Enrique Oltuski

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Enrique Oltuski Ozacki (born November 25, 1930 in Santa Clara , Cuba , † December 16, 2012 in Havana ) was a Cuban politician and revolutionary. He was Minister for Communications and most recently Deputy Minister for Fisheries.

Life

Oltuski was born in 1930 as the son of Polish immigrants in Santa Clara, where he also spent his childhood and youth. His father was a wealthy shoe manufacturer who, as a religious Jew, was actively involved in the local Jewish community. Enrique Oltuski could not identify with the religion of his parents in a predominantly Christian environment. After studying architecture in Miami, which he completed in 1954, he first worked in the USA, but returned to Cuba in 1955 and devoted himself to the fight against the dictatorial rule of President Fulgencio Batista . At the same time he worked as a socially respected, married family man for the US subsidiary of the British-Dutch oil company Shell as the technical director responsible for the Central Cuba region.

Underground struggle

Shortly after the Batista coup in March 1952, Oltuski joined the National Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario, MNR) led by Rafael García Bárcena. García Bárcena had made a name for himself as a student leader during the uprising against dictator Gerardo Machado in the early 1930s, was a co-founder of the Orthodox Party and lecturer in philosophy at the University of Havana. The MNR enjoyed great support, especially among the academic middle class and among military officers. On Easter Sunday 1953, police foiled a planned attack by the MNR on the Campamento Militar de Columbia military headquarters in Havana and the movement was crushed.

Oltuski subsequently stayed in touch with his former MNR comrades-in-arms, even during his time in Miami, and in 1955 he joined the movement of July 26th (M-26-7) newly founded by Fidel Castro . Oltuski soon rose to become a member of the national leadership committee and took care of the recruitment of additional members and the collection of money and weapons for the armed fight of the M-26-7 prepared by Castro in exile in Mexico from Havana. Together with Frank País , Armando Hart and Carlos Franqui , he wrote a programmatic pamphlet in the fall of 1956 in which the social revolutionary goals of the movement were emphasized and the Cuban workers were called upon to actively participate. In October, Oltuski brought the design to Mexico City to have Fidel approve it there. He did not succeed in finding him, however, because Castro, who had been officially requested to leave the country by the Mexican authorities, had to hide from the police and had already left the city on the motor yacht Granma for the imminent crossing to Cuba . In September Castro had already made a pact with the armed Revolutionary Directorate (Directorio Revolucionario, DR), which operated from the Cuban universities, but avoided any ideological commitment.

From December 1956, Oltuski participated in acts of sabotage, assassinations and terrorist attacks in Havana using bombs and other weapons. A larger part of the July 26th Movement fought simultaneously in the east of the country - both in Santiago de Cuba under Frank País and in the Sierra Maestra under Fidel Castro. In February 1957, the Civil Resistance Movement (Movimiento Resistencia Cívica, MRC) was constituted as an organization that operated in parallel with the M-26-7 and supported it in the cities of the country. From the spring of 1957, Oltuski served as the MRC's contact for the M-26-7, and shortly thereafter also as its chief secretary general. In September / October 1957 he was seconded to the central Cuban province of Las Villas as coordinator of the July 26th Movement (M-26-7) .

Within the M-26-7, Oltuski was one of the most important activists of the "level" (span. Llano ), the second component of the liberation struggle alongside the much more prominent fighters of the "mountains" (span. Sierra ) around Fidel Castro . The activities of the “Llano” included not only supplying the “Sierra” with collected weapons and money, but also coordinating political propaganda and carrying out acts of terrorism and sabotage. In direct contrast to his place of work on the plains, Oltuski's code name within the underground movement was “Sierra”. With the exception of his wife, he kept his underground activities hidden from his entire family. As a respected Shell manager and member of the Cuban Rotary Club , he moved quietly within the wealthiest and most influential circles in central Cuba .

Since the arrival of the guerrilla troops under the command of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who had advanced from the eastern part of the country to the province for which he was responsible, in the fall of 1958, Oltuski worked closely with Guevara, with Oltuski and Guevara's views on the political goals and strategies of the revolution being wide at the beginning were apart and they had numerous heated discussions. For example, Oltuski was strictly against the bank robberies demanded by Guevara to provide money for the troops and advocated a model of less radical land reform that was also acceptable for the USA, according to which the farm workers should be able to purchase the land with cheap loans. To avoid such attacks, Oltuski gave Guevara a large amount of money - Aleida March , who was one of Oltuski's closest employees at the time and who later became Guevara's wife, served as courier in November 1958 . Before the arrival of the troops led by Guevara, Oltuski had instructed the M-26-7 fighters in Las Villas to join the anti-communist "Second National Front in the Escambray Mountains" under the command of Comandante Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo , which joined in the summer 1958 split off from the Revolutionary Board of Directors, which was officially allied with the M-26-7.

Participation in the revolutionary government

When Fidel Castro came to power, Oltuski switched to government and handed over his position as coordinator of the M-26-7 to his deputy, Orlando Bosch . As communications minister (until 1960), Oltuski was the first Jewish member of the government in Cuba's history; at the same time, at the age of 28, he was the youngest minister in the first revolutionary government. In addition to the interim domestic trade minister Máximo Berman (1961–1962) and the historic communist leader Fabio Grobart , Oltuski was one of the few high-ranking members of the Castro regime with a Jewish family background. He still belonged to the upper class of Havana - in April 1959 the society section of the conservative daily Diario de la Marina reported on the " baby shower " for his wife, which she celebrated with friends in the exclusive yacht club in the Miramar district .

One of his first acts was the nationalization of the Cuban telephone company, which had been owned by the American company ITT. At his suggestion, a weekly television program was broadcast with the title “The Revolution explains its laws”, in which the minister responsible for revolutionary laws, Osvaldo Dorticós , explained selected laws in a generally understandable manner . After he was appointed as the successor to President Manuel Urrutia, who resigned under pressure from Fidel Castro, in July 1959, Oltuski took over the moderation of the program, which he had renamed "The Revolution explains its work". Oltuski had different ministers present various government projects there on a weekly basis and involved ordinary citizens who had to do with the respective topic.

Like the other non-Marxist ministers who had formed a clear majority in the government in January 1959, Oltuski was no longer a member of the cabinet of the revolutionary government by the summer of 1960. In contrast to most of them ( Roberto Agramonte , Manuel Urrutia , José Miró , Elena Mederos , Humberto Sori Marín , Raúl Chibás and others), however, he did not actively oppose Castro's course, which now more and more openly followed the Soviet social model, but served the state subsequently in subordinate functions.

After later portrayal of the then director of the newspaper Revolución and executive member of the M-26-7, Carlos Franqui, Oltuski spoke out at a cabinet meeting in autumn 1959 for an acquittal of Comandante Huber Matos . He had announced his resignation from the post of military governor of Camagüey province in protest against the course of the revolutionary government, which was increasingly communist in terms of content and personnel, and was thereupon accused by Fidel of being a traitor. Apart from Oltuski, only Faustino Pérez and Manuel Ray pleaded against the shooting of Matos, which Raúl Castro demanded. Both were expelled from the revolutionary government immediately, and Oltuski's departure from the cabinet followed six months later. Before that, he accompanied Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir on their visit to Cuba in the spring of 1960. In his euphoric series of articles on the Cuban Revolution, which he published after his return to France, Sartre explicitly referred to Oltuski's descriptions of the experiences of the risky man Underground struggle. Sartre called Oltuski "one of our best friends" and dedicated an entire article (of the 16-part series) to him. A few days after publication, Oltuski was replaced as minister by the largely unknown communist Raúl Curbelo.

After losing his ministerial office, he worked for five years under Guevara's command as Vice-Chief of the Central Economic Planning Council (JUCEPLAN), which controlled the country's progressively nationalized economy. Later he was exiled by Fidel Castro for six months to the pine island (Isla de Pinos), where he had to work as a cowherd. Since the 1970s, Oltuski has held the deputy management post in the Ministry of Fisheries and Merchant Marine, which has become largely insignificant since the 1990s. In the second half of his life, Oltuski appeared publicly as a contemporary witness with statements about the life and work of Guevara. In 2001 he published the commemorative volume Gente del llano , in which he described his participation in the revolution and in general the importance of the urban resistance fighters. In 2004, Pescando recuerdos was followed by a collection of other memories, including encounters with Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos and Fidel Castro.

Family connections

With his wife Martha Rodríguez del Pozo, a Catholic doctor's daughter whom he had known since school, he had four children, all of whom became members of the Communist Party . His son, Frank País Oltuski Rodríguez, is Vice President of Marketing at the tourism group Gaviota SA, managed by the Ministry of Defense. Enrique Oltuski's brother-in-law Guillermo "Gallo Ronco" Rodríguez del Pozo was the founder of the regional group of the 26th July Movement in the province of Las Villas, is a two-star general of the Revolutionary Forces and heads the State Defense Information Study Center (CEID). His son, Colonel Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja , is married to President Raúl Castro's daughter, Deborah Castro Espín, and runs the GAESA holding, which brings together all the economic interests of the Cuban military.

Oltuski died of respiratory failure . His remains were cremated in the Cementerio Cristóbal Colón Catholic cemetery in Havana. Despite his prominent role in the underground struggle against Batista and his leadership role in the July 26th Movement, his death was barely reported in the Cuban state media. More detailed obituaries only appeared outside of Cuba.

Publications

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Larry Luxner: Cuba's Enrique Oltuski: a lifetime of revolution ( Memento of September 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), in: CubaNews of November 2002, accessed on December 17, 2012 (English)
  2. ↑ Michael Posner: archives.econ.utah.edu ( Memento of February 17, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ), in: The Toronto Globe and Mail of December 3, 2002, accessed on December 17, 2012 (English)
  3. ^ A b Enrique Oltuski: Vida Clandestina: My Life in the Cuban Revolution. P. 125 (English)
  4. ^ Richard Gott: Cuba: A new history. P. 159, Yale University Press: New Haven / London 2004 (English)
  5. ^ Carlos Franqui: Diary of the Cuban Revolution. Pp. 106–110, Viking: New York 1980 (English)
  6. ^ Carlos Franqui: Diary of the Cuban Revolution. Pp. 116–118, Viking: New York 1980 (English)
  7. ↑ Jorge Alberto Serra: El Movimiento de Resistencia Cívica en La Habana ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 612 kB), undated, accessed on December 18, 2012 (Spanish)
  8. ↑ Jon Lee Anderson: Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. Pp. 329–333, Grove Press 2010 (English)
  9. ^ Enrique Oltuski: Vida Clandestina: My Life in the Cuban Revolution. Wiley, New York 2002, p. 126 and 199 (English)
  10. ↑ Grupo de Historia de la Lucha Revolucionaria en Villa Clara (ACRC): La detención y desarme de los combatientes del Movimiento 26 de Julio en el Esambray , (Spanish)
  11. ↑ Luis T. Panero: El camarada Oltuski y el renegado Bosch ( Memento from June 30, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), in: Emilio Ichikawa from December 16, 2012 (Spanish)
  12. ↑ Netanel Lorch and Margalit Bejarano: Cuba ( Memento from June 29, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), in: Jewish Virtual Library (English), accessed on December 17, 2012
  13. ↑ Michael Zeuske : Kuba in: Handbuch des Antisemitismus: Judenfeindlichkeit in past and present. (Ed. by Wolfgang Benz ), Volume 1: Countries and Regions , p. 206, Walter de Gruyter 2009
  14. ↑ Baby shower a Martha Rodríguez de Oltuski , in: Diario de la Marina from April 12, 1959, accessed on December 18, 2012 (Spanish)
  15. ↑ Enrique Oltuski: Pescando Recuerdos. Pp. 105-108
  16. ^ Carlos Franqui: Family Portrait with Fidel. P. 54, Random House: New York 1984 (English)
  17. ↑ Maurice Halperin: Fidel's Power to Disrupt in: Caudillos: Dictators in Spanish America ed. by Hugh M. Hamill, University of Oklahoma Press 1995 (English), pp. 321f.
  18. ↑ quoted from: Theodor Draper: Castro's Communism 1961 (English)
  19. ↑ Enrique Oltuski: Pescando recuerdos p. 38
  20. ↑ Cuba expands tourism on North Cays , in: Caribbean News of May 10, 2012, accessed on December 18, 2012
  21. ↑ Family matters : How the Castro clan rules Cuba, in: Welt Online from April 18, 2008, accessed on December 18, 2012
  22. ^ Fallció el compañero Enrique Oltuski (Comrade Enrique Oltuski deceased), in: Granma of December 17, 2012 (Spanish)
  23. ↑ Mauricio Vicent: Enrique Oltuski, el hombre del Che en el 'Llano' , in: El País of December 18, 2012 (Spanish)
personal data
SURNAME Oltuski, Enrique
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Oltuski Ozacki, Enrique (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban politician and revolutionary
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Santa Clara (Cuba) , Cuba
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 2012
Place of death Havana