From February 1967 to late 1968, Dreke led a column of some 60 Cuban internationalist volunteers who fought alongside the anti-imperialist forces of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC).

The state decree was signed by Pedro Rodrigues Pires, himself an independence fighter and current president of the archipelago nation off the coast of West Africa. The decree acknowledged the contributions made nearly four decades ago by 25 foreign-born “generous men and women…in the process that led to Cape Verde’s independence” in July 1975. The struggle that put an end to five centuries of Portuguese colonial rule, Rodrigues Pires noted, required “audacity, sacrifices and much personal selflessness in an unequal and persistent combat.”  
 
Began revolutionary activity in 1952
Dreke, who is today Cuba’s ambassador to Equatorial Guinea, began his revolutionary activity in 1952 when, as a teenager, he threw himself into the struggle against the U.S.-backed military coup by Fulgencio Batista. Dreke rose to the rank of captain in the revolutionary war that toppled the dictatorship on Jan. 1, 1959. From 1962 to 1964 he commanded the special units that defeated the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolutionary bands in the Escambray mountains in central Cuba, which were trying to overthrow the revolutionary government.

In 1965, Dreke served as second-in-command to Ernesto Che Guevara, who was leading a column of 128 Cuban internationalist volunteers responding to a request for aid from anti-imperialist forces in the Congo. At the end of that wrenching seven-month effort, Che wrote of Dreke’s conduct, “The only reason I am not recommending that he be promoted is that he already holds the highest rank”—comandante.

Much of this history is recounted by Dreke in his book From the Escambray to the Congo: In the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution.

On his return to Cuba in 1965, Dreke was placed in charge of Military Unit 1546, training Cuban internationalist volunteers and revolutionaries from other countries who had asked the Cuban government for help. This included cadres of the independence struggle in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau.

Amilcar Cabral, the central leader of the PAIGC, was among the revolutionary leaders from around the world who converged in Havana in January 1966 for the Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America—known as the Tricontinental Conference.  
 
Anticolonial struggle
“In our present historical condition, there are only two possible paths for an independent nation,” Cabral told the gathering, “to return to imperialist domination (neo-colonialism, capitalism, state capitalism), or to take the road of socialism.” Those seeking to rid their countries of colonial oppression cannot ignore the fact, he added, that “the essential instrument of imperialist domination is violence.” By then, the PAIGC had been waging a war of national liberation for nearly three years against more than 20,000 Portuguese troops; the independence movement had a third of Guinea-Bissau under its control.

The PAIGC, Dreke recalled in an interview with the Militant, was carrying out political work across the country, organizing peasants, youth, women. It had popular support. It had a leadership with structure and discipline that was in the field, fighting alongside the ranks. This stood in stark contrast to the Congo experience, he stressed. “You may start as a small group, but you must win people over,” and the PAIGC was doing that.

After the Tricontinental Conference, Havana’s collaboration with the PAIGC deepened. The Guineans and Cape Verdeans, Cabral insisted, had to lead the struggle themselves. In agreement with the Cuban leadership, they wanted only a limited number of internationalist volunteers whose combat experience they took full advantage of to advance—directly on the field of battle—the training of their forces.

Little more than a year after leaving the Congo, Dreke returned to Africa at the head of the military mission aiding the struggle led by the PAIGC.

Cabral, who was born in Guinea-Bissau of Cape Verdean parents, fought to unite the liberation forces in the two parts of the Portuguese colony in a single struggle. “Cabral believed that when Guinea-Bissau was liberated, Cape Verde too would be free,” Dreke emphasized. Cabral’s political course represented an important break from the divisions fostered by Portuguese imperialism. Colonial domination of the region had for a long time relied on the relative privileges bestowed on the Cape Verdean population. The Portuguese sought to inculcate Cape Verdeans with a sense of racial superiority over Africans on the continent.

Recognizing that Cape Verde’s topography precluded waging a successful guerrilla struggle on the islands, Cabral organized the scores of Cape Verdeans trained in Cuba to join the guerrilla fronts on the continent in Guinea-Bissau. Cabral’s course was a measure of his leadership caliber, Dreke emphasized in accepting the decoration.

Cabral’s political capacities, and the military, medical, and other assistance from Cuba, enabled the PAIGC to become the most effective liberation movement in sub-Saharan Africa at that time. “Portugal took its heaviest military blows in Guinea-Bissau,” stressed Ambassador Gomes. The impact was felt not only throughout the Portuguese colonies but in the metropolis itself. “It was a weighty factor in the ‘Carnation Revolution,’” she added, referring to the April 1974 overthrow of Lisbon’s nearly 50-year-old dictatorship.

In face of a decade of armed struggle, Portugal acknowledged defeat, and on Sept. 10, 1974, Guinea-Bissau became independent. Fewer than 14 months later Lisbon had ceded independence to Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Angola.  
 
Cuban internationalists at ceremony
More than a dozen Cuban internationalist volunteers who fought for the independence of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau and other Portuguese colonies attended the ceremony. One of them was Pedro Rodríguez Peralta, himself a recipient of the Amilcar Cabral Order. Rodríguez, who headed the Cuban forces in the Guinean southern front, was wounded and captured by the Portuguese in November 1969, winning his freedom a week after independence was declared in 1974.

Also among the 25 “generous men and women” on whom the Amilcar Cabral Order has been bestowed is Ahmed Ben Bella, president of Algeria’s revolutionary government from 1962 until its overthrow in 1965.

The ambassador of Angola to Cuba and ranking officials of the embassies of Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau attended the award presentation.

Among the Cuban leaders present were Fernando Remírez, head of international relations for the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party; Jorge Risquet, who led Cuba’s internationalist mission to Congo-Brazzaville in 1965-67; Brig. Gen. Arnaldo Tamayo, first Cuban cosmonaut and head of foreign affairs for the Revolutionary Armed Forces; Brig. Gen. (r) Rafael Moracén, who from 1965 on was centrally involved in the leadership of Cuba’s internationalist aid to Angola’s freedom fighters, and is currently head of international relations for the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution; and Brig. Gen. (r) Armando Choy, former Cuban ambassador to Cape Verde.
 
 
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