Dreke fought in the Cuban revolutionary war, led by the Rebel Army, that overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in January 1959. In the early 1960s, he was a commander of the volunteer battalions that fought the U.S-organized counterrevolutionary bands in the Escambray mountains of central Cuba. In 1965 he was second in command of the column of Cuban internationalist volunteers, headed by Ernesto Che Guevara, that joined with national liberation fighters in the Congo. He subsequently carried out numerous internationalist missions in Africa.

Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder Press, and Luis Madrid, a Pathfinder editor, conducted the first session of the interview with Dreke in Havana on Oct. 26, 1999. Pathfinder editor Michael Taber and Perspectiva Mundial editor Martín Koppel joined Waters in a second interview session on Dec. 2, 2001.

This book is scheduled to be released February 1, with simultaneous editions in English and Spanish. Copyright © 2002 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission.

The Militant will be reprinting the rest of the chapter in upoming issues.
 

In 1959–60 the new Cuban power, at the same time inspiring and responding to a rising mass movement, implemented more and more measures in the interests of workers and farmers. As the revolution deepened, the capitalists and landlords and their retainers, with the encouragement and growing support of Washington, sought to overthrow the new government and return themselves to power, restoring their lost property and privileges.

They organized and armed counterrevolutionary bands throughout Cuba. In the cities they began a campaign of arson and sabotage, setting fire to department stores and factories. Well over a hundred Cubans were killed in these terrorist attacks in the first years.

In the rural areas the armed counterrevolutionary groups increasingly became centered in the Escambray mountains of central Cuba. By 1960 dozens of such bands--known in Cuba as simply los bandidos, the bandits--were carrying out assassinations and sabotage actions, burning sugarcane fields, and attacking centers of production.

Singled out as special targets were the thousands of teenage literacy brigade volunteers who fanned out across the countryside in early 1961 to teach peasants and workers to read and write, effectively eliminating illiteracy in Cuba by the end of the year. The particularly brutal murder of nineteen-year-old literacy volunteer Conrado Benítez and peasant Eliodoro Rodríguez Linares in January 1961 gave fresh impetus to the massive militia mobilization that was the heart of the first limpia, as Cubans called the clean-up operation to eliminate los bandidos.

Leaders of the counterrevolutionary bands included men who had at one time taken part in the anti-Batista struggle, as well as others who had either supported Batista or had played no role during the revolutionary war. In the pages that follow, Dreke describes a number of these individuals.

The bandits were armed, supplied, and directed by Washington, which accelerated its aggressive course. In the preparations for what became the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, the U.S. administrations of Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy planned for these groups to play an important support role in the aggression. But the Rebel Army and Revolutionary National Militia took decisive action in late 1960 and early 1961 to eliminate that threat.

On April 17, 1961, an expeditionary force of 1,500 Cuban mercenaries--organized, financed, and deployed by Washington--invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs on the southern coast. The counterrevolutionaries aimed to spark an antigovernment uprising while holding a beachhead on Cuban territory long enough to install a provisional government already formed in the United States that would appeal for Washington's support and for direct military intervention. In less than seventy-two hours of intense combat, however, the mercenaries were defeated by Cuba's militias, Revolutionary Armed Forces, Revolutionary Air Force, and Revolutionary National Police. On April 19 the remaining invaders were captured at Playa Girón (Girón Beach), which is the name Cubans use to designate the battle.

Víctor Dreke led the two companies from the 117th Battalion that headed to Playa Girón coming in from the village of Yaguaramas to the east. He was wounded in combat.

Another blow to the bandits in the Escambray and their sponsors and armorers in Washington came in October 1963, with the second agrarian reform. This revolutionary measure confiscated landholdings in excess of 165 acres from the remaining 10,000 capitalist farmers, bringing property relations on the land in line with those already established through the expropriation of capitalist industry in the latter half of 1960.

By the end of 1964, as Dreke describes, the fight against the bandits--la lucha contra bandidos--had largely been won. In a mop-up operation, the last groups of bandits were eliminated in 1965.

This history of the revolutionary struggle in the Escambray was brought to life in 1999 for new generations of young people in Cuba.

That year eight organizations, representing the majority of the population, joined together to file suit in the Provincial People's Court of the City of Havana to demand that Washington be compelled to pay damages for the human consequences of its forty-year ongoing effort to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. The court hearings in The People of Cuba v. the U.S. Government included scores of witnesses giving firsthand testimony detailing U.S. crimes against the Cuban people--thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in physical destruction. The court ruled on November 2, 1999, handing down damages against Washington of $181 billion for the human cost of these crimes.

Witnesses gave testimony in court that in the Escambray, between 1960 and 1965, the bandits were responsible for the deaths of 549 Cubans.

They also pointed out how the fight to defeat the bandits helped mobilize the power of Cuba's workers and farmers during those years, thus strengthening the Cuban Revolution for the challenges to come.
 

Waters: Outside Cuba, the fight against the counterrevolutionary bands in the Escambray in the first half of the 1960s is a little-known chapter of the revolution. Yet it's one of the decisive battles that molded the revolution. Knowing something about that struggle also helps explain why for more than forty years Washington has underestimated the strength of the revolution. And why, in spite of their concerted military, economic, and political efforts, the U.S. rulers have been unable to crush it.

Who were the bandits? Where did they come from?

Dreke: When we were talking about the war of liberation, I mentioned a number of individuals who had participated in the revolutionary struggle who were in fact adventurers. There were others who were simply opportunist self-seekers, individuals out to grab power, who believed when the revolution triumphed they would trade places with the thieves who had been in control. They would trade places with the brothel owners and become the new owners of the brothels, prostitutes and all.

Early on in the struggle, these people tried to fan the political differences and take advantage of them. As you know, in Cuba there were various revolutionary organizations in the struggle, and some of those people tried to use the divisions flowing from that fact.

Take Evelio Duque, for instance. At the time of the revolutionary war, Duque had been in contact with the Revolutionary Directorate. Even though he was of peasant origin, he had nothing in common with our peasants--our guajiros--who in general are good people, noble and friendly people. He was the opposite.

After the revolution's victory, Duque was one of those who tried to recruit to the counterrevolution other compañeros he knew who had fought in the struggle. He tried to divide the different organizations that had fought side by side--organizations that had accepted the leadership of Fidel [Castro] and Che [Guevara] and whose unity contributed to the revolution's triumph. That's what Evelio Duque tried to do.

There was Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, who had also been in the struggle and had betrayed the revolution from the beginning. His first betrayal was leading the split that resulted in the expulsion of the Second National Front of the Escambray. We talked about that earlier. And he continued betraying.

There was William Morgan, the American, who was also part of the Second Front. He was another one who took up arms against the revolution.

There was Plinio Prieto, who was from the Authentic Organization, the group of Aureliano Sánchez Arango and Prío Socarrás. They didn't want to hear anything about revolution.

There was Sinesio Walsh, who was from the July 26 Movement but didn't have anything to do with its principles.

In other words, these are people who belonged to a revolutionary organization, if the July 26 or Revolutionary Directorate armbands and other symbols they had worn were taken at face value. But deep down they didn't answer to either of those two revolutionary organizations, nor to the Popular Socialist Party. They were traitors in waiting, adventurers who wanted to grab power, to be able to keep committing abuses and keep stealing.

Waters: Why did the Escambray mountains become a center for these counterrevolutionary forces? What was going on in the Escambray?

Dreke: In Cuba at the triumph of the revolution there were a half million illiterates, and there were another half million who were only semiliterate. That was the concrete situation. If one were to go to Pinar del Río or to the Escambray the situation was terrible. There was no electricity, no running water--what little water there was came from wells. There were no stores. There were few radios, since you couldn't even receive radio signals throughout much of these mountainous areas. All this made the enemy's job easier.

From the time of the revolutionary war, nearly all these individuals I've talked about--who would eventually become counterrevolutionaries--were concentrated in the Escambray. They worked on some peasants and managed to recruit a few. At the same time, they also committed abuses in the areas where they functioned. They murdered peasants, they raped peasant women. They burned down schools and homes. So the peasants were terrorized; they were deathly afraid of the counterrevolutionaries. Some peasants joined them consciously, of course, but others joined out of fear. This is how the counterrevolutionary movement was built.

One of their first actions was the attempt to take Trinidad and destroy the revolution. I'm referring to the attempted landing organized by Dominican President Trujillo.1

There were others who didn't commit murders--such as Luis Vargas, to give you a concrete example. Vargas had always been a bandit who devoted himself full time to robbery. He stole here; he stole there; he rustled cattle; he had five or ten wives. Luis Vargas had always been in armed rebellion in the Escambray, until finally we put an end to the notorious Luis Vargas.

In some other parts of Las Villas province, in the Sagua-Corralillos eastern region, there were persons such as Benito Campos and his son Martí, the "Campitos." These people and others like them had been characterized by the same immorality and the same unwillingness to do battle with the dictator's army. These were people who simply wanted to become the new millionaires.

Waters: In several of Fidel's speeches during 1962 he spoke of problems in the application and implementation of the Agrarian Reform in Matanzas and the Escambray. He pointed out that this political situation was responsible for the fact that the bandits gained some influence among layers of the peasants.

Dreke: Yes, that's true. At the beginning no authentic agrarian reform was carried out in the Escambray. Why was this? Because those in charge of the agrarian reform in Trinidad and Sancti Spíritus weren't in fact revolutionaries.

One of those in charge of the agrarian reform there, for example, was the counterrevolutionary Evelio Duque who I just mentioned. Duque headed up INRA in Sancti Spíritus, and he removed the compañeros who were revolutionaries from the agrarian reform and its leadership. He removed people like Commander Julio Castillo, a revolutionary who was highly regarded in Sancti Spíritus. Then Duque recruited others who, like himself, weren't revolutionaries.

What did Duque do? He committed a series of injustices. He expropriated land that shouldn't have been taken. Or else he extorted money in exchange for not expropriating someone's land.

So the agrarian reform wasn't implemented as the commander in chief and the revolutionary leadership had laid out in the Agrarian Reform Law. Nor as Che and the compañeros of the Directorate had done during the war.2

One of those in charge of the agrarian reform there was William Morgan, who devised a plan called Rana Toro [bullfrog]. Rana Toro was a scheme to bring in weapons and hide them in Charco Azul, in order to prepare an uprising by the bandits. This same William Morgan, who had murdered peasants and raped women during the war in the zone where the Second National Front of the Escambray operated, was preparing the conditions for an uprising.

Another one of these individuals was the notorious Jesús Carreras, who had also been a leader of the Second Front.

In fairness, it's important to state that while the Second Front was dominated by a group of criminals and traitors, some young revolutionaries also found their way into its ranks. They were victims of those people, and they're here with the revolution today. The revolution hasn't tossed them off, because not everybody in the Second Front was the same. To say otherwise would be illogical and untrue. There were exceptions. There were also peasants who took up arms and later put them back down and left the bandits, after realizing they had made a mistake.

But the leadership of the Second Front did have characteristics that made them act this way. And later they united with others who were traitors, embezzlers, and rapists. All those of that ilk got together. Some came from the Directorate, others from the July 26 Movement, some from other places, and they all joined together with the worst elements of the Second Front.

It's also true that at first the necessary attention wasn't paid to the Escambray. The most qualified persons were not utilized there, and we didn't stay on top of things. We should have designated those in charge of major responsibilities. That's my personal opinion.

Already in 1959 there were bandits there. I was in a position to know, since, along with other compañeros, I participated in various operations in the Escambray.

The enemies of the revolution had already studied the situation, and they realized the Escambray would be the best spot for them. There were problems within the revolutionary ranks, and our work there was the weakest.

Some bandits had posts initially.

Osvaldo Ramírez, the murderer and traitor, was squadron chief of the Caracusey garrison in Trinidad. And the first thing he did was to run the peasants off their farms and take away their land. You must know what that meant. Captain San Luis, who was squadron chief in Trinidad and later became a combatant in Che's unit in Bolivia, had to go there and kick him out. That's why Osvaldo was dismissed. But it was an error to let Osvaldo take the position there as squadron chief in the first place.

Sinesio Walsh--the same person I talked of earlier--was named squadron chief in Cruces.

Benito Campos--"Campito"--was chief in the Corralillo zone, where he committed atrocities.

The conscious revolutionaries at that time were not yet Marxists or Leninists--and I'm not just speaking about myself--but at least we wanted a revolution. We wanted to prevent the bourgeoisie from returning to power. We wanted the poor to be in charge. We wanted racial equality. That's what we were then. But the fact is we gave the Escambray to the bandits as a gift during the first stage. That has to be said.

When the first clean-up operation began in 1960, when the army arrived, when Fidel arrived, the peasants responded, and entire battalions of peasant militias from the Escambray were formed. The peasants asked for weapons and they defended the Escambray. So what the enemy thought was going to be a den of thieves was, by determined revolutionary combat, turned into a bulwark of the revolution.  
 
 
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