From the Escambray to the Congo: In the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution Book

This interview from 2001 outlined the former Cuban FAR Commander's military history from underground rebel to guerrilla to special forces operative in Africa. As one of the few black Cubans to achieve top rank in the early days of the Revolution, his career became all the more valuable as Fidel Castro turned his restless attention to the African anti-colonial movement of the 1960s and 70s. One can profitably skip over the second part of the book, as it basically recapitulates the chronology of Che Guevara's own account in "The African Dream." More interesting is his autobiography as rebel youth and counter-counter-revolutionary.

The most amusing story of his underground years is his journey to the mountains hidden in his mother's furniture. His opinions of the anti-Batista struggle of course reflect his present perspective as a Party member: this or that former companero became a "traitor to the Revolution," though few specifics are given. He recounts his personal sense of triumph over Cuba's less violent but patronizing racism, attitudes that lingered deep after 1959. Overcoming this domestic division was, perhaps, one of Castro's chief reasons for embarking on African liberation projects in the Congo, Angola, and elsewhere.

To me the real heart of Dreke's book is his account of service with the LCB brigades of the "Struggle Against Bandits." Dreke details the ground logistics and several forces brought into play to isolate and eliminate the Cuban contras of the Escambray. While denouncing the Second Front guerrillas as traitors, bandits, murderers, etc., Dreke shows some understanding of their motives. The Escambray peasants were small owner-operators, not the landless squatters of the Sierra or the cane cutters of Oriente. They feared land reform as a tool of confiscation, not distribution, and became a "natural" base for the anti-Fidelista Second Front guerrilla movement. One can believe that, like the Nicaraguan contras of a generation later, their tactics were more brutal than the Fidelistas they fought: most Cuban peasants had hated Batista as they loved Fidel, and rural Cuba was much more polarized by 1962. This division even cut through families, with some members deeply involved with the LCBs fighting brothers on the other side.

Their murders of Literacy Brigade youth, like Conrado Benitez, thus become "understandable" as acts of war - such brigadistas operated in remote rural areas as, essentially, spies for State Security, relaying reliability to the LCB as well as letters to the illiterate. Their fate was akin to Pavel Morozov, murdered by "kulak" uncles in early Stalinist Russia (and mythologized) for the same reason. It was fortunate that Cuba is an island, making extra-territorial bases and supplies more difficult; these factors account for the crushing of the Escambray "vendee" as much as organized civilian support. Had they been resupplied as in Nicaragua their rebellion might have dragged on to bleed and polarize the whole country, as the CIA hoped.

Although light reading and "regime biased," Dreke's book is nevertheless a good little reminiscence of his own revolutionary war within the national and international paradigm of his era.