BY MARY-ALICE WATERS  
Publication of this new edition of Haciendo historia, as part of the special plan of the Cuban Book Institute, means that for the first time this invaluable book will be available throughout Cuba as the book fair taking place here in Havana this week spreads over the coming month to other cities across the island. Thus, this printing of some 5,000 copies merits celebration, as well as this special presentation here today by two of the book’s four authors—José Ramón Fernández and Harry Villegas.

It is especially appropriate that Haciendo historia is being reissued on the eve of the 45th anniversary of the historic victory of the Cuban people at Playa Girón. That was “Washington’s first military defeat in the Americas,” as the title of another book published by Pathfinder, of which José Ramón Fernández is also one of the authors, emphasizes.¹ The character and significance of that victory—for Cuba, for the United States, for the world—is one of the threads that runs throughout the interviews that make up this book.  
 
An excellent suggestion
What became Haciendo historia had its origins nine years ago during another anniversary of Playa Girón. Several reporters for the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial—today El Militante—a socialist newsweekly published in the United States, were here in Cuba for that occasion. We mentioned to compañeros at Editora Política with whom we were collaborating on a number of editorial projects that we wanted to take advantage of that moment to write something about Playa Girón. Compañera Iraida [Aguirrechu] asked if we would be interested in interviewing some compañeros who fought there.

Needless to say, we thought that was an excellent suggestion—but little did we know what Iraida had in mind. Within a matter of days, much to our surprise and appreciation, she had lined up interviews with three generals of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba—Fernández, who commanded the main column that defeated the invasion; Enrique Carreras, who commanded the air force; and Néstor López Cuba, one of the tank commanders.

Later that same year, we were also able to interview compañero Pombo [Harry Villegas] on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of Che’s [Ernesto Che Guevara] death in combat in Bolivia and the return to Cuba of what Fidel so aptly called “Che’s reinforcement brigade,” when the remains of Che and others who fought and died in that internationalist mission were laid to rest in Santa Clara.²

The first edition of Haciendo historia was published in English in 1999 by Pathfinder and in Spanish the following year by Editora Política. Soon thereafter, because the demand in both the United States and Cuba was greater than Editora Política could meet given the severe limitations of the Special Period, Pathfinder also brought out an edition in Spanish that has remained available ever since. Over the years, we have sold some 4,000 copies altogether of the English and Spanish, the large majority of those in the United States.  
 
Introduction to Cuban Revolution
For us, the interviews that make up this book are a powerful introduction to the Cuban Revolution for new generations of workers and youth awakening to political struggles of the toilers of the world. They often know little about the Cuban Revolution. As they become involved in the social, economic, and political struggles born of their own experiences in capitalist America, however, they begin learning how the press lies about what they are fighting for and distorts their stories. And they begin to suspect that the picture of Cuba portrayed by Washington and the big business press is probably also distorted. They begin searching for the truth. That’s where we come in. In this book they find that truth.

They find the men and women of Cuba who in their millions ceased being simply objects of history and became its makers as well, opening the door to the first socialist revolution in the Americas.

Soon after the book was first published, a steelworker in the city of Pittsburgh who had just read it commented to me that he had been struck by two things above all—about which he had either known nothing, or had had a completely distorted picture: the political caliber of the leaders of the FAR, and their humanity. Both are qualities that workers in the United States know very concretely from their own experiences are absent from the officer corps of the imperialist armies. But these qualities are indispensable to the fighting vanguard of the oppressed and exploited. Today that lesson is once again more timely than ever.  
 
Confidence in own capacities
A final comment.

Reading this book, young people, especially, gain confidence in their own capacities, in the fact that revolutions by necessity are the work, first and foremost, of youth. But to be victorious, they must also learn to combine their energy, lack of fear of consequences, and unfettered spirit with discipline and knowledge of the hard-won lessons of revolutionary struggle by those who started before them.

Haciendo historia will help them in this task. And it is to their future struggles and victories that this book is dedicated.

2. In late 1966 Ernesto Che Guevara, the Argentine-born leader of the Cuban Revolution, led a detachment of Cuban internationalists to Bolivia, where they joined with revolutionists from Bolivia and Peru in forming a guerrilla movement to overthrow the U.S.-backed military regime. Wounded and captured by the Bolivian army in a CIA-organized operation on October 8, 1967, Guevara was murdered the next day. In 1997 the remains of Guevara and other combatants were found in an unmarked grave in Bolivia and returned to Cuba. At an October 1997 ceremony in Santa Clara marking the interment of Guevara and six others from Cuba, Bolivia, and Peru, Cuban president Fidel Castro said: “I view Che and his men as reinforcements, as a detachment of invincible combatants.”
 
 
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New Cuban edition of ‘Making History’ launched in Havana
Federal appeals court holds hearing on granting new trial to Cuban 5  
 
 
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