Fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution falls on January 1, 2009:

Anecdotes from history

by Raul Castro Ruz

Like a fast-moving film, hundreds of different scenes flashed through my mind, thousands of faces of comrades who have fallen in this struggle, because the struggle of the Cuban people is not just the blockade; after the aggression of the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the missile crisis that put the world on the brink of World War III was the result of that same aggression.

When that was discussed, some comrades had doubts about that, until not too long ago, when the U.S. Government declassified documents that demonstrated that same government could not go on with that defeat hanging over it, and thus planned direct aggression against Cuba with its troops. That was the motive for the presence of the rockets and those moments experienced.

Given that an agreement was reached between an assassinated President and a Prime Minister who was dismissed - I am referring to Nikita Khrushchev - that doubt was always there, and every time there was a change of government in the United States, a journalist, a second-rate spokesperson, faced with an apparently ingenuous question, would answer that agreement no longer existed, and that moves would have to be made - through diplomatic, not public channels - in order to be told that agreement did not exist.

Great was our surprise when we discovered - and on good authority - that we were on our own, totally on our own, to such an extent that Fidel and I decided to keep that a secret. The (Political) Bureau was informed that I had just returned from the Soviet Union and that there was an issue I proposed that only he and I should know about because, if the U.S. government was to find out, anyone of them - with a possible exception or two - would have known how to use that advantage.

Today things are different. After Reagan came to power, we decided to take the matter into our own hands, and today, I could may be say that there is more comprehension and rationality in the U.S. Armed Forces than in the area of the politicians, in the area of the State Department.

Today we can say that we are in vulnerable from the military point of view, through our own efforts. We haven’t purchased weapons for more than 20 years, except for telescopic sights for our sharpshooters, and naturally, a certain quantity of parts.

For us, avoiding war always signified the principal victory, and we used to say, “Averting a war is the same as winning one; however, in order to win it by averting it, it is necessary to spill rivers of sweat, and more than a few economic resources,” and that is what we did.

The country’s defense has been very costly, and is still costing us. We’ve built thousands of kilometres of tunnels of all sizes, to the extent that in Cuba, no important military units are at ground level; they are underground, including our Air Force.

That is why all those events were passing through my mind, and there are so many of them. Just imagine, on December 18 -in just two days’ time - I will be in Brasilia on an official visit, in response to the kind invitation of President Lula, and that day marks 52 years since the disaster of December 5, after the guerrilla detachment from Mexico landed in Cuba and was virtually wiped out... That is why I say that our Armed Forces were born in Mexico, because the Rebel Army was their precedent, just like the Mambo Army before it, the Liberation Army that fought against European colonialism, let’s say. From that 5th of December to the 18th, 13 days passed; Fidel thought that I was dead, and I thought that he was dead. Most of the comrades had fallen, and others were murdered after being captured, wounded or exhausted. I resisted the encirclement with five members of my platoon; out of 20-plus men, there were only five of us left, and we resisted the encirclement for a week, during which all we had to eat were some sugarcane stalks, and we had no food or water. We saved energy by not moving until a certain giddiness told us it was time to run the risk and break through the encirclement.

That was how, 13 days later - as I was telling you - on December 8, now in the Sierra Maestra, campesinos brought the two groups together: Fidel’s and mine. After our first embrace, as we encountered each other at midnight, he took me aside and asked, “How many guns do you have?” “Five,” I replied. And he says, “I with the two that I have, that’s seven. Now we can win the war!” (Laughter) What I’m going to say to all of you now, I told him after the war, and didn’t even dare to put it in my diary: “My brother’s gone crazy!” (Laughter) That was what I thought.

He criticized me afterward: “Didn’t you believe that we would be victorious?” “Yes, but that we weren’t going to come out of it alive.”

That is how the circumstance arose- perhaps unique in history - that after such a long journey, of more than half a century, some of the main leaders of our Revolution are still alive, and without realizing it,we have assimilated a gigantesque experience in every sense, including economic, although we are not economists.

After that solution to the missile crisis that I have mentioned, the so-called Operation Mongoose, created by the CIA, arose and lasted for five years: a sort of internal civil war - not civil war, a battle against bandits. There were times when we were fighting 179 bands in the former six provinces of the Republic, until the administrative political division, approved in 1975 and applied in 1976, increased it from six to 14 provinces.

That struggle lasted five years. I would arrive at the Ministry of Defense and four or five adjutants would come at the same time to bring me the lists, to inform me of what had happened the night before, or in the last 24 hours - we didn’t have the efficient communications we have today - and I’d say, “Tell me the most important things.”

“So many fires in the cane fields, so many tobacco-curing houses burned down, so many battles in the central region, in which mountain areas they had grown stronger. And as I was saying, twice, they were in all six provinces, including the southern part of La Habana Province - where there used to be one province, there are now two - where the capital was. That struggle lasted until January 1966, and after that was sporadic.

How many comrades fell in that struggle, and many more, as a consequence of the state terrorism that we suffered for years?Three thousand, four hundred and seventy-eight Cubans died, including a number of boys and girls, women, innocent victims who were not participating in any battle; 2,099 were disabled; a total of 5,577 Cubanmen and women, even including attacks on our embassies, and once, even at the UN. That was universal: consulates, embassies, diplomatic officials, and et cetera.We resisted. I think that that is the greatest merit of our people, our greatest merit; we resisted and we are here, and this transcendental event is taking place, and one minute ago I was saying to Felipe, “I’m really sorry that it’s not Fidel sitting here! Although he’s probably watching us on television.

(Extracts of the speech made by Cuban President Raul Castro at the Extraordinary Summit of the Rio Group in Brazil on December 16, 2008.)