Vol. 77/No. 23      June 17, 2013

Below is an excerpt from Making History: Interviews with Four Generals of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. The Spanish-language edition is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for June. The excerpt is from an interview with Cuban Brig. Gen. Harry Villegas in Havana in 1998. It was conducted by Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder Press and a member of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee. Well-known by his nom de guerre Pombo, Villegas fought alongside Cuban revolutionary leader Ernesto Che Guevara in Cuba, the Congo, and Bolivia. Copyright © 1999 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

WATERS: I’d like to go back to the early days of the revolution and your experiences as a young soldier under Che’s command at La Cabaña. There is a very specific thing related to culture and education, to the social aims of the Rebel Army, that we’d like to ask you about.

One of the recent “biographies” of Che quotes from some dispatches sent by U.S. embassy personnel to Washington during the first months of 1959. The communiqués express concern over what was happening in the garrison at La Cabaña. Che, they reported, was doing something with very disturbing implications. He was organizing a department of culture within the Rebel Army and teaching soldiers to read! The Department of Culture was also doing things like organizing concerts, poetry readings, and ballet performances right there in La Cabaña, not for the officers but for all the soldiers. The dispatch said this was very worrisome, because it showed Che’s communist tendencies.

I think this captures something very important, on both sides. The U.S. government had good reason to be afraid, of course. When education and the cultural conquests of all previous civilization become the property of the working class, when working people take this as their right, their prerogative, the rulers should tremble. A new ruling class is in the process of asserting itself. The incident also captures the importance that not only Che but the entire leadership of the Rebel Army gave to education, to broadening the cultural horizons of working people. It captures the class character …

VILLEGAS: …of the revolution.

WATERS: Yes, and the aspirations of working people to transform themselves, to educate themselves, to be the bearers of culture into the future that they alone can build.

VILLEGAS: Che felt that the task of creating and developing the Rebel Army’s Department of Instruction and Culture at the time was not only to encourage the creation of cultural works. Che was the first one to start a campaign for literacy. Because there is no culture without literacy.

The Rebel Army was an army of people with humble origins. If you read the book Secretos de generales, you’ll see that almost all the generals interviewed come from families of workers or peasants. That was the composition of the Rebel Army. That’s why the first thing we did was set up schools to eradicate illiteracy. The Department of Instruction was created, and everyone who couldn’t read and write was enrolled in these schools. Che looked for teachers and the work began.

As part of all this, a movement was created to bring cultural works to those who had never seen them before, to the members of the Rebel Army. We had a large theater in La Cabaña, a huge theater that could hold the entire garrison. Plays were put on there, ballet performances, and other cultural presentations. Movies were brought in, and other compañeros would join us for discussion after a movie was shown. The purpose of all this was to raise the cultural level of the army, which at that time was very low. Almost all of us were peasants.

I think the North Americans must have been worried, thinking that culture for workers and peasants was a sign of communism. But our purpose was to create a movement that later grew very powerful in the army, with the aim of becoming participants in culture, making it our own. So a group of amateurs developed, which put on plays, performed songs, held festivals. All these things were promoted as part of the process of creating a higher cultural level. …

At the time, when the party had not yet acquired a mass size, the armed forces was the most authentic representative of the people’s interests, of the interests of the workers. That was where you found the best of the country’s working people. The people trusted the armed forces, and they still do. Fidel once said, and Raúl repeats it every day, that the Rebel Army is the soul of the revolution. Raúl says the armed forces continue to be the soul of the revolution. And it is true. The people see the armed forces as the representative of the revolution.

Of course, there are still a lot of people who were among the original founders of the armed forces, people of very humble origins. Raúl has been at the helm of the armed forces, and this has guaranteed that they do not go off track. Raúl is a very strict person; very fair, but he demands that those serving under him be held accountable for their errors. The people have tremendous trust in the armed forces.

WATERS: The policy on education and culture that Che put in practice at La Cabaña was not his policy but the policy of the revolution. It was first implemented by the Rebel Army in the Sierra, wasn’t it?

VILLEGAS: Yes, Fidel and Che began it in the Sierra. As the guarantor of the revolution, the Rebel Army had to raise the educational and cultural level of the people. That’s where the literacy campaign began. Then it was extended to the entire population. But it started with the Rebel Army.  
 
 
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