Valle’s words were read to a gathering of nearly 200 people here June 29 at an annual event dedicated to the example of the proletarian internationalism Guevara stood for. The presentations highlighted Cuba’s contributions to the struggles against colonialism and for national liberation around the world since Cuban working people toppled the corrupt U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and opened the first socialist revolution in the Americas.

Under the theme "From Africa to La Higuera," the gathering brought together combatants from internationalist missions in Africa and Latin America, including many who were part of Che’s column in the Congo and longtime fighters who worked closely with Guevara in the guerrilla campaigns in Argentina and Bolivia in the 1960s. Representatives from the diplomatic missions of several African countries in Cuba, including the ambassador of Angola, also attended the event.

La Higuera is the name of the village in Bolivia where Guevara was taken by government troops after he was wounded and captured in battle. After consulting with Washington, on Oct. 9, 1967, the Bolivian government ordered Guevara’s execution along with two other guerrilla fighters.

Among the institutions sponsoring the event were the Cuba-Africa Friendship Association, Casa Africa, the Center for Che Guevara Studies, the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, the Africa Department of Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Relations, as well as the Che Guevara Studies group at the Latin American School of Medicine, and the Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (OSPAAL).

This year the meeting coincided with the 37th anniversary of the battle at Front de Force, in what was then Congo-Leopoldville, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Four of the six Cubans killed in the Congo died in that fight. The internationalist mission to the Congo was Cuba’s first in sub-Saharan Africa. The event served as an occasion to commemorate the contributions of the volunteers who were part of that mission.

Ana Morales, a professor at the Latin American Medical School in Havana, who in the 1980s helped found Cuba’s medical mission in the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, chaired the program.

The featured speakers at the meeting were Víctor Dreke, who was second-in-command of the Cuban column, and today the vice president of the Cuba-Africa Friendship Association; and Ulises Estrada, director of Tricontinental, the magazine of OSPAAL. Estrada served as the liason with Che and the forces in the Congo, and played a central role in the preparations of the guerrilla campaign in Bolivia, where Che and a number of other internationalists who fought with him in the Congo died in 1967.

Dreke gave a careful account of the battle at Front de Force and reviewed with the combatants in the audience the lessons drawn by Guevara and other Cuban revolutionaries from that experience.

The Cuban contingent had gone to the Congo at the request of leaders of the national liberation movement to help train and fight alongside the forces combating pro-imperialist troops and mercenaries backed by Belgium, France, and the United States.

Washington and Brussels had intervened in the Congo under the cover of the United Nations just a few months after the Congolese people had won their independence from Belgium in 1960. Through a series of maneuvers and support to counterrevolutionary forces inside the country, they succeeded in removing the prime minister and anti-imperialist leader Patrice Lumumba from office, installing a pro-imperialist regime, and orchestrating the assassination of Lumumba in January 1961.

Many of Lumumba’s followers and other independence fighters refused to submit to the new regime and organized armed resistance for many years after Lumumba’s death.

Dreke described how at the height of their mission in 1965, which lasted for seven months and ended with the withdrawal of the Cuban volunteers, the leadership of the Congolese forces proposed the attack on Front de Force, where a large and heavily armed concentration of pro-imperialist troops were located near a hydroelectric power plant vital to the region.

Dreke explained that Guevara tried to persuade the Congolese leaders that an attack on Front de Force was premature. "Instead, he proposed engaging in smaller actions so that the Congolese fighters could gain enough experience and cohesiveness in combat," he said. "But once the decision was made by the Congolese leaders, Che accepted it," and we were at the front of the battle, Dreke noted.

The original plan of attack included an assault on the hydroelectric plant supplying electricity to the fort, a frontal attack against other fortified positions, and the setting up of ambushes to prevent enemy reinforcements from joining the battle.

But the assault by the rebel forces soon turned into a rout. The Congolese and Rwandan fighters fled the battle scene, abandoning their weapons and their wounded under heavy fire from the enemy. The bulk of the fighting fell to the Cuban combatants.

After hours of battle, with only a handful of Cubans holding their positions and many casualties among the Congolese and Rwandans, the Cuban combatants had to retreat.

"It was a painful decision to leave behind the bodies of the four fallen combatants," Dreke said, stressing a strong tradition that exists within Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of never abandoning those who had fallen. "It was impossible to reach our comrades because of the intense, close enemy fire. Retrieving their bodies would have meant even greater casualties." Up to this day the bodies of the four combatants have not been recovered, the Cuban leader explained. "It was a difficult decision but 37 years later I would make the same one again," concluded Dreke.

Dreke said the conditions in the Congo, including the lack of a revolutionary leadership and the deep divisions among the Congolese and Rwandan fighters, didn’t allow the Cuban volunteers an opportunity to forge a fighting force together with the Congolese combatants. The story of the Cuban internationalist brigade and the lessons drawn from the experience are recounted in full in Che Guevara’s The African Dream: Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo, as well as Dreke’s own account in From the Escambray to the Congo, published this year by Pathfinder Press.

Another special part of the program was the presentation of the new book Ernesto Che Guevara en Punta del Este, 1961, by Carlos D. González, published by Editora Política in Havana. The book contains the speech delivered by Guevara in 1961 at the Inter-American Economic and Social Conference at Punta del Este, Uruguay. At the meeting, which was sponsored by the Organization of American States, Guevara responded to Washington’s mounting military and economic aggression against the Cuban Revolution and exposed the exploitative character of Washington’s Alliance for Progress launched in response to the Cuban victory. The book also includes a series of interviews with other members of the Cuban delegation that participated at that meeting.

The day of activities included presentations of works on the revolutionary legacy of Che Guevara, including the presentation and sale of books and other multimedia materials. Several students from Argentina and El Salvador, who are part of the Che Guevara Studies group at the Latin American School of Medicine, also gave presentations.

"When we speak of Che Guevara’s internationalist example, we can not only refer to his participation in the revolutionary struggles in Cuba, Congo, and Bolivia," said Ulises Estrada in his talk.

Estrada pointed to the close collaboration Guevara developed with other Latin American fighters in the 1960s with the aim of forging a revolutionary vanguard to lead workers and peasant to deepen the struggle against imperialist domination across the continent.

In 1954 Guevara witnessed the CIA-backed military coup that overthrew the government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, Estrada said. The events "reaffirmed to Che that the only way to defeat the enemy and win national liberation was through unity, with arms in hands and the will to win or die."

"The only thing Cuba and its revolutionary leadership did was to provide assistance to those who wanted to take up arms against neocolonialism," affirmed the Cuban revolutionist.  
 
 
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