BY PEDRO A. GARCIA  
He joined the Cuban revolutionary movement when he was just a teenager. The streets of the city where Víctor Dreke Cruz was born were the initial scene of his struggles; later the location changed to the Escambray mountain range in central Cuba, when he became a member of the guerrillas belonging to the Revolutionary Directorate who were operating in that area. Later still, he went to Africa to support the continent's fight for liberation.

Víctor Dreke Cruz's life has encompassed almost 50 years of revolutionary struggles in different latitudes. His eyewitness account is now being published in a full and insightful interview by Pathfinder publishers in De la Sierra del Escambray al Congo (From the Escambray to the Congo), and was recently presented at the 11th International Book Fair in Havana.

The pages tell of Dreke's evolution from a restless student who saw his country once again fall under military dictatorship via a coup d'etat which installed the bloody tyranny of Fulgencio Batista, with the blessing of the United States.

Like many young people, he was ready to die "without knowing anything about revolution." That very same Revolution would soon shape him into a political leader and teacher of revolutionaries.

Those were unprecedented times--it was the first revolution in Latin America that was carried out "against a national army." In the book, Dreke describes his flight from the repressive forces inside a wardrobe and a comrade's rescue from a trial in Santa Clara, one of Cuba's largest cities.

Other moments also capture the reader's attention: the guerrillas' fight in the Escambray; taking cities; being with Che [Guevara] and the others in the Sierra Maestra; the Bay of Pigs and the invaders' tremendous defeat; returning to the Escambray to prevent those mountains from becoming the bastions of the CIA and the groups it organized and financed.

The book dedicates a chapter to Africa, [including] Dreke's experiences together with Che in the Congo and Amilcar Cabral in Guinea-Bissau. Readers will find illuminating corrections to the accounts of some people who have tried to distort that history.

De la Sierra del Escambray al Congo is a necessary and timely book and a valuable eyewitness account of Cuba's most recent history.
 
 

BY NORMAN (OTIS) RICHMOND  
From the Escambray to the Congo: In the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution by Víctor Dreke is a must read for African Canadians. This compact volume is chock-full of information about what makes a Cuban a Cuban. This book shows how practical experience and study can change the consciousness of people. It captures the life of Dreke, a veteran African Cuban freedom fighter. Dreke has been a revolutionary for a half century--first as a high school rebel, a cadre of the July 26 Movement to internationalist combatant at the side of Ernesto "Che" Guevara in the Congo, a political leader, an educator, and representative of the Cuban revolution throughout Africa.

Dreke's story is a tale of a Black Cuban's rise from being politically "deaf, dumb and blind," to a Pan-Africanist and internationalist. He ironically explains that his father once told him: "Don't get involved in anything. My father wasn't for Batista, (Fulgencio Batista came to power in Cuba on March 10,1952 in a coup) he was against Batista. But he didn't believe in anyone. 'Don't join anything,' he'd say. 'Things will always stay the same. One side wins now, the other side wins later, and the ones with money will always be in power. Study and get an education and don't mess with strikes or any of that. It won't get you anywhere. Besides, that stuff's not for Blacks.'"

Fortunately, Dreke didn't listen to his father. Dreke chose to ignore his dad and fight against injustice. He confesses in the book, "We were ready to die to bring down Batista, but we didn't know the first thing about revolution." The 65-year-old Dreke comes from Escambray, a large mountainous region in the middle of Cuba. In this part of Cuba, Africans were in the minority and this was a politically weak area. It was a stronghold of the counterrevolution. Dreke was recruited to help drive out the CIA-backed bandits.

After helping oust the bandits from his home turf, he made his way to the Congo to help the followers of the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba. International and local forces, including the CIA, murdered the Congo's first president on January 17,1961. From April to November 1965, Dreke was second in command of a company of 128 Cuban volunteer fighters in the eastern Congo. Argentine-born Guevara was in charge of the Cuban delegation. The Cubans were there at the request of liberation forces (including a 26-year old Laurent Kabila) belonging to the movement founded by Lumumba. Cuba's goal was to help bring down the neocolonial government of Mobutu Sese Seko who came to power after Lumumba's murder.  
 
Knew little about the Motherland
When Dreke went to the Congo, Guevara gave him the Swahili name Moja (One), another Cuban, Papi, became Mbili (Two) and Guevara himself took the name Tatu (Three). The first fourteen Cubans who arrived in the Congo were given Swahili names. During the course of this interview, Dreke explained how the Cubans arrived thousands of miles away in Africa. He goes to great lengths to explain how Cuba knew little or nothing about the Motherland in 1965.

Says Dreke, "Speaking truthfully, almost nobody here knew anything about Africa. Our image was from Tarzan movies--Tarzan and Cheeta the monkey. That was all we knew about Africa." Dreke could have been speaking about any group of African people living in the Western Hemisphere. After serving in the Congo, Dreke later went on to volunteer for tours of duty in Guinea-Bissau, the Republic of Guinea (Conakry), Cape Verde and Congo-Brazzaville. He later lived in Ghana, the Republic of Guinea and other African nations. He talks about how Cuban instructors trained the militias that defeated the Portuguese imperialists in November 1970, when they invaded the Republic of Guinea. Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) fought against the invaders.

Today Dreke is no longer singing the Tarzan and Cheeta song. Says Dreke, "We say we have African blood in our veins, and you see this in Cuba every day, with our dance, our music, everything. It doesn't matter whether your skin is lighter or darker. There's an African presence in all of us. "

"Fidel Castro and the revolution have taught us to identify ourselves with our ties to Africa and to appreciate them. The presence of so many of our compañeros in Africa has played a big role making it possible for us to internalize this appreciation."  
 
 
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