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 now available, with simultaneous editions in English and Spanish. Copyright © 2002 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission. To order it online, go to www.pathfinderpress.com.

The Militant will be reprinting the final part of the chapter in the next issues.
 

Waters: Where were you when the invasion at Girón began?

Dreke: In April 1961 I was head of the Hatillo militia training school, which I mentioned earlier. A session of the school had just ended, and I requested a transfer to Oriente, to the Tactical Force of Oriente in Caney de las Mercedes headed by compañero Armando Acosta. I left very early on the morning of April 17, 1961, the very day of the invasion.

On the way I stopped in Santa Clara to pick up the letter of transfer at the general staff headquarters.

When I got there, I looked around and it was bedlam. There were people coming and going every which way.

"What's happened?" I asked.

"The mercenaries have landed at Girón," someone told me--although I think they said it was the Americans that had landed. At the time I sort of knew where Girón was, but I'd never been there before.

I jumped into the car and headed for Girón. At each town I came to, I'd ask "Where's Girón?" They said it was close to Yaguaramas, so I headed over there.

When I got to Yaguaramas, I witnessed a moving scene. The population of the town was in the street asking for arms and applauding all the combatants as we passed through.

As we went through the area we could hear shots. Canefields were on fire and cars were burning.

I came across a group of militia compañeros from the 117th Battalion. I took command of the battalion and got in touch with compañero René de los Santos at the command post in Yaguaramas. Later that day we clashed with an enemy paratroop unit.

The evening of April 18 the commander in chief gave us instructions that at dawn our artillery would open fire and that our troops were to begin advancing shortly after that, to arrive in Girón at 6:00 p.m. on April 19.

As we were advancing on the 19th, I noticed it was already 4:00 p.m. and we still had quite a ways to go. I hopped in a jeep with two or three compañeros and said, "Let's get to Girón!"

The previous night three tanks had arrived, along with compañero Emilio Aragonés, and they were now accompanying us. But instead of staying with the tanks, which were our protection, the jeep got out in front of the company.

Shortly after 5:00 we fell into an ambush by one of the remaining small enemy groups. As I was aiming my rifle, I was shot in the arm and the leg. The compañeros put me in the jeep and took me to Santa Clara.

Within an hour after I was wounded, our forces took Girón.

Waters: After the first cleanup operation and the defeat of the U.S.-organized forces at the Bay of Pigs, what was the situation of the bandits? How did they regroup and reorganize?

Dreke: Out of the first cleanup, one group of bandits escaped unharmed and managed to hide. It included Osvaldo Ramírez, Tartabul, and Campito. At a famous gathering of the bandits in July 1961, called the Cicatero meeting, the bands were restructured. The CIA had its hand in this, along with Osvaldo and Evelio Duque, who were together. A dispute eventually erupted between those two over who was going to be in charge. But at this meeting, a new structure was created that involved dividing up the bandits in the Escambray by zone, by area.¹

In response, we divided up the Escambray into sectors, structuring it the way the bandits had done. We'd received pretty good information from State Security.

The three main sectors we set up in the Escambray were Sector A, Sector F, and Sector G. Sector A encompassed Salto de Habanilla, which was a very important area, one of the most mountainous zones of the Escambray. Sector F was in Banao. And Sector G was in Minas Bajas, which is next to the Santa Clara region.

The first headquarters of the Escambray section was set up in Manicaragua. Later it was transferred to Trinidad.

There were additional sectors, as well. Sector B was created in the Yaguajay zone, encompassing Florencia, Tamarindo, Arroyo Blanco, and the zone where the bandit Mario Bravo and those people were. Sector C covered the zone of Rodas, Cartagena, part of Cienfuegos, and Aguada de Pasajeros, where there were also bandits. Sector D covered Sagua-Corralillo. Sector E encompassed Camagüey, Ciego de Avila, and all those places, which were then a single province going up to the border of Oriente province. Those were the main sectors at that time. There were also the Matanzas sectors, which I'm not going to get into right now.

What were the characteristics of the sectors and subsectors?

Each sector had a four-person command: a military head, a political instructor, a chief of information, and a doctor or nurse. Since at that time we didn't have too many doctors, the fourth was often a nurse. In 1961, when the literacy campaign began, we added a teacher, since our soldiers were illiterate and they too were learning how to read and write. Each sector was then divided into zones. With this structure, a more organized and effective stage of the battle began.

In July 1962 the commander in chief and the minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces created a specialized command, the LCB--Lucha Contra Bandidos [struggle against bandits]. This new command operated in the Escambray, in Las Villas province, and throughout the country.

Those of us assigned to the LCB were the same ones who'd previously participated in pursuing the bandits as members of the Rebel Army and the militias. The command was headed up by compañero Raúl Menéndez Tomassevich. Previously the fight against the bandits had been directed by Piti Fajardo and then Dermidio Escalona; after Tomassevich it was headed by Osvaldo "Pineo" Lorenzo Castro and then Lizardo Proenza.

I was second in command of the LCB overall and headed the forces in the Escambray sector, an area that includes parts of the present-day provinces of Cienfuegos, Sancti Spíritus, and Villa Clara. At that time these were all part of a single province, Las Villas.

We began operations with information provided by the peasants.

"There's a group of bandits over there," they would tell us.

We'd run out to catch them. Sometimes there would be bandits, sometimes just peasants cutting undergrowth. Other times they'd tell us there were bandits somewhere, and we'd say: "There aren't any bandits there; that's crazy. It's all lies." Then it turned out there really were bandits there. All those things happened during the initial stage of the fight.

We established a very important school in Condado, the Corporals' School. Its purpose was to train leaders of squads and other small units that would be the first troops to clash with the enemy.

A corporal is the immediate superior for a squad. It's a very important rank. Because in a military operation each piece of terrain is covered by a squad, that is, by seven, eight, sometimes ten men. It varied. Seven was the usual figure for us at the time, and there was a leader among these seven men who commanded the group.

So a school was established to prepare these youth for command, since they were peasants, workers, students who had no military background. They hadn't participated in the war of liberation. And the Rebel Army wasn't big enough to fill all the command positions we now needed. We were not even three thousand men in arms at the time the revolution triumphed. But even before, the idea had never been for the Rebel Army to hold all the command positions. Why? Because, as Camilo said, the Rebel Army was the people--it was the people in uniform.

The situation was the same in the Escambray.

In addition to compañeros already in the Rebel Army, the school included the militia officers, who we referred to as militia lieutenants, to be trained as battalion and company commanders, and so on. There were company-level people, such as Gustavo Castellón--"the Mayaguara Horse"--Julián Morejón, Catalino Olaechea, and others who became quite famous in the struggle against the bandits.

During this new stage, State Security began to play a more important, a more fundamental role than previously. I mentioned earlier that there were places where we lacked information. State Security was now beginning to get organized. Wherever we had a sector there was a State Security group. They worked on their own but they collaborated with us in the LCB.

Furthermore, the party had its own structure in the zone. The Federation of Women, the CDRs, ANAP, and the youth organization were all working in the zone.² In other words, the revolutionary organizations were participating together with us throughout the entire battle. The political and ideological work they conducted was very important.

In addition, a series of social measures were taken in the Escambray.

Medical centers were set up throughout the region with doctors from Havana or Santa Clara, and medical supplies were made available to the population. The first doctors to graduate after the victory of the revolution, those who were in medical school at the time of the triumph, were sent to the Escambray. Schools were established, and we provided teachers for them.

We set up the Ana Betancourt School in Havana, where young women from the Escambray came to learn sewing and other skills. They were housed in the mansions abandoned by wealthy owners--some the former landlords of the peasant women. Later they went back to the Escambray to teach the same skills to others.

Plus we established what was called the "Escambray Plan" to develop agriculture in the region. Members of the LCB would help the peasants during the coffee harvests, for example.

Every officer was there with his unit. We were present in the battles, combing the area together with the troops, exchanging fire with the bandits. This is one of the things about our armed forces that allowed us to wipe out the bandits--the personal example of the commanding officers, who were always with their troops in combat.

Along these lines, the compañeros sometimes tell a story about me. I don't remember it, so I don't know if it's true or not. One night, they say, I was asleep in camp. One of the compañeros returning from guard duty didn't recognize who I was and woke me up, saying, "Hey, get me some food." Or "Bring me some water to cook with." Because the commanding officers were right there along with the rest of the men. You were just like everybody else. That's how the struggle against the bandits was.

The commander in chief himself was the first to set the example, on the front lines, firing at the bandits. This was an extremely dangerous time. The death of Fidel would have been very dangerous for the revolution. But as he would say, "We have to set the example." That's the way it is. And besides, Fidel is Fidel, always in the front lines of combat.

Like when there's a hurricane. The commander heads right out there and no one can stop him.³ That's the way he is. We wish he wouldn't do that, but we love him more for it. It's the same with Raúl. The minister is our best teacher.

During the early part of this phase of the struggle to eliminate the bandits, these bands murdered many people--because, even though we had this structure set up, it really wasn't operationally strong at first. There'd be a company of 100 men, let's say. But since it had to cover such a vast territory, when the company went here, the bandits would hit you there; when you went there, they'd hit you here. They started burning down stores, murdering literacy brigadistas, and instilling fear among the teachers who were participating in the literacy campaign.

There were moments when we couldn't do anything and that made us so angry. They'd attack some place and we'd arrive and comb the area, catching one or two of them. But the next day they'd be attacking somewhere else.
 

1. At the July 1961 meeting held in the tiny village of Cicatero, the surviving bandit leaders divided up the Escambray into five zones. By the beginning of 1962, there were some 500 men in 41 bands in Las Villas province, and another 30 groups in the rest of the country.

2. This is a reference to the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP), and the Association of Rebel Youth (AJR), which in April 1962 became the Union of Young Communists (UJC).

3. Hurricane Flora slammed into eastern Cuba in October 1963, killing more than a thousand people, destroying 10,000 homes, and severely damaging agricultural production. In the midst of the hurricane, Fidel Castro went to the affected area and became directly involved in the rescue operation.  
 
 
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