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Abstract
Victor Emilo Dreke Cruz is a walking archive. Today, at age 82, his life represents the arch of the Cuban Revolution. He was fifteen in 1952, when General Batista waged a military coup in order to protect US neo-colonial and Cuban elite interests. It was at this moment that Dreke joined the resistance. First as an organizer, then in charge of a sabotage unit, and then as leader of campaigns against the dictator’s police and army. Once the revolution succeeded he took leadership in the Revolutionary Armed Forces. He battled US supported counter-revolutionary forces at the Bay of Pigs and in the Escambray Mountains and joined Che Guevara in the Congo after the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. He worked with the brilliant theorist Amilcar Cabral in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, and trained numerous leaders from Africa in Cuba. This article examines the extraordinary life of this man in the context of extraordinary events.
Notes
1 Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba, March 20, 2015.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 See Melina Pappademos, Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2011), 6; Gillian McGillivray, Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Class, and State Formation in Cuba, 1868–1959 (Duke University Press, 2009), 10. Dreke said that his father did join the Authentic Party after 1944 which had political power from 1944-1952, Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba, March 20, 2015.
5 Las Villas was known for strong cross racial networks of the Liberal Party dating back to 1906 when Jose Miguel Gomez, who was from the region, became President. McGillivray, Blazing Cane, 82.
6 Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba, March 20, 2015.
7 Bureau of the Census Library, CUBA: Population, History and Resources, 1907 (Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census Library, 1909), 152-53.
8 Alejandro de La Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality and Politics in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 64.
9 Oscar Pino-Santos, Cuba Historia y Economia (Editorial Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 1983), 483-484; Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba, March 20, 2015.
10 Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.), 54.
11 According to John T. Skelly and Harold Lidin, “Sagua typifies the sweating sugar towns whose toll builds the Havana palaces…It’s milk and honey country all the way; the verdant cane-covered tableland tilts just enough to keep the placid Sagua river coursing its way to the Atlantic., John T. Skelly and Harold Lindin, “Pea-Shooters vs. Machine Guns: Why Castro’s Revolt Sputters,” The Minneapolis Star, (April 18, 1958).
12 McGillivray, Blazing Cane, 38; See also, Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba, Race, Nation and Revolution (1868-1898), 18.
13 Phillip S. Foner, The Antonio Maceo: The “Bronze Titan” of Cuba’s Struggle for Independence (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977), 196.
14 “Antonio Maceo to the People of Las Villas,” Remedios, December 5, 1895, Francisco de Paula Coronado Collection, 1895, in Phillip S. Foner, 201.
15 See, Louis A. Perez, Jr. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 122; Jaime Suchlicki, Cuba: From Columbus to Castro, second edition, revised, (Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brasseys International Defense Publishers, 1987), 70.
16 Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), 174.
17 “The Killing of Bandera: Negro General and Two Companions Shot and Slashed to Death,” The New York Times, August 24, 1906.
18 “The Killing of Bandera: Negro General and Two Companions Shot and Slashed to Death,” The New York Times, August 24, 1906.
19 “The Killing of Bandera: Negro General and Two Companions Shot and Slashed to Death,” The New York Times, August 24, 1906.
20 Christobelle Peters, Crossing the Black Atlantic to Africa: Research on Race in ‘Race-less’ Cuba, New Perspectives on the Black Atlantic: Definitions, Readings, Practices, Dialogues (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2012), 92.
21 Moni Basu, “Che’s work in Africa given new scrutiny,” Atlanta Constitution October 30, 2002, 66.
22 Jorge Ibara, Prologue to Revolution: Cuba, 1898-1958, (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 1998), 141.
23 “The Killing of Bandera: Negro General and Two Companions Shot and Slashed to Death,” The New York Times, August 24, 1906.
24 Ibid; “Cuban Republic’s Army, Composed of Rural Guards and the Artillery Corps,” The New York Times, June 26, 1902; Allen R. Millett, “The Rise and Fall of the Cuban Rural Guard, 1898-1912,” The Americas, vol. 29, No. 2. October, 1972, 191-213.
25 It was during this administration in 1933 that women got the right to vote in Cuban elections.
26 “Assassination in Cuba,” New York Times, October 30, 1956.
27 De La Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality and Politics in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001),194; Devyn Spence Benson, Antiracism in Cuba: the Unfinished Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), 184.
28 Ibarra, Prologue to Revolution, 17.
29 McGillivray, Blazing Cane, 250.
30 “Cuban Sugar Workers Want Guarantees,” Miami Daily News, Sunday, April 28, 1946; “State Department Partly to Blame for High Sugar Price,” The Gazette and Daily (York, PA), October 4, 1946. “Red Sugar Chief States Cuban Aims,” Daily News, December 8, 1947, 66; “Cuban Sugar Workers Ask 44-Hour Week,” Tampa Morning Tribune, December 21, 1948; “Cheaper Food Sent to Cuba Guarantees U.S. More Sugar,” The Berkshire Evening Eagle, March 15, 1947; McGillivray, Blazing Cane, 250.
31 “Cuban Red Deputy Slain: President Sifts Killing of Menendez, Chief of Sugar Unions,” New York Times, January 3, 1948; The Cia was established in 1947 and the Truman, US President, anti-communist cold war doctrine in 1948.
32 Victor Dreke, From the Escambray to the Congo: in the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 2002), 51.
33 Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba, March 20, 2015.
34 Dreke, From the Escambray to the Congo, 54.
35 Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba, March 20, 2015; Dreke, From the Escambray to the Congo, 54.
36 Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba, March 20, 2015.
37 Marifelli Pérez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 53.
38 Dreke, From the Escambray to the Congo, 52.
39 Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba, March 20, 2015.
40 Dreke, From the Escambray to the Congo, 53.
41 U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign Commerce, Investment in Cuba (Washington, D.C., 1956), 10 in Leland T. Johnson, “U.S. Business Interests in Cuba and the Rise of Castro,” World Politics, 17, no. 3 (1965):443.
42 Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba, March 20, 2015
43 Ibid.
44 Julia E. Sweig, Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 12-13.
45 Victor says that after the triumph of the revolution, people from his neighborhood were so proud that they all claimed to have been a part of his escape.
46 Ibarra, Prologue to Revolution, 170.
47 Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba, March 20, 2015.
48 It is important to note that the eastern part of the Island has always been considered more Caribbean in culture than and more Latin American Havana.
49 R. Hart Phillips, “Cuba Rebels open a ‘Second Front’ Youthful Insurgents Raid Military Post in South Coast Mountain Area,” The New York Times, January 28, 1958.
50 R. Hart Phillips, “Rebels Claim 80 of a Province at Fierce Cuban Fight Continues,” The New York Times, December 30, 1958,
51 Jay Mallin, “Still in Revolt’s Grip, Cuba Yearns for Peace,” The Miami News, Wednesday, January 1, 1958.
52 Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba, March 20, 2015
53 Ibid.
54 Associated Press, “Revolt at Critical Peak,” The New York Times, December 30, 1958.
55 Spence Benson, Antiracism in Cuba: the Unfinished Revolution, 92.
56 Ibid, 92.
57 Richard R. Fagan, Cubans in Exile: Dissatisfaction and the Revolution (Stanford University Press, 1968), 17; Maria Cristina Garcia, Havana, USA: Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959-1994 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), 1, 15; Mark Sawyer, Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press 2006), 157; “Cuban Migration: A Postrevolution Exodus Ebbs and Flows,” Migration Policy Institute, July 17, 2017; Spence Benson, Antiracism in Cuba: the Unfinished Revolution, 135.
58 See Mirta Oito, “Best of Friends, Worlds Apart,” The New York Times, June 5, 2000; Tim Padgett, “Miami’s Cuban Cubicle’ Creates Isolation that Fosters Racism – And Blackface,” WLNR, Miami Florida, May 30, 2018.
59 Sagua had many US agencies representing many products for export. This agency was involved in the import and export of lumber/timber. For earlier engagement in wood commerce, see David Demeritt “Boards, Barrels, and Boxshooks: The Economics of Downeast Lumber in Nineteenth-Century Cuba,” Forest & Conservation History, Vol. 35, No. 3, July, 1991, 108-120.
60 R. Hart Phillips, “Castro Reported Pursuing Rebels With 5,000 Troops,” The New York Times, April 16, 1960; “Havana Reports, Revolt Crushed,” The New York Times, October 10, 1960.
61 Dreke, From the Excambray to the Congo, 111.
62 Jorge Ibarra, describes serious disparities between the capitol of Havana and the rest of the country. For example, during the 1950s, Havana had one hospital bed for every 195 inhabitants while Las Villas had one for every 1,333 inhabitants. Oriente had one hospital bed for every 1,870 inhabitants. Catherine Murphy, director, Maestra, 2014. These figures are representative of all indices.
63 Robert Light and Carl Marzani, Cuba Versus the C.I.A, (New York: Marzani and Munsell Publishers, Inc. 1961), 19.
64 Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “US Officials Haven’t Learned Lessons from Bay of Pigs Fiasco,” Newport News, Virginia, June 4, 1964; “The Great Betrayal,” The Shreveport Times, April 17, 1963.
65 Dreke, From Escambray to the Congo, 113.
66 “Failure was the Word from the Very Start,” The New York Times, May 24, 1964; “Kennedy Near Tears Over Bay of Pigs,” The New York Times, July 19, 1965; “Bay of Pigs Planner Cites Errors of 1961,” The New York Times, July 21, 1965; Robert Pear, “The Pointing of Fingers and the Bay of Pigs,” The New York Times, December 30, 1987, B6.
67 A Curator’s Pocket History of the CIA, CIA Website, July 21, 2019, 4:30pm.
68 Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba, March 20, 2015.
69 Brenda Gayle Plummer, Black Americans and US Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 303.
70 Jihan El Tahri Paris, Cuba: An African Odyssey, (France: Arte, 2007).
71 John Daniszewski and Ann M. Simmons, “Mobuto, Zairian Dictator for 32 years, Dies in Exile,” Los Angeles Times, September 8, 1997.
72 Che Guevara, The African Dream: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo (London: The Harvill Press, 2001), 1.
73 Che also critiqued Tanzania for having initially promised military support, but pulled out due to negotiations with others made later. Christabelle Peters, “When the ’New Man’ Met the “Old Man: Guevara, Nyerere, and the Roots of Latin-Africanism,” in Jennifer L. Lambe and Michael J. Bustamante, The Revolution from Within: Cuba, 1959-1980 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019), 175-180.
74 Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba March 13, 2018; Dreke argues, that “the action of those campañeros who fell in the Congo was not in vain…. The experience we gained made it possible for us to do what we did to aid the liberation struggles in Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and other places.”
75 Peters, “When the New Man…,” 172.
76 Che Guevara, The African Dream: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo, (London: The Harvill Press, 2001), xxxi.
77 Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, Audio, Havana, Cuba, March 13, 2018.
78 Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba, August 10, 2016; Moni Basu, Atlantic Constitution, 66.
79 William Gálvez, Che in Africa: Che Guevara’s Congo Diary, (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1999), 213.
80 And very importantly, one who was killed and whose body was seized by the enemy had underwear that said made in Cuba. This was a major error on the Cubans part. According to Dreke, they should have had no clothes on them that linked them to Cuba.
81 Ibid.
82 Fidel Castro, The Second Declaration of Havana, http://www.walterlippmann.com/fc-02-04-1962.html. Edited by Walter Lippmann based on the Cuban English language edition of 1962.
83 Che Guevara, “Create Two, Three, many Vietnams,” Speech at the Tricontinental Conference for the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, January 6, 1966, Havana, Cuba, in Ernesto Che Guevara and David Deutschmann, Che Guevara Reader: Writings on Politics and Revolution, (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2003), 361, 362.
84 Matt D. Childs, “An Historical Critique of the Emergence and Evolution of Ernesto Che Guevara’s Foco Theory,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 27, no. 3 (1995), 596.
85 Ibid, 598.
86 Anne Garland Mahler, From the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism and Transnational Solidarity (Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 3.
87 Mary Dudziack, Josephine Baker, “Racial Protest, and the Cold War,” The Journal of American History, 81(2)(1994), 543-570.
88 Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 187.
89 Amilcar Cabral, “Weapon of Theory,” Speech at the Tricontinental Conference for the People’s of Asia, Africa and Latin America, January 6, 1966, Havana, Cuba. Marxist Writers Archive, https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/cabral/1966/weapon-theory.htm; Ndangwa Noyhoo, “Revisiting Cabral’s ‘weapon of theory,” Pambazuka News, January 22, 2014, https://www.pambazuka.org/governance/revisiting-cabral%E2%80%99s-weapon-theory.
90 Victor Dreke, interview by Lisa Brock, audio, Havana, Cuba, March 13, 2018.
91 Piero Gleijeses, “The First Ambassadors: Cuba’s Contribution to Guinea-Bissau’s War of Independence,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 29, no. 1 (1997), 46.
92 Ibid, 47.
93 Interview, audio, March 15, 2018.
94 Interview, audio, March 15, 2018.
95 Ibid.
96 Ibid.
97 Gleijeses, “The First Ambassadors,” p. 50.
98 The successes were: Cubans and Angolan air forces defeat the South Africans in air battle, known as the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, in 1988; the Namibians with long support from the United Nations became independent of South Africa in 1988, the people in South Africa made their country ungovernable from 1985-1990 and Nelson Mandela was released in 1990. The United States government steps in, without invitation, to broker a cease fire and troop withdrawal of both the South Africans and Cubans.
99 Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 191.
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Lisa Brock
Lisa Brock, PhD is the Academic Director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College, where she is also the founder and Senior Editor of Praxis Center, an online blog and resource site. She is also an historian of transnational black studies.