<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div id="container" class="container font-size5">
<div dir="ltr" style="display: block;" id="reader-header"
class="header"> <b><small><small><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/"
id="reader-domain" class="domain"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/</a></a></small></small></b>
<h1 id="reader-title">Che's Economist: Remembering Jorge Risquet</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/helyal0912/"
rel="nofollow">Helen Yaffe</a><br>
Oct 2, 2015<br>
</span></div>
</div>
<div class="content">
<div style="display: block;" dir="ltr" id="moz-reader-content">
<div
xml:base="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/"
id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div itemprop="articleBody" class="post_content">
<p>On Monday 28 September, Commandante Jorge Risquet died
in Havana aged 85. Risquet participated in the
revolutionary war and was a protagonist in Cuba’s
military missions in Africa. He led Cuba’s intervention
in the French Congo in 1965 and to Angola between 1975
and 1979 where Cuban troops fought alongside Angolans to
defeat the invading army of apartheid South Africa. In
1988 he headed Cuba’s team of negotiators following
South Africa’s surrender. In response to South African
machinations at the negotiating table Risquet stated:
‘South Africa must face the fact that it will not obtain
at the negotiating table what it could not achieve on
the battlefield.’ In the words of Piero Gleijeses, an
authority on revolutionary Cuba’s role in Africa, with
the exception of Fidel and Raul Castro, and Che Guevara,
‘no Cuban has played a more prominent role in African
affairs than Jorge Risquet Valdés, a man of
intelligence, wit, and unswerving commitment to the
Cuban Revolution.’<a name="_ftnref1"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/#_ftn1">[1]</a></p>
<p><strong>Interviewing Risquet</strong></p>
<p>Ten years ago, I met with the veteran socialist and
commandante to interview him for my doctoral thesis. My
discussion with Risquet did not, however, focus on
Cuba’s revolutionary armed forces or his role in Africa.
I was in Cuba working with archives and conducting
interviews to investigate the economic ideas of Ernesto
‘Che’ Guevara in the Cuban Revolution.<a name="_ftnref2"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/#_ftn2">[2]</a>
Risquet’s name had been added to my interview ‘wish
list’ after consulting declassified documents from the
British embassy in Havana dated 1967 and 1968 detailing
the ‘top personalities in Cuba’. Listed as the new
Minister of Labour, Risquet was described as: ‘A
bearded, youngish man, who appears to be steadily rising
in favour.’<a name="_ftnref3"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/#_ftn3">[3]</a>
I met Risquet in his office where he sat in the middle
of a large, tidy desk. His distinctive black bushy beard
had thinned and turned white. For several hours Risquet
patiently answered my questions, showed me old newspaper
clippings and journal articles and told me the stories
behind the black and white photos hanging on the wall.
He gave me a signed a copy of his book, <em>El Segundo
Frente del Che en el Congo</em> (<em>Che’s Second
Front in the Congo</em>) (2000).</p>
<p><strong>The making of a revolutionary</strong></p>
<p>Risquet was born in 1930. Gleijeses described him as
‘the descendant of an African slave, her white master, a
Chinese indentured servant, and a Spanish immigrant.’<a
name="_ftnref4"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/#_ftn4">[4]</a>
His early childhood were years of economic depression,
revolutionary upheaval, democratic opening and then
violent reaction as Batista took control of Cuba with US
support in 1934. Risquet’s parents were cigar makers who
belonged to a politically progressive worker collective
with communist sympathies. ‘My parents were
semi-literate’, he told me. ‘My father had completed 4th
grade and my mother knew how to read but not write.’<a
name="_ftnref5"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/#_ftn5">[5]</a>
In 1943, aged 13, Risquet joined the Revolution Cuban
Youth (<em>Juventud Revolucionaria Cubana</em>), youth
wing of the Partido Socialista Popular (PSP), later
renamed Socialist Youth. Within two years he was elected
onto the executive committee. In 1953, ‘Risquet was the
first Cuban to meet Angola’s first president Agostinho
Neto in 1953, in Bucharest, Romania, at the Fourth World
Festival of Youth and Students’.<a name="_ftnref6"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/#_ftn6">[6]</a>
The following year, as a representative of Cuba and
Latin America on the organising committee of the World
Federation of Democratic Youth, aged 24 years, he
travelled to Guatemala where he met Ernesto Guevara (not
yet ‘Che’) who had befriended the exiled Cuban
revolutionary, Ñico Lopez. Che was two years his senior.</p>
<p>Following Batista’s coup, Risquet joined the urban
underground resistance in Havana. It was a perilous
existence. After being captured, tortured and
incarcerated, he made it to the Sierra Cristal in
Oriente Province, where Raul Castro had opened up the
Second Front. There he directed political education for
the troops. On 1 January 1959, he entered Santiago de
Cuba with Raul and Fidel Castro’s Rebel Army columns.</p>
<p><strong>Political and military roles in the Revolution</strong></p>
<p>Risquet became head of the Culture Department of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) in Oriente province, in
charge of political instruction. He carried out numerous
political roles between 1959 and 61 as well as serving
as head of army operations. He recalled: ‘During those
first years my work involved guiding the political tasks
of the revolution. I went on to occupy more military
roles too.’ Risquet joined the political leadership in
Oriente province of the Integrated Revolutionary
Organizations [ORI] formed by merging the three
insurrectionary organisations which had participated in
Batista’s overthrow.’ As a veteran of the PSP, Risquet’s
role was particularly important in opposing the
sectarianism (mainly from PSP stalwarts) which
threatened unity between those groups. The ORI became
the United Party of the Socialist Revolution [PURS] in
1962 and Risquet was deputy leader in Oriente. When PURS
became the Cuban Communist Party in 1965 Risquet was
named among its 100-strong Central Committee. Between
1973 and 1990, he served on the Cuban Communist Party’s
Secretariat and its Politburo from 1980 to 1991. He was
also a long-standing member of Cuba’s National Assembly
of Peoples’ Power.</p>
<p><strong>In the economic sphere</strong></p>
<p>It was in his capacity as a political leader in Oriente
Province in 1961 that Che Guevara, then Minister of
Industries, asked Risquet to support his plans for the
sugar industry, which was under Che’s jurisdiction. ‘At
Che’s request, I concentrated on the sugar harvest, an
activity which involves thousands of people’. Having
joined Cuban <em>macheteros</em> (cane cutters) for
voluntary labour, Che was determined to wipe out what he
called ‘slave labour’ in the fields. He immediately set
up the Commission for the Mechanisation of the Sugar
Harvest. In the meantime, however, emphasis was placed
on increasing and improving the harvest. Sugar exports
were to create the capital necessary for investments in
diversifying the economy and establishing socialist
state provision. Risquet helped to create a movement of
emulation in the sugar harvest. He recalled:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘We created the Millionaires Movement in which a <em>machetero
</em>had to cut a million <em>arrobas</em>, each <em>arroba
</em>has 11.5 kilogrammes. In the first year we had 11
brigades with 48 men in each, then it became a
national movement… the sugar cane workers are poor,
but we called them millionaires. Organised into
brigades, their work became collective for the first
time … this task of organising emulation was very
arduous. But Che praised this movement a lot.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Che also enrolled Risquet’s support in introducing the
first rudimentary machines into the sugar cane harvest.
This required abating the fears of the cane cutters who
had historically resisted attempts to introduce
machinery for fear of losing employment.</p>
<p><strong>Returning to military action in the Congo</strong></p>
<p>On 26<sup>th</sup> July 1965, during the Moncada Day
celebrations in Las Villas, Fidel revealed to Risquet
that Che had left Cuba at the head of a secret military
mission in the former Belgian Congo (DRC). Meanwhile, as
a consequence of previous discussions with Che, the
president of the neighbouring French Congo, Alphonse
Massamba-Débat, had requested military assistance from
Cuba to defend that country’s recent independence. The
following month, Risquet sailed to the French Congo with
260 Cuban soldiers on a legal mission of military
assistance. The Cubans began training fighters from the
MPLA, Angola independence fighters, initiating the
political and military cooperation which would culminate
in Cuba sending tens of thousands of troops to fight the
South African occupation of Angola and ultimately end
the occupation of Namibia.</p>
<p><strong>Back to the economy</strong></p>
<p>One day after returning from the Congo to Cuba in
January 1967, Risquet was named Minister of Labour. ‘I
was not expecting that’, he told me, having little
knowledge about the laws, policies and institutions
linked to the post. However, the task was principally a
political one, involving coordination with workers and
trade unions. ‘The Minister of Labour is responsible for
distributing salaries and it was my task to apply the
salary scale that Che had devised’; an integral part of
his Budgetary Finance System of economic management.<a
name="_ftnref7"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/#_ftn7">[7]</a>
A principal objective was to reduce the 25,000 different
salary grades in pre-revolutionary Cuba into eight basic
categories. ‘As Minister, I spent several years applying
that salary scale and doing so was hard work.’ Workers
received an overpayment for exceeding the ‘norm’, but
the bonus was split between the worker and the state. ‘I
remember in one meeting with the Dockers’ Union the
workers told me that they felt a lot of respect for Che,
but that they did not understand the scale.’ According
to Risquet the new arrangement was never implemented
among dockworkers. In Risquet’s view this became a brake
on productivity, because workers stopped trying to
exceed the norm. However, he concluded that the new
system ‘did work in organising the salaries’.</p>
<p>I concluded by asking Risquet what was Che’s most
important contribution to the Cuban Revolution. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Che was one of the most admired and outstanding men
of the Cuban Revolution, an example of solidarity,
originality, simplicity, naturalness. He had a
profound hatred for imperialism…a great willingness to
volunteer [and] was a master of revolutionary war. He
had great faith in human beings, in ideas and
examples. Cuban soldiers who passed through Africa had
his name on their lips… He was very stoic and
self-critical, with absolute sincerity.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In many ways, the same could be said for Risquet; a
revolutionary socialist and anti-imperialist who
dedicated his life to fight for the poor and oppressed
in Cuba and in Africa. His legacy lives on as part of a
proud chapter of Cuban internationalism.</p>
<p><strong>Notes.</strong></p>
<p><a name="_ftn1"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/#_ftnref1">[1]</a>
Piero Gleijeses, (2006), <em>Risquet, Jorge.</em>
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History.</p>
<p><a name="_ftn2"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/#_ftnref2">[2]</a>
My research was adapted for publication as <em>Che
Guevara: the economics of revolution</em>, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009.</p>
<p><a name="_ftn3"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/#_ftnref3">[3]</a>
British Embassy in Havana, <em>Top Personalities in
Cuba</em>, Havana, 20 September 1967, National
Archives document FCO 7/529 211465.</p>
<p><a name="_ftn4"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/#_ftnref4">[4]</a>
Gleijeses, (2006).</p>
<p><a name="_ftn5"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/#_ftnref5">[5]</a>
This and all following Risquet quotes are taken from my
interview in Havana, 8 February 2005.</p>
<p><a name="_ftn6"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/#_ftnref6">[6]</a>
‘Angolan Embassy in Cuba Shocked By Jorge Risquet
Death’, 30 September 2015. <a
href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201509301475.html"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201509301475.html">http://allafrica.com/stories/201509301475.html</a></a></p>
<p><a name="_ftn7"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/ches-economist-remembering-jorge-risquet/#_ftnref7">[7]</a>
For a detailed discussion about the Budgetary Finance
System see Helen Yaffe, <em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0230218210/counterpunchmaga">Che
Guevara: the economics of revolution</a></em>,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.</p>
</div>
<p class="author_description"> <em><strong>Helen Yaffe</strong>
is an Economic History Fellow at the London School of
Economics and the author of <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0230218210/counterpunchmaga">Che
Guevara: The Economics of Revolution</a> published by
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Between 2011 and 2014, she was
a Research Associate at Leicester University on a
project investigating the history of the anti-apartheid
movement in Britain.</em> </p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>