Che Guevara Talks to Young People

by Ernesto Che Guevara

  Che was truly a communist and today he is an example and a model of what a revolutionary is and what a communist is.

  Che was a teacher and forger of human beings like himself. Consistent in his actions, he always practised what he preached, and he always demanded more of himself than of others.

  Whenever a volunteer was needed for a difficult mission, Che would be the first to step forward, both in wartime and in peacetime. He always subordinated his great dreams to his readiness to generously give his life. Nothing was impossible for him, and he was capable of making the impossible possible.

  Among other actions, the invasion from the Sierra Maestra westward through immense and unprotected plains, and the capture of the city of Santa Clara with just a few men, testify to the feats he was capable of.

  His ideas concerning revolution in his country of origin and the rest of South America were possible, despite enormous difficulties. Had they been achieved, perhaps the world today would be different. Vietnam proved that it was possible to fight the interventionist forces of imperialism and defeat them. The Sandinistas [in Nicaragua] defeated one of the most powerful puppets of the United States. The Salvadoran revolutionaries were on the verge of attaining victory. In Africa, apartheid was defeated despite the nuclear weapons it possessed. China, thanks to the heroic struggle of its workers and peasants, is one of the countries with the greatest prospects in the world. Hong Kong had to be returned after 150 years of occupation, originally carried out to impose the drug trade on an immense country.

  Different epochs and different circumstances do not require identical methods and identical tactics. But nothing can stop the course of history; its objective laws have enduring value. Che based himself on those laws and had absolute faith in human beings. Often humanity’s great revolutionaries, those responsible for great transformations, did not have the privilege of seeing their dreams realised as quickly as they hoped or desired, but sooner or later they have triumphed.

  A combatant may die, but not his ideas.

  What was an agent of the US government doing there, where Che was wounded and held captive?23 Why did they believe that by killing him he would cease to exist as a combatant? Today he is not in La Higuera. Instead, he is everywhere; he is to be found wherever there is a just cause to defend. Those with a stake in eliminating him and making him disappear were incapable of understanding that he had already left an indelible mark on history; that his shining, prophetic vision would become a symbol for all the poor of this world, in their millions. Young people, children, the elderly, men and women who knew him, honest persons throughout the world, regardless of their social origin, admire him.

  Che is waging and winning more battles than ever.

  Thank you, Che, for your personal history, your life, and your example.

  Thank you for coming to reinforce us in this difficult struggle we are waging today to save the ideas you fought so hard for, to save the revolution, the homeland, and the conquests of socialism, which is a realisation of part of the great dreams you held so dear! [Applause] We are counting on you to help us carry out this enormous feat, to defeat the imperialist plans against Cuba, to resist the blockade, to achieve victory. [Applause]

  As you can see, this land, which is your land; this people, which is your people; this revolution, which is your revolution, continues upholding with honour and pride the banners of socialism. [Applause]

  Welcome, heroic comrades from the reinforcement detachment. The enemy will never be able to conquer the trench of ideas and the trench of justice that you will be defending alongside our people! And together we will continue fighting for a better world!

  Hasta la victoria siempre! [Ever onward to victory]

  [Ovation]

  Endnotes

  1A series of earthquakes and tidal waves hit southern Chile 21-29 May, killing more than 5,000 people.

  2Formed in March 1958, the Rebel Army’s Second Eastern Front was named after Frank Pais.

  3In May 1958, the Batista regime launched an offensive to “encircle and annihilate” the Rebel Army in the Sierra Maestra. Despite the massive disparity in numbers of troops and scope and weight of equipment, the Batista army was defeated in numerous skirmishes. After a decisive battle at El Jigiie in mid-July, the troops of the tyranny withdrew, enabling the Rebel Army to assume the offensive throughout the island.

  4In late 1958 Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos led Rebel Army columns west from the Sierra Maestra to Las Villas province in central Cuba. In a series of battles, the Batista forces were driven out of the major cities of the province, culminating in the capture of Santa Clara by Guevara’s column on 1 January 1959, as Batista fled the country.

  5In the first weeks after the victory of the revolution, several hundred of the most notorious torturers and murderers of the Batista regime were executed. This measure had the overwhelming support of the Cuban people.

  6Agrarian Reform Law.

  7José Miró Cardona. The first government that came to power in January 1959 included both revolutionary forces led by the 26 July Movement and bourgeois opposition figures. Among the latter were the new prime minister, José Miró Cardona, who was replaced as prime minister by Fidel Castro in February 1959; and Manuel Urrutia, who was president from January 1959 until July of that year, when he resigned under mounting popular pressure and was replaced by Osvaldo Dorticós of the 26 July Movement. From 1 January on, the Rebel Army, with Fidel Castro its commander in chief, was the sole, unchallenged, and increasingly popular armed force within Cuba.

  8One hectare equals 2.47 acres; in Cuba, one caballeria equals 33 acres.

  9Following the US government’s 3 July decision to virtually end importation of sugar from Cuba, the Soviet Union announced it would purchase all Cuban sugar Washington refused to buy.

  10Andrés Coba, coordinator of the 26 July Movement in Venezuela – which organised solidarity with the Cuban Revolution – was gunned down 27 July 1960, in Caracas. The assailants were thought to be agents of Venezuela’s political police. Coba died the morning of Guevara’s speech.

  11On 24 June 1960, an attempt was made on the life of Venezuelan president Rómulo Betancourt when a car loaded with dynamite was detonated alongside his passing vehicle; he was unhurt.

  12Gen. Miguel Ydigoras was military strongman in Guatemala from 1958 until 1963. The Somoza family dictatorship in Nicaragua lasted from 1933 to 1979. François (Papa Doc) Duvalier ruled Haiti from 1957 to 1971; he was succeeded by his son Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier, who ruled until being overthrown in 1986. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo became dictator of the Dominican Republic in 1930. At the time Guevara gave this speech, Trujillo had lost Washington’s favour; he was assassinated in 1961.

  13At the mass rally two weeks earlier where Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro read out the decree nationalising the properties of US-owned corporations in Cuba, the crowd responded to the name of each corporation with chants of “Se llamaba!” – Was named! The phrase became a popular slogan of the revolution. Castillo Armas was assassinated in 1957.

  14The term “Our America” was first used by Cuban national hero José Marti, explaining the struggle for Cuba’s independence as part of the broader struggle against US imperialist domination of Latin America as a whole. The Rio Bravo, commonly called the Rio Grande in the United States, forms the current border between the US state of Texas and Mexico. Marti conceived “Our America” as encompassing everything from this point southward to Patagonia, on the extreme southern tip of the continent.

  15On 27 October 1959, the revolutionary government passed a law regulating the extraction of mineral and oil reserves, which asserted Cuba’s sovereignty over its subsoil. Under the law, the government was given the power to demand that any mine or refinery deemed essential to the national interest be kept in production; a refusal to do so would give the government the right to take it over.

  16A day earlier, an explosion was heard during Fidel Castro’s speech to a mass rally in Havana on the t
hird anniversary of the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution.

  17On 11 March 1949, several members of the US Navy were photographed climbing atop the statue of José Marti in Havana’s Central Park, urinating on it. As word of the desecration spread, demonstrations quickly developed and there was a protest the following day led by the Federation of University Students (FEU) in front of the US Embassy. Among the participants was the twenty-one-year-old law student Fidel Castro.

  18Literacy Campaign.

  19On 26 March 1962, Fidel Castro gave a televised speech that became known internationally by the title “Against Bureaucracy and Sectarianism”. In it he attacked the bureaucratic practices that led to sectarianism in the organising and functioning of the ORI, then in the process of formation, which if allowed to continue would lead to the alienation of masses of workers and peasants. In the speech, Castro announced that Anibal Escalante, a former leader of the Popular Socialist Party and organisation secretary of the ORI, was being removed from his post. A process of reorganising the ORI began.

  20Literally “four mouths”, this was the popular term in Cuba for the Chinese-made ZPU-4 14.5-mm. antiaircraft heavy machine gun. The weapon had four barrels mounted on a four-wheel carriage.

  21Emulation is a form of contest among cooperating groups of workers, a contest among collective entities, to see which factory or enterprise can produce the most, with the greatest productivity and of the highest quality. The opposite of competition among individual workers – the dog-eat-dog condition of life and work under capitalism – emulation is only possible when workers are producing for themselves, not for their exploiters. It was tirelessly promoted by Che Guevara in factories under the direction of the Ministry of Industry in the early 1960s. “Emulation is a fraternal competition … It is a weapon to increase production,” he stated in 1963. “But it is not only that. It is also a tool for deepening the consciousness of the masses. The two should always go together.”

  22As part of the reorganisation of the Integrated Revolutionary Organisations (ORI) into the United Party of the Socialist Revolution (PURS) in 1962-63, a procedure was established whereby workers were nominated for the pool from which the party selects its members by their fellow workers at assemblies in their workplace. That procedure continues today in the Communist Party of Cuba.

  23An agent of the CIA, Félix Rodriguez, accompanied Guevara’s captors and helped direct his execution by the Bolivian army in the town of La Higuera.

  Glossary Notes

  Agrarian Reform Law – Enacted by the revolutionary government 17 May 1959, it set a limit of 30 caballerias (approximately 1,000 acres) on individual landholdings. Implementation of the law resulted in the confiscation of the vast estates in Cuba – many of them owned by wealthy US families and corporations. These lands passed into the hands of the new government. The law also granted sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and squatters title to the land they tilled. Some 100,000 peasant families received deeds.

  A provision of the law created the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA) as the instrument for its implementation. INRA was granted sweeping powers over virtually every aspect of the economy. Under the leadership of the cadres of the Rebel Army and the 26 July Movement it became the central government body that mobilised workers and peasants to defend their interests.

  A second agrarian reform in 1963 confiscated landholdings in excess of 165 acres. This law affected 10,000 capitalist farmers who still owned 20% of Cuba’s agricultural land and brought property relations on the land in line with those already established through the nationalisations of industry in the latter half of 1960.

  Albizu Campos, Pedro (1891-1965) – Leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. Jailed or placed under house arrest for a total of nearly a quarter century by the US government for pro-independence activities, 1937-47, 1950-53, and 1954-64. Paralysed by a stroke in 1956, he was released from prison just prior to his death.

  Arbenz, Jacobo (1914-1971) – Elected president of Guatemala in 1951, he was overthrown by a US-backed coup in 1954.

  Association of Rebel Youth (AJR). See Union of Young Communists.

  Batista, Fulgencio (1901-1973) – As a result of the popular revolution of August 1933 that toppled the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado, a movement arose within the Cuban army of non-commissioned officers and soldiers against the old Machadista officer corps. Fulgencio Batista, a sergeant and stenographer, was one of its leaders. Batista became army chief of staff and, with the support of the US embassy, emerged as the strongman of the regime, unleashing a reign of terror against popular organisations. The revolutionary upsurge was suppressed and Batista remained in power until 1944, when he left office, retaining a base within the army officer corps.

  On 10 March 1952, Batista organised a military coup against the government headed by Authentic Party leader Carlos Prio and cancelled impending elections. With support from Washington, Batista imposed an increasingly brutal military dictatorship that lasted until 1 January 1959. On that day, as his military and police forces began surrendering to the victorious Rebel Army advancing under the command of Fidel Castro, and as a general strike and popular insurrection spread, Batista fled the country.

  Bay of Pigs – On 17 April 1961, an expeditionary force of 1,500 Cuban mercenaries invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs on the southern coast. The counter-revolutionaries, organised and financed by Washington, aimed to hold a beachhead long enough to install on Cuban territory a provisional government already formed in the United States that would appeal for Washington’s support and direct military intervention. The mercenaries, however, were defeated within seventy-two hours by Cuba’s militia and Revolutionary Armed Forces. On 19 April the remaining invaders were captured at Playa Girón (Girón Beach), which is the name Cubans use to designate the battle.

  Ben Bella, Ahmed (b. 1918–2012) – Leader of the National Liberation Front (FLN) of Algeria, which mobilised the Algerian people in the 1954-62 struggle for independence from France. Ben Bella was the president of the workers and farmers government that came to power following the victory over Paris in 1962 and collaborated closely with the Cuban government to advance anti-imperialist struggles in Africa and Latin America. He was overthrown in a coup led by Col. Houari Boumédiènne in June 1965.

  Betancourt, Rómulo (1908-1981) – President of Venezuela 1945-48 and 1958-64 and leader of the liberal Democratic Action party.

  Blest, Clotario (1899-1990) – A long-time leader of the Chilean labour movement, president of the United Federation of Workers of Chile (CUTCH), and a supporter of the Cuban Revolution.

  Bolivar, Simón (1783-1830) – Known as the Liberator. Latin American patriot, born in Caracas. He led an armed rebellion that helped win independence from Spain for much of Latin America.

  Boti, Regino, Jr. (1923-1999) – Born in Guantánamo, Cuba, he studied first at the University of Havana, where he received a degree in civil law, and later at Harvard University, where he received a degree in economics, finance, and banking. He later went to work for the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America. During Cuba’s revolutionary war he became a collaborator of the 26 July Movement. He served as Cuba’s minister of the economy from 1959 until 1964.

  Castillo Armas, Carlos (1914-1957) – A colonel in the Guatemalan armed forces, he was installed as dictator by the US-backed coup that toppled the government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. He was assassinated in 1957.

  Castro Ruz, Fidel (b. 1926) – Born and raised in Oriente province in eastern Cuba. A student leader at the University of Havana beginning in 1945. Founding member of the Orthodox Party in 1947 and central organiser of its revolutionary-minded youth. One of the party’s candidates for House of Representatives in the 1952 elections, which were cancelled following the Batista coup. Castro led the 26 July 1953 attack on the Moncada and Bayamo garrisons that opened the revolutionary struggle against the dictatorship, and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. His courtroom defence speech, “History Wil
l Absolve Me”, which he wrote down and smuggled out of prison, was distributed in tens of thousands of copies across Cuba, becoming the programme of the revolutionary movement to oust the Batista regime. Released in May 1955 after a mass amnesty campaign, he led the founding of the 26 July Revolutionary Movement a few weeks later.

  In Mexico, Castro prepared the expeditionary force that, aboard the yacht Granma, returned to Cuba in December 1956. From the Sierra Maestra mountains, he commanded the Rebel Army during the 1956-58 revolutionary war. In May 1958 he became general secretary of the 26 July Movement.

  Castro was Cuba’s prime minister from February 1959 to 1976, when he was elected president of the Council of State and of the Council of Ministers. He is commander in chief of the armed forces and has been first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba since it was founded in 1965.

  Castro Ruz, Raúl (b. 1931) – Born and raised in Oriente province in eastern Cuba. A student leader at the University of Havana, he participated in the 1953 Moncada attack and was sentenced to thirteen years in prison. He was released in May 1955 following a national amnesty campaign. A founding member of the 26 July Movement, he was a participant in the Granma expedition. In February 1958 he was promoted to commander and headed the Second Eastern Front.

  Since October 1959 he has been minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. He was vice premier from 1959-76, when he was elected first vice president of the Council of State and of the Council of Ministers. Since 1965 he has been second secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba. He holds the rank of General of the Army, the second-highest officer in the Revolutionary Armed Forces after Commander in Chief Fidel Castro.