Bay of Pigs: Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas will be off the presses in early March. In early February Pathfinder is releasing Haciendo historia, a Spanish-language edition of Making History: Interviews with Four Generals of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces.

Bay of Pigs features a firsthand account by Brig. Gen. José Ramón Fernández of the events of April 17–19, 1961, when an invading force of 1,500 U.S.-organized Cuban counterrevolutionary mercenaries was crushed in 72 hours by the combined operations of the popular militias and the fledgling Revolutionary Armed Forces at Playa Girón (Girón Beach), as the battle is known in Cuba.

Working directly under the command of Fidel Castro, then-Captain Fernández was field commander of the Cuban forces charged with beating back the mercenary assault.

The account contained in the new Pathfinder book was given by Fernández in July 1999 as testimony for a lawsuit against the U.S. government filed in a Havana court by several Cuban organizations. The suit demanded damages for the military attacks, economic embargo, and other aggression against the Cuban people sponsored and organized by Washington, and has been used to educate about these facts. Fernández describes how working people mobilized and successfully defended their revolution. Maps and charts help readers follow his detailed account.

The new Pathfinder title also includes excerpts of three major speeches by Fidel Castro, on the eve of the U.S.-sponsored invasion and following Cuba's victory, where the revolutionary leader explains to the people of Cuba and the world the political stakes in this fight and proclaims the socialist character of the Cuban revolution.

The introduction to the book highlights the impact the Cuban victory over U.S. imperialism had on a generation of young people in the United States who were being won to the communist movement as they responded to the socialist revolution in Cuba and the deepening mass struggles to bring down Jim Crow segregation at home.

Bay of Pigs is a complement to Haciendo historia and Making History. Three of the generals interviewed in this powerful collection were the commanders of Cuba's armed forces at the Bay of Pigs. Besides Fernández, they are Enrique Carreras, an air force commander, and Néstor López Cuba, who commanded a tank unit. Also interviewed is Brig. Gen. Harry Villegas, who fought with Ernesto Che Guevara in the Cuban revolutionary war, in the Congo in 1965, and in Bolivia in 1966–67.

Their accounts give a vivid picture of the ordinary men and women who, in their millions, have made the Cuban revolution, and of the caliber of their proletarian leadership.
 
 
Related articles:
Cuban general Harry Villegas salutes book by Bolivian revolutionary Rodolfo Saldaña
Pathfinder to launch new titles at Cuba fair
Progress in Pathfinder sales  
 
 
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