The following article appeared in the October 30 issue of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. It was titled, "Che’s work in Africa given new scrutiny: Author who aided him there hopes to demystify his hero." Víctor Dreke was interviewed while in Atlanta as part of a six-city U.S. speaking tour.

BY MONI BASU  
The worldwide interest in Ernesto "Che" Guevara, whether as stylish revolutionary or a historical figure, endures more than four decades after he was slain by U.S.-assisted Bolivian troops. But to Cuba’s faithful Fidelistas, Che’s legacy remains even more vivid.

"Some people have tried to mystify Che, but for us, he was flesh and bones," said Victor Dreke, who was Guevara’s second in command in Cuba’s failed military ventures into the Congo.

Much of Guevara’s character was revealed in his African diaries, published last year, and in Dreke’s book, published earlier this year, called "From the Escambray to the Congo: In the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution."

Dreke, 64, visiting the United States for the first time, is in Atlanta this week to talk about Cuba’s relationship with African nations.

Now the vice president of the Cuba-Africa Friendship Association, Dreke is meeting with black Georgia farmers, speaking at Clark Atlanta University and Spelman College, touring the Auburn Avenue historic district and the Martin Luther King Jr. site and talking to civil rights veterans Tyrone Brooks, the Rev. Tim McDonald and the Rev. C.T. Vivian.

In an interview this week, Dreke talked about race relations and why Castro sent his beloved friend Che to fight in post-colonial wars in Africa.

Dreke and more than 100 other Cuban volunteers--all black except Che--followed their commandante into the Congo after the assassination of socialist leader Patrice Lumumba shortly after independence. There they fought alongside the remnants of Lumumba’s nationalist movement.

As Dreke recalled, Che brimmed with courage and zeal in his quest to help Laurent Kabila’s Simba rebels oust the U.S.-supported government. But Dreke said Che faced faulty intelligence and deeply divided, ill-trained Congolese fighters.

"We had other misconceptions, too," Dreke wrote in his book. "Speaking truthfully, almost nobody here knew anything about Africa. Our image was from Tarzan movies--Tarzan and Cheeta the monkey." Dreke blamed textbooks written by capitalists in pre-revolutionary days for Cubans’ ignorance about their black brethren across the Atlantic.

The Congo experience led to Cuban troops in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and other African nations freshly freed from colonial rule. The United States accused Castro of exporting revolution; the Cubans claimed affinity with black Africans struggling against racism.

"The brutal policy of apartheid is being carried out before the eyes of the whole world," Guevara declared at the U.N. General Assembly in 1964. "The people of Africa are being compelled to tolerate in that continent the concept, still official, of the superiority of one race over another.... Can the United Nations do nothing to prevent this?"

Dreke credited Cubans of African descent with the start of Cuba’s independence movement and for the prosperity of Havana.

"The beautiful buildings of Old Havana were built with the blood and sweat of Africans," he said, defending Cuba’s "internationalist" policy. "That’s why Fidel felt compelled to pay back the debt."

The U.S. State Department estimates Cuba’s population at 37 percent white, 11 percent black, 51 percent mulatto (mixed race) and 1 percent Chinese. An estimated two-thirds of the population is believed to have some African roots.

Dreke credited Castro’s 1959 revolution with wiping Cuba clean of racial discrimination. "It wasn’t as grave as it was [in the American South], but blacks in Cuba didn’t have the same rights as whites," Dreke said. "I was not a socialist--or a Communist--but in the face of abuse, you become rebellious. From night to day, things changed for black people in Cuba."

Victor Dreke will speak with Ana Morales, a professor at Havana’s Latin American School of Medicine, on Cuba’s ties with Africa at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Interdenominational Theological Center, 700 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
 
 
Related articles:
Cubans: ‘We go to Africa to pay our debt to humanity’
Cuban revolutionaries meet with farmers in southern Georgia  
 
 
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