Waters is editor of this book-length interview with Cuban revolutionary leader Víctor Dreke, the author of its introduction, and president of Pathfinder Press, which earlier this month published the book in English and Spanish.

The previous day, From the Escambray to the Congo was also launched at a workers assembly of some 70 people at the National Union of Caribbean Construction Enterprises (UNECA) in Havana. Dreke is currently director of UNECA's construction projects in Africa.
 

Thank you for giving Pathfinder the opportunity to be here with you today to present this powerful new book, which captures so well the heart and soul of the Cuban Revolution.

I would like to begin by expressing our appreciation to compañero Dreke, for his many hours of work, accomplished with great good humor and patience; to the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution for their support and encouragement; and to Compañeras Iraida Aguirrechu and Ana Morales, whose competence and enthusiasm made everything possible.

Others will speak about what this book means to compañeros in Cuba. I want only to add a few words on why it is so important outside Cuba.

For those of us on the front lines of the class struggle in the imperialist countries, or in the so-called Third World, From the Escambray to the Congo is not only a book. For us it is one more political weapon in our arsenal. It increases our firepower and allows us to take the offensive in the battle of ideas that we, as well as you, are waging on a daily basis.

Rebel-minded young people in many countries the world over will see themselves reflected in compañero Dreke's account of his experiences as a scrappy, rebellious teenager, always in trouble with the police, and not sure of anything beyond his hatred for the bloody dictatorship, the Yankee overlords, and his determination to resist.  
 
Storm the gates of heaven
But Víctor Dreke's story takes a different turn with the assault on Moncada, the launching of the revolutionary war, and the victory of the Cuban Revolution. Through his story we see the capacity of ordinary men and women--workers, farmers, students, shopkeepers, housewives--to transform themselves as they cease being victims and "dare to storm the gates of heaven" (to borrow Marx's eloquent description of the men and women of the Paris Commune).

That is the lesson of the Cuban Revolution. Sí, se puede. With a leadership worthy of them, men and women whose existence is often not even recognized by the rich and arrogant are capable of taking on the most powerful empire the world has ever known. We need not remain outside the gates of heaven. We can win.

In the United States, especially, Dreke's story has an additional powerful message. It shows us the kind of revolutionary power of the workers and farmers necessary to even begin to eradicate the legacy of centuries of African slavery in our hemisphere. Whatever its imperfections, only socialist Cuba provides an example of how the racist discrimination that still permeates all aspects of social and economic relations in the United States--and elsewhere throughout the Americas--can be eliminated.

So when people ask us why Pathfinder publishes books like From the Escambray to the Congo, or Haciendo historia, or Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, our answer is simple: because they are needed.  
 
What capitalism offers
In the economic, social, and political crisis exploding in Argentina today, we see the future capitalism has in store for us all. We see the outrage and resistance of workers, farmers, students, unemployed, and sectors of the middle classes. But we also see that they do not yet have either the leadership they deserve, nor the consciousness tempered by struggle they need.

That process is only now beginning. It will take more than a few days or months. There will be no small number of defeats before lessons are learned and some victories registered.

It is precisely in these conditions that now, more than ever, we need accounts such as Dreke's that do not try to simplify or evade the real contradictions and complexities that are intertwined in any revolutionary struggle. Books that help us all to concretely, to truly understand the example of the Cuban Revolution--not to copy, but to learn from and use what is applicable to our own struggles now.  
 
Changes within the U.S.
The profound changes taking place within the United States today are less visible and less known than what is happening in the streets of Argentina, but they are ultimately even more important "with regard to the great contemporary issue of relentless struggle against Yankee imperialism," to use Che's words in his preface to Episodes of the Revolutionary War: Congo.

In the events of September 11 the imperialist rulers, with Washington in the lead as usual, immediately recognized an opportunity--under the banner of a supposed war against "terrorism"--to implement measures they had long been preparing. Contrary to the claims often echoed throughout the imperialist world, September 11 did not give birth to a new world situation. But the imperialists' response has accelerated the velocity of the class struggle, increased the contradictions inherent in the already dominant political trends, both inside the United States and internationally.

Within hours the U.S. rulers had decided on their war of conquest and recolonization of Afghanistan, and charted their other moves to redraw the political map from India and Pakistan, to the republics of the former Soviet Union, to the Philippines, to Iraq, to the Andes, to Guantánamo.

Domestically they also announced plans laid long ago to establish a North American "homeland" military command, military tribunals to circumvent protections guaranteed by the amendments to the U.S. constitution, a national identity card, and other police-state measures. These moves are aimed not at immigrant workers alone, but at immigrant workers as the next step in preparing assaults against broadening layers of working people.

How far and how fast the rulers are able to carry out these measures--some but not all of which they have already begun to implement--will be decided in struggle in the months and years ahead.  
 
Workers' resistance
The rulers met some success in their drive to convince workers and farmers that the recession, whose deepening effects we had already been experiencing for several months, was the consequence of the September 11 attacks. But they also met with resistance and growing disbelief.

Less than two weeks after the Twin Towers were attacked, 22,000 public workers in the state of Minnesota went on strike, refusing to subordinate their demands for long-delayed pay increases and relief from soaring medical costs to the so-called war on terrorism. Despite the calling up of the state National Guard to act as strikebreakers, these workers refused to back down. Two weeks later they won important concessions on their new contract and returned to work stronger and more united.

In the midst of the bombing campaign against Afghanistan in November, more than 200 striking teachers in the state of New Jersey, most of them women, were arrested and sent to jail for defying a court order to return to work. They were marched out of the courtroom, chained one to another, with clenched fists raised, vowing to continue the fight until their demands for health care coverage were won.

In Chicago, in December, illegally terminated packinghouse workers, carrying signs in English, Spanish, and Polish, threw up picket lines around their former plant, demanding the severance and vacation pay denied them.

Such examples among many are important indicators of the difficulties the U.S. rulers face from the start in implementing their militarization drive, and of the political mood they must confront. This, above all, is the political obstacle to their plans, as they direct their "war against terrorism" against new and more numerous targets.

From the Escambray to the Congo is a book that will be sold not only in the giant monopoly bookstore chains across the United States and around the world. It will be sold by communist workers and young socialists on the picket lines such as those I've mentioned, in the factories, the mines, the fields, the universities and high schools, and on sidewalks and street corners in working-class neighborhoods in city and town.

For political-minded workers, farmers, and young people everywhere, the trajectory of the Cuban Revolution, as seen in the pages of this book, remains living proof that in the tumultuous anti-imperialist battles and revolutionary class struggles that are before us in the 21st century, there is every reason to fight, to fight like a Cuban, like our five Cuban brothers in the prisons of the Empire are fighting--with the knowledge and conviction we will win.

As the Cuban Revolution confirmed, the people with money will not (as Víctor Dreke's father had come to believe) always remain on top. More than 40 years of intransigent struggle later, the Cuban Revolution continues to show the way for working people the world over who are fighting for a world free of exploitation, racism, and imperialist domination. Yes, socialism is the only future possible for humanity.

Pathfinder has published From the Escambray to the Congo with the confidence that the experience and knowledge it conveys will help us all to lessen the cost and shorten the road to that future. We look forward to many more such products of the Cuban Revolution and hope we can be part of a collective effort to bring them to fruition.
 
 
Related articles:
Havana book fair celebrates publication of 'From the Escambray to the Congo'
Rebel Army sought unity of whites, blacks
Cuban leader opens book fair  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home