A second Pathfinder title, October 1962: The ‘Missile’ Crisis as Seen from Cuba by Tomás Diez Acosta, was also presented at the February 3 event. The meeting, organized as part of the 11-day-long Havana International Book Fair, drew nearly 100 people.

In addition to Villegas, speakers included Brig. Gen. Delsa Esther "Teté" Puebla and Mary-Alice Waters, editor of Marianas in Combat. Introducing the book October 1962 was Carlos Lechuga, who was appointed Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations during the decisive events described in the book. Iraida Aguirrechu, current affairs editor at the Cuban publishing house Editora Política, chaired the meeting. Editora Política publishes a Spanish edition of the book by Diez Acosta.

Joining the platform were Vilma Espín, president of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba; Commander Belarmino Castilla Mas, a vice-president of Cuba’s Council of Ministers; and author Tomás Diez Acosta, of the Institute of Cuban History.

In the audience were a number of veteran revolutionary combatants. Many, like Puebla, had taken part in the revolutionary war, led by the Rebel Army and July 26 Movement, that overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista on Jan. 1, 1959. Lilia Rielo was one of Puebla’s comrades-in-arms in the Mariana Grajales Women’s Platoon, the groundbreaking female combat unit of the Rebel Army. Brig. Gen. Rolando Kindelán had gone to the Sierra Maestra mountains together with Teté Puebla in July 1957 to join the guerrilla army led by Fidel Castro; he is currently president of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution in Havana.

Also present was Brig. Gen. Rafael Moracén Limonta, head of international relations for the Association of Combatants. The Association, many of whose members took part in the event, is made up of revolutionary fighters spanning several generations, from the revolutionary war to Cuba’s missions of internationalist solidarity around the world.

Aguirrechu noted that Marianas in Combat is Pathfinder’s latest in a growing number of books and pamphlets on the Cuban Revolution, many of which have been presented at the Havana Book Fair in recent years. These include, she said, Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58 and the Bolivian Diary by Che Guevara; Pombo: A Man of Che’s ‘Guerrilla’ by Harry Villegas; Making History: Interviews with Four Generals of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces; Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs by Fidel Castro and José Ramón Fernández; and From the Escambray to the Congo by Víctor Dreke. Aguirrechu introduced Waters as the president of Pathfinder and a member of the Political Committee of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States. (See accompanying remarks by Waters in this issue.)  
 
Needed by working people
Waters noted that around the world there are growing numbers of youth who, "like the young Teté of this book, are unwilling to accept the brutal realities of the capitalist world in which they live. Among them is a small but growing vanguard that is beginning to search ever more insistently in the experiences of past revolutionary struggles for the lessons that can help point a way forward in today’s world."

Pathfinder has published the story of Teté Puebla and the Mariana Grajales Women’s Platoon, like the other titles mentioned by Aguirrechu, Waters said, because these books show how "only an uncompromising struggle to destroy the state power of the capitalist rulers and replace it with the power of the toilers can open the door to the ‘other world’ that is so frequently demanded" by young people entering political activity today. This is why the example of the Cuban revolution continues to be decisive, she said

Waters noted that Cuba’s socialist revolution has, in a few short years, "brought the kind of advances in the economic and social status of women that it took well over a century of struggle to partially achieve in the imperialist world and are still a distant dream for hundreds of millions of women throughout the so-called third world."

In her remarks Gen. Puebla explained with humor that "it wasn’t easy to do the interview. It took two rounds. Compañero Villegas almost locked me in his office" with the interviewers to get it done. "One can talk a lot about the revolutionary war, what others did," she said, "but it’s difficult for me to talk about myself."  
 
Women in the revolution
"This book tells part of the story of my life," Puebla said, "starting with my youth and participation in the revolutionary war, and the work that Cuban women have carried out over the past 44 years of the revolution."

She pointed to the involvement of women in mass organizations such as the Federation of Cuban Women; the integration of growing numbers of women into the work force; the concrete place of revolutionary cadres who are women in winning support for the revolution from Cuban peasants as they work alongside them in the fields; and the work carried out by many women in assisting the children and families of war victims.

"One of our greatest achievements is the integration of women into the revolution," Puebla said. Cuba’s revolutionary leadership, beginning with Fidel Castro, has actively promoted this process, she emphasized.

Villegas, the executive vice president of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, began by citing the foreword to Marianas in Combat by Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida, president of the combatants’ association. Teté Puebla’s account, writes Almeida, helps readers discover for themselves "her revolutionary fiber, and to appreciate more deeply the generosity and firmness of our revolution."

Villegas and Puebla grew up together in Yara in eastern Cuba, and he concentrated his remarks on some of the experiences they shared. "Teté joined the underground movement in Yara, a small town where everyone knew each other"--a fact that increased the dangers. The Batista dictatorship’s army maintained an intimidating presence there, and the regime’s informers reported on any "suspicious" activity.

In 1956, as a teenager, Teté was one of the first to join an underground cell of the July 26 Movement that organized the struggle in Yara. "I’m talking about a young woman who was 15 years old," Villegas said, "who like other young women danced, played, laughed, enjoyed life, but when it became necessary to fight for her country, joined the revolutionary struggle."

In July 1957 it became too dangerous for Puebla to remain in Yara. A few months later, when Villegas arrived in the Sierra Maestra mountains to join the Rebel Army, "Teté was already there," he said. Her presence in the Rebel Army’s command post had a big impact on him. "You can imagine how happy I was to see a compañera from my town there."

Over the following months, Villegas explained, "Teté carried out important missions." In July 1958, after defeating a major army offensive, the Rebel Army leadership handed over several hundred captured soldiers to the International Red Cross, forcing the Batista regime to agree to a truce while the transfer took place.

"Teté was designated by Fidel as a messenger to give the army the proposal for an arrangement to turn over the prisoners," Villegas said. "She went carrying a white flag, risking her life." She had to give the message to Merob Sosa, a major in Batista’s army who was infamous as an officer responsible for acts of murder and abuses against the peasants and rural population.  
 
The ‘Marianas’
In September 1958, Puebla became a founder and second in command of the Mariana Grajales Women’s Platoon, an all-female combat unit.

"The Marianas," Villegas explained, "were a group of 13 determined and daring women who fought, arms in hand." It was difficult for Fidel to convince everyone in the Rebel Army command that it was correct to form the platoon, "and that women could really use weapons just like the men. But he did," Villegas said. As a lieutenant, Puebla took part in numerous battles, several of which she describes in the book.

"The Marianas platoon was an extraordinarily important element in further increasing the morale of the troops of the Rebel Army," Villegas noted.

After the victory of the revolutionary forces in January 1959, "Teté did not simply live off the glory of having been in the Sierra Maestra and in the Marianas," Villegas said. She took on a number of responsibilities, from director of the Rebel Army’s Department of Assistance to War Victims and their families, to head of education in the Eastern Army, to director of the Guaicanamar Cattle Plan in Jaruco, in Havana province.

"You can see in Teté an example of revolutionary fiber, an example to emulate," Villegas said. "That is why you must read this book."  
 
October 1962
In opening the portion of the program on October 1962: The ‘Missile’ Crisis as Seen from Cuba, Aguirrechu noted that Editora Política’s Spanish edition of the book had quickly sold out, and that a new printing is under way. She then introduced Mary-Alice Waters.

"Hundreds of books have been published in the United States on what is commonly known there as the Missile Crisis," said Waters. "But until October of last year, there was not one--not a single one--that did not treat those events as a cold war conflict between two superpowers in which the revolutionary government and the people of Cuba were largely absent. They were like the movie Thirteen Days, where Cuba is seen once or twice as a palm-studded launching platform for some antiaircraft artillery, and that is it."

The great merit of Tomás Diez’s book, Waters said, "is that it places squarely at the center of the screen the fact that the October Crisis began with Washington’s reaction to what happened on Jan. 1, 1959. The determination to crush the Cuban Revolution accelerated after the victory of the Cuban people at the Bay of Pigs and the Kennedy administration’s renewed invasion preparations. It was not the ‘wise statesmanship’ of Kennedy or Khrushchev that prevented a nuclear holocaust, as is so often argued by their apologists."

Several days into the crisis, Waters pointed out, Kennedy was informed by the Pentagon of the stunning cost in American lives that Cuban resistance to an invasion would entail, and "thus the political price for him, his administration, and its place in history." It was the "calm determination and, above all, the battle-readiness of millions of Cubans to defend their sovereignty and their socialist revolution," she emphasized, "that stayed the hand of Washington."

"It was also that determination that helped win me and others of my generation in the United States to a lifetime of support for the Cuban Revolution and to the communist movement," Waters said.

Carlos Lechuga emphasized that the book deals with the October Crisis from the Cuban perspective, telling the truth about the events. First and foremost, he said, the book explains that the cause of the conflict "was the aggressive U.S. policy against Cuba since the first days of the revolution." (Lechuga’s remarks will be published in a coming issue of the Militant.)

Leading up to October 1962, the Kennedy administration stepped up its acts of sabotage, attempts to assassinate Cuban leaders, and other counterrevolutionary actions against Cuba, while trying to isolate Cuba diplomatically.

"Cuba’s position was always based on principles--on the defense of its sovereignty, on its right to have the weapons it considered necessary to repel the aggression of which it was a victim," Lechuga said. "Cuba did not compromise on its right to refuse to be inspected, nor did it agree to negotiate any encroachment on its independence."

The Cuban leadership, he said, acted on the basis that "the country’s security depends above all on the courage, determination, and readiness of the people to participate in its defense."

Those in the audience purchased almost 90 copies in Spanish and 15 in English of Marianas in Combat. They also bought 46 copies of the English-language October 1962. In discussions after the program, several participants commented that they were particularly struck by Waters’s explanation from the platform that Pathfinder does not publish books like Marianas in Combat and October 1962 in order to bring them to Cuba, "even though we’re happy they are well received here." Pathfinder has "published the story of Teté Puebla and the Mariana Grajales Platoon, Waters said, because its example of what the revolutionary road and revolutionary character are all about is so "needed by those who find themselves in the front lines of the struggle for national liberation and socialism the world over--including by those of us who live and engage in working-class political activity in the United States."

Contribute to the Books for Cuba Fund