Che had many functions in his role as an educator and propagandist during the Cuban revolutionary war. He established Radio Rebelde [Rebel Radio] and the newspaper El cubano libre [The Free Cuban] in the Sierra Maestra in 1957.
This article, and the others in this section of this anthology, were written under the pen name Francotirador [Sharpshooter] and show his concise yet educational style, explaining recent national and international events to the average guerrilla, who may not have had much education or might even have been illiterate. This article, “How Cuban the World Seems to Us,” written in a polemical style and published in El cubano libre, explores the question of communism and the necessary role of the struggle against brute force and injustice.
The voice of the distant world reaches the soil of our Sierra Maestra through the radio and newspapers, more explicit in describing events over there because it cannot relate the crimes that are committed here [in Cuba] every day.
Thus we learn about the disorder and deaths in Cyprus, Algeria, Ifni1 and Malaya. All of them have common features:
a) Government forces “have inflicted numerous casualties among the rebels”;
b) There are no prisoners;
c) The government reports “nothing new”;
d) All the revolutionaries, whatever the name of the country or region, are receiving “undercover aid from the communists.”
How Cuban the world seems to us. It is the same thing everywhere. A group of patriots, armed or unarmed, rebels or not, is murdered and the armed oppressors chalk up points “after heavy fighting.” All witnesses are killed, hence the absence of prisoners.
The government never suffers casualties, and at times this is true since killing defenseless beings is not very dangerous. But there are also times when this is a tremendous lie and the S.M. [Sierra Maestra] can testify to this.
Finally, there is the hackneyed accusation they always trot out: “communists.” Communists are people who turn to arms when they become tired of so much wretchedness, wherever it occurs in the world. “Democrats” are people who kill those who are angry about this, be they men, women or children.
The whole world is Cuban and what is happening here is happening everywhere. Against brute force and injustice, the people will have the last word, and that word is victory.
The society for the protection of animals paraded six dogs before the UN building seeking clemency for their Siberian relative Laika, the dog that is flying in outer space.
Our soul is filled with compassion to think of the poor animal that will die gloriously in honor of a cause it does not understand.
But we have not heard that any philanthropic society in the United States is parading in front of that noble building to plead clemency for our peasants, who are dying in considerable numbers, machine-gunned by P-47 and B-26 aircraft, hit by shells or riddled with bullets from the soldiers’ M-15s.
Do the members of philanthropic societies know that these deaths are caused by arms supplied by their compatriots in the US government?
Or is it that, in the framework of political expediency, the life of a Siberian dog is worth more than those of a thousand Cuban peasants?
1. A Spanish province on the Atlantic coast of Morocco.