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

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What is striking about Victor Dreke's story is not what is different about the man, but how similar the youth was to so many others in his day and in ours. It also shows the kind of person who is made by, and makes, a great revolution.
Dreke was a Afro-Cuban teenager of the 1950s who did not know that you can't fight city hall -- or in his case, the presidential palace. He joined the battle against the vicious and corrupt Batista dictatorship, and the social and economic system it defended. In doing so, he joined the struggle of sugar refinery workers and met the militants of Fidel Castro's Rebel Army. He stuck with the struggle for the long term, taking leadership responsibilities in everything from the fight against counter-revolutionary gangs, organized and directed by the U.S. government, to armed combat in the Congo against Mobutu Sese Seko's regime.

Read this small book for a series of snapshots of what it was like to be a participant in the Cuban revolution that triumphed in January 1959. From a high school activist under the Batista dictatorship, Victor Dreke joined the Rebel Army and fought in many campaigns. The Escambray mountains in central Cuba were the scene of a bloody five-year-long attempt by Washington-organized groups to undermine the new regime. Like the Contras in Nicaragua 20 years later, these 'Bandidos' murdered literacy volunteers, health workers, and peasants who backed the revolutionary government. Dreke was a leader in the military and militia campaigns that wiped them out. His description of the Cuban mid-1960s contingent to aid revolutionary fighters in the Congo complements Che Guevara's own recently published account of this. Dreke notes how the Congo campaign, though not a success at the time, paved the way for critically important Cuban efforts to aid African liberation struggles, such as the decisive victory at Cuito Cuanavale, Angola, against South African forces in 1988. As with all Pathfinder titles, the well-thought-out maps, footnotes and glossary in this book help the reader with unfamiliar names and events. Numerous photos bring Dreke's story even more to life.

This is a captivating book and must reading for progressive-minded people everywhere. Pre-revolutionary Cuba was a place of discrimination and segregation against Blacks similar to the U.S. South or South Africa's Apartheid. Dreke grew up in one of the more backward areas-- much like Mississippi, the state where I was born.

Fresh from having defeated the U.S.- backed Batista regime, the rebel army took down the rope separating Blacks and whites at a celebratory dance. Dreke, an Afro-Cuban, relates how Cuba's revolutionary government policy was to take down all the ropes of oppression and keep them down in Cuba and to help others internationally do the same.

This book is about two little-known stories of the Cuban Revolution. One is the five-year campaign against U.S.-supplied and advised counterrevolutionary terrorists in the Escambray moumtains.
The other story is of the Cuban fighters, led by Che Guevara, who fought (alongside Congolese freedom fighters) the mainly white mercenaries employed by the Yanki Empire and other powers in 1965. Victor Dreke was a commander in both those campaigns, who also fought in the war against the U.S. backed dictator Batista.
Also discussed is the struggle against racism in Cuba led by the revolutionary government. A far, far, cry from the USA!
In the 1970s and 80s the lessons of the Congo experience were drawn on as Cuba came to the aid of Angola in defeating the numerous massive invasions by troops of racist South Afica.Nelson Mandela credited these victories, and Cuba's international-ism, as crucial to the overthrow of apartheid.
The uncompromising honesty of the Cuban leadership is also shown here. The errors made in the Escambray by the revolutionaries themselves were openly discussed and made good in public and in action. And Che himself wrote a blistering critique of the Congo mission, also discussed by Dreke. Again, a far cry from capitalist politicians of both parties here!
You also can't help noticing how the bandits in the Escambray and the mercenaries in the Congo used the same tactic: terror. Murder, rape, and lynching of peasant families in both places, assassination of literacy teachers and pupils in Cuba, "bombing men and women and children and babies", as Malcolm X described it in the Congo. Che called it "terror-bombing " .The "axis of evil" sits in Washington D.C., then as now.
It was ordinary people - workers, farmers, shopkeepers, street vendors, students-who overthrew dictator Batista, and made the first socialist revolution in the Americas. As they made revolution, they changed themselves. From the age of seventeen, Victor Dreke was one of them, later one among many leaders of the process. He tells their story : the uncommon heroism of ordinary people. Us workers and farmers and young fighters for a just world here in the U.S. will need to study this story - together -- to prepare for and participate in the struggles capitalism is forcing on us.

Written by a soldier who fought in the Cuban revolution, Victor Dreke's From The Escambray To The Congo is a personal memoir and first-hand testimony of the end of the Batista dictatorship and the attempts to create a better government in its place. An insert of black-and-white photographs adds a visual touch to the gripping experiences both on and off the battlefield described in this memorable, gut-wrenching, up close and personal account of the modern history of a nation. From The Escambray To The Congo is a welcome and much appreciated addition to the growing library of personal memoirs and eye-witness accounts of the Cuban Revolution and its aftermath.

Forthright...gripping...delightful. Reading this book-length interview with Victor Dreke is like sitting down for a chat with a favourite uncle and being totally mesmerized by the story of his life -- which is part of yours, too. Completely uncomplicatedly, he tells of young rebels going on missions with guns that jammed at the crucial moment (never-to-be-forgotten lesson on the discipline of weapons-cleaning!); being in Africa with Che Guevara (the beginning of a chain of events that eventually led to Namibian independence and the release of Nelson Mandela); and being an Afro-Cuban at the very beginning of the revolution (he was sent to a town where the rope separating Blacks from whites at Saturday night dances had only been taken down days before -- by a white Rebel Army officer). He describes the thrill in 1953 of hearing that Fidel Castro had stormed the Moncada Barracks. The action went down to military defeat -- but it was a sign that there were people who would never waver, and Dreke responded. Gives you total confidence that human beings can learn how to fight and win. Also paints a convincing picture of why Cuba is part of Africa.

In New Zealand, politicians, government agencies, and many businesses like to crow about how much they oppose discrimination of any kind. However, most working people who come up against racist practices know there is big gap between what these institutions say and do when it comes to dealing with instances of racism.

"From the Escambray to the Congo" is a powerfully account of how after the 1959 victory of Fidel Castro's 26 July movement over the Batista dictatorship in Cuba, the new revolutionary government set out close to gap between the word and the deed.

How the Cuban government went about eradicating Jim Crow type racism, is told through the words of Victor Dreke, a leading participant of Cuba's revolutionary movement for half a century. The capitalist foundations that propped up racism in Cuba collapsed under the weight of the hundreds of thousand workers, peasants and young people - both black and white - coming to the realisation that racism was incompatible with the new society they were fighting to transform.

As a young teenager Dreke was advised by his father to "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 did not follow his fathers advice and threw himself into revolutionary activity. Beginning as a high school activist, then Rebel Army fighter. He was a commander in the fight to root out the counterrevolutionary bands operating in central Cuba and has been an internationalist combatant and representative of the Cuban revolution in Africa.

What comes across strongly for me is how the Cuba's determination to end racism in it's own country was inextricably linked to the liberation of the Africa continent from imperialist exploitation

For the millions of young Victor Dreke's - male or female - in the mines, factories and on the high school and university campuses around the world - this book is for you.

Avoid this piece of propaganda by the murderer of Cuban freedom fighter Margarito Lanza Flores (a.k.a. "El Negro" Tondique).

For the truth about Fidel Castro, I recommend "Fidel: America's Favorite Tyrant" by Humberto E. Fontova.

This is a captivating book and must reading for progressive-minded people everywhere. Pre-revolutionary Cuba was a place of discrimination and segregation against Blacks similar to the U.S. South or South Africa's Apartheid. Dreke grew up in one of the more backward areas-- much like Mississippi, the state where I was born.

Fresh from having defeated the U.S.- backed Batista regime, the rebel army took down the rope separating Blacks and whites at a celebratory dance. Dreke, an Afro-Cuban, relates how Cuba's revolutionary government policy was to take down all the ropes of oppression and keep them down in Cuba and to help others internationally do the same.

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