Anyone who has traveled these lands of the Americas will have heard the disdainful pronouncements of some people about certain regimes with clearly democratic leanings. These sentiments date from the Spanish Republic and its fall. At that time they said the republic consisted of a mob of layabouts who knew only how to dance the jota, and that Franco established order and exiled communism from Spain. Time polished such opinions, standardizing criteria, and the words used, like stones thrown at any moribund democracy, went along the lines of, “That wasn’t liberty, but the rule of libertines.”
The governments that in Peru, Venezuela and Cuba had held out the dream of a new era for the Americas were thus defined. The price that democratic groups in these countries have had to pay for their apprenticeship in the techniques of oppression has been high. A great number of innocent victims have been immolated to maintain an order required for the interests of the feudal bourgeoisie and foreign capital. Patriots now know that victory will have to be achieved by blood and fire, that there can be no forgiveness for traitors, and that the total extermination of reactionary groups is the only way to ensure the rule of justice in the Americas.
When I once again heard the words “rule of libertines” used to describe Guatemala, I feared for the small republic. Does it mean that the resurrection of the dream of the Latin American people, embodied by this country and by Bolivia, is condemned to go the way of its precursors? Herein lies the dilemma.
Four revolutionary parties constitute the support base of the government and all of them, except for the Guatemalan Workers’ Party [PGT] are fragmented into two or more antagonistic factions that fight among themselves even more viciously than with their traditional feudal enemies, forgetting in their domestic squabbles the aspirations of the Guatemalan people. Meanwhile, the reactionary forces spread their nets wide. The US State Department and the United Fruit Company—one never knows which is which in that country to the north—in open alliance with the landowners and the spineless, sanctimonious bourgeoisie—are making all kinds of plans to silence a proud adversary that has emerged for them like a boil on the bosom of the Caribbean. While Caracas awaits orders that will open the way for more or less barefaced interference, the displaced little generals and the craven coffee growers seek to make alliances with other dictators in neighboring countries.
And while in the adjoining countries the fully muzzled press can only sing the praises of the “leader” on the only note permitted them, what pass for “independent” newspapers here unleash a farrago of long, involved stories about the government and its defenders, creating whatever climate they want. Democracy permits this.
The “beachhead of communism,” setting a magnificent example of freedom and ingenuity, allows them to undermine their own nationalist foundations, permitting the destruction of yet another of Latin America’s dreams.
Look back a little at the immediate past, compañeros, and observe the leaders who have had to flee, the murdered or imprisoned members of APRA [American Popular Revolutionary Alliance] in Peru, of Democratic Action in Venezuela, and look at the magnificent young Cubans assassinated by Batista. Draw close to the 20 bullet-wounds in the body of the poet soldier, Ruiz Pineda, and look at the miasmas of the Venezuelan prisons. Look fearlessly, but with care, at this past that serves as an example, and answer this question: is this the future of Guatemala?
Has the struggle been, is the struggle, for this? The historic responsibility of those who must fulfill the hopes of Latin America is great. The time for euphemism is over. It is time that garrote answers garrote. If one must die, let it be like Sandino and not like Azaña.2
May treacherous guns be grasped not by Guatemalan hands. If they want to kill freedom, let it be the other side that does it, those who hide freedom away. We must do away with feebleness and refuse to pardon treason. Let not the unshed blood of a traitor cost the lives of thousands of brave defenders of the people. The old dilemma of Hamlet has come to my lips, in the words of a poet from Guatemala-America: “Are you or are you not, or who are you?” Let the groups that support the government answer this.
This article was first published in the book compiled by Ernesto Guevara Lynch, Aquí va un soldado de América, (1987).
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1. According to his father, this article (along with a bundle of letters, books and various other papers) was sent to Argentina when he left Guatemala for Mexico in September 1954.
2. Here the author draws a parallel between Augusto César Sandino, the assassinated Nicaraguan revolutionary, and Manuel Azaña, the impotent president of the Spanish Republic in 1936.