The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 70/No. 11           March 20, 2006  
 
 
Cuban combatants host tour on book
of interviews with Chinese-Cuban generals
(feature article)
 
BY MARTÍN KOPPEL  
HAVANA—“How is it possible for Cuba today to send nearly 20,000 doctors to Venezuela, and 2,500 doctors to Pakistan as volunteers, just as we previously sent thousands of combatants to Angola to defend that country’s independence?” asked Brig. Gen. Moisés Sío Wong.

“It’s possible because we have a socialist revolution, a revolution that has educated our people in the spirit of solidarity and internationalism. And that’s why this book is important for the new generations. It explains what the Cuban Revolution is about, what socialism is about.”

Sío Wong was speaking at the National Combatants Center in Havana to an enthusiastic audience composed of multiple generations of revolutionary fighters as well as students from a nearby high school. The February 16 meeting of 125 people was one of seven such events held in Havana and in cities across central Cuba to present Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution, recently published by Pathfinder Press in both English and Spanish.

In the book Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui, and Sío Wong recount how, as young rebels of Chinese-Cuban ancestry, they joined the 1956-58 revolutionary war that overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship and opened the door to the first socialist revolution in the Americas. Each of the three, who became generals in Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces, today continue to shoulder important leadership responsibilities.

The book was launched at the February 3-12 Havana International Book Fair (see coverage in the February 27 issue). The following week it was presented at three events in Havana and in four cities and towns where some of the events recounted in the book occurred: Matanzas, Santo Domingo, Santa Clara, and Fomento.

The Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, an organization that brings together 300,000 Cubans who have participated in revolutionary struggles at home or internationalist missions abroad, hosted the event.

Each of the meetings held outside Havana was hosted by the city government and the provincial Communist Party of Matanzas, Villa Clara, or Sancti Spíritu. Local leaders of the Communist Party and the government warmly welcomed the speakers and joined them on the platform. Altogether, nearly 600 people attended the events, most of them revolutionary combatants—including many comrades-in-arms of Choy, Chui, or Sío Wong—as well as a number of high school and university students.

Two of the generals spoke at each of the events, as well as Mary-Alice Waters, Pathfinder president and editor of the book, and Iraida Aguirrechu of Editora Política, the publishing house of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Introducing Waters at the National Combatants Center, Aguirrechu noted that in recent years the national leadership of the Combatants Association has hosted a number of meetings—both in Havana and other cities—to present Pathfinder books featuring interviews with Cuban revolutionary combatants.

Waters explained that Pathfinder has published Our History Is Still Being Written “because it is needed by those on the front lines of the class struggle, wherever they may be. Because the example of the Cuban Revolution is not only a moral one, great as that is. It is a practical lesson for our class of how to fight—and most importantly, how to win.”  
 
Meeting in Havana’s Chinatown
One of the meetings was held at the House of Chinese Arts and Traditions in Havana’s historic Chinatown. Most in the audience of 60 were involved in various Chinese cultural activities, from members of Chinese societies—founded in the 19th and early 20th centuries—to a group of young Ministry of Interior immigration officials taking Chinese languages classes there. Many expressed pride in what they called “our three generals” and were excited about the new book.

“This book is a dream become reality,” said Sío Wong. He told the audience how Our History Is Still Being Written came about through the course of several interviews over four years.

Chui explained that the new title describes how tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants were brought to Cuba as indentured labor in the 19th century, and their weight in Cuban history. “Thousands of Chinese fought in our independence wars, including some all-Chinese battalions. As Gen. Gonzalo de Quesada said at the time, ‘There was not a single Chinese-Cuban deserter. There was not a single Chinese-Cuban traitor.’”

For more than a century, Sío Wong said, there was discrimination against the Chinese in Cuba, especially poor Chinese-Cubans. “It took a socialist revolution to end that systematic discrimination,” he noted.

The example of the Cuban Revolution needs to be known worldwide, Sío Wong said. “We are working to ensure this book is translated to Chinese too. In China little is known about our revolution.”

It is no secret to anyone, he said, that between the mid-1960s and the end of the 1980s, relations between China and Cuba were not good. For example, he noted, “Chinese troops served as advisers to mercenary forces from Zaire invading Angola,” while Cuban volunteer troops were fighting alongside the Angolan army to beat back the imperialist-backed invasion by the South African and Zairean regimes.

As a result, during that period “nothing was published in China about Cuba, and nothing was said here about China,” Sío Wong said. “That’s why this book is so important today.”

After the speakers’ remarks, several members of the audience took the floor. Meiling Wong, a 19-year-old martial arts instructor and Tai Chi champion, said, “This book allows us, as young descendents of Chinese, to read about our roots. It’s a source of pride.” Carmen Eng, director of the House of Chinese Arts and Traditions, spoke along similar lines, as did Roberto Vargas Lee, president of the Cuban Wushu Association, and Li San, a leader of the Chung Wah Casino, a major cultural center in Havana’s Chinatown.  
 
Sugar workers in struggle
In Santo Domingo, a town of 26,000 in what is now Villa Clara province, the exchange between the speakers and the working-class audience brought to life Cuba’s revolutionary history. The meeting was held at the National Research Center on Tropical Root Vegetables (INIVIT), which, workers at the facility said, played an important role in developing strains of pest-resistant plants as part of Cuba’s successful efforts to overcome the food shortages of the 1990s.

Santo Domingo, residents reported, had the largest proportion of combatants of any town in the province during the revolutionary struggle. It was a stronghold of the sugar workers union, and one of the towns that sugar workers took over during the 1955 strike of 200,000 cane cutters and mill workers.

Choy spoke along with Chui. He explained that he was born in nearby Fomento and went to high school in Santa Clara, where he became a member of the July 26 Movement. In May 1958 he joined a July 26 guerrilla unit led by Commander Víctor Bordón, which later that year became part of the Rebel Army’s Column 8 led by Ernesto Che Guevara. “In Column 8 there were six of us who were sons of Chinese immigrants,” he said.

“The victory of this struggle, led by Fidel [Castro], opened the door to a total change. At the time, 99 percent of us didn’t consider ourselves socialists. We didn’t learn about socialism through documents,” Choy said, referring to the young ranks of the Rebel Army. “It was through the measures Fidel led us to carry out that benefited the Cuban people.”

One of those speaking from the audience at the Santo Domingo meeting was Edelberto González, who was Choy’s commander when he joined the July 26 guerrilla front in the Escambray mountains. González, known by his nom-de-guerre Captain Cente, recounted how Choy led a combat unit in storming the Santo Domingo army barracks in the days before the Jan. 1, 1959, revolutionary victory.

“Today we can be proud of what the Cuban people accomplished. Because of the blood we shed, no imperialist power can come in and take away what we have won,” González said.

After the program, Ricardo Uz and other workers described how they had organized underground cells of the July 26 Movement at the George Washington sugar mill, owned by dictator Fulgencio Batista. “In 1956, on the last day of the harvest, after we had all left the mill, we blew up Batista’s warehouses, destroying 250,000 sacks of sugar—his entire harvest there,” he said with a grin. About a third of the 300 mill workers were organized into revolutionary activity.  
 
Experiences in Angola
The three generals also drew on their experiences in Angola told in Our History Is Still Being Written. Speaking at the National Combatants Center in Havana, Chui noted, “More than 300,000 Cubans went to Angola between 1975 and 1990, all of them volunteers,” responding to the request for aid by the newly independent government of Angola to defeat the imperialist-backed invasion by South Africa’s apartheid regime. “Angola is a country rich in resources, but we didn’t go there for the resources, not even for a barrel of oil. When we returned, we brought back only our dead,” Chui said. He explained that as a result of these efforts, “we defeated the apartheid regime and won independence for Namibia.”

The presentation of Our History received substantial media coverage. It was covered by the daily Granma, Prensa Latina news agency, the online cultural magazine La Jiribilla, and several radio stations. The Santa Clara event was covered by the provincial paper Vanguardia, the national evening TV news, and the Havana TV channel, which ran a 20-minute segment featuring the remarks by Waters.

Over the course of the book fair and subsequent events, some 750 copies of Our History Is Still Being Written were sold or distributed to individuals, organizations, libraries, and other institutions.  
 
 
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