Letter to Mr. Ernesto Sábato
Havana
April 12, 1960
Year of the Agrarian Reform
Mr. Ernesto Sábato
Santos Lugares, Argentina
Esteemed Compatriot,
Around 15 years ago, when I met a son of yours, who should be close to 20 years old now, and your wife at a place that I think was called Cabalando, in Carlos Paz, and later, when I read your book Uno y el universo [One and the Universe], which fascinated me, I didn’t think that you—who possessed what, for me, was the most sacred thing in the world at that time, the title of writer—would, with the passing of time, ask me for a definition, a “task of reunion,” as you call it, based on an authority affirmed by many subjective phenomena and some facts.
I have made these preliminary comments only to remind you that, in spite of everything, I belong to the land of my birth and still feel all its joy, desperation and deception deeply. It would be difficult to explain to you why “this” is not the liberating Revolution. I may have to tell you that I saw the quotation marks around the words you denounce right at the beginning, and I identified that word with the same thing that had happened in a Guatemala that I had just left, defeated and nearly disillusioned. All of us whose first participation was in that strange adventure and whose revolutionary spirit was deepened through our contact with the masses of the peasants, all of us who shared this profound interrelationship during two years of cruel struggle and truly great work felt the same.
You say our revolution couldn’t be a “liberating” one, but we were part of a new, people’s—not plutocratic—army and used our weapons to destroy the old one. You say our revolution couldn’t be a “liberating” one, but our combat banner depicted a tractor breaking the wire fence around a large landholding—now the insignia of our National Institute of Agrarian Reform—not a cow. You say our revolution couldn’t be a “liberating” one, but tears of joy ran down the maids’ faces the day Batista left and we entered Havana; such manifestations continue; and so do ingenious conspiracies by the Country Club set, who are the same kind of people as the members of the Country Club you know there, who sometimes joined you in your hatred of Peronism.
Here, the intellectuals’ submission was much less subtle than in Argentina. Here, the intellectuals were outright slaves; they didn’t pretend indifference, as they do there, or intelligence; it was simple slavery at the service of a cause of opprobrium, without any complications; they acted as mere echoes. But all this is nothing more than literature.
To refer you to a book on Cuban ideology, as you did with me concerning Argentina, is to refer you to a year ahead; now, all I can show you is a first attempt—a serious one, perhaps, and eminently practical, as are all the things that inveterate empiricists do—at putting theory to this revolution in this book, Guerrilla Warfare. It is almost childish of me to expound what I know by simply putting down one word after another; I don’t pretend to explain the great things that disturb you, and the second book that I’m thinking of publishing—if the circumstances in Cuba and abroad don’t force me to take up arms again (a task that I disdain as a government official but which excites me as a man who loves adventure)—may not be able to explain them, either. Anticipating what may or may not arrive (the book), I can tell you briefly that this revolution is the most genuine creation of improvisation.
In the Sierra Maestra, impressed by so much improvisation and by how well all the resources adapted to one another and functioned under a central organization, a communist leader who was visiting us said that it was the most perfectly organized chaos in the universe. This revolution is like this because it advanced much more quickly than its earlier ideology. When all is said and done, Fidel Castro was a bourgeois party’s candidate for deputy—the candidate of a party as bourgeois and respectable as the Radical Party in Argentina. It was a party which followed in the footsteps of its deceased leader, Eduardo Chibás, who had characteristics similar to those of Irigoyen. And we, who followed him, were men with little political preparation but plenty of good will and innate honesty. Thus, our watchword was, “In [19]56, we will be either heroes or martyrs.” A little earlier, our battle cry— or, rather, Fidel’s—had been “Honor against money.” We summed up our simple thoughts in simple phrases.
The war revolutionized us. There is no experience more deeply moving for a revolutionary than the act of war. Not the isolated act of killing, of carrying a gun or of fighting in one way or another, but the totality of war— of knowing that an armed man is like a combat unit, is worth the same as any other armed man and does not have to fear other armed men; the leaders’ explaining to the defenseless peasants that they can take up arms and showing those soldiers that an armed peasant is worth as much as the best of them; learning that the strength of one is worth nothing if it is not backed by the strength of all; and also learning that revolutionary watchwords must reflect the people’s most cherished yearnings and discovering from the people what those yearnings are and making them goals in political work. That was what all of us did, and we learned that the peasants’ love of the land was the strongest stimulus of struggle that could be found in Cuba.
Fidel understood many more things; he developed into the extraordinary leader of people that he is today and has become an enormous force for uniting our people. More than anything else, Fidel draws people together; he is a true leader who ends disagreements, destroying them with his disapproval. While some of the politically ambitious tried to use him and others challenged him, all his adversaries feared him. That is how this revolution was born; how its watchwords were created; and how, little by little, theories were developed about reality to create an ideology that came tagging along after the events.
We distributed land in the Sierra Maestra long before we launched our Agrarian Reform Law there. After understanding a series of factors in practice, we set forth our first, timid law, which didn’t tackle the basic need, which was that of suppressing the large landowners.
There were two reasons why the regional press didn’t think we were so very bad: first, because Fidel Castro is a very able politician, who didn’t publicize his intentions beyond certain limits and was admired by reporters representing the big mass media, who identified with him and took the easy path of sensational reporting; and, second, simply because the US media people, who are really into polls for measuring everything, took one of their polls, added up the scores and pigeonholed him. When, in response to their questions, he said, “We will nationalize the public services,” they thought this meant “We won’t do this if we receive reasonable support”; when he said, “We will do away with large landholdings,” they interpreted this as “We will use the large landholdings as a source of funds for our political campaign or simply keep the money”; and so on.
They never dreamed that what Fidel Castro and our movement said so naively and drastically was really what we planned to do. For them, we were the great confidence trick of the mid-century, because we told the truth while appearing to lie. Eisenhower says we betrayed our principles; this is one interpretation of the truth: what we betrayed was their image of us, as in the story of the lying shepherd—only the other way around. They didn’t believe us, either.
Now, we’re speaking in a new way, too, because we’ve continued to advance much more quickly than we’ve been able to think and structure our thoughts; we’re in continuous movement, and theory advances very slowly—so slowly that, after writing (in the few moments of my free time) the manual that I’m sending you, I’ve discovered that it’s almost inapplicable to Cuba. In contrast, it may be applicable to our country [Argentina], only it must be used with intelligence, without any haste or deception. Therefore, I’m hesitant about trying to discover the movement’s ideology. When it came time to publish the manual, everybody thought it had been written many years ago.
While situations outside the country are being exacerbated and international tension is mounting, our revolution, in order to survive, must become more radical; and, every time it does so, tension increases, so the revolution has to become even more radical. This is a vicious circle that seems to be spiraling tighter and tighter, approaching the breaking point. We’ll have to wait and see how we get out of this predicament, but I can assure you that the Cuban people are strong, because they have fought and won and know the value of victory; they know what bullets and bombs are, and they also know what oppression is. They will fight with exemplary courage.
At the same time, I assure you that, even though I’m now making a timid gesture in this direction, we won’t have theorized very much by then, and we must deal with whatever happens with the agility instilled in us by guerrilla life. At that time, I know that your weapons of an honest intellectual will be aimed against the enemy—our enemy—and that we will have you with us, fighting alongside us, when that time comes.
This letter has been rather long, and it is not entirely free of the affectation that trying to show a thinker that I’m a thinker, too—which I am not— imposes on simple people like me. In any case, I will be glad to hear from you.
Cordially,
Ernesto Che Guevara
Havana
May 17, 1960
Year of the Agrarian Reform
Mr. José Tiquet
Publicaciones Continente, S.A.
Paseo de la Reforma No. 95
Mexico City, D.F.
Dear Friend,
Please forgive me for the delay in replying to you. It was due to lack of time, not negligence.
I would be very pleased to pay for your trip to Cuba, but I don’t have the funds to do so. My income is limited to my pay as a major in the Rebel Army—which, in line with the austerity policy of our revolutionary government, is only what is needed to provide us with a decent standard of living.
Far from annoying, your letter pleased me very much.
Yours with affection,
Commander Ernesto Che Guevara
Havana
December 30, 1960
Year of the Agrarian Reform
Mr. Gustavo Jiménez
Nayarit 73
Mexico City 7, D.F.
Dear Gustavo,
I found your affectionate letter, reminding me of old times, waiting for me when I returned from a trip abroad on an official mission for the government, and was very pleased to see it.
My life is developing very differently from how it was in those days. It can be summed up in a single word: work—work, work and more work.
The revolution needs all my time. If you should have the opportunity to visit, you would see how hard I work.
I married a Cuban over a year ago, and we had a daughter last month.
Please give my greetings to your parents.
Very affectionately,
Commander Ernesto Che Guevara