Ours is a people who know how to choose so accurately the object of their applause, who know how to find the political essence of things, who know how to make such a precise distinction between peoples and governments, even in moments like this – when, for example, bitter hatred and brutal repression have been directed against the Cuban delegation in the United Nations, reaching the point of physical threats, not to mention verbal threats. So we ask ourselves: Have the people of this country made a revolution because that’s just the way they are? Absolutely not. The people are the way they are because they are in the midst of a revolution. In the process of exercising their revolutionary rights during the barely twenty months of the Cuban Revolution, they have learned all that is being expressed here today and all that you, delegates from around the world, have been able to see and witness in our island.
The first prescription for educating the people, to put it in different words, is for them to take the road of revolution. Never try to teach a people that through education alone and under a despotic government, they can conquer their rights. Teach them, first and foremost, to conquer their rights. When they have a government that represents them, they will learn everything taught to them, and even more: they will themselves become teachers of everyone without the slightest effort. [Applause]
We ourselves, a revolutionary government, part of the people, have learned by always asking the people and without ever isolating ourselves from them. Because he who governs, yet isolates himself in an ivory tower and tries to lead the people with formulas, is lost and is on the road to despotism. The people and the government should always be one. And all of you, visiting compañeros of the Americas and of colonial countries that are yet to win their independence, should also be aware that to lead the people you do not need a lot of schooling. If you have it, good. If you are a philosopher or a mathematician, good. But to lead the people you have to interpret them. And that is much easier to do if you are part of them, if you have never let education, or any other barrier that separates us, isolate you from them.
That is why we have a government of workers, of peasants, and includes as well people who knew how to read from before. But the latter, who are a minority, learned a lot more in the struggle. And you have the example here, in the Rebel Youth. [Applause] On Sunday you will hear Commander Joel Iglesias. [Applause] This Rebel Army commander went to the Sierra when he was fifteen, barely able to read and not knowing how to write. Today he is able to address all the youth, not because he has become a philosopher in a year and a half, but because he speaks to the people as one of them, because he feels what all of you feel every day, and he knows how to express it, he knows how to reach you. If governments were made up of men like him, that would be better.
Therefore, we extend here our greetings to the governments of the world whose leaders have suffered as part of the people, who have learned their ABCs in the course of the struggle, and are today, as always, identified with the people. [Applause]
You have come here, compañeros of the world, to know us and to work for us. But in spite of all the knowledge you bring us, you can always learn something new, especially compañeros from countries that have not had this experience and are preparing for it. Because all this is part of history, and past history cannot be changed.
There are many things to learn from Cuba. Not only the good things, which you see every day, those that show the enthusiasm and fervour of the people. You can also learn from the bad things, so that one day, when you have to govern, you can avoid the kind of errors we have committed. You can learn how organisation must be intimately tied to the victory of the people, that the more thorough the organisation, the easier the victory.
You set out to build a school complex, but when you arrived not everything was organised. The school complex was on break, and you were not able to finish that small monument to human solidarity that you wanted to leave there. That’s a shame, although for us it’s worth as much as if you had built the grandest castle. But it is also a lesson that organisation is important. We cannot think that a revolutionary is a divine being who, by the grace of God, falls to earth, opens his arms, and the revolution begins. That when problems arise, they are resolved simply by the grace of the enlightened. A revolutionary must be a tireless worker, and more than tireless, organised. If instead of learning from the struggle’s setbacks, as we have had to do, you go into the revolutionary struggle bringing with you that prior organisational experience, all the better for those countries where each of you will fight to make a revolution. This is one of the lessons you can take from here. And you can draw the lesson from this concrete example, since we could not offer you a positive one.
But, of course, in many other branches of the country’s economy we have not committed this sin. From the early days of the struggle we learned that we had to organise ourselves. And even though the revolution is barely completing its second year, we are preparing our first well-organised development plan, to carry it out enthusiastically, along with the entire people. Because an ambitious development plan, which will seek to harness all the forces of the people, cannot be divorced from them. We must do it together, so that everyone understands it, so that everyone grasps its essence, and so that everyone puts their shoulder to the wheel for this task.
We will be the first country in the Americas that can say with pride that we have a plan for economic development and, moreover, we have the most important thing, a plan that will be fulfilled, a plan we will do everything possible to surpass. [Applause] Why do we need this plan? For us this is also something new; because we always have to think over carefully all those things we do not fully understand. We must analyse what the enemy wants us to do and why they want us to do it. Then we must do the opposite. The enemy doesn’t want us to plan, to organise, to nationalise our economy; the enemy fights with all its might against it. Why? Because it is precisely through the capitalist anarchy of production that they exploit working people. That is how they make everyone develop a dog-eat-dog mentality, where each one struggles on his own, elbowing each other, kicking each other, knocking heads; each person trying to get ahead of everyone else, failing to realise that if we got organised and united we would be a tremendous force and could go much further, to the benefit of everyone. [Applause]
Of course, there are always individuals, at least a few, who watch the bullfight from behind the barrier, those who stay away from daily work and effort, who get offended by hearing these things, and who, aghast, speak of the sanctity of private property. What has private property meant, the property of the big monopolies? (We’re not talking about the small workshop or store owner, but the big monopolies.) What it has meant is the destruction not only of our strengths but also of our national identity and our culture. The monopoly – which is the epitome of private property, the epitome of the struggle of man against man – is the imperial weapon that divides, that exploits, and that degrades the people. Monopolies produce cheaper goods, but these are either of poor quality or are not needed. They sell their culture through movies, novels, or children’s stories, fully intent on instilling within us a different mentality. Because they have their strategy – the strategy of laissez-faire; the strategy of individual versus collective effort, of appealing to that little bit of selfishness that exists in each person to beat out the rest. They appeal to that petty superiority complex that everyone possesses that makes one think they are better than everybody else. The monopolies instil in individuals, from childhood on, the view that since you are better and work harder, that it is in your interest to struggle individually against everyone else, to defeat everyone else and become an exploiter yourself.
The monopolies go to great lengths to prove that collective effort enslaves and prevents the smarter and more capable from getting ahead. As if the people were made up simply of individuals, some more intelligent, some more capable. As if the people were something other than a great mass of wills and hearts that all have more or less the same capacity for
work, the same spirit of sacrifice, and the same intelligence.
They go to the undifferentiated masses and try to sow divisions: between blacks and whites, more capable and less capable, literate and illiterate. They then subdivide people even more, until they single out the individual and make the individual the centre of society.
The monopolies, needless to say, stand above these individuals they point to. Monopolies are collectivities, too, but they are collectivities of exploitation. We have to show people that their strength rests not in considering themselves better than everyone else, but in knowing their individual limitations as well as the strength of unity; in knowing that two can always push harder than one, ten more than two, a hundred more than ten, and six million more than a hundred! [Applause]
Compañeros, delegates from around the world: I must thank you, on behalf of the Cuban people, and tell you sincerely that we have learned a lot from you, and that you leave an indelible mark on us. But we also hope we have left an indelible mark on you. We hope you take advantage of all we have to offer. We hope that wherever in the world it becomes necessary to analyse why things are the way they are, that you do so; that you study the theories, revise them, and analyse them carefully. And we hope that everyone will ask themselves whether it is possible to be happy some day, and what will be the means to bring that about.
We do not presume to put ourselves forward as an example. We simply offer this, with open arms, as a historical fact. If someone can draw lessons from us that are of benefit, even a little, to another section of the world’s population, we will feel satisfied. But even if we fail to achieve that, we would still feel happy if in our travels to other parts of the world we encounter your hands of friendship, remembering this two-month stay in Cuba. [Applause]
Compañeros, we have fond memories of you. We look forward to meeting you again. We invite you to visit our country as often as you like, to work here, to learn here, or simply to see it again. We bid you farewell with a brotherly hug and say to you, “Until we meet again!” [Ovation]
The university must colour itself black, mulatto, worker and peasant
(At the Central University of Las Villas, 28 December 1959)
When the revolution triumphed in January 1959, the class composition of the student body and faculty at Cuba’s three universities – located in Havana, Santiago de Cuba, and Santa Clara – reflected the exploitative society Cuban workers and peasants were now striving to leave behind.
From its earliest days, Cuba’s revolutionary government instituted measures to begin redressing these class inequalities and the racist discrimination inherent in capitalist social relations, exacerbated in Cuba by more than three centuries of black slavery and decades of US imperialist domination. In addition to the agrarian reform and nationalisation of industry, the new government carried out numerous other revolutionary measures during its first two years. It mobilised more than a hundred thousand young people as volunteer teachers who spread out across rural Cuba in a one-year campaign that virtually eliminated illiteracy – a scourge that prior to the revolution was a fact of life for nearly 25 per cent of the people. Government decrees slashed rents and the cost of medicines in half and reduced electricity and phone rates. An extensive and universal public education system was established for the first time in Cuba, while private schools were turned into centres of education for all. A public health system was inaugurated with free medical care for the entire population.
In the following speech presented at the Central University of Las Villas in Santa Clara, and in the subsequent two items in this book, Che Guevara addresses the challenge of advancing this course in Cuba’s universities too, opening up these virtually all-white enclaves to sons and daughters of workers and peasants, and transforming their character and curriculum in line with the new revolutionary tasks.
A system of racial segregation stigmatising blacks and mulattos was reproduced daily by the workings of capitalism in prerevolutionary Cuba. Africans had been brought to Cuba as early as the Spanish conquest in the 1500s, toiling as slaves on sugar plantations. The wars to win the island’s independence from Spain in the latter nineteenth century were intertwined with the fight to abolish slavery, which was eliminated only in 1886. Tens of thousands of slaves and their descendants fought as soldiers, officers, and commanders in the three wars for independence, constituting the majority of the members of the Liberation Army.
Throughout the first six decades of the twentieth century, blacks in Cuba faced the worst conditions in city and countryside, whether in employment, education, health, or housing. A system of racial segregation similar to that in the Jim Crow South of the United States prevailed across much of Cuba. Among the first steps of the new revolutionary government were laws that confronted this racist oppression. Speaking to a rally in Havana on 22 March 1959, Fidel Castro announced that discrimination against blacks in employment had been outlawed. Several weeks later, Law 270 declared all beaches and other public facilities open to everyone – black, mulatto, or white. Clubs, businesses, and other establishments that refused equal access and service to blacks were closed. These laws were enforced by the Rebel Army, the newly formed revolutionary police force, and the popular militias.
As noted by Guevara in the speech that follows, his visit to Las Villas coincided with the First National Forum of Cuban Industries, organised by university students there. Since October 1959, Guevara had headed the Department of Industrialisation of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform. On 26 November 1959, he was appointed president of the National Bank as well.
Dear compañeros; new colleagues in the Faculty Senate and old colleagues in the struggle to liberate Cuba:
I must begin my talk by stating that I can only accept the degree bestowed upon me today as a general tribute to our people’s army. I cannot accept it as an individual for the simple reason that anything that is not what it claims to be lacks any value in the new Cuba. How could I as an individual, Ernesto Guevara, accept the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa conferred by the School of Education, since the only education I have imparted has been that of guerrilla camps, swearwords, and fierce example? [Applause] And I believe such things certainly cannot be transformed into a cap and gown. That is why I continue to wear my Rebel Army uniform, even as I come and sit before you in this Faculty Senate, in the name and on behalf of our army. In accepting this designation – which is an honour for us all – I also wanted to present our message, that of a people’s army, a victorious army.
I once promised the students at this campus a brief talk presenting my views on the role of the university. Work, however, and a mountain of events prevented me from doing so. But today I am going to do it, bolstered moreover by my status as Professor Honoris Causa. [Applause]
So what must I say about the university’s fundamental duty, its article number one, in this new Cuba? What I must say is that the university should colour itself black and colour itself mulatto – not just as regards students but also professors. It should paint itself the colour of workers and peasants. It should paint itself the colour of the people, because the university is the patrimony of no one but the people of Cuba. If this people, whose representatives occupy all the government posts, rose up in arms and broke through the dykes of reaction, it was not because those dykes lacked flexibility. Nor did reaction lack the basic intelligence to be flexible in order to slow the people’s advance. Nevertheless, the people triumphed. And they are somewhat spoiled by their victory. They are conscious of their own power, that they are unstoppable. Today the people stand at the door of the university, and it is the university that must be flexible. It must colour itself black, mulatto, worker, peasant, or else find itself without doors. And then the people will smash their way in and paint the university with the colours they see fit.
That is the first message – one I would have liked to express in the first days following the victory, [Applause] in all three universities of the country, but was only able to do so at th
e University [of Oriente] in Santiago. If you were to ask my advice on behalf of the people and the Rebel Army, and as a professor of education, I would say that in order to reach the people you must feel as if you are part of the people. You must know what the people want, what they need, and what they feel. You must do a little self-analysis, study the university’s statistics, and ask how many workers, how many peasants, how many men who make their living by their sweat eight hours a day are here in this university.
Once you have asked yourselves this, you must also ask yourselves, by way of self-analysis, whether or not the government of Cuba today represents the will of the people. If the answer is yes, if this government really represents the will of the people, [Loud applause] then one must also ask the following: This government – which represents the will of the people – where is it at this university and what is it doing? We would then see, unfortunately, that the government representing virtually the totality of the Cuban people has no voice in the Cuban universities with which to sound the alarm, to provide words of guidance, and to express, free of intermediaries, the will, the desires, and the feelings of the people.
The Central University of Las Villas recently took a step forward to improve the situation. When it held its forum on industrialisation, it turned not only to the Cuban industrialists but also to the government. We were asked our opinion and the opinion of all the technicians in the state and semi-state agencies. Because in this first year since liberation – and I can say this without boasting – we are doing much more than other governments did, and much, much more than those who pompously speak of themselves as “free enterprise”. Therefore, we have the right to state that the industrialisation of Cuba, which is a direct result of the agrarian reform, will be attained by the revolutionary government, and under its guidance. [Prolonged applause] Private enterprise will naturally play an important role in this stage of the country’s growth. But the government will establish the guidelines, and will do so based on its own achievements. [Applause] It will do so because it raised the banner of industrialisation in response to what is perhaps the most deeply felt aspiration of the masses, not in response to violent pressure from the country’s industrialists. Industrialisation, and the effort it entails, is the child of the revolutionary government, which will guide and plan it for that reason.
Che Guevara Talks to Young People Page 6