Invited to speak on "Cuba and Africa: from 1959 to Today" by a broad range of faculty and student groups at several university campuses, Dreke spoke in Washington, D.C.; Atlanta and Valdosta, Georgia; Birmingham, Alabama; Boston; Miami and Tampa, Florida; and Providence, Rhode Island. Ana Morales, a doctor who has led Cuban medical missions in Africa, shared the platform with him. The audiences, of up to 250-300 people, were among the largest ever for a Cuban revolutionary leader speaking in this country.

It’s not surprising that this tour has attracted such interest. Víctor Dreke was a cadre of the revolutionary movement that led millions in Cuba to overthrow the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in 1959 and to bring workers and farmers to power. Under the leadership of Ernesto Che Guevara, he was an organizer of the revolutionary tribunals that brought hundreds of Batista’s torturers and henchmen to justice. In the early 1960s Dreke was a commander of the Cuban forces that crushed the CIA-backed counterrevolutionary bands that were terrorizing working people in the Escambray mountains of central Cuba. He was second in command under Guevara of the unit of Cuban combatants that fought in the Congo alongside anti-imperialist forces there. He led Cuban volunteers in Guinea-Bissau during the independence struggle against Portuguese colonial rule. And he remains involved in leading Cuba’s solidarity work in Africa today.

Many of those who came to hear the revolutionary leader were attracted to the example of Cuba’s role in Africa--including how Cuban volunteer combatants, fighting together with Angolan and Namibian forces, smashed the invading South African apartheid army at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988. Dreke pointed out the little-known fact that Cuba committed itself to this fight with full knowledge that the South African regime had tactical nuclear weapons.

Dreke’s message had an especially powerful resonance among African Americans fighting racist discrimination in this country--from students demonstrating in Florida against the racist treatment of Haitian immigrants by the immigration cops, to veterans of civil rights battles in the South, to Black farmers fighting to stay on the land in Georgia and Alabama. Many Black youth, deeply aware of the devastating conditions of imperialist domination in Africa, were impressed by Cuba’s selfless contribution to the fight against the deadly AIDS pandemic in Africa and how the disease has been successfully combated in Cuba.

The students and others who organized successful, broadly sponsored public meetings for Dreke reaffirmed the political space that exists to have these kinds of discussions--including in Florida, where a small minority of Cuban-American right-wingers are no longer able to prevent such free exchanges of views in the way they have done for years.

The interest in Dreke’s message underscores the changes taking place among working people in the United States, including among workers who are Cuban-American. As working people here confront the increasing brutality of capitalism and the prospect of economic devastation and repeated imperialist wars, many are searching for answers and for a different road forward for humanity. Many who came to hear the revolutionary leader, particularly young people, were attracted to the powerful example of Cuba’s socialist revolution, which shows it is possible to stand up to the imperialist rulers, overthrow their rule, and open the road to building a society based on human solidarity and not capitalist degradation. They were interested in the perspective that it is not only necessary but possible to do so right here in the United States.
 
 
Related articles:
A Miami first: meeting for a leader of the Cuban Revolution
A Tampa first: the truth about ‘Cuba, Africa’
Víctor Dreke: Cuba’s mission to Guinea-Bissau
‘Miami Herald’ covers meeting for Cuban leader  
 
 
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