https://themilitant.com/2019/01/26/jose-ramon-fernandez-revolutionary-of-exemplary-integrity/
Jos?? Ram??n Fern??ndez: Revolutionary of exemplary integrity
Fern??ndez held himself to highest standards of revolutionary
selflessness, human solidarity, proletarian discipline
Vol. 83/No. 5
February 4, 2019
Jos?? Ram??n Fern??ndez, center, during April 1961 battles at Bay of Pigs
where he was field commander of main column of revolutionary forces that
defeated U.S.-organized invasion. Discipline of revolutionary army ???must
be very just, very humane, with highest moral standards,??? Fern??ndez said.
Courtesy Jos?? Ram??n Fern??ndez
Jos?? Ram??n Fern??ndez, center, during April 1961 battles at Bay of Pigs
where he was field commander of main column of revolutionary forces that
defeated U.S.-organized invasion. Discipline of revolutionary army ???must
be very just, very humane, with highest moral standards,??? Fern??ndez said.
Cuban revolutionary leader Jos?? Ram??n Fern??ndez died Jan. 6 at the age
of 95. Mary-Alice Waters, a central leader of the Socialist Workers
Party and president of Pathfinder Press, collaborated with Fern??ndez on
three Pathfinder books.
BY MARY-ALICE WATERS
In the presence of Jos?? Ram??n Fern??ndez, you quickly sensed you were
with a human being of exceptional integrity. His posture alone
communicated that fact.
He held himself to the highest standards of revolutionary selflessness,
human solidarity and proletarian discipline. Even more important, he
knew the men and women he led were capable of acting with the same
selflessness and discipline, and he drew the best from them.
His strength was not only his moral clarity. It lay in the consistency
of his conduct, a trajectory followed throughout his life as a
revolutionary soldier and then as a leader of the Communist Party of Cuba.
Several of us in the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party in the
U.S. had the privilege of working with Jos?? Ram??n Fern??ndez for some two
decades in the process of preparing three books. He was one of the four
contributors to the small jewel of a book, Making History: Interviews
with Four Generals of Cuba???s Revolutionary Armed Forces.
He was the principal author of Playa Gir??n/Bay of Pigs, 1961:
Washington???s First Military Defeat in the Americas, a book that contains
his testimony in 1999 before the Provincial People???s Court of the City
of Havana (an excerpt from the book was run in last week???s Militant).
And Fern??ndez???s collaboration in the work that produced Women in Cuba:
The Making of a Revolution Within the Revolution?? by Vilma Esp??n, Asela
de los Santos, and Yolanda Ferrer ??? and his unflagging enthusiasm and
encouragement ??? was equally indispensable.
All three are published by Pathfinder Press in Spanish and English, and
two are published in Farsi. They???ve been distributed around the world
and featured at book fairs and political events from the Philippines to
Iran, Australia to Sweden, the Dominican Republic to Iraq and beyond.
From left Fern??ndez; Chinese-Cuban generals Gustavo Chui, Armando Choy,
Mois??s S??o Wong, and Socialist Workers Party leader Mary-Alice Waters,
presenting Our History Is Still Being Written at Havana International
Book Fair, Feb. 6, 2006.
Militant/Jonathan Silberman
From left, Fern??ndez; Chinese-Cuban generals Gustavo Chui, Armando
Choy, Mois??s S??o Wong, and Socialist Workers Party leader Mary-Alice
Waters, presenting Our History Is Still Being Written at Havana
International Book Fair, Feb. 6, 2006.
What left the most profound impression on us in working with Fern??ndez
was the attentiveness, courtesy and respect he extended to all around
him, including and especially those who to the bourgeois world are the
???invisibles??? ??? the men and women who worked with him as drivers,
translators, secretaries, cooks, housekeepers, security and more. The
dignity, pride, loyalty ??? and discipline ??? he inspired in return was
always in evidence.
A bourgeois army, or one cast in its mold, imposes its command through
???established norms based exclusively on hierarchy and rank,??? Fern??ndez
told us more than 20 years ago during the interview that appears in
Making History. By total contrast, in our army, a socialist army, he
said, ???discipline is achieved through conscious methods, and the
commanding officers derive their authority from the consent of their
subordinates; they earn that authority every day by their ability, work
and example.???
Inset, Fern??ndez during his 1956 court-martial for leading revolt in
armed forces against Batista dictatorship. Above, Havana, Jan. 1, 1959,
just-released prisoners, still in white prison clothes, join working
people taking over streets to ensure victory of Rebel Army.
Inset, courtesy Jos?? Ram??n Fern??ndez and Museum of the Revolution;
right, Lee Lockwood
Inset, Fern??ndez during his 1956 court-martial for leading revolt in
armed forces against Batista dictatorship. Above, Havana, Jan. 1, 1959,
just-released prisoners, still in white prison clothes, join working
people taking over streets to ensure victory of Rebel Army.
The army requires very strict discipline, he insisted, ???There can be no
concessions on that. But it must be very just, very humane, and it must
be carried out with the highest moral standards.???
Fern??ndez contrasted the norms of Cuba???s Revolutionary Armed Forces to
the attitudes that exist among instructors in the U.S. Marine Corps,
which he called ???bestial??? and ???contemptible.??? He said he was not talking
only about the young recruits ???who have drowned in the swamps [in
???training???]. I???m talking about the dehumanizing and denigrating methods
of treating young people. That???s unacceptable. It exemplifies the
difference between the two types of armies.???
His comments were doubly striking because only a few days earlier,
Division Gen. Enrique Carreras, the father of revolutionary Cuba???s air
force and one of the other generals who contributed to Making History,
had made a similar point. Carreras was talking with us about the
differences he knew from his own experience between the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Cuba and the Soviet army. ???If you???ll pardon my saying
so,??? he commented, ???armies have their own traditions. The Soviets have
theirs, of course, very strong ones. We have our own traditions ??? very
appealing ones, which we fight to maintain and guard.???
???For one thing, we are incapable of laying a hand on a soldier. That is
the greatest abomination we can imagine,??? he said. ???Yet once, right in
front of several of us, I witnessed a Soviet general strike a soldier
for being drunk. I can put up with a lot, but seeing that made me so
angry I had to get out of there. Laying a hand on a soldier shows a lack
of respect, and that???s something we do not allow. That???s just the way we
are.???
A combat leader
To those of us who knew him, Fern??ndez reminded us above all of the
combat leaders of the U.S. working class ??? men like Farrell Dobbs and
Vincent Raymond Dunne ??? who during the tumultuous years of the early
1960s recruited many of our generation to the Socialist Workers Party
and taught us what combat by a politically conscious proletarian
vanguard could achieve.
Those were the years during which we learned from the men and women of
Cuba what a socialist revolution could accomplish; how working people
fighting to transform their world transformed themselves. In the
process, they helped begin the transformation of some of us as well. We
learned from their example and, first and foremost, wanted to emulate
them. Joining those in the United States who were building a proletarian
party capable of making such a revolution, we set out on that lifetime
course.
It was during those years we also learned firsthand the fighting
capacities of the oppressed and exploited toilers of the U.S. Their
powerful, unstoppable movement for Black rights brought down the entire
institutionalized system of Jim Crow racism that had for nearly a
century imposed the terror of its reign throughout the post-Civil War
South. That social revolution at the same time began the transformation
of race relations in the North and changed the U.S. forever.
A legendary figure
Fern??ndez was already a legendary figure among vanguard fighters in Cuba
at the time of the triumph of the revolution in January 1959. A junior
officer of the armed forces, he initiated a conspiracy to overthrow the
Batista dictatorship, leading a group of military men who became known
as los puros ??? the pure ones. Arrested and convicted for his activities,
he had been incarcerated on Cuba???s Isle of Pines, today the Isle of
Youth, where many cadres of the July 26 Movement and other revolutionary
fighters were imprisoned. Among them was Armando Hart who had led the
urban underground before his capture.
Collaborating closely with Hart, Fern??ndez organized and gave military
training to the political prisoners who were held in what was called the
???Model Prison??? ??? because its design had been copied from a recently
built state prison in Joliet, Illinois, then considered the most
???secure??? penal institution in the world.
As Batista and his top henchmen fled Cuba in the wee hours of Jan. 1,
1959, a massive popular insurrection swept the country in response to
the Rebel Army???s call for a general strike. Fern??ndez, along with other
imprisoned military officers, was released. It was part of a maneuver by
the desperate Cuban bourgeoisie to put together a government and
military command that could block the revolutionary forces from taking
power.
While others headed straight out of the prison for a military plane sent
to carry them back to Havana, Fern??ndez struck out for the military
garrison on the Isle of Pines itself. He convinced the troops stationed
there to surrender their weapons and, accompanied by an armed escort,
returned to the prison. With a machine gun aimed on the gates, he
ordered the release of all the incarcerated revolutionaries. After a
brief showdown the warden complied, and the battalion Fern??ndez had
trained formed ranks and marched out of confinement.
With Hart in civilian control and Fern??ndez in charge of the military,
they established on the Isle of Pines one of the first revolutionary
governments of Cuba, one that was utterly opposed to the maneuvering
bourgeois forces in Havana and utterly loyal to Fidel???s revolutionary
movement and its Rebel Army.
Transforming the Rebel Army
Jos?? Ram??n Fern??ndez will always be remembered as the field commander of
the main column of militia forces ??? trained and led by him ??? that fought
under Fidel???s leadership to defeat the 1,500 mercenaries that invaded
Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. The counterrevolutionary
invaders, organized and financed by Washington, were routed in less than
72 hours, and the name Playa Gir??n became known to history as the first
military defeat of U.S. imperialism in the Americas.
But Fern??ndez himself did not consider that his most important or
enduring contribution to the revolution.
Having been a junior officer in the Cuban army, who had also received
training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, Fern??ndez told us, ???When the
revolution triumphed, I joined the Rebel Army as a first lieutenant, the
same rank I held previously. Since I was a trained professional (and I
say this with no vanity), I was given the task of helping to train the
Rebel Army ??? more than to train it actually, to help transform the Rebel
Army and the Revolutionary Armed Forces.???
In the revolution???s early days, he said, ???There was not, in general, a
clear and firm consciousness of the need for structures, for discipline,
for the norms indispensable to a modern-day military force. The members
of the Rebel Army ??? although excellent combatants who had been capable
of defeating the corrupt army of the Batista tyranny ??? needed training
along these lines. It was essential to organize and train these cadres
in the handling of weapons, in tactics, in combat engineering, in
communications, and in all those specific areas of knowledge essential
for any armed force.???
Ra??l, as minister of the armed forces, ???was decisive??? in this process,
he added.
???Participating in a modest way in building the Rebel Army in the early
years, as I did, coming to be vice minister of the armed forces with
Ra??l under the leadership of Fidel, has been the true fulfillment of my
life, this is what has given it meaning. The fact that I was able to
participate in the armed struggle in defense of the country at Gir??n has
contributed greatly to this personal fulfillment.???
The significance of the transformation of the Rebel Army and
revolutionary militias of 1959 into what became the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Cuba was nowhere confirmed more decisively than some 30 years
later in southern Angola in what has become known as the battle of Cuito
Cuanavale. That???s when the invading forces of the apartheid South
African Defense Force, then the strongest army on the continent, were
dealt a crushing defeat by Cuban, Angolan and Namibian forces under the
command of internationalist combatants from Cuba.
The spirit of victory
With characteristic insistence, Fern??ndez was always the first to point
to the Cuban toilers as the force that won the victory of Playa Gir??n.
???The mercenaries came well organized, well armed, and well supported,???
he testified before the People???s Court in Havana in 1999.
???What they lacked was a just cause to defend. That is why they did not
fight with the same passion, courage, conviction, valor, firmness,
bravery, and spirit of victory as did the revolutionary forces. ??? The
outcome can be explained only by the courage of a people who saw the
Jan. 1 triumph as the genuine opportunity to determine their own future.???
Fern??ndez and Fidel Castro award diplomas to teaching college graduates
in 1985. Fern??ndez held many leadership responsibilities over the years,
including minister of education and vice president of Council of Ministers.
Liborio Noval
Fern??ndez and Fidel Castro award diplomas to teaching college graduates
in 1985. Fern??ndez held many leadership responsibilities over the years,
including minister of education and vice president of Council of Ministers.
That ???spirit of victory,??? that conviction among the working people of
Cuba that with the leadership of Fidel, Ra??l, and cadres like Fern??ndez,
they were capable of carrying the day militarily against an invading
force organized by the strongest imperialist power in the world ??? that
was the example that inspired millions around the world, including here
in the United States.
With the truthfulness that marked him, Fern??ndez never failed to point
out it was the caliber of Fidel???s leadership that made possible the
victory at Playa Gir??n, and many others.
???History will one day record that few statesmen in the modern epoch of
humanity have had the talent, wisdom, courage, and capacity to take
advantage of the opportunities of the moment that Fidel has exhibited in
defending the revolution,??? he told us.
???For almost 40 years [now more than 60] we have been navigating along
the edge of a possible attack, firmly defending our sovereignty, the
revolution, and socialism.??? We have ???proved capable of defending our
principles while avoiding war.???
Defending principles while avoiding war ??? that is the ultimate strategic
goal of revolutionary armed forces. Only along that road can there be
space for the class struggle to unfold, involving the largest possible
numbers of the toilers, and experience through which we can transform
ourselves.
Fern??ndez shouldered many other responsibilities in Cuba???s revolutionary
leadership, including as minister of education for some 20 years, vice
president of the Council of Ministers for 30, and president of the Cuban
Olympic Committee.
The impact on others of the ongoing march of the revolution to which he
gave his loyalty and every fiber of his being will continue. And the
importance of that ongoing march will be registered not only in Cuba but
far beyond.
Making the example of the Cuban Revolution ??? and of the men and women
like Fern??ndez who made it ??? known to working people in the United
States and around the world is above all our responsibility. That
example is needed by the millions looked upon by the rulers as
???deplorable??? or worse, whose revolutionary capacities will one day prove
no less powerful than those the Cuban toilers have already demonstrated
for more than 60 years.
Related Articles
An Unconditional Soldier of the Revolution
The following excerpt is from ??????El Gallego??? Fern??ndez ??? An Unconditional
Soldier of the Revolution,??? the speech given by Jos?? Ram??n Machado
Ventura, second secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, at the
memorial tribute to Jos?? Ram??n Fern??ndez in???
In This Issue
Front Page Articles ???Los Angeles teachers won with broad strike support
???UK capitalist rulers ???Brexit??? political crisis continues on
???Florida voting rights victory spurs fights in Iowa, Kentucky
???SWP Dallas campaign attracts working-class interest in Texas
???Liberal, FBI anti-Trump ???resistance??? is a threat to working people???s
rights
Feature Articles ???Jos?? Ram??n Fern??ndez: Revolutionary of exemplary
integrity
Also In This Issue ???Chicago cop who killed Laquan McDonald gets prison
???SWP takes books, ???Militant??? broadly to working people
???Readers contribute to winter appeal for ???Militant???
???An Unconditional Soldier of the Revolution
??????Don???t make us go West Virginia on you!???
Books of the Month ???Jew-hatred incited by capitalist rulers in times of
crisis
25, 50 and 75 years ago
Corrections
?? Copyright 2019 The Militant?? -?? 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor -?? New
York, NY 10018?? -?? themilitant@xxxxxx
--
---
Carl Sagan
??? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ???
??? Carl Sagan
