THESE are our eight Cuban comrades in Brigade No. 5 of the Venceremos Brigade. We work with them every day, travel with them, talk with them. From them, more than from anything else, we get a sense of what changes the revolution has brought to people's everyday lives, to their work, and to their ways of thinking.

This is the in-between generation. They did not grow up under the Revolution, like their children and the children we talk to in the schools we visit. They grew up with the Revolution, like their children and the children we talk to in the schools we visit. They grew up with the Revolution. In 1959, when Fidel's Rebel Army entered Havana after the collapse of the U. S.-backed Batista dictatorship, Pedro was 11 and Hugo was 22. None of the eight was communist, and none was engaged in productive work for the Cuban people. Today all are dedicated communists, and all are working to lift Cuba out of underdevelopment. The course of their lives, the change they went through, is the course of the Revolution.

"Batista-Murderer"

Their youth was dominated by the resistance to Batista. Carlos went to the mountains to join the Rebel Army, and fought under Raul Castro. Pedro carried messages for his father, who was a member of the revolutionary underground of peasants in Havana province. Alberto took part in student strikes:

"I remember one very acutely. It was in 1957 in the secondary school near the school where I was studying. I was 13. A group of us went, carrying a big piece of cloth that said 'Batista-Murderer.' Then the police came, and started with the clubs. You know-clubs, big pieces of steel. I remember, I escaped by a miracle. I ran into a bus and could escape."

Juan was in Miami, where he and his parents had gone in 1953 to escape conditions under Batista. While he was gaining an amazing repertoire of mid- and late-fifties rock-and-roll songs, his parents were raising money for Fidel's 26th of July Movement.

Then came the triumph of the Revolution. As Lazara remembers. "Our people always waited for that success. When Fidel was in the Sierra Maestra, all the people knew he was there, and waited for night to listen to the news on the underground radio, about the battles and all the activities of the Revolution. When Fidel and his comrades won, all the people went to the streets and waited for him."

The Revolution

For Juan, the first result was that his parents began making arrangements to return to Cuba. They returned in 1960, and Juan hasn't been back to the U.S. since.

For Alberto, the Revolution immediately meant a chance to finish high school. "I was studying in the private school. All the government schools were closed because of the student strikes and everything. My father was a truck-driver and he didn't earn much money; my mother had to work in the morning, afternoon, and evening also, to pay for my studies. I wouldn't have been able to continue if the Revolution didn't come and open the national schools."

Like the political direction of the Revolution, the political outlook of the eight was vague at the time. Raul's father was a member of the old Communist Party, and "he always tried to make us see communist ideas. The first day of the triumph of the Revolution my brother and I went out into the streets with the flag of the 26th of July movement and celebrated. But the general idea was hatred of the dictatorship; I didn't have very much of an idea at that time of what else the Revolution meant."

Most of the others came from honor even anticommunist families, of the type that made up the bulk of the 26th of July movement. Juan says frankly. "I was basically interested in music and girls and fooling around. I didn't know what socialism was; I didn't even know what capitalism was." In four years, Hugo would be elected to the Party by fellow-workers in the clothing factory where he worked, but at the time "I always argued with my friends in the pre-Revolutionary Communist Party. I told them communism couldn't work."

The Literacy Campaign

Carlos immediately went to work in the new government. For many of the rest, real work in the Revolution began in 1961, with the literacy campaign, Lazara, Raul, and Juanito were among the thousands of teenagers who went to the countryside to teach the peasants to read and write. So was Alberto's sister, and his mother worked in the campaign as well. Carlos helped to administer it.

The campaign began with a week at a beach resort, where the volunteers were given training in teaching. Lazara lived in what used to be the mansion of the DuPonts. She describes the campaign that followed:

"I was fifteen. I went to the province of Cameguey, and worked with a farmer all day. At night we studied the abe; I taught four farmers-two women and two men. The campaign was like a battle, because we had one million illiterate people. And we had to begin to teach them, because we had to go out from underdevelopment. It was the first activity of the Revolution. All the youth of our country were in that campaign. We were very young people-12, 13, 14, 15 years. We lived all the time with the farmers, teaching them what the Revolution is, what we will do in the countryside, what are the laws-all the meaning of the Revolution. Fidel said we did very good work."

Raul remembers, "I saw how these people, even though they had difficulties like being old and finding it hard to learn, all of them had an intense interest. As the weeks passed, their expressions changed, like they were waking up from a long sleep."

At the end of the campaign, Cuba was 99 per cent literate. Next came scholarship programs, and adult education at all workplaces. But Cuba's development was not entirely quiet.

The Bay of Pigs