Description

April 2001 marks the 40th anniversary of the U.S.-organized invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. In this book, Cuban generals Nestor Lopez Cuba, Enrique Carreras, Jose Ramon Fernandez, and Harry Villages -- among them, three of the commanders of the Cuban militia and armed forces who defeated the invaders within seventy-two hours -- tell of that battle and other campaigns they have taken part in over four decades.

These include the 1956-58 revolutionary war that toppled Cuba's U.S. -backed Batista dictatorship, as well as internationalist missions in the Middle East, Vietnam and Nicaragua, and in Southern Africa. Two of the generals describe the victorious 1975-88 struggle against South African aggression that secured the independence of both Angola and Namibia and rang the death knell for the apartheid system itself a few years later.

These four interviews show the character of the men and women of Cuba who have made history by carrying out a socialist revolution on Washington's doorstep, successfully defending and advancing it for more than forty years.