Che Guevara Talks to Young People

by Ernesto Che Guevara

  We all have definitively become convinced there is a common enemy. Today no one looks over their shoulder to see if someone might overhear them, if some embassy spy might report his opinions, before clearly speaking out against the monopolies, before clearly saying: “Our enemy, and the enemy of all Latin America, is the monopolistic government of the United States of America.” [Applause] If everybody already knows this is the enemy, and if our starting point is knowing that whoever struggles against that enemy has something in common with us, then the second part follows: What are our goals here in Cuba? What do we want? Do we want people to be happy or not? Are we struggling for Cuba’s absolute economic liberation or not? Are we or are we not struggling to be a free country among free countries, without belonging to any military bloc, without having to consult any embassy of any great power on earth about domestic or foreign decisions we make? Are we thinking of redistributing the wealth of those who have too much, to give to those who have nothing? [Applause] Are we thinking here of making creative work a dynamic daily source of all our happiness? If so, then we already have the goals to which we referred. And everyone who shares those goals is our friend. If that person also has other ideas, if he belongs to one or another organisation, those are discussions of lesser importance.

  At times of great dangers, at times of great tensions and great creations, what counts are the great enemy and the great goals. If we agree, if all of us already know where we are going, then whatever happens, we must begin our work. [Applause]

  I was telling you that to be a revolutionary you have to have a revolution. We already have it. And a revolutionary must also know the people with whom he is to work. I think we still don’t know one another well. I think we still have to travel a while along that road. If someone asks me how to go about getting to know the people, in addition to going into the interior, learning about cooperatives, living in cooperatives (and not everybody can do that, and there are many places where the presence of a medical worker is very important) … in those cases, I will tell you that one of the Cuban people’s greatest expressions of solidarity is the revolutionary militias. [Applause] The militias now give the doctor a new function and prepare him for what was at least until recently a sad and almost fatal reality in Cuba: that is, that we were going to be prey – or if not prey at least victims – of a large-scale armed attack.

  I must caution that as a revolutionary militia member, a doctor must always be a doctor. He should not commit the error we made in the Sierra – or perhaps it was not an error, but all the doctor compañeros of that period know it’s the case – that it seemed dishonourable to us to be at the side of someone wounded or ill, and we sought any means possible to grab a rifle and show on the battlefield what should be done.

  Now conditions are different, and the new armies being formed to defend the country should be armies that use a different method. Within this new army the doctor will have enormous importance. He should continue being a doctor, which is one of the most beautiful and most important tasks of war. And not just the doctor but also the nurses, laboratory technicians, all those who dedicate themselves to this humane profession.

  But even knowing that danger is present, and even while preparing to repel the aggression that still hangs over us – we should all stop thinking about it. Because if we centre our efforts on war preparations, we cannot build what we want, we cannot devote ourselves to creative work.

  All work, all capital invested in preparing for military action, is labour lost, money lost. Unfortunately, it has to be done, because others are preparing. But the money I am most saddened to see leave the National Bank coffers – and I say this with all honesty and pride as a soldier – is money to pay for some weapon of destruction. [Applause]

  The militias have a function in peacetime, however. The militias should be, in the populated areas, the arm that unifies and gets to know the people. They should practise real solidarity, as the compañeros have told me is being done in the medical militias. At times of danger, they should immediately set out to resolve the problems of the needy throughout Cuba. But the militias are also an opportunity to get to know one another, an opportunity for the men of all Cuba’s social classes to live side by side, made equal and made brothers by a common uniform.

  If we medical workers achieve this – and you’ll allow me to use once again this term I had forgotten some time ago – if we all use that new weapon of solidarity, if we know the goals, if we know the enemy, and if we know the direction in which we must travel, then the only thing left for us is to know the daily stretch of the road and to take it. Nobody can point out that stretch – it is the personal road of each individual; it is what he will do every day, what he will gain from his individual experience, and what he will give of himself in practising his profession, dedicated to the people’s well-being.

  If we already possess all the elements with which to march towards the future, let us recall that phrase of Marti, which at this moment I am not putting into practice, but which we must constantly put into practice: “The best form of saying is doing.” Let us then march towards the future of Cuba. [Ovation]

  In Cuba imperialism was caught sleeping, but now it is awake

  (Farewell to international volunteer work brigades, 30 September 1960)

  The Cuban Revolution won the solidarity of working people and youth the world over. In August and September 1960 some 160 young people from 36 countries volunteered their labour for nearly two months to help build the “Camilo Cienfuegos” school complex in Las Mercedes in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Guevara gave the following speech at a ceremony bidding farewell to these volunteer work brigades.

  The delegation from Algeria received special mention by Guevara. Since 1954 the National Liberation Front had been fighting an independence war against Paris that had become a pole of attraction for revolutionary-minded youth the world over. In 1962 the French colonial regime conceded defeat and Algeria, like Cuba, established a government, under the leadership of Ahmed Ben Bella, that mobilised workers and peasants to defend their own interests.

  Four days prior to Guevara’s speech, Fidel Castro had addressed the United Nations General Assembly for the first time, placing before the world the case for Cuba’s right to national self-determination and economic development. “The case of Cuba is not an isolated one,” Castro pointed out. It “is the case of all the underdeveloped and colonised countries”. Speaking on behalf of Cuba’s revolutionary government, Castro denounced the actions of the United Nations in giving cover to the US-organised overthrow of the government of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo days earlier. He underscored Cuba’s support for Algeria’s independence struggle against France, called for UN recognition of the People’s Republic of China, and solidarised with the struggle for Puerto Rico’s freedom from US colonial rule.

  On 28 September 1960, at a mass rally in Havana, Fidel Castro reported back to the Cuban people on his historic trip to New York during which the entire delegation – made unwelcome at a downtown hotel – had moved uptown to the Hotel Theresa, receiving a tumultuous welcome from the people of Harlem and a warm embrace from US revolutionary leader Malcolm X.

  At that same mass gathering in Havana, during which a bomb planted by counter-revolutionary terrorists exploded, Castro announced that a block-by-block organisation of Cubans mobilised against the counter-revolution would be created. In the coming days the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution would be organised to meet this necessity.

  Compañeros of Cuba and from all the countries of the world who took your message of solidarity with the Cuban Revolution to the foothills of the Sierra Maestra:

  Today is a happy day, a youthful day, but it’s also a sad day of farewell. Today we say “so long” to the compañeros who came here from all over the world to work for the Cuban Revolution, and to get to know this revolution and its people. You worked with all your youthful and revolutionary enthusiasm. I believe you also got to know our people, a people like any o
ther, made up of millions of individuals who now form a unified and fighting mass in defence of their newly acquired rights – millions standing firm until death in order to safeguard those rights and continue advancing towards new conquests. [Applause]

  It would be an error for us to presume to explain to each of the compañeros who have come from around the world what a revolution is. It would also be an error to try to get them to follow this example, as if it were something unique in the world. This is nothing more, but also nothing less, than a people who have taken the road of revolution, and they stand firmly on it. Many of the world’s young people now know what it means to take the road of revolution, just as Cubans know. They know the magnificent results the people obtain when they cut themselves loose from the obstacles that hindered their development.

  Unfortunately there are also many compañeros in the Americas and throughout the world who have not yet seen their people take the road of revolution. Perhaps they do not yet fully understand the historic phenomenon that allowed Cuba – a country no more colonised or exploited than any other – to find, in its desperation, the necessary strength to begin the struggle that would break its chains. In truth, from the standpoint of well-known theories, it is difficult to explain why it was precisely here in Cuba that the first battle cry for the definitive liberation of the Americas was sounded, and here that we continue advancing even now. We will not presume to explain it, either. We don’t presume that the Cuban example is the only way to realise the aspirations of a people. Nor do we believe that this road paved with struggle is the one and only way to achieve true happiness, that is, freedom and economic well-being. Be that as it may, much of what we have done can be achieved in almost any oppressed country, whether oppressed, colonised, semicolonised. Not underdeveloped, as they call us, because we are not underdeveloped. We are simply badly developed, badly developed because imperialism long ago took over our raw materials and set out to exploit them according to its own imperial needs.

  It is unnecessary to give a lot of examples. You know about Cuba’s sugar, Mexico’s cotton, Venezuela’s oil, Bolivia’s tin, Chile’s copper, Argentina’s cattle and wheat, or Brazil’s coffee. We all share a common denominator: we are countries that produce a single product, and we also share the common denominator of being countries dependent on a single market.

  We therefore know that on the road to liberation we must first struggle to free ourselves from the single market, and then from having only a single product to sell. Foreign trade and domestic production must also be diversified. Up to this point everything is very simple. The question is how to do it. By the parliamentary road? By way of arms? Or through a combination of the parliamentary road and the armed road? I don’t know, and I can’t respond accurately to the question. What I can tell you, however, is that under Cuba’s conditions of oppression by imperialism and its local puppets, we saw no way out for the Cuban people other than the voice of guns.

  To those bogged down by technicalities – who ask us, for example, how much capital do you need to begin an agrarian reform – we would say none; the only capital needed is that of an armed people conscious of their rights. [Applause] That was the only capital we needed here in Cuba to carry out our agrarian reform, to deepen it, to advance it, and to embark on the road of industrialisation.

  Of course, all the people’s efforts cannot be summed up in a simple formula, because this struggle has cost blood and suffering, and the world’s empires are trying to make it cost more blood and suffering. That’s why we must firmly unite around those rifles, around the only voice that guides the entire people towards their final goals. We must be firmly united, allowing nothing to sow division. Because if brothers quarrel – as Martin Fierro said – outsiders will devour them. And this maxim, which the poet simply got from the people, is one imperialism knows all too well: if you divide, you conquer. For that reason it divided us into countries that produce coffee, copper, oil, tin, or sugar. It divided us, too, into countries competing for the market of a single country, constantly lowering prices, so it could more easily defeat our countries one by one.

  In other words, any rule that can be applied to one people has to be applied to all peoples whose development is incomplete. We must all be united. All the world’s peoples should unite to get what is most sacred: freedom; economic well-being; the conviction that they will never face a problem that is insurmountable; and the knowledge that through our daily, enthusiastic, and creative labour we can achieve our goals and nothing can stop us.

  But empires do exist, and you know them. We know them too because they have exploited us. The compañeros born inside these empires also know them, because they have lived in the belly of the beast, and they know how terrible it is to live under such conditions when one has faith in humanity. All peace-loving countries – encircled today by bases with nuclear weapons, unable to fulfil their aspirations of development – know them too.

  We all know them, and for this reason our common duty is to try to unite despite the governments that want to keep us apart. We must clasp hands – not just with young people, as we did here, but also with older people, the elderly and the children – so we become a single will. We must clasp hands to avoid the most terrible of wars threatening humanity today, as well as to achieve everyone’s most cherished desires.

  As soon as the peoples, who are aware of all this – because they are not ignorant – want to achieve this unity, pressure begins to be exerted by all the countries with sell-out rulers. This will happen to many of you. They will throw you in jail, oppress you in any way possible. They will try to make you forget what you learned in a free country, or to make an example of you so the faint-hearted have no desire to follow the road of dignity. This has already happened to many of those who visited us from countries in Latin America and, unfortunately, it will continue to occur. Many of you will run into problems. Many of you will be labelled human beings of the worst sort, allied with strange foreign oppressors, with the most vile elements, out to destroy what they call democracy, out to destroy the Western way of life.

  Ask the struggling people of Algeria about their Western way of life. Or ask any of the peoples who fight and are killed every day for seeking a happiness that never seems to arrive.

  That’s why it is not an easy road, even for those like us who have overcome the first barrier, and established a government of the people. [Applause] A very difficult stage is still ahead, a stage when these false democracies will attack the people more and more, when the people’s indignation and even hatred will well up inside them, until they form a human wave that takes up arms, fights, and conquers power. Under the conditions currently faced by humanity, peoples in the colonial and semicolonial countries – those under the yoke of the empires’ puppet governments – will almost certainly have to take up arms sooner or later to be able to put their representatives in the government, and in this way unite all of America, all of Africa, all of Asia. Then America, Africa, Asia, and Europe will all be together in a single happy world. [Applause]

  But you will see many things. You will see how in Cuba imperialism was caught sleeping but is now awake. The cries of the people woke it up. You will see them create police forces, which will be called international, where leadership will be assigned to those with more experience in the fight against communism. In other words, in the case of our Latin American example, it will be the United States that will take up arms to combat any people that rebels – or, more precisely, that will provide the arms that our brothers in the Americas will carry under the shameful flag of what is today the Organisation of American States. This will be seen in the Americas, and soon. It will be seen because the peoples will rebel and because imperialism will create those armies. But the history of the world marches on, and we will see – or our compañeros will see, in the event we fall in the struggle, but in any case this generation will see – how in the struggle the peoples will defeat armies equipped by the most brutal power on earth, and they wil
l destroy imperialism completely.

  Our generation will see the world definitively liberated, [Applause] even if we have to experience the greatest suffering, the greatest hardships, and even if in their madness they seek to unleash a war that will only hasten their demise.

  But if any nation achieves its independence without having to pass through this struggle, or is able to shorten some of its stages, and asks us for the recipe to unify the people, to organise the deepest economic and social reforms using the capital of guns and the people – then we must tell them that it is very important to educate the people, and that the people can be educated with marvellous speed.

  Those of us who have had the opportunity to live through an experience like the Cuban Revolution, so rich in events, are moved when we see how day by day our people gain more knowledge, more revolutionary conviction, more revolutionary consciousness. Take a simple example from today: All the delegations from brother countries were warmly applauded. But three of them received our warmest applause because they face special circumstances.

  One is the delegation of the people of the United States of America, [Applause] a delegation that should never be confused with the government of the United States of America. It is a delegation of people with no racial hatred, and who do not judge individuals by their skin colour, their religion, or their economic status.

  Also receiving very warm applause were those who today represent better than anyone the opposite pole, the delegation from the People’s Republic of China. [Applause]

  At the same time, two other peoples were applauded, from countries whose governments are in bitter struggle – one backed by its entire people, the other deceiving its people or against its people. So the Algerian delegation was also enthusiastically welcomed. [Applause] They are writing another marvellous page in history, fighting the way we had to in the mountains. But they are facing an invasion that did not originate on their own soil. People born on your own soil, however brutal they may be, always observe some semblance of respect. The Algerian people, however, face an invasion by troops of a foreign country, who are taught to slaughter, who are taught racial hatred, who are taught the philosophy of war. In spite of this our people were able to applaud, very generously, the delegation of the people of France, who also do not represent their government. [Applause]