The event took place in Santiago’s municipal government building. It was from the balcony of that building that Fidel Castro spoke to the people of Santiago in the early morning hours of Jan. 2, 1959, after the forces of the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista surrendered the city to the Rebel Army, as Batista himself fled the country.

Sío Wong, one the book’s three authors, was himself fighting in central Cuba as a combatant in Rebel Army Column 8 when that historic announcement was made in Santiago. But his memory of the revolutionary victory in 1959 is still fresh.

He had entered the battle against the Batista regime as a high school student in the early 1950s. Joining the Rebel Army in 1957, he fought under the command of Ernesto Che Guevara during the final months of Cuba’s revolutionary war.

Since the triumph, Sío Wong has shouldered many duties, including as head of logistics for Cuba’s volunteer internationalist military mission in Angola. A brigadier general in the Revolutionary Armed Forces, in the early 1990s, he helped initiate the small-scale urban agriculture program that has since expanded throughout Cuba, and he later served as consultant on a similar program in Venezuela.

Since 1986 Sío Wong has been president of the National Institute of State Reserves. He is also president of the Cuba-China Friendship Association.  
 
Seven-city tour
As part of a seven-city tour of Cuba in October to discuss and promote Our History Is Still Being Written, Sío Wong spoke at the Santiago meeting together with the book’s editor, Mary-Alice Waters (see her remarks on facing page), and Iraida Aguirrechu of the Cuban publishing house Editora Política.

He began his remarks by thanking “the compañeros and compañeras of the party and government here who organized this event.”

How did the book come about? he asked.

“Through an idea by compañero Harry Villegas¹ who, in a meeting with Mary-Alice, proposed an interview with the three generals of Chinese descent”—Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui, and himself. The first interview took place in February 2002.

After that, Sío Wong said, the interview “kept getting extended: 2003, 2004, 2005. We kept getting new questions, by e-mail, during new visits, and through compañera Iraida, who has been very persistent. I would ask Iraida when the book would be published. ‘When you finish answering all the questions,’ she would reply.”

So, he continued, “Mary-Alice, Martín [Koppel], and other compañeros would send their questions: To Choy, to talk about this. To Chui, to clarify some other question. Another question for Sío Wong.

“Besides telling about our lives and the participation of Chinese in the independence wars, new questions arose: What is the Battle of Ideas? Our involvement in Angola? The energy revolution (at that time it wasn’t yet called the energy revolution)? Our contribution in Venezuela?”

This testifies to “the professionalism and skill” of the interviewers, Sío Wong said. “You say many things in an interview. But then it has to be synthesized and boiled down, without losing the essence. Things have to be explained, keeping in mind the audience to whom the book is directed.” The audience in the United States, he added, drawing on a point Waters had made, operates under conditions where information about Cuba “is blocked and totally distorted.”

“That is why we want to highlight the work of Pathfinder Press in spreading the truth within the belly of the beast,” Sío Wong said. “They are telling the truth about the Cuban Revolution, and about the struggle to free the Five Heroes, to whom they send all these books. And in this way, they make a contribution not only in the United States but in Canada and elsewhere, including now in Venezuela, and later in China.”

The Cuban general pointed to the importance of having this book— “which, as Mary-Alice said, is an introduction to the Cuban Revolution”—published in Chinese. He noted that Waters had described how at the book presentation in September at the Chinese Historical Society in San Francisco, California, translation had been offered into Cantonese. A large percentage of Chinese immigrants spoke Cantonese, including those who emigrated to Cuba.

“In China there are some 50 dialects,” he said. “The official spoken tongue is Pekinese, or Mandarin, but the writing is the same in all the dialects. That’s why the decision of the Chinese publishing house, with Pathfinder’s consent, to translate and publish this book in Chinese is so important.

“China is our strategic ally economically and politically, and they are our brothers in struggle. As president of the Friendship Association, I always say that the friendship between Cuba and China was not born on Sept. 28, 1960, when diplomatic relations were opened; it was born on the battlefield.”

The Chinese edition “will also circulate in the United States,” Sío Wong pointed out. “As you heard, many thousands of Chinese in the United States don’t know English or Spanish, but they do speak and read Chinese, and they too are going to have access to this book.”  
 
A little-known history
“What importance does the publication of this book have for Cuba?” asked Sío Wong.

He noted that Pathfinder had only been able to bring a limited number of copies for sale at the presentations across Cuba. For all those who want to read the book, however, he explained that Editora Política will release a Cuban edition next year.

As soon as it’s available, “we’ll do another launching here in Santiago, together with both Chui and Choy as well,” he said.

Sío Wong pointed out that the participation of Chinese “in our wars of independence is little known in Cuba.”

Many people, he said, “pass by the monument on Línea Street in Havana with the famous words of General Gonzalo de Quesada, secretary to José Martí,² who said that in Cuba’s wars of independence, ‘There was not a single Chinese-Cuban traitor, there was not a single Chinese-Cuban deserter.’

“Of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese who were here at the end of the 19th century,” Sío Wong said, “not a single case is known of a Chinese who helped the Spaniards during that period.”

The Cuban general noted that the first Chinese had arrived in Cuba in 1847 through labor contracts signed in China. “They were virtual slaves,” he said. The European colonial powers, using the pretext of what they called the Opium War, attacked China and imposed a number of conditions. These included ceding Hong Kong to the British and opening another port, Amoy, now Xiamen.

At that time the African slave trade to the Americas had been banned for more than 20 years, but the planters continued bringing over African slaves anyway, though in smaller numbers.

Sío Wong said that it was the British who first began to bring over Chinese for their colonies in the Caribbean—including Guyana, Trinidad, and Jamaica. “And the Spanish then saw the opportunity to bring over cheap labor power for the development of the sugar industry,” he added.

“Some historians report that at the time, according to the 1841 census, there were a little over 400,000 white Spaniards, a slightly larger number of Black slaves, and some 150,000 free mulattos. There were more Blacks than Spaniards!” he said. “And some of the Spaniards were afraid, because there were slave uprisings and conspiracies.”

So the wealthy landowners in Cuba began bringing in large numbers of Chinese. The first ship arrived on June 3, 1847. “Next year will mark the 160th anniversary,” he noted. “To commemorate that date, the Chinese want to publish the book in the Chinese language and launch it then.”

Sío Wong pointed out that June 3 is also the birthday “of another ‘chino’ here in Cuba. Do you know who that is?” he asked the audience, as many shouted back, “Raúl!”

“Yes,” he said, referring to Raúl Castro. “They call him El Chino.”

Sío Wong said that during the second half of the 19th century more than 150,000 Chinese arrived in Cuba. They signed contracts for eight years of indentured labor and paid next to nothing. In practice, he said, they were bought and sold as slaves. Not being used to the hard work of the sugar harvest, some committed suicide, while others fled to palenques, settlements of fugitive slaves.  
 
Chinese in independence wars
On Oct. 10, 1868, when Carlos Manuel de Céspedes sounded the call for Cuba’s independence struggle, thousands of Chinese and former African slaves joined the Liberation Army. “There were entire battalions of Chinese organized together in separate units since they spoke little Spanish,” the Cuban general explained.

In 1993, during the first visit to Cuba by China’s president Jiang Zemin, Sío Wong had been asked how many Chinese fought in Cuba’s wars of independence. “I said 6,000, but the exact number is not known,” he said. “In the rolls of the Liberation Army not a single Chinese name appears, because they would take on Spanish names, often the name of the owner who had contracted them, such as Ramón Fernández or Fernando González.”

Nevertheless, Sío Wong said, there were all-Chinese units that were outstanding in combat. He pointed to the Battle of Guásimas, for example, where Gen. Máximo Gómez confronted a Spanish column that greatly outnumbered the liberation forces in arms and men. After three days of combat, Gómez threw his reserves into the battle—a battalion of Chinese—and emerged victorious.

There were other heroic actions by the Chinese as well, Sío Wong said. For example, the Guáimaro Assembly in 1869 “when all the forces from different regions met with the government of the Republic in Arms. Those of you who have studied history,” he said, “know there was great disunity, above all during the war of 1868-78. During that time Máximo Gómez’s invasion of the west failed because the central government did not send the necessary reinforcements.

“Villa Clara sent a delegation to the Guáimaro Assembly that included its commanding general,” Sío Wong continued. “But he died of disease along the way. So they designated a Chinese soldier—Juan Anelay, who did not speak fluent Spanish—to speak to the assembly.

“The Chinese soldier took the floor and said: ‘You, the central government, are not sending us ammunition, rifles, food, or men. We are fighting for the independence of Cuba. Our general died along the way. And you here are not giving real support.’ It was quite something!”

The Chinese-Cuban general pointed to another anecdote.

“As part of Antonio Maceo’s escort,” he said, “there was a group of Chinese who were present during the famous meeting in Los Mangos de Baraguá in 1878.³ They were at the main entrance when general Vicente García—the Lion of Las Tunas—arrived, and they wouldn’t let him through. The Chinese remembered Vicente García’s indiscipline at the time of the 1875 revolt at Lagunas de Varona.⁴ So Maceo had to go outside and say, ‘This is a patriotic general, let him pass.’“

Sío Wong pointed to another fact highlighting the role of Chinese in Cuba’s wars of independence. When the 1901 constitution was drafted, Article 65 stipulated that any foreigner who had fought for 10 years arms in hand was considered Cuban by birth and could become president of the republic. That article was included, he said, because many Cubans wanted Máximo Gómez to be president. When Gómez said no, Sió Wong explained, “Bartolomé Masó was proposed, but the candidate of the Yankees was Tomás Estrada Palma. Bartolomé Masó withdrew and Estrada Palma became the first president.”

Sío Wong said that only four individuals met the requirement of Article 65: Máximo Gómez, who was Dominican; Gen. Carlos Roloff, who was Polish; and two Chinese: Lt. Col. José Bu and Capt. José Tolón, who had participated in the three independence wars. Some historians, he said, include General Rius Rivera, who was Puerto Rican and also a participant in the three wars.

In the same 1993 meeting with Chinese president Jiang Zemin mentioned earlier, Sío Wong said, “Fidel asked me, ‘How many Chinese took part in the final war of liberation, from 1956 through 1958?’ I told him, ‘Commander, I don’t know that either.’ Because even second-generation Chinese, when their Chinese ancestry comes from their mother, lost their Chinese names.

“For example,” Sío Wong asked the audience, “how many of you know that [Esteban] Lazo’s grandfather was Chinese?”⁵

As participants responded with laughter, he continued: “Look at Lazo’s features, his eyes, and you’ll see he is Chinese. He had to show Raúl a photo of his grandfather to prove it was true.”

Sió Wong noted other examples, including Bárbara Castillo, former minister of domestic trade, and Lázaro Barredo, editor of Granma, both of whose grandparents were Chinese.

“Thousands of Cubans have Chinese ancestry,” he said. “But the outstanding role of the Chinese in the independence wars, this aspect of Cuba’s history is little known.

“And this is not part of the history of any other country in the Americas where Chinese emigrated,” he added. He pointed to an interview he had read a few days earlier in the Militant with a Venezuelan woman of Chinese ancestry. She said the Chinese who emigrated to Venezuela had not taken part in its independence war in the early 19th century, since they first arrived in 1856 after colonial rule had already been thrown off.

This same Venezuelan woman, Sío Wong said, told the Militant that Cuba is the only country she knows in the Americas where Chinese are not discriminated against.

That’s true, he said, because in Cuba, “the greatest measure taken against discrimination—against Chinese, blacks, women, the poor—was to make a socialist revolution.”  
 
Solidarity with Angola
Sío Wong called attention to the extensive parts of Our History Is Still Being Written that recount Cuba’s volunteer internationalist mission in Angola—a mission each of the three generals helped lead.

“There’s a lot of disinformation in the United States, not just about the Cuban Revolution, but about Angola and what Cuba did there,” he said.

Between late 1975 and 1991, some 375,000 Cuban volunteers served in Angola helping that newly independent country defeat repeated invasions from the South African apartheid regime, as well as attacks by other pro-imperialist forces.

In 1988 the apartheid army was defeated by Cuban and Angolan forces, an outcome that also contributed to winning Namibia’s independence and hastened the demise of the white supremacist regime in South Africa itself.

Sío Wong pointed out that Our History Is Still Being Written includes not only accounts by the three generals of their experiences in Angola, but speeches by Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela, as well as an excerpt from a 1991 speech by Raúl Castro greeting the last returning internationalist volunteers.  
 
The real transition in Cuba
Concluding his remarks, the Cuban general commented on the composition of the audience in Santiago. “I don’t know if Mary-Alice, Martín, and other compañeros realize the significance of this,” he said.

He pointed out that after 15 years of “heroic resistance” during the economic crisis known as the Special Period, “our people today continue the fight, confronting the so-called Bush plan against Cuba.

Sío Wong was referring to the so-called Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba appointed by Bush in 2004. The commission outlined plans to “assist” the Cuban people in making a “transition” to a “free” Cuba after the death or incapacitation of President Fidel Castro.

In July 2006 the commission reaffirmed this goal. It called on Washington to step up its economic war against Cuba and increase funding to U.S.-backed “dissidents” organizing to facilitate even more direct U.S. government actions against the Cuban Revolution.

“We are holding neighborhood meetings to discuss the Bush plan,” the Cuban general said, “so that people understand its purpose, which is to spread disinformation around the world and to try to annihilate our revolution and make us a colony again.

“The Bush plan,” he said, “talks about a ‘transition.’ Looking around this room, I believe here we have the transition. Here are the combatants; here are the young leaders like Misael [Enamorado, provincial secretary of the Communist Party] and other compañeros of the leadership. Here are the cadets of the José Maceo military school, the Camilitos [students at the Camilo Cienfuegos military high school] who are future officers.

“Who else is going to support this revolution other than the people who’ve expressed their determination to fight to the last drop of blood?” asked Sío Wong.

“Could there be the type of ‘transition’ the enemy wants? A real transition has in fact been under way ever since we began to make the revolution in 1959. A transition toward more socialism.”

The Santiago meeting, he said, is “a magnificent example, of our people’s attitude. And I think you’ll report accurately in your newspaper, the Militant, about our people’s willingness and readiness to struggle. And also about how our history is still being written—with this determination to continue fighting, to continue developing our country and socialism.

“On behalf of the three generals,” Sío Wong concluded to applause, “I thank the compañeros present for attending this book launch. And once again I thank our compañeros of Pathfinder for the work they’re doing, because they too are writing history.”

1. Harry Villegas, a retired brigadier general in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and serves as executive vice president of the national leadership of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution. Also known by his nom de guerre Pombo, Villegas was part of the general staff of the guerrilla unit led by Ernesto Che Guevara in the Congo in 1965 and in Bolivia in 1966-67. After Guevara's death in October 1967, he led the surviving combatants out of the encirclement operations of the U.S.-backed Bolivian army. With the help of Bolivian revolutionaries he and four others were able to escape.

2. José Martí, Cuba's national hero, founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party in 1892 to fight Spanish colonial rule. He organized the relaunching of the independence war in 1895, and was killed in battle that same year.

3. Antonio Maceo was a military leader and strategist in Cuba's three wars of independence against Spain in the 19th century. An Afro-Cuban known as the "Bronze Titan," in 1878 he attended a meeting of independence army leaders at Los Mangos de Baraguá to discuss a proposed pact with Spain to end the first war. Maceo declared his opposition to the pact, which failed to grant Cuba's independence. He issued what has become known in Cuban history as the "Baraguá Protest," calling for continuation of the struggle. A general in Cuba's final independence war that began in 1895, Maceo was killed in battle the following year.

4. In April 1875 troops of Cuba's Liberation Army in Las Tunas under the command of Maj. Gen. Vicente García met at Lagunas de Varona and rebelled against the leadership of Cuba's Republic in Arms. Although a number of independence fighters were also critical of the government’s conduct of the war against Spanish colonialism, Antonio Maceo and other leaders opposed the rebellion as an act of insubordination that weakened the struggle.

5. Esteban Lazo, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba, is currently responsible for the party’s ideological work. For many years Lazo, who is Afro-Cuban, was first secretary of the party’s Provincial Committee in Santiago de Cuba. He has been a vice president of Cuba's Council of State since 1992.
 
 
Related articles:
Meeting at UCLA discusses book on Cuban Revolution
Book by Chinese-Cuban generals: 'A practical example of how to fight, win, and defend gains'
Pathfinder president speaks in Cuba on 'Our History Is Still Being Written'
What the Cuban Revolution shows
UN vote condemns U.S. embargo against Cuba
New Greek-language book on 'Cuba and Africa,' Pathfinder titles
'Books Liberate' is theme of 2006 international book fair in Venezuela
'Che teaches us need to make a revolution'
Youth panel discusses 'Che Guevara Talks to Young People at Caracas book fair'
Venezuelan gov't opens youth centers for education, recreation in working-class areas  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home