Through the stories of these four outstanding Cuban generals, we can see the class dynamics that have shaped our entire epoch. We can understand how the people of Cuba, as they struggle to build a new society, have for more than fifty years held Washington at bay.
Also available in Spanish (ISBN: 9780873489041) and Farsi (ISBN: 9789645783189).
“Generals of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces talk about their lives, the Cuban revolution, and the society that has followed it. Particular attention is given to the class dynamics producing the revolution and to the effect of American foreign policy on contemporary Cuban society.” —Research Book News
José Ramón Fernández (1923–2019)– Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba: vice president of the executive committee of the Council of Ministers; minister of education; deputy to the National Assembly; president of the Cuban Olympic Committee.
In April 1961, Fernández was the field commander at Playa Girón, where the popular militias and Revolutionary Armed Forces defeated the US-organized Bay of Pigs invasion force. His writings include:
Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs: 1961, Washington’s First Military Defeat in the Americas (2001, contributor)
Making History: Interviews with Four Generals of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (1999, contributor)
Enrique Carreras (1922–2014) -– Division general in Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces; Hero of the Republic of Cuba. As an officer before the revolution, Carreras was ordered to bomb a rebellious army unit. He refused and was jailed. After the revolution’s triumph, the air squadron he headed was decisive in defeating the US-organized invasion at the Bay of Pigs. Carreras later helped organize Cuban volunteer forces defending Angola from South African invasions. He is coauthor of Making History: Interviews with Four Generals of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (1999).
Harry Villegas “Pombo” (1940–2019) – Brigadier general, known around the world as “Pombo,” the nom de guerre given him by Ernesto Che Guevara, at whose side he worked and fought in Cuba, the Congo, and Bolivia. A founding member of the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965. Served on Central Committee from 1997 to 2011; deputy to the National Assembly of People’s Power; executive vice president of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution; Hero of the Republic of Cuba, the highest honor given by Cuba’s Council of State. Villegas joined the Rebel Army in 1957. In 1965 he served on the general staff of a column of Cuban volunteers, led by Guevara, fighting alongside anti-imperialist forces in the Congo. There he received the nom de guerre he used the rest of his life: Pombo.
In 1966–67 he fought alongside Guevara in Bolivia, where he also served on the general staff. He commanded the surviving guerrillas who eluded encirclement by Bolivian army and US intelligence forces and returned to Havana. His account of this campaign is published in Pombo: A Man of Che’s guerrilla (1997).
In 1977–79 Villegas helped lead Cuba’s volunteer military mission in Angola. In 1981 he was assigned as liaison between the Cuban command in Angola and the Revolutionary Armed Forces command post in Havana, headed by Fidel Castro. His account of the war is published in Cuba and Angola: The War for Freedom (2017).
Villegas is also a contributor to Making History: Interviews with Four Generals of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (1999) and the author of At the Side of Che Guevara (1997).
Néstor López Cuba (1938–1999) was head of the Political Directorate of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, a deputy of the National Assembly of People’s Power, and vice president of the Executive Secretariat of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution—all responsibilities he held at the time of his death.
During the Bay of Pig invasion in April 1961 he headed a tank contingent, accompanied by militia units, that helped contain the advance of the invading mercenaries, defeated 72 hours later.
In 1973 López Cuba volunteered for a mission in Syria that helped organize the country’s defenses. In 1975 he joined the first Cuban internationalist volunteers in Angola, responding to the request for help in combating an invasion by South African forces. Following the July 1979 victory of the Nicaraguan revolution, he headed the Cuban military mission there, assisting defense of the revolution against US-backed forces known as “contras.”
López Cuba is a coauthor of
Making History: Interviews with Four Generals of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (1999)
Mary-Alice Waters (1942– ), a member of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee since 1967, is president of Pathfinder Press and editor of New International magazine. She joined the Young Socialist Alliance in 1962 and Socialist Workers Party in 1964. She has helped lead the SWP’s work nationally and internationally, especially in defense of the Cuban Revolution as well as the fight for women’s liberation.
Waters was YSA national secretary, then chairperson (1967–68). She covered the 1968 student-labor uprising in France for the Militant and edited that working-class newsweekly from 1969 through the early 1970s.
She has edited more than thirty-five books on the Cuban Revolution as well as more than a dozen other titles. Waters has spoken in the United States and around the world on the Cuban Revolution and its lessons for working people and youth everywhere.
Her works include:
The Turn to Industry: Forging a Proletarian Party (2019, coeditor)
In Defense of the US Working Class (2019)
Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? (2016)
“It’s the Poor who Face the Savagery of the US ‘Justice’ System”: The Cuban Five Talk about Their Lives within the US Working Class (2015)
Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women (2024, coauthor)
Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (1970, editor)
