BY MICHAEL BAUMANN AND JOSHUA CARROLL
HAVANA - Pombo: a Man of Che's "guerrilla," by Cuban brigadier general Harry Villegas, was the featured work at a book launching here on February 10, the final day of the Havana International Book Fair.

Both English- and Spanish-language editions of the book were presented at the event. The Spanish edition was released by Editora Política, the publishing house of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, the English by Pathfinder Press in the United States. Harry Villegas addressed the audience of nearly 50 people, along with Iraida Aguirrechu, editor of the Cuban edition and current events editor at Editora Política, and Mary-Alice Waters, editor of the English edition and president of Pathfinder Press.

Pombo (the nom de guerre of Villegas) was a young combatant in the Rebel Army, becoming an important component in Ernesto Che Guevara's column, during the Cuban revolutionary war that overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Later, he served on Guevara's general staff in guerrilla campaigns in the Congo and Bolivia. After Guevara was wounded, captured, and murdered in combat by the Bolivian army in collaboration with the CIA in October 1967, Villegas led the six combatants who broke through the army encirclement and returned to Cuba to regroup and continue their efforts. Pombo: A Man of Che's `guerrilla' is the previously unpublished account of the Bolivian campaign, based on Villegas's diary from his arrival in La Paz, Bolivia, in July 1966 to his return to Cuba in March 1968.

Iraida Aguirrechu opened the meeting with a report on efforts to make the book available in Cuba and around the world. The original Cuban edition, first printed in 1996, quickly sold out, she said, and was reprinted just in time for sales at this past summer's International Festival of Youth and Students held here and attended by 12,000 young people from around the world. Aguirrechu also described how the book has circulated in Cuba. "Unfortunately we have not been able to print enough copies for everyone to get one, but hand to hand many young people have been able to read this book," she said.

In addition to the English-language edition released by Pathfinder in 1997, the book has also been published in Argentina, Italy, and France. Two more editions are scheduled, for Portugal and Greece.

These future editions will benefit from the chronology, expanded glossary, and new footnotes provided in the U.S. edition, as will the next printing in Cuba, Aguirrechu remarked. The notes, added by Pathfinder in collaboration with Editora Política, explain, among other things, events, individuals, and "Cuban expressions that may not be known to everyone in the United States, Canada, and England," she said.

Aguirrechu introduced Mary-Alice Waters. The 30th anniversary of Che's death in combat, Waters noted, "became the profit- making occasion for the publication of numerous books purporting to be biographies of Ernesto Che Guevara." But these books, she said, "paint Che as a man who was murderous, cruel, egotistical, infantile, slovenly, and arrogant, as well as both naively utopian and driven by a deep-seated death wish." Waters stressed that these attacks on the character of Che Guevara were not aimed only at Che, but rather, "the target is Fidel, and the historic example of the Cuban revolution itself." These attacks are all aimed above all at discrediting socialism, she said. (Waters's talk is reprinted on page 10 of this issue.)

Waters also introduced At the Side of Che Guevara: Interviews with Harry Villegas (Pombo), published by Pathfinder in both English and Spanish. The booklet consists of two interviews with Villegas that cover topics from the guerrilla campaign in the Sierra Maestra to Cuba's internationalist missions in Angola that ultimately defeated an invading apartheid South African army in 1988.

Another important part of Waters's presentation was her description of how many young people have responded to these books by Pombo, particularly in the United States. She told the audience that in Houston and Los Angeles, youth "wanted to meet and hear a man who had become their hero, an example of the kind of person they would like to be." In these two cities interested youth put together organizing committees to invite Pombo to speak on their campuses. When Villegas was denied a visa by the U.S. government, 250 people participated in a protest meeting in Los Angeles to condemn this antidemocratic act.

Villegas spoke next. "The most important thing Che gave us was his example," he said. It wasn't until the "Special Period," however, that "we could completely grasp that example."

The Special Period is the term Cubans use to describe the economic hardships that have followed from the loss of trade with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the early part of the decade, compounded by the decades-long U.S. embargo.

Since the onset of the Special Period, Cubans have fought to boost production through increasing efficiency, which has required great discipline and attention to detail. These are capacities that, as Villegas explained, Guevara exemplified: "To be a professional," Che taught us in daily life, "you need to pay attention to details."

Turning to Guevara's internationalist mission in the Congo in 1965, Villegas said that Che went to Africa "because there were people there who were suffering and there were people who were fighting." Guevara wanted to fight side by side with those resisting imperialism, Villegas explained.

Villegas related a story about Che which he thought captured a formative moment in the development of the revolutionary leader.

In their first battle, shortly after landing in Cuba at Alegría de Pío in 1956, the rebel forces led by Fidel Castro came under heavy attack from the army of U.S. backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.

In that battle, in the midst of a rapid retreat, Guevara, who was at the time the troop doctor, faced the choice of grabbing his medical bag or a box of machine-gun ammunition. He took the bullets, the choice of a military combatant, Villegas noted. This was an important episode in Guevara's evolution as a "man of action," one of the outstanding military leaders in Cuba's revolutionary war. He became a man of action, Villegas said, without leaving behind the "man of thought."

Turning to the revolutionary campaign Guevara led in Bolivia in 1966 - 67, Villegas pointed to the internationalism Che personified. "Che's idea was to turn Bolivia into a Sierra Maestra," he explained, a training ground for revolutionists and "a free territory from which internationalist columns would advance into Argentina and Peru, for the total liberation of the Southern Cone."

The connection between the Cuban revolution and the international struggle against imperialism and for socialism was a theme Waters took up. She told the audience that the Cuban revolution "belongs to fighters the world over."

Villegas underscored that Che - a powerful example for young revolutionary fighters - was born in and shaped through the Cuban revolution. "The Cuban revolution created Che. Ernesto Guevara was Argentinian and Cuban, but Che belongs to Cuba. When Che became `Che,' when he began to identify himself by this name, he was a man who had undergone a profound revolutionary transformation.

"We have shared him with Africa and Bolivia," Villegas concluded, "but we are proud that Che is genuinely ours."

A total of 37 copies of Pombo: A Man of Che's `guerrilla,' At the Side of Che Guevara in English and Spanish, and related Pathfinder titles were purchased by those who attended the event.  
 
 
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