"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.
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The titles of these speeches are enough to tell why this should be every rebel's handbook.
As a physician, he explained that being good people is not enough to become a revolutionary doctor - one must make a revolution. Once that revolution had won through, he explained the tasks communist youth face. This advice may be taken well to heart, because there are too many people who try to be good persons, and leave it at that.
Read el Ché in his own voice, so you can make up your own mind. This is what Pathfinder Press stands out for: offering space for revolutionaries to speak for themselves. And well earned is this addition to the "...Speaks" "series."
Historically, this individual's intellectual development may be traced in this volume. The reader can see how the ideas gelled into what was to become the first experiment in the socialism of solidarity, which was retaken in 1985, just in time before the USSR began to quaver.
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If you are serious about making a human world, buy this book ! And pass it on to others.
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.
Aunque aquí en el mundo regido por el capital nos alimentan con cuentos del corte "de mendigo a príncipe", hay más provecho en una historia verdadero de una persona verdadera que nació negro -segregado y negado lo mas básico de la civilización- que ha llegado a ser dirigente de revoluciones en dos continentes.
Trazando su vida en este volumen vemos muchos capítulos de la revolución pocos conocidos fuera de Cuba. De Dreke aprendemos la resistencia a las violentas contrarrevoluciones en Cuba mismo y en muchos países de África central.
Los conocedores de la editorial Pathfinder a veces le llamamos "la editorial de los mártires" porque tantos de sus libros más populares dan voz a generaciones pasadas. Sin embargo, los casos como Dreke y Fidel Castro Ruiz nos presta el honor de contar con ejemplares vivos bajo esta imprenta.
¡Hasta la victoria siempre!
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This interview with Bolivian participant Rodolfo Saldaña reveals the opposite. His captivating description of how fertile the ground was in Bolivia and throughout South America for revolution includes the mass support and financial aid given to the guerrillas by tin miners, peasants, and students. He explains how the U.S. backed the military junta, and the real reasons for the defeat.
guerilla lead by Che Guevara - which Saldan~a helped lead the support network for --was rooted in the
revolutionary upsurge of workers' , students' and farmers' struggles in the mid-late '60s in Bolivia and the
mass movements against dictatorship and Yanqui Imperial domination in the neighboring countries of Peru
and Argentina . As he explains from first-hand experience, Che's efforts were not isolated, driven by
desire for martyrdom, or sabotaged by Fidel Castro, as so many of Che's ' biographers' have claimed.
Excellent preface and introduction by Cuban General Harry Villegas and Pathfinder Press' Mary-Alice
Waters place the lessons of Che's final efforts in the context of the struggles of workers, farmers and youth
of today against capitalism and the Yanqui Empire.
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The authors of "Washington's Assault on Iraq: Opening Guns of World War II" say no, not if working people are going to advance and build a world free of inequality and war. This book is as relevant today as it was at the start of the Gulf War.
'terrorism'. The US government goes to war for domination, markets, and profits, profits,
profits.Profits for families that have hundreds of millions and billions of dollars.It is their government,
not ours.In the Gulf in 1991 ( and in the region tomorrow ) war was,and is ,and will be, in the first place on behalf of Big
Oil. The superrich send working-class youth to kill and die for their interests. Not our own.In this now classic work
Jack Barnes explains the Gulf War and the increased rivalries between the market giant ( imperialist )
countries leading toward Depression, fascism, and a new world war. And what working class fighters
have done and will do -- here and all over the world --to resist and win.
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happened from the first-hand accounts of the Cuban revolutionaries who defeated the US-backed invasion. If you've never read a speech by Fidel Castro, there are a couple of very good ones in this book. You'll not only learn about what happened at the Bay of Pigs, but you'll also learn why the Cuban people smashed this invasion so swiftly and decisively. Another great part of the book is the testimony of Jose Ramon Fernandez who commanded troops in the thick of the fighting. There are maps, charts, all the details
of the battle. But it's not a dry or boring account. He tells what happened from a very human and personal point of view, revealing his own mistakes and weaknesses, and recounting some humorous episodes as well. Finally, the foreword of the book tells a fascinating story of how a group of young people at Carleton College organized support for
the Cuban revolution and against the US invasion and what they learned about politics. I think you'll be surprised as you read the
book about how relevant this forty-year-old event is today.
spending time in the water, I just sat there and read this book until it was too dark to read. This account is an activist account ofthe fight from Cuban and US fighters who see and saw the US invasion and resistance in Cuba and the United States not as history to be deciphered but part of an ongoing struggle against imperialism, against war, and for the power of working people. I never stopped caring; I never stopped seeing what was hidden from me in 1961, I never stopped seeing lessons for the future. A good read. -
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En aquel momento las revoluciones victoriosas en Nicaragua y Grenada estaban tomando un rumbo anticapitalista y el ejemplo de la revolución cubana dominaba el escenario mundial. En este contexto el Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores de los EE.UU. reexaminó su continuidad directa con la revolución bolchevique a través de la colaboración directa que tuvieron con Leon Trotski -co-líder con Lenín de la revolución rusa- durante su exilo en México. Trotski encabezó la batalla contra la burocracia estalinista que cortó la línea de acción internacionalista, así traicionando al flor de los luchadores proletarios y campesinos en los treinta y cuarenta. Esa burocracia, no el socialismo, cayó en 1990-1.
Los militantes del PST, con sus primeros pasos en los sindicatos industriales después de dichos años de ausencia (explicada en este volumen), se pusieron a aprender en la misma escuela de lucha y combate que los revolucionarios centroamericanos y caribeños, incluyendo las lecciones teoréticas que sirvieron como guía de acción para los cubanos. Intentaron aplicar las experiencias a la lucha de clases en los EE.UU.
Hoy en día, cuando el capitalismo está en crisis mundial y el imperio yanqui y el sistema imperialista entero está marchando a su única solución -el fascismo y la guerra mundial-, el proceso de los revolucionarios de los varios continentes y diferentes tradiciones aprenden teoría y acción uno del otro mientras participan en el combate de clases. Es más relevante que nunca plantear el curso hacia la revolución y establecer gobiernos obrero y campesino y así unir con la lucha por un mundo humano, es decir un mundo socialista.La introducción de este libro, escribido en 2002, elabora en esas temas.
Pronto se hizo patente que muchos partidos filiales del Partido Mundial de Revolución Socialista no fueron más que sectas que rindieron homenaje a la personalidad de Trotski, sin contar con mayor interés en intervenir en el trabajo sindical cotidiano y arduo. El SWP revisó su raíces y fundaciones, retomó las lemas "para un gobierno de los trabajadores y campesinos" y "lo valioso del Trotski es era el continuador de Lenín."
El porqué se explica en el libro. Ya, a un año del veintavo aniversario de este discurso, todo se mantiene vigente.
El autor, Jack Barnes, es dirigente del Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores en los Estados Unidos y presentó el discurso publicado aquí como parte de la discusión política de perspectivas revolucionarias al comienzo de los años 1980. Analiza el impacto importante de la revolución sandinista en Nicaragua y la revolución granadina de 1979. También el papel destacado de dirigentes cubanos en los esfuerzos para forjar una nueva vanguardia revolucionaria.
Toca cuestiones claves incluyendo las experiencias de la revolución bolchevique, la perspectiva de un gobierno de obreros y campesinos en el proceso de lucha anticapitalista, la relación entre la clase trabajadora y el campesinado, la fracasada revolución china de 1925-27, los avances y retrocesos en la construcción de una vanguardia marxista a lo largo del siglo XX.
Este libro a mi me animó mucho a estudiar más estas temas. Le invita a hacer lo mismo, y a seguir con otros títulos relacionados por el mismo autor: El desorden mundial del capitalismo, El rostro cambiante de la política en EEUU, y el número 5 de la revista Nueva Internacional: El imperialismo norteamericano ha perdido la guerra fría.