This speech was given on May 18, 1962, to the members of the Cuban Department of State Security [DSE]. It was not published until after Che Guevara’s death, but contains some of the ideas Che developed in his famous 1966 “Message to the Tricontinental.”
First of all, I would like to apologize, because I had intended to prepare some data and figures that would clearly express some analyses on Latin America in general, its relations with imperialism and the relations Latin America will have with the Cuban revolutionary government. However, as always in these cases, my good intentions have remained nothing more than intentions, and I will have to speak from memory, so I will talk in general terms and not quote any figures.
I won’t recount at length the history of the process of imperialism’s penetration in Latin America, but it is useful to know that the part of the Americas called Latin America has nearly always lived under the yoke of the big imperialist monopolies. Spain dominated a large part of the Americas and other European countries penetrated this area later on, just after the birth of capitalism, in the stage of capitalist expansion. Britain and France were among the countries that acquired colonies here.
After the wars of independence, several countries fought over Latin America, and, with the birth of economic imperialism at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, the United States quickly came to dominate all of North, South and Central America. Other imperialist powers still persisted in the southern part of the Americas; Britain had a strong position in the extreme south, in Argentina and Uruguay, until the end of the last war.
At times, our countries have been the scenes of wars caused by monopolies of different nationalities fighting over spheres of influence. The Chaco War is one of the examples of the struggle for oil waged between Shell (owned by English and German groups) and Standard Oil. It was a very bloody war lasting four years, in which Bolivia and Paraguay lost the best of their young men in the Chaco jungle.
There are other examples of this kind: the action in which Peru, representing Standard Oil, grabbed a part of Ecuador’s territory, where Shell was influential. Wars have also been waged for other kinds of products. The United Fruit Company has caused wars in Central America in order to control banana-growing territories. Wars have also been waged in the south, between Chile, Bolivia and Peru, over possession of nitrate deposits—which were very important before a method of creating synthetic nitrate was discovered. At best, we have been unwitting actors in a struggle between empires.
After the war, however, the last redoubts of British imperialism—German imperialism had already been ousted—ceded to US imperialism. The fact that the economic domination of the Americas has since been completely unified has brought about a trend toward unity among the forces that are struggling against imperialism. We must be ever more closely united in the struggle, because it is a struggle all of us share. It is expressed now, for example, in the peoples’ solidarity with Cuba. Everyone is quickly learning that there is only one enemy, which is imperialism, and that here in Latin America it bears the name of US imperialism.
Imperialism’s penetration has varied greatly depending on historical, political and economic circumstances — and also, perhaps, reflecting how far our countries are from the imperialist capital. Some countries, such as Panama, are completely colonized and this determines their way of life. Other countries retain more of their national characteristics and are still in a stage of cultural struggle against imperialism. All, however, have the common denominator of imperialism’s control over their great reserves of materials for use in its industries. Such reserves are strategic not only for war but for its many other industries, its control of banking and its near monopoly on foreign trade.
We are very interested in Latin America for several reasons: because we are a part of it culturally and historically; because we belong to a group that is fighting for its freedom; and because Latin America’s attitude is closely related to our future and to our revolution’s future and its desire to spread its ideology. Revolutions have this characteristic, they expand ideologically. They do not remain limited to a single country but expand to other areas—or, to use an economic term, even though this is not the case—to other spheres of influence.
The Cuban revolution has had an enormous influence in Latin America, although to varying degrees in every country. We should analyze the reasons for the influence of the Cuban revolution and why this has been greater in some countries than in others. We should also analyze in detail the political life in each of the countries and the attitudes of the progressive parties in each of them—with all due respect and without interfering in the internal affairs of any party—because those attitudes are very important for analyzing the current situation.
In some countries the popular struggle has developed acutely; in other countries, the popular struggle has been slowed. In some countries, Cuba is a sacred symbol for the entire people; in others, Cuba symbolizes a liberation movement that is viewed from afar. The origins are complex, but always related to each struggle’s approach on how to seize power, and they are greatly influenced by solutions that have been found for this problem. In some cases, they are also related to the greater or lesser predominance of the working class and its influence; in others, they are related to their proximity to our revolution.
We can analyze these countries in groups.
Two countries in South America are very important in terms of their ideological influence. One of them is Argentina, which is one of the relatively strong powers in Latin America. In the extreme south, Uruguay presents very similar characteristics. Both are cattle-raising countries and have very powerful oligarchies that control foreign trade on the basis of their ownership of large landholdings and cattle—although they have now to share these with the United States.
They are countries with a very concentrated urban population. In Uruguay’s case, we cannot say that the working class is prevalent, because Uruguay is a country with very little development. In Argentina, the working class prevails, but it is in a very difficult situation, because it is employed only in processing industries and is dependent on raw materials from abroad. The country does not yet have a solid industrial base. It has one enormous city, Buenos Aires, where close to 30 percent of the total population lives, and has close to 3 million square kilometers of habitable land, not counting the territory in Antarctica that is under dispute and is of no demographic value.
This immense country has a population of over six million people in its capital in an area a little larger than Havana. It has vast expanses of uncultivated land where the farming class has a relatively large amount of land. It also has a small group of agricultural workers wandering from one place to another following the crops, much as the cane cutters used to do here, however the cane cutters could pick coffee or harvest tobacco and alternate this with other seasonal crops.
In Argentina and Uruguay, which have these characteristics, and in Chile, where the working class is the majority, the philosophy of civil wars against despotic powers has been rejected and the taking of power in the future by means of elections or in some other peaceful way has been proposed more or less directly and explicitly.
Just about everyone knows of the latest events in Argentina, where some relatively leftist groups came to possess more or less real power. These groups represent the progressive sector of the Argentine working class but are distorting many of the people’s aspirations through a clique of the Peronist party that is completely out of touch with the people. And when elections were proposed, the gorillas — as the ultra-reactionary groups in the Argentine army are called—intervened and put an end to that situation.
Something similar happened in Uruguay, though there the army there has no real clout. Nardone (the ultra-reactionary now in power) carried out a kind of coup. The situation created by repeated rightist coups, combined with the philosophy of taking power by means of elections and popular fronts, creates a certain apathy toward the Cuban revolution.
The Cuban revolution embodies an experience that Cuba does not want to be unique in Latin America. It reflects a way to take power. Naturally, it is not a form that appeals to the masses of people who are under great pressure, oppressed by domestic oppressive groups and by imperialism. Some theoretical explanations concerning the Cuban revolution are in order, and these will affect the attitude of those people toward the revolution.
In countries where groups have openly proclaimed their determination to seize power by armed struggle there is more understanding. This position is of course very difficult and very controversial to adopt, and we don’t have to participate directly in it. Every country and every party in its own country should seek the formulas of struggle recommended by its own historical experience. Yet the Cuban revolution is a fact, and one of continental scope. Cuban reality has at least some ongoing influence in the lives of the Latin American countries.
Those known as ultra-leftists—or sometimes, provocateurs—try to implant the Cuban experience without thinking particularly about whether or not this would be the right place to do so. Such people, who exist everywhere, simply take an experience that has occurred in Latin America and attempt to transfer it to each of the other countries. This causes more friction among the leftist groups. The history of the defense of Cuba in those countries by each of the political organizations is also a history of division. It is important to say this here so you will understand something of those problems, including their history of pettiness and their struggles to achieve small advances in controlling organizations.
Without intending to, Cuba has therefore been viewed as being mixed up in those polemics. I say “without intending to”: this experience has been enough for us; we will never aspire to lead the politics or the method of carrying out a revolution, achieving power, in any other country. We are again, however, at the heart of the polemics.
In Chile, where the parties of the left have greater ascendancy, a vigorous trajectory and an ideological firmness which may well be greater than that of other parties in Latin America, the situation has been similar. The difference being that the Chilean Communist Party and the other leftist parties have themselves already posed the dilemma: to take power either through peaceful means or by the way of violence. They are all preparing for a future struggle which I think will come about, because there is no other historical experience, nor is one possible here in Latin America in the present conditions of the conflict developing between the superpowers. The exacerbation of the struggle between imperialism and the peace camp proves that imperialism will never simply hand over control. From a strategic point of view, such a thing would be ridiculous, if the imperialists still have the weapons. To gain control, the left must be very powerful and must force the reactionaries to capitulate. Those conditions don’t as yet exist in Chile. This is the part of South America where, for the people of the region, the Cuban revolution presents different characteristics.
Moving north we come to the countries where the Cuban revolution is really a beacon for the peoples. We can leave Bolivia aside, because some years ago it had a very timid bourgeois revolution that was severely weakened by concessions it had to make regarding its economy, which is single-crop and completely tied to the imperialist economy. Its bourgeoisie has had to be maintained in part by imperialism. Imperialism, of course, takes its wealth with one hand and using a quarter of the wealth it takes out it then props up the government with the other. This has created a situation of dependence and, in spite of the Bolivian government’s efforts to throw off the imperialist yoke—many of these efforts have been obviously sincere—it has not managed to do so. Bolivia does maintain a correct attitude on some matters regarding Cuba and they remain as friendly as possible in international conferences. It has carried out agrarian reform, although in a very truncated form: the church’s possessions have not been seized; the cooperatives created have no real development; and, importantly, are cooperatives of a traditional kind, based on earlier regional experiences of primitive communism. Such cooperatives, worked by Indians, have been maintained through tradition and operate now as they have always done. The struggle is not manifested very strongly in Bolivia. The terms are changing a little; it is not a case of direct struggle by the oppressed masses of peasants and workers against imperialism, but one of struggle against a national bourgeoisie, which has made a series of concessions, like overthrowing the feudal overlords and the domestic large landowners, so the class struggle is not so acute.
Paraguay, Bolivia’s former rival in the Chaco War is, however, nearby. There are now guerrillas in Paraguay. It is a very poor country. It has around one-and-a-half million inhabitants in a territory that is much larger than Cuba’s, with extensive jungles. It has some agricultural products and very few cattle. It has terrible endemic diseases, such as leprosy, which has spread extensively, and there is practically no health care.
Almost the entire population lives in three or four relatively large cities. There have been several guerrilla experiences in the forests. The most important and most serious of these from an ideological point of view have been directed by a people’s revolutionary front with the participation of the Paraguayan Communist Party. Its guerrillas have been systematically defeated. I think that tactical mistakes have been made in the conduct of the revolutionary struggle—which has some laws that must not be broken—but, even so, uprisings continue. Some rebel groups are living in the forests and they know that if they turn themselves in they will be killed. They are far from the borders.
Paraguay is an ideal country for guerrilla warfare. It is agriculturally very rich and has wonderful natural conditions. There are no high mountains but there are forests, very large rivers and operational zones where it would be very difficult for regular armies and very easy to wage a struggle with the help of the farming population.
It has a dictatorship of the extreme right, which used to be very influenced by the Argentine oligarchy. Paraguay was a semicolony of Argentina but with the latest penetrations of US capital has now become directly dependent on the United States. It maintains a bestial dictatorship and has all of the seeds of an intensive short-term popular struggle.
A little farther to the north is Peru. Peru should be watched closely in the future. It has very special characteristics: 80 percent of its population is indigenous or mestizo and there is very clear racial segregation. Whites own the land and the capital; the mestizos generally work as overseers for the whites, and Indians as serfs.
In Peru, farms are still sold complete with their Indian workers. Farms are advertised in the newspapers along with the number of workers or the number of Indians who are forced to work for the feudal lord. You cannot even imagine how terrible the situation is unless you have been there.
Peru is the only country in Latin America with vast agricultural regions where the leftist parties have decisive influence and control. Peru and the indigenous region of Cuzco, where the Peruvian Communist Party has a strong influence, are the only areas in the Americas where any Marxist party has a strong influence. Some years ago the Peruvian Communist Party seized the city of Cuzco by force of arms, but revolutionary conditions didn’t exist and there was a kind of tacit truce: the rebels returned the city and the oppressors, the government troops, took no reprisals. A tense situation ensued, and today Cuzco remains one of the areas where a revolution is threatening—or, rather, where there are hopes of a revolution in Latin America.
Peru is in a similar situation, extreme poverty and extreme oppression, the fundamental characteristics of the heavily populated Andes and important factors for carrying out a revolution. The people don’t speak Spanish; the most commonly spoken languages are Quechua and Aymara, closely related to each other. Anybody wanting to communicate with the Indians has to speak those languages; if they don’t, communication will be impossible.
Nationalities aren’t defined by the borders of those countries. Aymaras in Bolivia relate better with Aymaras in Peru than with whites in either Bolivia or Peru. First the colonizers and then the imperialists have taken pains to maintain that situation. There is, therefore, a natural affinity between those two countries, and in Peru and Ecuador and even as far as Colombia, between the areas where the Andeans and Quechuas live. In all of those countries the prevailing languages are dialects.
These countries have great geographical differences. Peru has three mountain chains crossed by valleys, and the eastern half of the country leads into the great Amazon River basin, which is where la montaña begins—an area of medium to high mountain ranges with a subtropical climate, similar to the climate in our mountains, but with more difficult natural conditions.
The little-developed bourgeoisie in Peru lives on the coast, a narrow, desert-like strip that runs parallel to very high mountains. The highest peak in Peru’s western mountain range is just 100 kilometers from the coast and 5,000 meters above sea level. It sits there like a shell washed ashore. A month or two ago there were uprisings you probably heard about, in the mining area in the middle of the country. Mining is very developed in Peru and you know that mine workers in general are very combative. They don’t necessarily have great political awareness because of the conditions in the country, but they are very combative. The Peruvian army consists of a caste of officers at the top, all from the same class, and masses of Indians at the bottom; if a serious uprising were to occur, there would be no way to crush it.
Ecuador has the same conditions with just one difference: the Ecuadoran bourgeoisie—or a part of it—and, in general, all the supporters of the left have much more influence in the cities and are much clearer about the need for an uprising. Several leaders of these Ecuadoran leftist groups have been in Cuba and have been considerably influenced by the effects and results of the Cuban revolution. They openly uphold the banner of an immediate agrarian revolution. There is also a strong repressive army and the United States has stationed some of its troops in Ecuador. I think that Ecuador, too, is a country where intensive revolutionary struggle will soon appear.
Continuing up the Andes, the backbone of the continent, we come to Colombia where, with periods of greater or lesser activity, a war has been going on for the past 12 years. The Colombian guerrillas have made mistakes that have kept them from achieving a people’s victory such as ours. There has been a lack of ideological leadership. The guerrillas are dispersed and lack a central command (which we in Cuba had), they have been under the personal leadership of caudillos from rural areas, and they began to rob and kill just like their rivals in order to survive. Naturally, they gradually fell into banditry. Other guerrilla groups adopted a position of self-defense and did nothing other than defend themselves when attacked by the government. The situation of struggle and of war to the death led these guerrillas to be weakened. Some of them were completely wiped out.
Right now, influenced by the Cuban revolution, the guerrilla movement in Colombia has grown stronger.
One group of young people, the MOEC [Worker, Student, Peasant Movement], did something similar to what the July 26 Movement did here in the beginning of its struggle. They espouse a series of rightist tendencies toward anarchy—that are sometimes mixed with anticommunist ideas—but they reflect the seeds of a determination to fight. Some of their leaders have been in Cuba. The most determined and enthusiastic of them was compañero Larrota, who was with us during the April [1961 Bay of Pigs] invasion and some time before that. He was murdered when he returned to Colombia. MOEC is probably not important as a political movement and in some cases even could be dangerous, but the group is an example of what is happening there.
Clearly the Colombian parties of the left are trying to hold back the insurrectional movement and move toward electoral struggle, in an absurd context where there are only two legal parties, each taking turns at power. In such absurd conditions, the more impetuous Colombian revolutionaries consider that resorting to elections simply wastes time, and in spite of all obstacles they are doing everything they can to further a struggle that is no longer latent but has developed into open fighting in several parts of the country.
It is difficult to say whether the struggle in Colombia may or may not be important. It is not directed by a well-structured leftist movement; it consists of efforts by a range of social groups and elements from different classes all trying to do something, but there is no ideological leadership and that is very dangerous. There is no way to know where it’s going, but the conditions are being created for the future development of a well-structured revolutionary struggle in Colombia.
The situation in Venezuela is much more active. The Communist Party and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) are heading an armed movement of liberation, and civil war has practically broken out in Venezuela. We should be very interested in this Venezuelan movement; we should be watching it carefully and with great affinity.
Some tactical disagreements have arisen over how to wage that struggle. As a result of our own experience, in which our nation was born from a unilateral experience, we favor guerrilla warfare based on peasants’ groups and seizing the cities from the countryside. This is based on our masses’ great hunger for land and on the mercenary armies’ extreme weakness when moving through large territories in Latin America. Imperialism’s attacks can’t be effective in areas that are favorable for the guerrillas and the popular forces. The government is unable to move beyond areas where the population is concentrated.
Some Venezuelan compañeros have said several times that something violent may happen in Venezuela, that special conditions exist, with some military groups ready to support an insurrection. Partial results were seen in the last insurrectional attempt made at Carúpano, showing once again that, in a revolution, Latin America’s professional military men serve only as a source of weapons for the people. The only mission an army group can have is to let itself be disarmed. From then on, it should be left alone; at most, isolated individuals should be taken from it.
I don’t know that specific area very well, but I am familiar with neighboring areas and in that region impenetrable forests and mountains are nearby. There, a guerrilla unit can create an extremely difficult situation. The area is near oil-exporting ports, such as Caripito, and a guerrilla unit can threaten one of the key areas of the imperialist economy in Venezuela. The marines, however, didn’t set foot outside their garrison. The marines who rebelled couldn’t go anywhere in the interior of the country. They surrendered as soon as they saw that the loyal troops outnumbered them.
A revolution cannot be carried out in those conditions. As you know, guerrilla struggle is long and drawn-out; battles follow one another very slowly and the greatest difficulties aren’t direct action by the enemy but rather struggle against the rigors of the climate; lack of provisions and medicine; the struggle to awaken the rural masses ideologically; the political struggle to incorporate those masses in the popular movement; the slowness of the revolution’s advance; and certainly, in the case of Venezuela, US intervention to defend its oil possessions. All these things influence the guerrilla struggle.
This time—although this time only, it can’t be said any other way—the path adopted in Venezuela was to try to deliver a violent blow via some of the units of the army. Even if they had triumphed, it would only have been a victory of one part of the army over the other. What would the army then have done? It’s very simple: they would have pardoned the losing faction, maintained their caste status and allowed them to retain all of their caste privileges and their class’s control in the country. The exploiting class has the weapons that maintain that army of exploitation.
When one part of the army has triumphed over the other—say, the constitutional section over the anti-constitutional section—it is nothing more than a tiny distortion or a small clash within the group of exploiters. This is a contradiction that in present-day Latin America will never be decisive, with imperialism maintaining its tools of exploitation.
One of the premises of the Cuban revolution is that it is absolutely necessary to immediately destroy the army in order to take power seriously.
Brazil is another big country in South America that is in a strange situation of unstable equilibrium. As you know, Brazil is the largest country in Latin America, the third largest in the world and the country with the largest reserves of raw materials owned by US interests. It has 60 million inhabitants and is a real power. All its raw materials are being developed by US capital, and all the contradictions of Latin America have appeared there.
Two trends can be noted in the forces of the left: some of them want a revolution, while others want to take power by more peaceful or institutional means. The forces of the left that are represented, above all, by the peasant masses of the northeast are clearly willing to seize power despite the opposition of the bourgeoisie (the bourgeoisie puts up little opposition; imperialism is the real enemy).
Brazil is really several different countries. The northeast region is one of them. It is a very poor, densely populated area where there are terrible droughts and the very large peasantry is particularly combative. In the center of the country there is a largely unpopulated jungle area with small agricultural plots. To the south is the industrial area with São Paulo and Río de Janeiro, the most important cities in Brazil.
The northern area is ideal for insurrection. Exploitation has reached such an extreme that peasants cannot stand it anymore. Every day there are reports that Brazilian compañeros have been killed in their struggle against the large landowners. After Quadros resigned and the military tried to stage a coup, the country reached a compromise: the present government is in power thanks to a compromise between the exploiting groups, the Brazilian national bourgeoisie and imperialism. This compromise will, of course, be violated and the two will start fighting among themselves. If they haven’t yet done so openly, it is because they face one great enemy, the Brazilian people.
When Quadros resigned, Fidel explained more or less what the Brazilian people should do. His words were broadcast to the Brazilian people and caused a lot of disquiet. Some thought it to be an act of interference by our government and prime minister in Brazil’s internal affairs. I believe that revolutionaries should give such advice in times of great danger and great need for decisiveness. If a decisive battle had been won in Brazil, the panorama of Latin America would have changed rapidly. Brazil shares borders with all the other South American countries except Chile and Ecuador. It has enormous influence. It is really a place for waging a battle.
In our relations with the other Latin American countries, we should always consider that we are part of a single family—a family with more or less special characteristics—and we must not forget our duty of solidarity or our duty to express our opinion at specific moments. It is not a matter of always interfering or of tediously pointing to our own example—an example not all other countries can follow. But at moments like that, when Brazilians were debating the future of a large part of Latin America, we should speak out.
Part of the Brazilian battle was lost—and could be lost—without too many consequences, but it was nevertheless a moment of tremendous tension. If the battle had been won, we would have won a great deal. What happened in Brazil was not a triumph of the popular forces; it was simply a compromise, in which the group that has power, weapons, decisiveness to use them and great clarity about what has to be done gave up some of the privileges it had won. It will try to regain them later on, and then there will be a clash, too.
This year has already been one of violent clashes between the popular forces and those of oppression. The coming years will be similar. It cannot be said exactly when a collision will occur between such forces in each Latin American country, but it is clear that the contradictions are more and more exacerbated, and this is creating subjective conditions so important for developing a revolution. Two such conditions are particularly important: awareness of the need to effect urgent social change in order to do away with the situation of injustice and the certainty that it is possible to bring about that change.
All Latin Americans are training to bring change about. Training takes the form of uprisings and daily struggle, at times through legal means and at other times through illegal ones; at times in overt struggle and at other times underground. In all cases, the people are training constantly in all possible ways and that training is maturing in terms of quality and intensity, which presages very great future battles in Latin America.
Central America is like one country sharing the same characteristics overlaid with massive imperialist domination. It is one of the places where the popular struggle has already reached a climax but where the actual results are hard to see. In the short term I do not think they are very encouraging, because of the extensive domination of the United States. In Guatemala there has been a relative failure by the progressive forces, and Mexico is fast becoming a US colony. There is a type of bourgeoisie in Mexico, but it has made a pact with imperialism. It is a difficult country that has been greatly harmed by the so-called Mexican revolution, and no important actions against its government can be foreseen there.
I have concentrated my attention on the countries that have entered into the sharpest contradictions with us and in which special conditions have been created for struggle. We have responded to the aggression through our mass media and explained as far as possible to the masses, telling them what can be done, and we are waiting. We aren’t waiting as if we were in an orchestra pit preparing to watch the fight; we aren’t spectators but rather are a part—an important part—of the struggle. The future of the peoples’ revolutions in Latin America is very closely linked to the development of our revolution.
We have friends that are more powerful than all the forces in Latin America. The United States knows this; if it attacks us directly it will seriously endanger its own territory. Even so, it has chosen and meticulously followed a policy of isolating us in the Americas. First, it has ensured that our economic ties with the other Latin American countries are weak, except for Chile. Second, it has seen to it that our relations with most of the other Latin American countries have been broken, and it continues to work on this. It appears that the United States will engage in more acts of aggression, like the seemingly imminent one in Jamaica, to keep us from competing—that is, to do away with the influence of the Cuban revolution, to break our contact with others. This is what Jesuits do, putting on long cassocks to hide their desires. The United States is trying to do this with us, cloaking us so nobody will see us and we won’t have any pernicious influence.
It is very important to struggle against this, because our contact with the rest of Latin America also depends on the way in which the Latin American peoples react to imperialism’s attacks, and our safety depends to a great extent on how they react.
We shouldn’t forget that imperialism makes mistakes. Imperialism may or may not know what the Soviet Union is willing to do to defend us, although I think it does know—if it didn’t, we would have been attacked already. But it may be mistaken, and this time we must not let imperialism be mistaken. If it is, imperialism will be totally destroyed, but very little will be left of us. We must be fighters for peace and convinced champions of peace, because we ourselves will be hurt if the peace is broken. At the same time, we must talk freely of peoples’ revolutions.
Although it seems paradoxical, advocating revolutions and peoples’ struggle is the way to defend peace. Imperialism cannot fight against people when they are armed; it has to come to some kind of a compromise. Moreover, it is not profitable for it to test its implements of war against something that does not exist, so it tries to foment wars between other nations. Imperialism wins in the local wars, the wars between nations. In them, its war materiel wins; the countries go into debt, and imperialism sells weapons to one or to both of the countries. In short, everything depends on the circumstances, but imperialism will gain from testing its war machinery, its tactics and its new inventions.
Now, a people’s war has armies that appear and disappear in the early stages and fronts of struggle that don’t exist—a war such as that in the southern part of Indochina, where a death zone has been declared 40 kilometers from Saigon; that is, the guerrillas hold territory just 40 kilometers from the capital. The imperialists can’t maintain this kind of war, and moreover it teaches them nothing. They want to fight with their weapons to defend their privileges; they can’t learn anything from fighting against small units in places where there is no visible enemy. They would have to make war against the Soviet Union, fighting with nuclear missiles and using another, totally different kind of strategy.
Even though it is not really drained—its losses are small—imperialism is losing points of support. We should remember one important thing: the US imperialists are quite foresighted; they aren’t as stupid as they seem. They make mistakes, true, but they aren’t as stupid as they seem. Some years ago they realized their own raw material reserves were decreasing. The United States is a very wealthy country, but its reserves were on the decline, and so it began to seek reserves elsewhere, all over the world.
There are tin deposits close to Indochina and in Malaya. Bolivia also has tin. Peru has deposits of several precious metals, including iron and copper, and there are also large deposits of copper in Chile. Among other things, Argentina has uranium, and I believe the imperialists are taking that, too. Mexico has sulfur. Venezuela has oil, which the imperialist machine needs in order to survive. The United States needs Latin America, in addition to the parts of Asia and Africa it controls to keep itself going.
Why did it fight in the Congo? The Congo has uranium, copper, diamonds—a whole realm of natural riches. The United States fought hard in the Congo; it ousted Belgian imperialism and took over. The United States is applying this policy all over the world, preparing for the future. If we take away its access to resources, take away imperialism’s economic base, we will mortally wound it. You have to remember that imperialism functions outside its own territory. The United States is not a power operating only within its own territory. It has invested capital all over the world and it plays with it, investing and then withdrawing its investments. Weakening imperialism’s economic base will help to break its strength and will contribute to peace—world, global peace—which is what interests us.
We have to try to ensure that imperialism is not mistaken. We have so far warned it of the steps we would take to counter its blows—and we have taken them, which has hurt it. We have warned the imperialists several times. The radio station here in Havana hurts them. The truth hurts them, and that radio broadcasts to all of Latin America. Peasants throughout Latin America listen to the radio; cinema is the only media more influential than radio there. We have taught imperialism about our modest strength, and we must encourage their belief in our strength.
The imperialists are trying to isolate us, but also to attack us, through acts of sabotage like those in recent days and by trying to influence the people so as to create a certain climate. What happened in Hungary [in 1956] is an interesting example of mistakes made by a people’s government, and there a counterrevolution paid for and prepared by the US government was unleashed.
Here in Latin America there was a very similar example, though the relevant government had different characteristics from the Hungarian people’s government. It happened in Bolivia. In Bolivia there was a bourgeois government, headed by Major Villarroel, that opposed the United States. It advocated nationalizing the mines and other measures that the Bolivian people wanted. That people’s government ended in a terrible way: Major Villarroel was hanged from a street lamp in the public square. Why did that happen? Because the US specialists manipulated the weaknesses arising in his government, and all governments have weaknesses, no matter how progressive they are.
We’ve had our weaknesses for some time, and all of you are in part responsible for them, in a very small way, of course; the leaders of the government, who are obliged to be far-sighted, are much more to blame. We took the road of sectarianism—which, more than simply being sectarian, is just plain stupid. We took the road of separation from the masses, of being too rigid, of strictly implementing correct measures and also absurd ones. We took the road of suppressing criticism, and not only the people’s criticism, those who have a legitimate right to criticize, but also suppressing vigilant criticism by part of the party apparatus, which turned into an executive office and, as such, lost its characteristics of vigilance and inspection. That led us to making serious economic mistakes. Remember that economics lies at the base of all political movements, and we made economic mistakes. That is, we took the road imperialism wanted us to take; they want to destroy our economic base by means of the blockade, and we have been assisting them with our own actions.
Why do I say that you’re partly responsible? The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), institutions created for the people’s vigilance and to represent the people’s wish to defend their revolution, were instead imposed on the people as all-purpose dens of opportunism that aroused the hostility of the people. I do think I’m entitled to describe the CDRs this way. Some of them took arbitrary measures, though this didn’t happen so much here in Havana.
The fact is, we have totally ignored and abandoned the countryside, which is our base, the origin and, for two years, the source of replenishment for our guerrilla army, which triumphed over the cities—and we have left it in the hands of the CDRs.
The CDRs are filled with extremists, opportunists of all kinds who never stopped to think about the damage they were causing to the revolution. Imperialism began to work on these weaknesses—always present in the struggle—and as they worked they became quite successful. In some regions, it created real antagonism between the revolution and sectors of the petit bourgeoisie, who were overwhelmed by revolutionary activities. This is a lesson from which we should learn, and it also constitutes a great truth: that no matter what form they take, security bodies must be controlled by the people.
Sometimes it may seem, and at times it is, absolutely necessary to take prompt (and seemingly arbitrary) measures to counter the danger we are in. Half measures cannot be taken in moments of excessive tension; many people have been arrested without absolute proof that they were guilty. In the Sierra Maestra we shot some people without knowing if they bore full guilt, but it was a time when the revolution could not stop to fully investigate; it had the sacred obligation to win.
As soon as it is possible to restore natural relations among people, we should reestablish those relations, and not continue with the relations of the strong and the weak, based on the precept of “Do what I say.” It is not fair not to do otherwise, and most importantly, we must do it because failure to do so would be politically unwise. Just as the CDRs have become antipathetic organizations, or at least have lost a large part of the prestige and affection they used to command, the security bodies might follow suit; in fact, they have already made similar mistakes.
Our great virtue is that we have never engaged in torture or other similarly terrible behavior that some peoples have fallen into in many other countries in the course of defending correct principles. We established a principle energetically defended by Fidel: that no prisoner, even if they are to face execution, must be touched in any way. There may have been exceptions and I personally know of one, but we continue to uphold and defend that principle. This is extremely important: anything and everything that happens makes the news, including things we don’t publish in the [Cuban] newspapers and things we’d rather not know about. We hear about them later on. When I get home my compañera says, “So-and-so took asylum in an embassy,” or “A soldier shot up a bus.” Everything becomes known. Everybody would find out about abuses and other bad things if there were any, no matter how secretly and far from the public eye they were carried out. The people know and evaluate all such things.
You have a very important role in the defense of the country, but it is less important than the development of the economy. Remember this: your role is less important. For us, it is much more important to have malanga [a root vegetable] than to have you. Even so you have an important role and must carry it out well.
Very hard battles lasting for who knows how long still lie ahead of us, and we must be ready to give our lives for the revolution in one field or another, with greater or lesser urgency, in the more or less immediate future. The battles will continue. I’m no prophet and I can’t tell you what level of tension they will reach or to what degree they will consist of open combat; I hope and wish they will not reach an extreme degree. If they do, neither my actions nor yours will be very important for the final outcome. But if they don’t, and none of us wants them to reach an extreme degree and will struggle to hold imperialism in its place because, as Nikita said, the elephant is strong, although the tiger is still a tiger. Your task of finding out what the enemy is planning to do, and also of passing on what the people think, takes on full importance. You can be great conduits, passing on the people’s feelings to the government.
The leaders of the revolution in Matanzas went through the streets with some rope, saying that INRA (National Institute of the Agrarian Reform) would provide the rope but it was up to the people to decide who should be hanged. There were no reports—at least I haven’t read one—that any such thing actually happened. Those leaders didn’t do their duty correctly. That is like the example of the so-called red terror that people tried to impose against the white terror, not realizing that the white terror existed only in the minds of some extremists. We ourselves unleashed a white terror with our absurd measures, and then we introduced a red terror.
The absurd measures that an uncontrolled revolutionary group took in Matanzas were both saddening and strange. They might be repeated and we must all be vigilant to prevent that from happening. Everything that goes against revolutionary morality is counterrevolutionary—don’t forget that. Anyone who fights against the revolution is a counterrevolutionary, but so is a person who uses their influence to buy a house, an extra car, food beyond their ration book quota and other things the people don’t have, whether or not they flaunt them. That person is a counterrevolutionary and should be denounced immediately. Those who use their influence for their personal benefit or for that of their friends is a counterrevolutionary, and they should be relentlessly pursued and removed. Opportunism is an enemy of the revolution and flourishes wherever the people don’t have control. For this reason it is very important to control the security bodies.
In bodies where control is exercised from far above—where, because of the body’s work, the steps that each of its members takes cannot be controlled—we must be inflexible. Only this is justice and we have made a revolution against injustice; moreover it is politically correct to do so, because those who violate revolutionary morality while speaking of revolution are not only potential traitors to the revolution but are also the worst detractors of the revolution. The people see them and know what they are doing, even when we ourselves don’t know about such things, or don’t want to know. Our revolution, having taken that mistaken path for some months, was destroying the most sacred thing it owns, the people’s faith in it, and we must now work together with more enthusiasm and self-sacrifice than ever, to restore what we destroyed.
It will be a hard task; there is not the same enthusiasm this year as last; something has been lost and must be recovered. It will take a lot of effort, but it will be done, because the will to create beats in the hearts of the people and in the revolution is great. It was easier in the past. After faith has been betrayed or weakened, it won’t be so easy to restore and you must work hard to do this while, at the same time, be inflexible with the counterrevolution. You must be inscrutable about state matters and remain constantly vigilant.
When making analyses you should always consider that Cuba is part of Latin America, that it is directly linked to the rest of Latin America. What we have wrought here is of great historical importance and, even if we didn’t wish it, it will extend to the rest of Latin America. As it has already extended to some peoples, it will extend to others as well. The Second Declaration of Havana will be very important in the development of the revolutionary movements in Latin America. As a document it calls on the masses to struggle, and we should retain our respect for great documents. This Second Declaration of Havana is like a Latin American Communist Manifesto of the period, and is based on our reality and on a Marxist analysis of Latin American reality.
I thought it would be correct for me to touch on Latin America with you this evening. Please forgive me because lack of data kept me from being more convincing and from going into the economic aspect of the struggle, which is so important. It would have been very interesting—for me, at least; I don’t know about you—to examine data demonstrating the extent of imperialist penetration, that brings out the relations between political movements and the economic situations of our countries and clearly shows how reaction corresponds to imperialist penetration and how penetration takes place because of a specific historical or economic background.
The continent shares many features: imperialism’s efforts to penetrate the bourgeoisie in some places in Latin America, the development of the struggles between different empires, and now the absolute US monopoly over the economies of Latin American countries and over Latin America as a whole. The brand name Colgate, for example, is a word repeated in nearly every Latin American nation, just like Mejoral, Palmolive and the names of thousands of other articles consumed here every day. Imperialism uses Latin America as a source of raw materials and as an area of expansion for its monopolies. But this has also unified us, creating a unity that must be held sacred and must be defended and strengthened.
As a moral footnote to this conversation, you should study Latin America more. I have noted that generally in Cuba we know more about practically every other part of the world than we do about Latin America, and this is wrong. By studying Latin America, we will also learn a little about ourselves, draw closer together and understand more about our relations and our history. Studying Latin America means studying imperialist penetration—that is, studying its economy. There, you will discover the seeds of everything that is growing and happening now.
In this speech Che Guevara addresses the Argentine community in Havana during the festivities held on May 25, 1962, the anniversary of Argentina’s liberation from Spain.
Dear compatriots from all over Latin America and those who come from the same province in Argentina as I do and who are here today celebrating one of our patriotic dates:
This moment, which has been repeated many times in the course of our lives, has special meaning—a special tone and color—today. Here, in another Latin American country, in new conditions in Latin America, where we are celebrating another May 25, this time, with no hackneyed speeches and the customary fanfare, without the hollow words with which the rulers of the moment try to make themselves participants in our forefathers’ glory.
Here in Cuba, therefore, May 25 has special significance for us—so special that an Argentine is greeting and hosting you on behalf of the Cuban government and conveying to you its congratulations. The new conditions in Latin America, conditions that have ripened over the course of time, have consolidated this new era in which we live, this new historical moment, in which Cuba has the special glory of being the initiator in Latin America.
Therefore, when speaking of the liberation movements, recalling the old feats of our wars of independence, we must remember today’s Cuba, because this Cuba is part of an old effort of the masses to obtain their definitive liberation, an effort that has not yet completely succeeded even in Cuba. We must struggle to wipe out the old economic systems that oppress us, to free ourselves of all of the problems that dependence on foreign capital—mainly, dependence on US monopolies—has brought us in our development and to defend the freedom and well-being of our people that we have achieved in these years of struggle.
May 25, 1810, witnessed one of the many cries that were emitted in different countries in that period. The Spanish monopoly was coming to an end, and everywhere the peoples were trying to win their freedom. A similar cry had been made in Bolivia the year before, and the struggle for freedom had also begun on the other side of Latin America. That cry of May 25, 1810, was neither the only nor the first one of its kind, but it had the essential virtue of holding firm and being consolidated; it had the virtue of triumphing at that time.
Likewise, today’s Cuban revolution has been neither the only nor the first such effort. Other revolutions have taken place in this period and have tried to take the step that the Cuban revolution has taken, but not all the required conditions existed and the governments created by those popular movements were overthrown. The most advanced, most moving case is that of Árbenz’s Guatemala, which was destroyed by the US monopolies.
Cuba, like the heroes of May 25, 1810, has no other or special virtue; it is neither more nor less than an example of how the people can achieve victory—not an original one, not one based on proposals conceived of for the first time and not using a strategy that is unique in history.
The Cuban revolution simply made the most of the historical moment in which it developed. It applied revolutionary strategy correctly and united the masses who sought change under the leadership of a movement that, at a given moment, interpreted the aspirations of the Cuban people. The revolution followed a leader with extraordinary qualities who, like all great leaders, united the people and, in the special conditions in which we were waging our struggle in the Sierra, in the difficult conditions of guerrilla warfare, and on the plains, brought together an army of peasants that advanced on the cities and drew in the working class. An army of peasants defeated the dictatorship’s army in many pitched battles; and, coming from the countryside, entered the city and then dedicated itself to destroying systematically the old established order—naturally, beginning with the most powerful arm of the reaction, which was the army. The first thing every victorious revolution must do is completely reform the defeated army, replacing it with a new army and establishing class rule.
We did that, and that was our virtue. This is the experience that we can show the other peoples of the world—especially the other Latin American peoples, with more strength and more suffering because we speak the same language, have gone through the same experiences and understand one another very easily.
Therefore, we have an experience here—naturally, not the only one; we would never consider that the Cuban experience blazes the only path for Latin America’s liberation. But it is an important one, an effective demonstration that the repressive armies can be destroyed, that the people can arm their combative vanguard by teaching it how to fight and destroy the enemy army, how to harass and finally crush it. We can also show here how the masses grow and develop—the development of revolutionary consciousness is one of the most interesting phenomena.
We all know that, to be successful, a revolution requires certain objective and subjective conditions. The government against which the revolution is directed has to be given a sound beating and have lost its ability to react. The objective conditions exist throughout Latin America; there are no Latin American countries where they aren’t at a peak. However, the subjective conditions haven’t ripened to the same extent in all countries. We have shown that, in Cuba’s special conditions, the subjective conditions ripened during the armed struggle; the armed struggle was a catalyst that made those conditions more acute, carrying them to an extreme; and political awareness was born.
Awareness of the need for change in a given social situation and confidence in the possibility of effecting that change—those are what we call subjective conditions. The masses in Latin America are very aware of the need for change, but they aren’t always aware of the possibility of bringing about change, the possibility of seizing power. The peoples aren’t always aware of their strength.
The armed struggle in Cuba developed the people’s faith in their own strength, turning it into confidence in victory and even enabling us to throw ourselves against the enemy’s weapons; defeat its numerical superiority in terms of armed soldiers, firepower and modern weapons; attack it at a disadvantage of sometimes one to 10; and destroy all its focal points until victory was won. After this, the other stage also begins—the stage we’re living in now—which may be more difficult, more arduous, than the stage of the war. I repeat: this is what we can show you. We have the moral duty and obligation of showing it to you so you can study and analyze—but not copy—it.
When enough time has passed to make the Cuban revolution a topic for historical studies and the future generations call some of those who took part in this revolution heroes of that time, then the revolution will have the virtues which I’ve just listed: of having shown other Latin American peoples what an armed people can do when it has chosen its revolutionary strategy well and when its revolutionary army is well led.
Naturally, every Latin American country has specific conditions. Some of them have wonderful conditions for guerrilla struggle; in some, the peasants have very advanced thinking, and the war can be fought more favorably. In others, the working class, the urban population, is much more advanced, and the conditions for waging a war are more difficult.
We aren’t experts who have specialized in subversion—although there are experts who are specialists in combating subversion—but we do know one thing, and that is that an armed man is worth just as much as or more than another man who is armed, depending on the ideology motivating him to take up arms. Moreover, to be armed, a man must obtain a weapon, and weapons don’t appear through spontaneous generation; neither are they found just around the corner; the weapons are held by the enemy’s army, the oppressor’s army. To achieve revolutionary liberation, you must use those weapons you have and, with them, take new weapons away from the enemy and turn your small army into a great people’s army.
Please excuse my military emphasis on weapons, but we’re celebrating a day on which the Argentine people expressed their determination to seize independence from Spanish rule and, after holding an open meeting—after having those discussions which we remember year after year in ceremonies such as this and after hearing the statements of the Spanish bishops, who refused to seek independence and who expressed the racial superiority of Spain. After all, that political triumph had to be implemented and the Argentine people had to take up arms. And then, after taking up arms and expelling the Spanish invaders from all their borders, even more compañeros had to ensure Argentina’s independence—and that of her sister Latin American nations—so the Argentine armies crossed the Andes to help liberate other peoples.
When the liberating feats are remembered, we are especially proud—more than of having obtained our territory’s freedom and of having defended it against encroachment by the royalist forces—the role our forces, our armies, played in the liberation of Chile and Peru.
Rather than an act of altruism by the revolutionary forces, it was a pressing need of military strategy to obtain a victory of continental scope, since partial victories were impossible. The only alternatives were the complete triumph or the complete defeat of revolutionary ideas, and that is also true today. Here on this small Caribbean island, surrounded by the sea—and by enemies, too—the history made in Argentina is being repeated.
Our revolution needs to spread its ideas, needs other people to embrace it, needs other Latin American peoples, filled with energy, to take up arms—or seize power, whichever, because, when you seize power, you have to take up arms afterwards—and help us in this task, which is the task of all Latin America and all humankind: the global task of struggling against the destruction wrought by our monopolist, imperialist enemy, which won’t be defeated until the last of its magnates goes to jail or to the scaffold. It won’t end until we bring about the total defeat of imperialism, and we draw closer to that day every time the popular forces wage and win a battle anywhere in Latin America or in the rest of the world.
The Asian and African peoples are just as much our brothers—just as much brothers and sisters in our destiny—as are the other Latin American peoples. The people of Algeria, who are winning their independence, and the people of Vietnam and of Laos, who are giving their lives to obtain theirs, are just as much our brothers as are the people of Venezuela, Paraguay, Peru and Argentina.
They are all part of a single struggle—which imperialism calls by the same name, even though ideologies change and are acknowledged as communist or socialist, Peronist or any other “-ist,” representing the political ideology in a given country. There are only two positions in history: either you’re for the monopolies, or you’re against them, and all those who are against the monopolies can be called by the same name.
In this, US imperialism is right: those of us fighting for our peoples’ liberation are united in the struggle (even if we don’t know it) by our goal of wiping out imperialism. We are all allies, although we may not know this, either; although our own forces are sometimes divided by internal quarrels; and even though pointless arguments sometimes divert our attention from the prime need to oppose imperialism. But all of us who struggle honestly for the liberation of our respective countries are enemies of imperialism. There is no possible position now other than that of struggle or collaboration, and I know that none of you are collaborating with the enemy, none of you is even remotely in favor of imperialism, and all of you are decidedly for Argentina’s liberation.
“Liberation,” because Argentina is once again in chains. These chains are sometimes hard to see; chains aren’t always visible to everyone, but they are shackling the country. Oil goes out on one side, US companies come in on all sides of the country and old victories are being eaten away—and all this is going on slowly, as if a subtle poison were penetrating Argentina, as it is in many other Latin American countries. However, the people are reacting energetically against this penetration, which, in general terms, is subtle but always weighs on the backs of the people. And, when the administrations try to cleanse their hands with an election, this brings on disasters such as the latest one.
Then comes brazen intervention by imperialism, its puppets and all of its aides-de-camp. This creates a familiar situation, and the popular struggles begin. If the leaders of the reaction are skillful, they may channel things toward new forms that will enable them to deceive the people once more; if the leaders of the reaction aren’t skillful enough, or if the people are more alert than they are, the impetus of the masses may take them farther than they have come so far; it may enable them to take the step needed for the working class to seize power. The masses of workers and peasants in our country may learn to take a new path or continue along paths they know well and destroy a power that is already tottering, which is based on fear of bayonets, on the disunity of our forces, and on unawareness of the possibility of change and of struggle, unawareness of how great the people’s strength really is and of the comparatively enormous weakness of the repressive force.
If our people learn their lessons well, if they don’t allow themselves to be deceived again, and if new disputes don’t divert them from their main purpose, which should be that of seizing power—neither more nor less than seizing power—new conditions may arise in Argentina: the conditions represented, in its time, by May 25; the conditions of a total change. Only, in this period of colonialism and imperialism, total change will mean the step that we have taken, the step toward the declaration of a socialist revolution and the establishment of a power dedicated to the construction of socialism.
When you come right down to it, socialism is an economic stage of humankind; like it or not, we must pass through this stage. We may delay or advance it—that part of the struggle corresponds to the leaders of the two great opposing forces. If the reaction does an effective job of directing its guns, its weapon of division and its weapon of intimidation, it may keep socialism from coming to a given country for many years. But, if the people use their ideology correctly, apply their revolutionary strategy well, choose the right moment for making their attack, and do so fully and without fear, revolutionary power may come very soon in any Latin American country—specifically, Argentina.
Compañeros, whether the historic experience of May 25 is repeated in these new conditions or not depends on the Argentine people and their leaders—that is, it depends on you. Therefore, you have a great responsibility: to struggle and lead the people, who have already begun using every conceivable means to express their determination to break the old chains and to free themselves of the new ones with which imperialism is threatening to shackle them.
Let us, therefore, take up the hackneyed, often distorted example of May 25; let us take up the example of the liberating revolution that issued from its borders—filled with a new ideology that was not its own but which it had adopted to convey its message to the rest of Latin America—and let us think of these moments, when a type of May 25 has appeared in the Caribbean, revolutionary proclamations are being launched from here that will reach all Latin American peoples and the Declaration of Havana stands out as a declaration of human rights for the peoples of this era.
Let us think about the indestructible unity of all of Latin America; let us think about everything that links and unites us—not about what divides us. Let us think about all of the qualities we have in common; about our economies, which are all distorted; about the fact that each nation is shackled by the same imperialism. Let us think about being part of an army that is fighting for liberation in every part of the world that has not been liberated yet, and let us get ready to celebrate another May 25—not in this generous land, but in our own land, under new symbols: under the symbols of victory, the construction of socialism and the future.