Tonight it is necessary to invoke [José] Martí, as was suggested by the person who introduced me. When we speak of the social ideals of the Rebel Army I think we are basically referring to the dream Martí himself hoped to realize. As this is a night of remembrance, we shall briefly outline the past development of our revolution before we discuss the topic and its historical significance.
I shall not begin with the attack on the Moncada Barracks of July 26, 1953. I shall refer only to those events in which I participated and which resulted in the revolution of January 1 of this year.
Let us begin this story in Mexico, where it began for me.
It is very important for us to know the actual thinking of those who constitute our Rebel Army, the thinking of that group who embarked on the Granma adventure and the evolution of that thinking — born from the very heart of the July 26 Movement — and its successive changes throughout the revolutionary process that have reached the final stage in this last chapter, of which the insurrectional part has just ended.
In Mexico I met several members of the July 26 Movement. Those men had very different social ideals prior to sailing on the Granma, prior to the first schism of the July 26 Movement, when it comprised of the entire surviving nucleus of the attack on the Moncada Barracks. I recall an intimate discussion in a Mexico home when I spoke of the need to offer the people of Cuba a revolutionary program and a member of the July 26 Movement who had participated in the Moncada Barracks assault — he fortunately later left the Movement — answered me in a way I shall always remember: “The matter is simple. What we want to accomplish is a coup d’état. Batista staged a coup and took power in one day. We must carry out another coup to get him out… Batista has given a hundred concessions to the United States and we must give them a hundred and one.” For him the main objective was achieving power. I argued that a coup must be based on principles, for it was important to know what we would do once we had taken over government.
This was the thinking of a member of the July 26 Movement in its first stage. Those who held these ideas have fortunately for us left our revolutionary movement and taken other paths.
From that time on the group constituting the Granma crew began to take shape, going through many difficult periods. We suffered continuous persecution from Mexican authorities that at one point almost endangered the whole expedition. In addition, certain individuals who at first wanted to participate in the adventure later left us under one pretext or another, reducing the number of expeditionaries. In the end, 82 men boarded the Granma. The rest is well known by the Cuban people.
What I am concerned with and what I believe to be primarily important is the social thought of those who survived Alegría de Pío, the first and only disaster the rebels suffered throughout the insurrection. Fifteen men regrouped afterward, physically and morally destroyed. We were able to move forward only because of the enormous confidence Fidel Castro gave us in those decisive moments, with his strong revolutionary caudillo’s personality and his unshakeable faith in the people. We were a group with civilian origins, attached but not grafted to the Sierra Maestra. Thus we went from hut to hut; we touched nothing that did not belong to us, we did not eat unless we could pay for it and many times we went hungry because of this principle. Our group was tolerated but not joined by the peasants, and in this situation a great deal of time went by. For a few months we led a nomadic life high in the Sierra Maestra mountains. We made sporadic attacks. We went from one mountain to the next. Most of the time there was no water and living conditions were extremely difficult.
Bit by bit the peasants’ attitude toward us began to change, propelled by the actions of the repressive forces of Batista who dedicated themselves to assassination and the destruction of the peasants’ houses. Batista’s men were hostile toward all who came in contact with the Rebel Army. This change in attitude translated into the incorporation of peasants into our guerrilla army and in this way an army of civilians began to change into an army of peasants. As the peasants were incorporated into the armed struggle for liberty and social justice, the magic words began simultaneously to spread to the oppressed masses of Cuba in their struggle for land: agrarian reform.
In this manner the first great social issue was established. Later, agrarian reform became the predominant banner of our movement even though [earlier] we went through a stage of much restlessness due to our natural preoccupation with the policy and conduct of our neighbor to the north. At the time, the presence of foreign reporters, preferably U.S. reporters, was more important to us than a military victory. More important than the incorporation in the struggle of the peasantry (who gave the revolution their ideals and faith) was to have U.S. supporters who served to export our revolutionary propaganda.
At that time a tragic event occurred in Santiago de Cuba — the assassination of compañero Frank País — marking a complete change in the structure of the revolutionary movement. The people of Santiago de Cuba, responding to the emotional impact of the assassination, took to the streets spontaneously, producing the first attempt at a general political strike. Even though it had no leadership it completely paralyzed Oriente Province, with repercussions in Las Villas and Camagüey provinces. The dictatorship liquidated this movement that began without preparation or revolutionary control. The phenomenon made us aware of the need to incorporate the workers into our liberation struggle. Immediately, underground work in workers’ centers began to prepare a general strike which would aid the Rebel Army in gaining power.
This work led to the creation of underground organizations with an insurrectional philosophy, yet those who encouraged these movements did not really grasp the meaning or the tactics of a people’s war. The masses were led down false paths because their leaders did not create revolutionary spirit and unity. They attempted to direct the strike from above without effective links to the workers at the base.
The victories of the Rebel Army and the great efforts of the underground created within the country such a state of unrest that a general strike was called on April 9, 1958. It failed — precisely because of organizational errors due primarily to the lack of contact between the leaders and the working masses and the leaders’ mistaken attitude. The experience taught us a lesson. An ideological struggle developed within the July 26 Movement that brought about a radical change in the analysis of the country’s realities and in its activist sectors. The July 26 Movement was strengthened by the failure of the strike and the experience taught us a precious truth — that the revolution did not belong to any one group in particular but to all the Cuban people. Consequently, the energies of the Movement’s members in the mountains and cities were aimed toward that end.
Precisely at this time the Rebel Army took its first steps toward developing the theory and doctrine of the revolution; demonstrating that the insurrectional movement had grown and was achieving political maturity. We moved from an experimental stage to a constructive one, from trials to definite deeds. Immediately we initiated “small industries” in the Sierra Maestra: like our ancestors, we moved from nomadic life into a settled life; we created centers of production in accord with our most basic needs. Weapons and shoe factories appeared and we began to build land mines from the bombs Batista dropped on us.
The men and women of the Rebel Army did not forget that their fundamental mission in the Sierra Maestra and elsewhere was the betterment of the peasantry and their incorporation into the struggle for land. We formed schools in the mountainous regions of Oriente. There we made our first experiment at distributing land through an agrarian code written by Dr. Humberto Sorí Marín, Fidel Castro and myself. The land was given to peasants in a revolutionary manner. Great farms owned by Batista’s advocates were occupied, and all state land in the region was given to the peasants. We were now fully identified as a peasant movement closely bound to the land and with agrarian reform as our emblem.
Later we reaped the consequences of the ill-fated strike of April 9 [1958]. The dictatorship increased its repression toward the end of May, provoking in our cadres a loss of morale which could have had catastrophic consequences for our cause. The dictatorship began its most furious offensive. On May 25 of last year [1958], 10,000 well-equipped soldiers attacked our position, centering their offensive on Column Number One led personally by our commander in chief, Fidel Castro. At the time the Rebel Army controlled a very small area. It is incredible that we faced a force of 10,000 soldiers whilst we had 300 rifles — the only rifles in the Sierra Maestra at the time. Effective tactical leadership resulted, by July 30, in the end of the Batista offensive. From then on the rebels moved from defense into the offensive. We captured more than 600 new arms, more than twice the number of rifles we had when the action was begun. The enemy suffered more than 1,000 casualties in dead, wounded, deserters and prisoners.
The Rebel Army came out of this campaign prepared to initiate the offensive in the lowlands. This was a tactical and psychological offensive because our armaments could not compete in quality or quantity with those of the dictatorship. This was a war in which we always counted on that imponderable: the extraordinary courage of the people. Our columns were able to constantly fool the enemy and place themselves in better positions not only because of our tactical advantage and the high morale of our militia, but also because of the generous support given by the peasants. The peasant was the invisible collaborator who did everything the rebel soldier could not do: they gave us information, watched the enemy, discovered the enemy’s weaknesses, rapidly brought us urgent messages and spied within the ranks of the Batista army. None of these was a miracle but a product of our energetic agrarian policy. In light of the attacks made on the Sierra Maestra and the encircling hunger established and enforced by all the landowners in the surrounding areas, 10,000 head of cattle were sent to the mountains to supply the Rebel Army and the peasants. For the first time the peasants of that region ate meat and their children drank milk. Also for the first time the peasants there received the benefits of education. Our revolution brought schools in its hand. In this way the peasants reached a positive conclusion about our regime.
At the same time the dictatorship systematically burned the peasants’ houses. The peasants were removed from their land or murdered. Death came sometimes from the skies in the form of napalm given graciously to Batista by that democratic neighbor to the north for terrorizing civilian populations. They gave 500-kilo bombs that destroyed everything within a 100-meter circumference. A napalm bomb dropped over a coffee grove means the destruction of that wealth — and all those years of labor. What is destroyed in a minute will take five or six years to rebuild.
At this time we began our march to Las Villas. This is important to point out, not because I participated in it but because on our arrival in Las Villas we found a new socio-political panorama of the revolution.
When we arrived at Las Villas with the flag of the July 26 [Movement], the Revolutionary Directorate, groups of the Second Front of Escambray, groups of the Popular Socialist Party, and smaller ones of the Auténtica Organization were already there fighting against the dictatorship. It was necessary to begin to work to achieve unity — an important factor in any revolutionary struggle. The July 26 Movement, with the Rebel Army at its head, had to promote unity among the different elements that were disgruntled with one another and who had as their only unifying element the work done in the Sierra Maestra. First it was necessary to unify these groups of fighters not only in the hills but also in the plains. We therefore had to perform the very important task of classifying all the sections of workers in the province. This task was carried out amid opposition, even within our own movement, still suffering the disease of sectarianism.
We had just arrived in Las Villas and our first governmental edict — even before establishing the first school — was to pass a revolutionary law establishing an agrarian reform that ordered, among other things, that owners of small parcels of land pay no more rent until the revolution considered each case separately. Agrarian reform was the spearhead with which the Rebel Army advanced. It was not a demagogic maneuver, it was simply that after one year and eight months of revolution, the close understanding that existed between the leaders and the peasant masses was so great that many times it propelled the revolution to do things it had not even conceived of doing before. We did not invent agrarian reform, it was an idea that came from the peasants; they pushed for it. We convinced the peasants that with the weapons at hand, with organization and without fear of the enemy, victory was assured. And the peasantry, with good reasons to do so, compelled the revolution to bring about agrarian reform. They compelled the confiscation of cattle and all the other social measures adopted in the Sierra Maestra.
In the Sierra Maestra, Law Number Three was decreed on the day of the November 3 [1958] electoral farce. It established genuine agrarian reform and, though incomplete, contained very positive arrangements: state land was to be distributed as was land owned by those who served Batista, as well as land obtained by fraudulent means, like that of the land-grabbers who swallowed thousands of acres of borderlands. It gave small, rent-paying colonos [tenant farmers] plots not exceeding two caballerías. Everything was free. The principle was very revolutionary.
Agrarian reform will benefit over 200,000 families. Yet the agrarian revolution is not complete with Law Number Three. To complete it, it will be necessary to establish a law to proscribe large landholdings — as stated by the constitution. We must define exactly the concept of latifundia which characterizes our agrarian structure and is the source of the nation’s backwardness and of the miseries of the majority of the peasantry. This has not yet been touched. The organized peasant masses now have the task of demanding a law that will prohibit latifundia just as they once compelled the Rebel Army to establish Law Number Three.
Another aspect must also be considered. The constitution states that land expropriation must be paid for in advance. If the agrarian reform is to follow that precept it may be a little slow and expensive. The collective action of the peasantry, who have won their right to freedom since the triumph of the revolution, is needed in order to demand the democratic derogation of that precept so they can advance toward a true and full agrarian reform.
Now we begin to consider the social ideals of the Rebel Army. Today we have an armed democracy. When we plan the agrarian reform and observe the new revolutionary laws that complement it, making it viable and immediate, our main concern is the social justice that land redistribution brings about. The creation of an extensive internal market and agricultural diversification, two of the fundamental and inseparable objectives of the revolutionary government, cannot be postponed because the interests of the people are implied in and through it.
All economic activities are related. We must increase the industrialization of the country without ignoring the many problems that this process creates. But a policy to encourage industrialization requires certain tariff measures, to protect our new industries, and an internal market capable of absorbing the new products. This market can only be increased by adding to it the peasant masses — the guajiros — who, though they remain needy, have until now had no buying power.
We are aware that our goals demand an enormous responsibility on our part, and these are not our only responsibilities. We must await the reaction of those who dominate more than 75 percent of our commercial trade and our market. We must prepare ourselves before this danger by applying counter-measures such as tariffs and by diversifying our markets abroad. We need to build a Cuban merchant fleet to transport sugar, tobacco and other products. Its existence will favorably influence the exchange of the type of cargoes on which the progress of underdeveloped countries like Cuba depend.
If we are to undertake an industrialization program, what are its most important features? First, the raw materials that the constitution wisely protected but that have been surrendered to foreign enterprises by the Batista dictatorship. We must rescue our subsoil, our minerals. Another element in the process of industrialization is electricity. We have to be able to rely on it. We are going to make sure that electrical power returns to Cuban hands. We must also nationalize the telephone company because of the poor service it has rendered and the high rates it maintains.
What are the tools we possess to carry out a program of this sort? We have the Rebel Army, and it must be the first instrument in our struggle, our most vigorous and positive weapon. The remains of Batista’s army must be destroyed. Let it be understood that this will not be done for revenge or for a love of justice, but to assure that the people achieve their goals in the shortest possible time.
We defeated, with the support of the people, an army numerically superior to ours. We did so with appropriate tactics and a revolutionary morale. Now we must face the fact that our Rebel Army is not yet capable of performing its new responsibilities, such as the integral defense of Cuban territory. We have to rapidly restructure the Rebel Army. We initially formed an armed force of workers and peasants, many of them illiterate and without technical preparation. We must now educate this army culturally and technically for the demanding tasks they must face.
The Rebel Army is the vanguard of the Cuban people and when we refer to its technical and cultural development we should understand the contemporary meaning of these terms. We have symbolically begun this education with a reading imbued almost exclusively with the spirit and teachings of José Martí.
The process of national reconstruction must destroy many privileges and we must be on the alert to defend the nation from its real and hidden enemies. The new army must adapt to the new modes that have arisen in this war of liberation. We know that if, for example, Cuba suffers external aggression originating from a small island, it would be with the support of a nation that occupies almost an entire continent. We would have to face on our soil an immense aggressive force. That is why we must anticipate and prepare our vanguard with a guerrilla spirit and strategy — so that our defenses will not disintegrate with the first attack and will maintain their cohesive unity. All the Cuban people must become a guerrilla army — the Rebel Army is a growing institution whose capacity is limited only by our population of six million people. Each and every Cuban must learn to handle and, if necessary, to use firearms in the defense of the nation.
I have briefly outlined the social ideals of the Rebel Army after victory and its role as it moves the government toward realizing its revolutionary aspirations.
There is something most interesting thing to tell you before ending this talk.
The example our revolution has set in Latin America and the teachings implied in it have destroyed all café society theories. We have demonstrated that a small group of determined fighters with the support of the people and without fear of death can, if necessary, defeat a regular and disciplined army. This is the fundamental lesson. Another lesson that should be learned by our brothers and sisters in the Americas — because they find themselves economically in the same agrarian category as ourselves — is that agrarian revolutions must be made; we must struggle in the countryside, in the mountains, and from there take the revolution to the cities. One cannot pretend to make revolution in the cities devoid of any social substance.
Now, with all the experiences we have had, we are faced with the question of what our future will be, a future very closely related to that of all the underdeveloped countries of Latin America. This revolution is not limited to the Cuban nation — it has touched the consciousness of Latin America and has also alerted the enemies of our peoples. We have warned that any aggression will be repelled with arms in hand. The example of Cuba has provoked unrest in all of Latin America, in all oppressed countries. The revolution has placed the dictators of Latin America on death row. They, like foreign monopolies, are the enemies of popular government. We are a small country and we need the support of all democratic countries and especially of the people of Latin America.
We have to inform the entire world truthfully of the noble goals of the Cuban Revolution. We have to call on the friendship of U.S. people and Latin Americans. We have to create a spiritual unity among all of our countries, a unity that will transcend words and bureaucracy, a friendship that will transform itself into effective aid to our brothers and sisters by sharing with them our experience.
Finally, we must open new roads identifying our common interests as underdeveloped countries. We must be aware of all efforts to divide us and struggle against those who try to sow the seeds of discord among us — those who, hiding behind well-known masks, aspire to profit from our political disagreements and incite unfounded prejudices in this country.
Today the people of Cuba are conducting the struggle on their feet and must continue to do so. Their victory against dictatorship is not transitory but rather is the first step toward Latin America’s victory.