Publisher's Synopsis
The author describes how easy it became after the Cuban Revolution to take down a rope segregating blacks from whites in the town square, yet how enormous was the battle to transform social relations underlying all the "ropes" inherited from capitalism and Yankee domination. Dreke, second in command of the internationalist column in the Congo led by Che Guevara in 1965, recounts the creative joy with which working people have defended their revolutionary course-from Cuba's Escambray mountains to Africa and beyond. "Readers in the United States will be especially interested in Dreke's account of the successful efforts by the revolutionary government to eradicate institutionalized racist discrimination in Cuba patterned on the Jim Crow segregation of its former Yankee overlords." -Oakland Post "Written by a soldier who fought in the Cuban revolution, Victor Dreke's From the Escambray to the Congo is a personal memoir and first-hand testimony of the end of the Batista dictatorship and the attempts to create a better government in its place. An insert of black-and-white photographs adds a visual touch to the gripping experiences both on and off the battlefield described in this memorable, gut-wrenching, up close and personal account of the modern history of a nation." -Midwest Book Review
