BY MARTÍN KOPPEL AND MARY-ALICE WATERS
HAVANA, Cuba - "We're not veterans - we're combatants,"
Brig. Gen. Gustavo Chui Beltrán affirmed.
"As members of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, we're not like those who sit around talking, holding social events and living from their memories of history. We're engaged in the day-to-day struggle for the unconditional defense of our socialist revolution."
Chui Beltrán, together with Brig. Gen. Sergio Pérez Lezcano, both reserve officers of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) of Cuba, spoke with Militant reporters at the national headquarters of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution (ACRC) in Havana on May 24. Chui Beltrán is the secretary of finances of the association. Pérez Lezcano is its deputy executive secretary and heads the organizational bureau.
As we sat down to talk, the intensifying U.S.-NATO war against the people of Yugoslavia was uppermost in their concerns, and the Cuban generals wanted to make their position clear. "In face of the indiscriminate bombing of the Yugoslav people by the U.S. government and NATO," Chui Beltrán said, "we condemn the genocide being carried out against this sister people and demand an immediate halt to the massacre and a settlement through peaceful means."
The Association of Combatants brings together revolutionary fighters of several generations in Cuba. Its prominent role today is part of the initiatives by the vanguard of the revolution, including the fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, in taking the political offensive to confront the challenges that stem from the worldwide capitalist economic crisis and its effects on the Caribbean nation.
The combatants carry out work in schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods to win a new generation to the fight for socialism by telling the history of the Cuban revolution through their own experiences and setting an example through their day-to-day activity.
This was the second opportunity Militant reporters had to speak with Chui Beltrán and Pérez Lezcano. The earlier occasion, in November of last year, was on the eve of their first national conference.
The ACRC is a young organization, they explained. "We held our founding conference five years ago, on Dec. 5, 1993," said Pérez Lezcano. "It was during the most difficult period of the revolution." He was referring to the early years of the economic crisis in Cuba, commonly known on the island as the Special Period, that was precipitated in 1990 by the abrupt loss of 85 percent of the nation's foreign trade as the Soviet bloc regimes disintegrated.
Several generations of combatants
Today the association has 300,000 members organized in
11,200 neighborhood committees throughout the island. It is
"totally voluntary, nongovernmental, and self-financing,"
Pérez Lezcano pointed out.
Who are the members of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution?
"It is made up of three generations of combatants," Chui Beltrán explained. "The first generation is made up of combatants from the 1930s and '40s," he said, including those who fought against the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado as well as Cuban internationalists who fought in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the republican forces against the fascists. Some of these fighters are now in their 70s and 80s.
"Then there is the generation of combatants from the end of the 1940s to just before the triumph of the revolution in 1959," Chui Beltrán said. Many members of the association fought in the Rebel Army, which under the command of Fidel Castro directed the revolutionary struggle that overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in January 1959 and opened the road to Cuba's socialist revolution. The president of the association is Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida, a leader of the Communist Party of Cuba who was one of the leaders of the Rebel Army and July 26 Revolutionary Movement.
"And then there is the generation that came after the triumph of the revolution, including the youngest ones, who carried out internationalist missions, such as those who fought in Angola and Ethiopia," Chui Beltrán noted. Some of these are as young as 28 years old.
Hundreds of thousands of Cubans served as volunteers in Angola between 1975 and 1990, fighting alongside the Angolan people to defeat successive invasions by South Africa's apartheid regime. Cuba sent thousands of volunteer troops to Ethiopia in 1977 to help beat back a U.S.-supported invasion by the Somali regime.
Chui Beltrán and Pérez Lezcano themselves have been revolutionary fighters since they joined the Rebel Army in the late 1950s.
"My father, of Chinese origin, had a small business in my home town in Santiago de Cuba," Chui Beltrán recounted. "I joined the underground in Santiago when I was 16 or 17 years old. I functioned in the underground as a guerrilla until a few days after the April 1958 strike."
When the ill-prepared April 9, 1958 general strike, called for by the revolutionary forces, was quickly crushed and the Batista dictatorship escalated its offensive against the movement, he and others in the eastern city of Santiago "were forced to go to the mountains. I went up the Sierra Maestra and joined the Mario Muñoz Monroy Third Eastern Front, led by Commander Almeida.
"I was in the guerrilla struggle until the triumph of the revolution," Chui Beltrán said. "I arrived in Havana on Jan. 8, 1959," with the main columns of the Rebel Army headed by Fidel Castro. He has been in the Revolutionary Armed Forces ever since.
"I carried out two internationalist missions in Angola, in 1976-77 and 1987-88. During the second one I fell on an antitank mine and lost a leg," Chui Beltrán said.
Pérez Lezcano related his background. "I grew up in a poor peasant family in Pinar del Río, and I've been working since I was 10 years old. When I was 14, I moved to the city and studied, with a great deal of effort, at a business school. When Batista imposed his dictatorship -with all the torture, persecution of students, assassinations it unleashed - I came to Havana and then went to Santa Clara, where I joined the guerrillas in the Escambray mountains with Che." He fought under the command of Ernesto Che Guevara in the battle of Santa Clara in the final days of 1958, which helped seal the fate of the tyranny.
In 1979 Pérez Lezcano took part in an internationalist mission to Nicaragua, shortly after the overthrow of the U.S.- backed Somoza dictatorship and the opening of the revolution in that Central American nation.
"It's been 40 years, but it seems like yesterday," Chui Beltrán remarked. "We went through all the phases in the struggle, from the underground struggle, to the guerrilla in the Sierra Maestra, and all the different stages since the triumph of the revolution."
These included, he said, Cuba's defeat of the U.S.- orchestrated mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs (referred to as Playa Girón in Cuba) in 1961, the struggle to crush counterrevolutionary bandits in the Escambray mountains in the early 1960s, and the October Crisis in 1962, (which the U.S. government calls the Cuban Missile Crisis), when Cuban working people forced Washington - which had brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust - to back off from invading the island.
Those eligible to join the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, Pérez Lezcano explained, include "combatants of the FAR and the Ministry of the Interior, who must have at least 15 years' service to be eligible to join. Other categories of combatants are not required to have a minimum number of years of service, but must have taken part in action, such as the struggle against the bandits in the Escambray or elsewhere, Playa Girón, and internationalist missions.
"The Association of Combatants also includes the founders of the Border Battalion at Guantánamo, next to the U.S. naval base, as well as the 15 women militia leaders from the first officer training course of the Revolutionary National Militias."
Referring to the latter group, Chui Beltrán explained that in the early years of the revolution, as working people organized into popular militias to defend their revolution, "there were two or three courses for militia leaders. In the first course there were 15 women who were trained as officers. They went on to lead militia battalions and companies."
In addition, the association also admits the mothers and fathers of those who have died fighting in defense of the revolution.
Work in schools, factories, communities
Above all, the Association of Combatants focuses its
political work on winning the young generations to a
revolutionary working-class perspective - to do with their
lives what many of these combatants have been doing for more
than four decades.
In the schools, says Pérez Lezcano, "we carry out what we call patriotic-military-internationalist work. We convey our experiences as combatants to children and youth, from elementary school to high school, pre-university, and university students. Our members aren't academic lecturers. They talk about their own lives to audiences of youth."
Chui Beltrán explained that "every school is linked to a neighborhood Association of Combatants. We give talks to the students about the history of the revolution both nationally and in that particular community.
"When the combatants go to the schools and give talks, the students love it - and so do the teachers, because the combatants are telling about their own experiences. For example, someone who fought alongside Che will talk about their experiences in battle with him, explaining what Che was like.
"That's important. The teachers know history because they read and study it, and they can explain things theoretically, but it's often not from their own experience. So the teacher can talk about a historical event, and then the combatant will come and tell how that event actually occurred and what he did in it.
"This living history is something we must not lose. We must revive it and keep it for the future."
He added, "Our combatants are now going to speak at the universities too. Many of us are a little intimidated by the universities, because of the high cultural level there. But we've broken through that fear now, and we're doing work with groups of university students."
The Association of Combatants is also present in factories and other workplaces. "We educate other workers, giving talks on dates that commemorate a historical event or the death in combat of a martyr of the revolution," Chui Beltrán noted. "The combatants all signed the Declaration of the Mambises of the 20th Century. We took part in that effort and got people to sign it in all the neighborhoods and workplaces."
The "Declaration of the Mambises" - referring to the 19th century plebeian fighters for Cuba's independence from Spain, or mambises - was a 1997 statement signed by military officers and hundreds of thousands of other Cubans expressing support for the revolution and rejecting a public appeal by the Clinton administration to Cuban officers to overthrow the central leadership of the revolutionary government in exchange for some U.S. funds.
The combatants also play a role in military training activities, from the army reserves to the popular militias in workplaces and neighborhoods. Mobilizations such as the national Days of Defense are part of the revolutionary leadership's strategy, known as the War of the Entire People, of organizing millions of Cubans for the defense of the revolution against any imperialist assault.
"All the combatants, only a minority of whom are retired, play an important role in the military reserves," Chui Beltrán explained. "And we are always the first when it comes to the Days of Defense, and in preparing the Production and Defense Brigades in the factories. Those of us who have jobs participate in the defense units in our workplaces. And we take part in the units in our neighborhoods."
The Association of Combatants does political work in the neighborhoods. It collaborates with all the mass organizations in the country, such as the Union of Young Communists, Federation of Cuban Women, Central Organization of Cuban Workers, and National Association of Small Farmers. Members of the association set an example by joining volunteer brigades to bring in the sugar, coffee, or tobacco harvests.
"The work of our members with these institutions is all voluntary," Chui Beltrán stressed. "Since the big majority of the combatants are of working age and hold jobs, we usually do our work outside normal working hours. Members of the association do a lot of work in the evenings and on Saturdays and Sundays. We go to our meetings, we work with the mass organizations, in the schools, in the workplaces. The combatants are everywhere.
"In other words, we're not an elite that lives removed from that struggle. Wherever there is a problem, you'll see the combatants stepping forward."
Women combatants
The two generals underscored the role played by women in the
Association of Combatants. Of the 300,000 members of the
association, some 5 percent are women today. "We have women
combatants from all the different periods in the revolution,"
Chui Beltrán pointed out. "The majority of them are young
internationalists. They have served in various countries as
combatants, nurses, FAR officers, or in other capacities. For
example, the president of the Association of Combatants in
Guantánamo province is Victoria Arrúes Caraballo, who was
the head of the women's antiaircraft artillery battalion in
Angola.
He noted that "women have played a crucial role in the fight for our country's independence and sovereignty since the time of the mambises. During the war for liberation in the Sierra Maestra, for example, we had the Mariana Grajales women's platoon, which was initiated by Fidel.
"Today one of the generals of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, who is part of the leadership of the Association of Combatants, is Brig. Gen. Delsa Esther Puebla, who everyone calls Teté. She was a member of the Mariana Grajales platoon during the revolutionary war.
"The Cuban revolution itself has had many internal revolutions, and one of them was the liberation of women," Chui Beltrán added.
Balance sheet of first five years
Commenting on the first national conference of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, held December 5 in Havana, Pérez Lezcano said the meeting drew a balance sheet of their first five years. Leading up to the national gathering, discussions were organized in the 11,000 local associations as well as on the municipal and provincial levels. Some 600 delegates and 300 guests from around the island attended the conference.
"We think we've consolidated ourselves as an organization that defends the revolution," he remarked. "We went into that conference with much more experience, maturity, and unity.
"I say more unity because, before the association was founded, we were combatants from different generations who did not know each other. Sometimes we even lived in the same neighborhood, on the same block, but didn't work together as we are doing now."
Chui Beltrán agreed with Pérez Lezcano on the advances made by the Association of Combatants. He added, "Our great task is to work with the new generation - to help prepare them for the future and for today. We explain to them that under capitalism, a small group of people live well but the big majority live under terrible conditions.
"That's why we're working and fighting so hard. I tell other combatants that the revolution is once again offering us a responsibility - to unite in order to help educate the new generation. We have an important, historic task to fulfill."