Vol. 77/No. 14      April 15, 2013

Below is an excerpt from Marianas in Combat: Teté Puebla and the Mariana Grajales Women’s Platoon in Cuba’s Revolutionary War 1956-1958, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for April. In a series of interviews, Cuban Brig. Gen. Teté Puebla — who joined the Rebel Army led by Fidel Castro in 1956 — tells her story of participation in the revolutionary movement that toppled the U.S.-backed tyranny of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Mary-Alice Waters, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party and editor of the book, took part in the interviews. Copyright © 2003 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

WATERS: The U.S. rulers know perfectly well what they would confront if they invaded Cuba.

PUEBLA: That’s why they haven’t attacked us.

There are counterrevolutionary organizations the U.S. is sponsoring here that want to stir up riots, and engage in other activities. The government doesn’t intervene because every block has its Rapid Response Detachment.¹ These groups are under surveillance, and everyone is ready to respond.

They can’t do anything because the revolution is ours, it’s the people’s. It doesn’t belong to a little group that wants to come and tell us: “Do as we say.” No, this revolution belongs to the people.

There’s a popular saying: “The enemy’s not taking my street. My city will be defended inch by inch, house by house. We’ll die here but they’re not going to take our town.”…

Sometimes we’re asked, “Why are you always thinking about war?” We don’t like thinking about war, because we don’t like war. We like life, happiness, we love people. But they force us to live like this due to a tightening blockade that obligates us to stay on the alert.

Our problems are with the U.S. government and its blockade and all the other attacks. But not with the people of the United States. There’s a people-to-people identification. …

People there want what we want, an end to the blockade. We don’t have anything against the people of the United States and they don’t have anything against us.

It’s the U.S. administrations and those Cubans who are traitors to their country, many of whom ended up in Miami. Among them are people who have committed acts of sabotage, who participated in attempts on Fidel’s life, people responsible for the deaths of many Cubans.

Take Jorge Mas Canosa. According to the perpetrators themselves, he gave money to finance the bombing of the Barbados plane.² He has been linked to more than forty acts of sabotage committed against the Cuban people. The group he founded has close ties to many in the U.S. government.

Who was killed in that plane over Barbados? Some were young people fourteen, sixteen, and seventeen years of age. There was the entire Cuban junior fencing team, which was returning victorious to the country from their competition in the Pan American Games in Caracas. I should mention that we’re helping the families of the victims of that act.

The people who committed this crime are the real terrorists.

Yet the ones they find guilty are our compañeros, the five heroic prisoners of the empire: Fernando González, René González, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, and Ramón Labañino. These compañeros are not criminals, they’re ordinary working people who were there defending our homeland. They were trying to prevent all those acts of sabotage that are committed against our people. And to prevent acts of terrorism against our people. Three were given life sentences. Yet they’re innocent; they simply were trying to save the world from so many deaths. …

WATERS: It’s been forty-six years and you’re still on active duty. …

PUEBLA: Forty-six years may sound like a long time, but I don’t see myself as a hero, just a regular person. We don’t like to talk about what we’ve done since it’s just our daily work and daily lives. We’ve lived the revolution so intensely that we can’t separate it from ourselves. It’s our reason for being.

I can’t stop feeling I’m a guerrilla. Today we’re defending the same ideas of Martí and of the Moncada. But we do so with other, heavier weapons, and we face a powerful enemy that demands greater unity and steadfastness, not to mention heroism. These times require combatants with a guerrilla spirit, a rebel spirit. Such a spirit exists within our people—a people who in the midst of all the difficulties remain loyal to our commander in chief.

So if I were to be born again, I’d do exactly the same as I’ve done until now.

Being a general of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, a military force that has never been a mercenary one, constitutes the pride of our lives. Because every member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces represents all of our dead. The war of liberation cost twenty thousand dead. And others died later.

From the days of the war of liberation up to the present, we work and live for the people. We’re a people in uniform.

So I’m proud of being a soldier, of wearing the olive green uniform. And we will defend this uniform to our last breath.

1. Formed in 1991 to mobilize community residents to meet any U.S.-encouraged counterrevolutionary actions in Cuba.

2. On Oct. 6, 1976, Cuban counterrevolutionaries set off a bomb on a Cubana Airlines flight from Barbados to Cuba. All 73 people aboard were killed.  
 
 
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