[act-ma] Forum on Cuba, Sat. at 7 p.m.

Fri Jan 25 17:08:16 PST 2008

The Militant Labor Forum presents:

On Saturday, January 26

 The Cuban
Revolution -- Lessons from 1959 to Today 

 This January is the 49th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. Why does Washington maintain its unbroken hostility towards Cuba, and why is Cuba's
example being more widely discussed today in Latin
America from Bolivia to Venezuela?  Come join a discussion.

This forum will include two video clips. One is an interview about Che Guevara
with Pombo (Harry Villegas) who was together with Che
Guevara in Bolivia. Pombo led the
surviving guerrillas who succeeded in escaping after Che was captured and
killed.  The other is of Victor Dreke,
another Cuban who fought alongside Che in the Congo. The video clip is of a
portion of a speech he gave when he spoke a few years ago at UMass Boston and
where he addresses some of the history of the Cuban revolution and its
internationalist missions especially in Africa. Both Villegas and Dreke are
still active revolutionaries in Cuba today.
(Below are more detailed descriptions of both Villegas and Dreke.)

Saturday, January 26
Dinner: 6:00 p.m. ** Program: 7:00 p.m.
Militant Labor Forum Hall
13 Bennington St., 2nd floor
Suggested donation -- Dinner: $5 Program: $5

For more information call 617-569-9169

or e-mail bostonmlf at yahoo.com

Traducción inglés-español y español-inglés

Visit themilitant.com
and pathfinderpress.com websites for
news, analysis, books, and pamphlets.

T Blue Line to
Maverick Station, bus or walk 5 blocks down Meridian to Bennington at Liberty
Plaza

_____________

Harry Villegas, a brigadier general in Cuba’s Revolutionary
Armed Forces no longer on active duty, is vice president of the executive
secretariat of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution. The
association is made up of Cubans who have taken part in revolutionary struggles
and internationalist missions over more than half a century. Villegas is widely
known as Pombo, the nom de guerre given him by Ernesto Che Guevara, the
Argentine-born leader of the Cuban Revolution, alongside whom Villegas worked
and fought for a decade, during Cuba’s revolutionary war as well as in the
Congo and Bolivia. Villegas is also a member of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Cuba, a National Assembly deputy, and Hero of the Cuban
Revolution. Pombo’s account of the 1966–68 revolutionary campaign in Bolivia
led by Ernesto Che Guevara and of the escape to Chile is told in his book Pombo:
a man of Che’s Guerrilla.

Victor Dreke fought in the Cuban revolutionary war,
led by the Rebel Army, that overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in
January 1959. In the early 1960s, he was a commander of the volunteer
battalions that fought the U.S-organized counterrevolutionary bands in the
Escambray mountains of central Cuba. In 1965 he was second in command of the
column of Cuban internationalist volunteers, headed by Ernesto Che Guevara,
that joined with national liberation fighters in the Congo. He subsequently
carried out numerous internationalist missions in Africa. Dreke is currently
Cuba’s ambassador to Equatorial Guinea in west-central Africa. Dreke tells part
of his story in the book From the Escambray to the Congo: In the Whirlwind
of the Cuban Revolution.

      ____________________________________________________________________________________
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