2506 in April 1961.

Fernández's testimony, which Pathfinder is now publishing, is neither original nor unpublished, since it was one of the documents from the July 1999 trial held in Havana that condemned the United States, and was published in book form. The work therefore lacks material that would add new information to the subject.

What is surprising about this book, based on court testimony and public speeches by Fidel Castro and Fernández, is the lack of ethics by the publishing house that put it out.

On the back cover of the book is a photograph taken April 20 or 21, 1961, which is clumsily cropped on the left, a space that is covered over with a brown strip.

The aim of such mutilation is to make the image of José Abrantes Fernández disappear. Abrantes was then head of Fidel Castro's escort and would later become a division general and Minister of the Interior for more than a decade. Abrantes died in prison while serving a 20-year sentence, accused of not discovering drug trafficking by his subordinates.

The integrity of a publishing house that lends itself to such distortion of history becomes questionable. The book's text meticulously makes various protagonists from Playa Girón disappear, such as pilots Gen. Rafael del Pino and Col. Alvaro Prendes, as well as Cuban historians on the topic whose studies are not cited in the bibliography because they no longer live on the island.

Because of these attempts to rewrite history, those interested in the subject will have to consult uncontaminated works, such as Peter Wyden's 1979 book. This is too bad, since it's time a history of this battle was published that was not based on ideological passions or immediate political interests.

Caption reads: Photo: Pathfinder Press and the archives of Miguel Angel Sánchez. The back cover of the new book by Pathfinder with the mutilated photo, above and below. In the left of the original photo is the "disappeared" José Abrantes Fernández, Minister of the Interior, who died in prison. Abrantes, Del Pino, and others are now "erased" from history. In the original photo, Abrantes can be seen beside José Ramón Fernández.  
 

Dear Sir,
In an April 8 review of Pathfinder Press's newly released, Playa Girón / Bay of Pigs: Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas, Miguel Angel Sánchez attempts to discredit the book for its "lack of material that would add new information to the subject" and impugns the ethics and integrity of the publisher. He is wrong on both counts.

Sánchez asserts that the 1999 testimony of José Ramón Fernández, a centerpiece of the book, is "neither original nor unpublished." This is inaccurate. The testimony by Fernández--the commander of the main column of revolutionary Cuban forces that defeated the U.S.-financed and organized invasion at the Bay of Pigs--has indeed been broadcast, posted on the web, and quoted from in Cuban publications more than once during the last year and a half. But it has not previously appeared in print in either Spanish or English, in Cuba or elsewhere. Pathfinder has published the new book simultaneously in both languages.

The 1961 speeches and statements by Fidel Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara, and Raúl Castro contained in the book have been inaccessible to the Spanish-speaking public for decades. For English-language readers, not only has most of the material long been unavailable outside library archives, but a number of items have never before been translated or published in English.

Sánchez's most serious accusation is that the publisher lacks integrity. As proof he charges that a photo on the back cover has been "mutilated" in a clumsy attempt to make José Abrantes Fernández disappear from history.

In 1989 Division General Abrantes, minister of the interior, was arrested, tried, and convicted of abuse of authority, negligence in carrying out his duties, and unauthorized use of government funds and resources, and sentenced to the maximum term of 20 years in prison (actions that in and of themselves were a remarkable demonstration of the integrity of the revolutionary leadership in Cuba and its support among the Cuban people). Sánchez implies that Pathfinder is guilty of a Stalinist falsification of history, however, because the back cover photo as cropped does not include Abrantes, who was walking ahead of and to the right of Fernández.

Pathfinder had in its archive three different prints of the photo selected. Each version was cropped differently to include a number of individuals in addition to Castro and Fernández. One print shows as many as twenty combatants who were part of the entourage. The version published by El Diario, is cropped to focus on three individuals--Fernández, Castro, and Abrantes. The purpose of the back cover photo was to show the two principal authors together at Playa Girón in April 1961. Pathfinder selected the version of the photo that best met that editorial and design need--without knowledge or concern for the identity of any of the surrounding individuals since they were not the subject. No one was airbrushed out or digitally removed from the photo. As is obvious to any objective reader, there was no attempt to rewrite history.

At the recent Havana conference on "Playa Girón: 40 Years Later", to which the review refers, a large blowup of the full photo that El Diario/La Prensa reprints part of was displayed in the impressive photo exhibit prepared by the Cuban hosts of the conference and mounted in the lobby of the Convention Center.

Pathfinder's increasingly bilingual catalog contains nearly 400 titles by a range of authors that includes revolutionary giants such as Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Maurice Bishop, Ernesto Che Guevara, and Malcolm X, to name but a few, all of whom have been victims of attempts by various powerful forces to falsify their views or erase them from the record of history. Pathfinder's integrity and record of keeping their words in print not for months or years, but for decades, is unmatched. It is one we are justly proud of.

Sincerely,

Mary-Alice Waters
President, Pathfinder Press  
 
 
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