Reprinted below is an excerpt from Pathfinder’s From the Escambray to the Congo: In the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution by Cuban revolutionary leader Víctor Dreke. Over the next few weeks the Militant will publish excerpts from the book. Dreke, a longtime combatant and leading cadre of the Cuban Revolution, is currently speaking in a number of U.S. cities on "Cuba and Africa: 1959 to Today," along with Ana Morales, a Cuban doctor and leader of internationalist medical missions in Africa.

From the Escambray to the Congo is based on interviews with Dreke conducted in 1999 and 2001 by Mary-Alice Waters, the president of Pathfinder Press; Luis Madrid, a staff editor of Pathfinder; and Martín Koppel, editor of the Militant. The excerpt is from the chapter titled "Joining the revolutionary movement. Copyright © 2002 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission. Subheadings and introductory notes are by the Militant.
 

As Víctor Dreke explains in the pages that follow, his political activity began in response to Fulgencio Batista’s March 10, 1952, military coup against the elected government of President Carlos Prío Socarrás.

Batista was already well known to the Cuban people. He had headed a repressive regime from 1934 to 1944 that had been marked by brutality, corruption, and subservience to the interests of U.S. imperialism and Cuba’s own landlords and capitalists. Following the 1952 coup, the Batista gang quickly moved to consolidate power and establish one of the bloodiest dictatorships in Latin America, and it did so with the full backing of Washington.¹

The coup aroused widespread opposition throughout Cuba. From one end of the island to the other, working people and youth wanted to fight. But the major bourgeois opposition groups and politicians opposed any revolutionary action. They steered the deepening anti-Batista energy into ineffective channels such as boycotting stores and movie theaters, refusing to pay taxes, and withdrawing money from bank accounts. They aimed to convince Washington that they, not Batista, could best defend imperialist interests in Cuba. Above all, they feared a struggle against the Batista dictatorship by the workers and peasants on the plantations, in the factories, and throughout countryside and city that could grow over into a struggle against the entire capitalist system.

Among the young people determined to organize a fight against the tyrannical regime was Fidel Castro. A member of the Orthodox Party and one of its most popular candidates in the 1952 elections aborted by the coup, Castro initially sought to convince the party leaders to fight Batista. Having exhausted this effort, he and a handful of other young people set about creating a new revolutionary movement to do the job. By early 1953 they had organized some 1,200 workers and students, overwhelmingly young. The organization came to be known as the Centennial Generation--named in honor of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of José Martí, Cuba’s national hero.

On July 26, 1953, some 160 combatants, under the command of Fidel Castro, launched an insurrectionary attack on the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba, together with a simultaneous assault on the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes garrison in Bayamo. This assault announced the revolutionary war against the Batista dictatorship.

The attempt to seize the garrisons and liberate the weapons inside them failed. Batista’s forces massacred more than fifty of the captured revolutionaries. Fidel Castro and twenty-seven others, including Raúl Castro and Juan Almeida, were tried and sentenced to up to fifteen years in prison. In the face of a massive public campaign for amnesty, those imprisoned were released on May 15, 1955.

As the rebels returned to Havana, where they received a tumultuous welcome, they were already discussing the name of the organization under which the struggle would continue.

In June 1955 the freed combatants, together with young cadres from the left wing of the Orthodox Party and other revolutionary forces, formed the July 26 Revolutionary Movement. The principal leaders of the new movement were soon forced into exile, meeting up in Mexico, where they set about organizing and training their forces to return to Cuba. Among the revolutionaries who joined them was the young Argentine doctor Ernesto Che Guevara.

In November 1956, eighty-two of these revolutionary combatants set sail aboard the yacht Granma from Tuxpan, Mexico. The expeditionaries landed in southeast Cuba on December 2, 1956, marking the beginning of the Cuban revolutionary war based in the Sierra Maestra mountains.
 

Mary-Alice Waters: More than forty years after the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship, Cuba’s course continues to point a way forward. That’s why so many rebels and fighters around the world want to study the revolution and learn its lessons.

But revolutionary-minded young people in the United States and other countries find it hard to envision that it was people very much like themselves who joined in the fight to bring down the Batista regime, and went on to establish the first free territory in the Americas on the very doorstep of the most powerful and brutal--and the final--empire the world has known.

You were one of those individuals. How did you come to join the revolutionary movement?

Víctor Emilio Dreke Cruz: As it happens, the very day Batista staged the coup, March 10, 1952, was my fifteenth birthday. I was born in 1937, in the town of Sagua la Grande in Las Villas province. I come from a poor, working-class family, from a neighborhood in Sagua called Pueblo Nuevo. I was born and lived in a small house with a palm-thatch roof and a dirt floor.

My father was a vendor. He sold fish from a stand in the marketplace, but he had trouble paying for the space. I found a letter written to my father in 1934, saying they’d taken the stand away from him because he’d failed to pay the fee. I still have that letter. He was told he could never again open up a stand to sell fish. I can imagine what a crisis that must have been for him.  
 
Advice from father
When I was young, I remember my father used to tell me, "Don’t get involved in anything." My father wasn’t for Batista, 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."

That was my father’s way of looking at things. And I think this was how many blacks in Cuba looked at things. Until the victory of the revolution. Fortunately, I didn’t listen.

I’m a revolutionary because I didn’t pay attention to my dad. But I’m sorry he didn’t live to see he was wrong about this.

I was in school at the time of the coup. The first news we received was that Batista had seized power, and that Prío Socarrás was going to put up resistance. We heard that the students had gone off to the hill by the university steps and were asking for weapons from the Prío government to defend the 1940 constitution.²

Prío’s government was one of those puppet regimes that existed in Latin America. In reality it answered to the United States, to Washington.

All of us at school took to the streets against Batista’s coup, since it was general knowledge that Batista was bad, and we joined a political strike organized to oppose the coup. The central leader of the strike in the area was a man named Conrado Rodríguez Sánchez. He had been a peasant, a poor man, from the Santa Teresa Sugar Mill, as it was called then, in the town of Sitiecito on the outskirts of Sagua. Today it’s called the Héctor Rodríguez Sugar Mill.

Conrado Rodríguez Sánchez demagogically presented himself as a proletarian leader. He wore a guayabera shirt with the sleeves rolled up and was an enemy of the suit and tie. But at his side were genuine fighters for the sugar workers and young anti-Batista rebels who thought he was a real fighter for the workers, even if not of the same stature as Jesús Menéndez or Lázaro Peña. Mr. Rodríguez showed his true colors when he ended his career together with the bourgeois and terrorist elements of Alpha 66.

The strike lasted only a few hours. Because Prío did not resist; he fled. The students were not given weapons, and Batista’s coup was successful.

That same day, the army and police--which until then had been the army and police of Prío Socarrás, of Prío’s Authentic Party--immediately became Batista’s army and police. They backed Batista. They attacked the demonstrations we were staging and arrested a group of compañeros and put us in jail. But they released us, because the 1940 constitution said that minors--anyone under age 18--could not be put on trial.  
 
Ready to die in the fight against Batista
We were a rebellious bunch, but we didn’t know the first thing about revolution. We protested because we believed Batista was bad. We didn’t have a clear idea of what we hoped to accomplish. I honestly think that if the Prío government had given us weapons, we would have fought against the army. We were ready to die in the fight against Batista.

So this was my initiation. From that point on we were branded as revolutionaries by the police. Every year, when March 10 rolled around, the police would come arrest us and throw us in jail.

I continued my studies and went on to high school in downtown Sagua. Then, on July 26, 1953, the Moncada and the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes garrisons were attacked.

July 26 was a Sunday. We didn’t know anything about the events that day. But at dawn the following day, the police came and arrested us and took us to the police station. We didn’t know why we’d been locked up. At the station we heard that "a group of outlaws" had attacked the Moncada garrison and that all the outlaws had been wiped out. That was the word used in the Batista govern–ment’s official communiqué: Fidel and the group of revolutionaries were "outlaws."

Speaking for myself, I was filled with admiration to learn that a group of young people had tried to take the garrisons. Because throughout Cuba’s history, a lot of people had talked about revolution. During this period in 1953--when Fidel attempted to take the Moncada garrison and, as he says, "set in motion the little engine that would start the big engine of the revolution"--there were a lot of movements that talked about armed struggle to get rid of Batista. But what they were actually doing was stealing money. They would collect money from people and buy weapons, and then they themselves would turn the weapons in to the authorities to justify not carrying out the action.

But this courageous deed by Fidel inspired optimism and led Cuban youth to admire and respect him. A path was opened up.

As for me, I was willing to give my life to defeat Batista--I had no doubt about that--but I did have doubts that anyone was really going to go up against Batista and do what they said they would do. Aureliano Sánchez Arango of the Authentic Party, for example, had talked about landing some people in Cuba to fight Batista. The same with Tony Varona, another leader of that party. But it was all a lie. It was all fake.

But Fidel Castro did come through. People now trusted him. We were confident Fidel was going to take up arms against Batista, because he’d actually done so. It was one of the events that made us more confident of taking the road of revolutionary struggle.  
 
Formation of July 26 movement
In 1955 the July 26 Movement was formed. That was a historic leap forward. I immediately joined a cell of the July 26 Movement in Sagua la Grande, becoming head of sabotage actions.

At the same time we continued to be part of the workers movement led by Conrado Rodríguez. This movement was affiliated to the Third Regional Workers Federation in Sagua, which encompassed the sugar workers in that area. There were nine sugar mills in the Sagua la Grande region at the time. So it was one of the most powerful sugar-producing areas in the country. The workers there were also among the most combative. The sugar workers’ fight led by Jesús Menéndez had been based, in part, in this area.

Within this workers movement there were both right-wing and left-wing currents.

There was one group within the Youth Movement of the Regional Federation--which is what the youth section of this workers movement was called--that favored the electoral road. One of the principal figures they looked to was José Pardo Llada, a member of the Orthodox Party who had presidential aspirations. This group wanted to get rid of Batista, but they thought they could do so through elections.

Then there was our group within this workers youth movement, which was against the electoral road and for armed struggle. We thus belonged both to what could be called the sugar workers movement and to the July 26 Movement. In other words, we had a link between the July 26 Movement--the student struggles--and this workers movement. So I came out of this combination, this symbiosis.

The struggle was very difficult, because as soon as you planned something, the government, the dictatorship, would come after you. You had to be in hiding part of the time, fleeing, persecuted.

We organized various revolutionary activities. On May Day, for example, we would organize different actions in opposition to Batista and in favor of the working class. These were lightning events. You hardly ever got a chance to speak. The moment you assembled, the police and the army would immediately arrive, with the snitches fingering people. Events had to be planned clandestinely.

We also waged a fight to honor Antonio Guiteras, holding activities on May 8, the anniversary of his assassination. I have photos somewhere of the activities we held in 1953, 1955, 1956, where I participated in activities by the student movement in tribute to Guiteras.³

Antonio Guiteras was the central leader of the revolutionary movement of 1933. For me personally, until Fidel Castro came on the scene, Guiteras was the figure I most respected and whose ideals I was a follower of. I still feel that way. I hadn’t yet been born when he was assassinated in 1935, but growing up I learned the whole history of Guiteras, his activities, what he had fought for in the Hundred Days Government, and I considered myself a Guiterista. All these things were still a jumble in my mind. But the important thing was that I was in favor of the struggle, the armed struggle.

As a result of our revolutionary activities--the strikes, the torching of sugarcane fields, the sabotage, and all that--we were "burned," as we say in Cuba. That is, our identities became known, and we were being hunted by the police. It simply became impossible to function at a certain point.  
 
Revolutionary offensive
In November or December 1957 a big revolutionary offensive was taking place, with sugarcane fields set on fire and other actions, in order to prevent the fake elections scheduled for the following year. Two compañeros in the cell I was the leader of were arrested.

One of the compañeros talked under torture. The other compañero held firm and didn’t talk.

One of my friends, a young man who worked with me, came immediately to my home, which was a small room my mother and I lived in. He warned me that so-and-so had been arrested, and that afterwards the police had come searching for other compañeros and arrested some.

We realized the man must have talked. I decided not to let myself get caught. By then, Batista’s government was murdering people. I said good-bye to my mother and left the house.

I headed toward the neighborhood where I’d been born. Like the story about elephants always going back to die in the place they were born. I did so because I knew my neighborhood, I knew how I could get out. "If I can get to Pueblo Nuevo," I said to myself, "no one will ever catch me." First, because my family would protect me. And second, because I knew the area.

I took off on a bicycle for Pueblo Nuevo, for my aunt’s house. I got there and told my aunt that the army was searching for me, that I had to hide, that I wasn’t going to go out.

My poor aunt had been through a lot with me. Every time she heard I was in jail, she and Cuca Acevedo, the mother of one of our compañeros, would go get me at the police station. I had the poor woman all tired out by then.

"You’re in trouble again, what’s going on?"

"Well, what can I do?" I said.

And I sat there in the house, thinking about that. Because by then I already knew I had to join the rebels in the mountains.

Suddenly, I spotted two army jeeps coming up the street. Inside the first jeep was this compañero who’d talked. He was sitting in the middle, between two soldiers. I’d forgotten I had brought this guy to the house once. I’d had no connection with Pueblo Nuevo for years.

"They’re coming to get me," I said to my aunt. "Tell them I was never here."

I went out the back, jumped over the fence, and headed for the house of a cousin. I came in through the backyard. Everyone panicked, thinking a thief had broken in. But then they saw it was me.

"All right, come in, sit down. What happened?" I explained, and my cousin told me to stay in the house, not to go out.  
 
Escaping Batista’s police
I immediately made contact with the July 26 Movement, because my cousin, Marcelo Castillo, belonged to the July 26 Movement, although his father Florencio was a councilman for the Liberals, one of Batista’s parties. That was common during the revolutionary struggle in Cuba: that within the same family, some were for Batista and others against Batista. That happened a lot in our country.

My revolutionary cousin went and told the compañeros that the army was looking for me and that I was in hiding. That night they moved me to the home of another cousin, where I hid out for two days in one of the rooms, barely able to breathe.

On the morning of the second day the owner of the house came home. He came in and started talking to his wife in a loud voice: "I’m going to buy you furniture. I’m going to bring you some furniture. You’ll like it." And he kept talking about the furniture. They couldn’t afford furniture; they were practically destitute. But that’s the news all the neighbors heard. Because those houses are all right next to each other, they’re made of wood, and everything you say in one house can be heard in the next.

The two of them went out. Later that afternoon he showed up with the furniture. A living room set, a bedroom set, an easy chair, a dresser, a cabinet, and I don’t know what else. They brought the furniture into the house.

But there was a plan afoot, which I didn’t know about until the furniture arrived. I hadn’t been told anything. The July 26 Movement cell had devised a plan to get me out of that house and out of Sagua, because all the exits had been closed off and the army was looking for me.

What was the plan?

The first part was to arrive with the furniture and make a lot of noise, so everyone in the neighborhood would know about it. "Look, he bought furniture. He’s giving her furniture," they’d say.

Later that afternoon, after my cousin had already gone back out, his wife came home. When he returned, she created a scene. Everyone in the neighborhood heard it, because that was the plan. "I don’t want the furniture! Take it away! I don’t want it! Besides, we can’t afford it; you know we can’t." She kept on and on like this, so he went and got a truck to take the furniture back.

Driving the truck was Arnaldo Arias Echenique, who owned the furniture store I worked in and who later left Cuba. He had been lined up through his brother Mario, who was a member of the July 26 Movement.

As they were preparing to take the furniture out, they put me inside the cabinet, a tiny two-door cabinet I was able to fit into because of my small size. Then they loaded the cabinet, with me in it, onto the truck, and put the living room set in front of it. That’s how they got me out.

I was taken to Santa Clara, where I was picked up by a compañero named Morejón, one of the July 26 Movement’s leaders in Sagua, who later betrayed the revolution.

It’s a story the old people in town still talk about. "The guy escaped in a cabinet."

"I helped. I helped," everyone claims.

There are about a thousand people in Sagua who claim to have helped me escape.

² The constitution of 1940 reflected the anti-imperialist sentiment that remained deeply rooted among the Cuban people in the years following the revolutionary upsurge of 1933 that toppled the U.S.-sponsored dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. It provided for land reform and other democratic measures, but these provisions remained a dead letter under the successive pro-imperialist regimes. The 1940 constitution was abrogated entirely when Fulgencio Batista seized power in 1952. Its restitution was a demand of the revolutionary forces who were fighting against Batista.

³ Antonio Guiteras (1906–1935)--Student leader of struggles against the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado in 1920s and 1930s. A leader of anti-imperialist forces during the 1933 revolutionary upsurge that overthrew the Machado regime, he became interior minister in the Hundred Days Government brought to power by that upsurge in September 1933 and overthrown in January 1934 in a coup by Batista. Guiteras was murdered in January 1935, as he was leading the clandestine struggle against the regime.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home