Marx, Karl (German), El 18 brumario de Luis Bonaparte [The 18th brumaire of Luis Bonaparte]
Malraux, André (French), La condition humaine (read in French)
Maeterlinck, Maurice (Belgian), La vida de las abejas. La cida de las hormigas [The Life of the Bee. The Life of the Ant] (science)
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Arch, Schalom (North American), El regreso de Jaim Lederer
Saint Thomas of Aquinas (Italian), La Ley (philosophy); Suma teológica (religion)
Ambrose, St. (Italian), Tratado de las mujeres (philosophy)
[Illegible]
Aristotle (Greek)
Aymé, Marcel (French), La Jument verte
Aragón (French), Amelién (read in French)
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Zola, Emile (French), Trabajo (2 volumes); Lourdes (2 volumes); Verdad (2 volumes); Le debacle; Miserias humanas; Naná; La taberna; La cuestion humana; Germinal.
Zweig, Stefan (Austrian), María Antoinette (biography); Magallanes [Magellan] (biography); Confusión de sentimientos; El candelabro enterrado; Amok; Tres maestros (biography); La tragedia de una vida (biography); Romain Rolland (biography)
Zambrano, María (Cuban), La agonía de Europa (political philosophy)
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Verne, Jules (French), La isla misteriosa (2 volumes). Las tribulaciones de un chino en China. Las aventuras de tres rusos y tres ingleses en el África austral. Los náufragos del Cynthia. Héctor Servadac. Un capitán de 15 años. Los hijos del Capitán Grant. La invasión del mar. Los piratas del Halifax. Las indias negras. La vuelta al mundo en 80 días. 5 semanas en globo. La jangada. La Estrella del Sur. Miguel Strogoff. Viaje al centro de la Tierra. Matías Sandorf (2 volumes). Norte contra Sur. Ante la bandera. La Isla de hélice. Familia sin nombre. 20 mil leguas de viaje submarino. Alrededor de la Luna. La agencia Thompson y Cía.
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FACSIMILE 1
Reading List
FACSIMILE 1
Historia sucinta de la medicina mundial [Brief History of World Medicine], Löbel
Stalin, H. Barbousse
Obras [Works], Vol. 5, Stalin
Poética [Poetry], G.W.F. Hegel
La Crónica del Perú [Chronicle of Peru], Cieza de León
El Comité Regional Clandestino actúa [The Underground Regional Committee Acts], Fiodorov
Tropa vieja [Old Troop], General Urquiza
Antología de cuentistas hispanoamericanos [Anthology of Spanish American Short Story Writers], J. Sanz y Díaz
Chapaev, Furmanov
Desembarco en Luperon [Landing at Luperon], Horacio Orves
A los pobres del campo [To the Rural Poor], Lenin
Historia del P.C. (b) de la URSS [History of the CP[B] of the USSR]
En torno a Agramonte [About Agramonte]
Obras [Works], Vol. 2, Stalin
El catástrophe que nos amenaza y cómo combatirla [The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It], Lenin
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels
Tempestad en el Caribe [Storm in the Caribbean], Alberto Bayo
La epopeya de Stalingrado [The Epic of Stalingrad], V. Grossman et al
La Chine acusse [China Accuses], Documents for the United Nations
Los conceptos politicos y filosóficos de Belinski [The Political and Philosophical Concepts of Belinski], Z. Smirnova
FACSIMILE 2
FACSIMILE 2
Los origins de la familia, la propiedad privada y el Estado [The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State], Friedrich Engels
Incidentes de un viaje por Centroamérica, Chiapas y el Yucatán [Incidents of a Trip through Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán], Vol. I, John L. Stephens
Conferencias sobre Pavlov [Talks on Pavlov], Academy of Sciences of the USSR
La protección de la salud de los trabajadores en la URSS [Protection of Workers’ Health in the USSR], N. Vinogradov
El imperialismo fase superior del capitalismo [Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism], V.I. Lenin
Sobre el materialismo dialéctio y el materialismo histórico [Dialectical and Historical Materialism], J. Stalin
Constitución (Ley fundamental) de la URSS [Constitution of the USSR]
Entre la piedra y la cruz [Between the Stone and the Cross], Mario Monforte Toledo
El imperialismo de hoy [Imperialism Today], Labor Research Association of the United States
A propósito de la práctica en torno a la contradicción [With Regard to Practice in Connection with Contradiction], Mao Tse-tung
Incidentes de un viaje por Centroamérica, Chiapas y el Yucatán [Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán], Vol. II, John L. Stephens
Un paso adelante, dos pasos atrás [One Step Forward, Two Steps Back], V.I. Lenin
Donde acaban los caminos [Where the Roads End], Mario Monforte Toledo
Oda a Guatemala [Ode to Guatemala], Raúl Leiva
Viento fuerte [Strong Wind], Miguel Angel Asturias
Introducción al materialismo dialéctico [Introduction to Dialectical Materialism], A. Talheimer
Prisión verde [Green Prison], R. Amaya Amador
Historia antigua y de la conquista del Salvador [Ancient History and History of the Conquest of El Salvador], S.I. Banbere
La historia oculta de la Guerra de Corea [Hidden History of the Korean War, 1950-1951], I.F. Stone
PART TWO
LATIN AMERICA FROM WITHIN 1956–65
Introduction
This period of the development of Che Guevara’s ideas about revolution in Latin America began with his participation in the armed struggle in Cuba and continued after its triumph on January 1, 1959. His experience grew and he became a respected socialist theoretician and an analyst of the socioeconomic situation in Latin America.
Revolutionary War in Cuba 1956–58
Articles
Che had many functions in his role as an educator and propagandist during the Cuban revolutionary war. He established Radio Rebelde [Rebel Radio] and the newspaper El cubano libre [The Free Cuban] in the Sierra Maestra in 1957.
This article, and the others in this section of this anthology, were written under the pen name Francotirador [Sharpshooter] and show his concise yet educational style, explaining recent national and international events to the average guerrilla, who may not have had much education or might even have been illiterate. This article, “How Cuban the World Seems to Us,” written in a polemical style and published in El cubano libre, explores the question of communism and the necessary role of the struggle against brute force and injustice.
How Cuban the World Seems to Us
By Sharpshooter, with an unloaded gun
The voice of the distant world reaches the soil of our Sierra Maestra through the radio and newspapers, more explicit in describing events over there because it cannot relate the crimes that are committed here [in Cuba] every day.
Thus we learn about the disorder and deaths in Cyprus, Algeria, Ifni1 and Malaya. All of them have common features:
a)Government forces “have inflicted numerous casualties among the rebels”;
b)There are no prisoners;
c)The government reports “nothing new”;
d)All the revolutionaries, whatever the name of the country or region, are receiving “undercover aid from the communists.”
How Cuban the world seems to us. It is the same thing everywhere. A group of patriots, armed or unarmed, rebels or not, is murdered and the armed oppressors chalk up points “after heavy fighting.” All witnesses are killed, hence the absence of prisoners.
The government never suffers casualties, and at times this is true since killing defenseless beings is not very dangerous. But there are also times when this is a tremendous lie and the S.M. [Sierra Maestra] can testify to this.
Finally, there is the hackneyed accusation they always trot out: “communists.” Communists are
people who turn to arms when they become tired of so much wretchedness, wherever it occurs in the world. “Democrats” are people who kill those who are angry about this, be they men, women or children.
The whole world is Cuban and what is happening here is happening everywhere. Against brute force and injustice, the people will have the last word, and that word is victory.
Our Soul is Full of Compassion
By Sharpshooter, with an unloaded gun
The society for the protection of animals paraded six dogs before the UN building seeking clemency for their Siberian relative Laika, the dog that is flying in outer space.
Our soul is filled with compassion to think of the poor animal that will die gloriously in honor of a cause it does not understand.
But we have not heard that any philanthropic society in the United States is parading in front of that noble building to plead clemency for our peasants, who are dying in considerable numbers, machine-gunned by P-47 and B-26 aircraft, hit by shells or riddled with bullets from the soldiers’ M-15s.
Do the members of philanthropic societies know that these deaths are caused by arms supplied by their compatriots in the US government?
Or is it that, in the framework of political expediency, the life of a Siberian dog is worth more than those of a thousand Cuban peasants?
1. A Spanish province on the Atlantic coast of Morocco.
Interview
Che was interviewed several times in Cuba, by both Cuban and foreign members of the press. These excerpts are from Argentine journalist Jorge Ricardo Masetti’s interview with Che conducted in the Sierra Maestra mountains in April 1958, an interview which Masetti later included in his book Los que luchan y los que lloran [Those Who Fight and Those Who Weep], along with interviews with Fidel Castro and other leaders.
Interview by the Argentine Journalist,
Jorge Ricardo Masetti, April 1958
When I woke up, I was disappointed. I had slept peacefully until 5:00 a.m. and had not heard any gunfire at all. The government troops had made a brief incursion but returned at once to their barracks on discovering that Che was not at La Otilia and that he was preparing an ambush.
I had been eagerly listening for the sound of gunfire, lying in the semidarkness of the room, while Virelles, with his machine gun’s safety catch off, promised himself a trip to Buenos Aires just to hear some tangos. Around 2:00 a.m., Sorí Marín and I stretched out on the only two mattresses available. Placed together, they could have accommodated three people, but not the five I found when I woke up. Virelles had gone to take up his post while Cantellops snored in an armchair. Llibre appeared, scratching himself at the foot of the bed, and told me in distress how he had spent the whole night trying to scratch a bunch of lumps that had mysteriously appeared on his stomach.
In a few minutes, what had looked like a dormitory became a dining room, office and infirmary. Everyone was standing now and the only thing they were asking, whatever they were doing, was whether the Commander had arrived.
Guevara arrived at 6:00 a.m. While I watched admiringly as a group of lads busied themselves—doing something I had given up a long time ago, washing their faces—groups of sweaty rebels loaded up with their light packs and heavy weapons began to arrive from different directions. Their pockets were swollen with bullets and cartridge belts hung across their chests without even the protection of buttonless shirts.
They were the people who had set out to ambush Sánchez Mosquera’s troops the previous night and were coming back exhausted, tired and still bristling with the desire to fight the troops of the detested colonel. Shortly afterwards, Ernesto Guevara arrived, riding a mule, his legs dangling, the curve of his back extended by the barrels of a Beretta and a rifle with telescopic lens, like two poles supporting the frame of his apparently large body.
As the mule approached I could see that, hanging from his waist, was a leather cartridge belt loaded with cartridges, and a pistol. From his shirt pockets two magazines protruded, while a camera hung from his neck and, from his chin, a few hairs that hoped to form a beard.
He calmly dismounted the mule, setting foot on the ground with his enormous muddy boots, and as he came over to me I calculated that he would be 178 centimeters tall. I noted that his asthma did not seem to inhibit him in any way.
Sorí Marín introduced us, watched by 20 soldiers who had never seen two Argentines together and who were somewhat disappointed to see that we greeted each other with a certain reserve.
The famous Che Guevara looked to me like a typical middle-class Argentine kid and also a rejuvenated caricature of Cantinflas.1
He invited me to breakfast with him and we began to eat, almost in silence.
The first questions, logically, came from him. And, logically, they were about the political situation in Argentina.
My answers seemed to satisfy him, and not long after we started talking, we realized that we agreed on many things and that really, we were not two dangerous characters. Soon we were chatting away quite freely, although with the slight reserve typical of two Argentines of the same generation, and we began to use the familiar tú form.
One of the peasant soldiers, who was trying to listen in, made some humorous comment to Guevara about how funny the Cubans found our way of talking. Our mutual amusement united us almost at once in a less inhibited exchange.
Then I told him why I had traveled to the Sierra Maestra. The desire to clarify, especially for myself, what kind of revolution had been taking place in Cuba over the last 17 months; who was responsible; how was it possible to keep going for so long without the support of any foreign nation; why the Cuban people did not overthrow Batista once and for all if they really supported the revolutionaries; and dozens of other questions, many of which had already been answered on my journey to La Otilia where I had experienced at close quarters the terror in the towns and the gunfire in the mountains; seen unarmed guerrillas participating in suicidal ambushes to get hold of some weapon with which they could really fight; and listened to illiterate peasants describing, each in his own words, but all of them clearly, why they were fighting. I had realized that I was not in the midst of an army of fanatics that would accept anything from its leaders, but among a group of men who were aware that any deviation from the honest line they were so proud of would mean the end of everything and of the new rebellion.
But, in spite of everything, I was distrustful. I refused to let myself be totally carried away by my sympathy for the fighting peasants until I could submit to the severest scrutiny the ideas of the people who were leading them. I refused to admit once and for all that some Yankee consortium was not bending over backwards to support Fidel Castro, even though, on several occasions, planes given to Batista by the US aeronautical mission had fired on the places where I was.
My first specific question to Guevara, the young Argentine doctor turned hero Commander and creator of a revolution that had nothing to do with his own country, was:
“Why are you here?”
He had lit his pipe, and I my cigarette, and we settled down to a formal conversation that we knew would be a long one. He answered me in the calm way that the Cubans believe is characteristically Argentine, but which I would describe as a mixture of Cuban and Mexican mannerisms.
“I am here simply because I believe that the only way to rid the Americas of dictators is to overthrow them—helping to bring about their fall by whatever means necessary—the more direct the better.”
“Are you not afraid that your intervention in the internal affairs of a country that is not your own might be seen as interference?”
“First of all, I consider my country to be not only Argentina but the entire Americas. My country’s history is as glorious as that of Martí, and it is in his land precisely that I abide by his doctrine. Besides, if I give myself, everything that I am, if I offer my blood for a cause that I consider just and popular, if I help a people to rid itself of a dictatorship that does indeed permit the interference of a
foreign power that backs it with arms, with planes, with money and with military instructors,
“I cannot concede that my commitment should be described as interference. No country has yet denounced US meddling in Cuban affairs and not a single newspaper has accused the Yankees of helping Batista to massacre his own people. But a lot of people are bothered about me. I am the interfering foreigner who is helping the rebels with his own flesh and blood. The people who supply arms for an internal war are not interfering. But I am!”
Guevara uses the pause to light his pipe, which has gone out. Everything he has said comes from what seem to be constantly smiling lips, without any stress on the words and in a totally impersonal manner. I, however, was totally serious. I knew that I had a lot of questions still to ask, but I already considered them absurd.
“And what about Fidel Castro’s communism?”
Again the smile was clearly discernible. He took a long draw on his pipe and answered me in the same matter of fact tone as before.
“Fidel is not a communist. If he were, he’d at least have a few more weapons. But this revolution is exclusively Cuban. Or, better said, Latin American. Politically, Fidel and his movement might be described as ‘revolutionary nationalist.’ Of course he is anti-Yankee inasmuch as the Yankees are antirevolutionary. But, in fact, we are not brandishing some kind of proselytizing anti-Yankeeism. We are against the United States”—he stressed this to give perfect clarity to the idea—“because the United States is against our peoples.”
I remained silent so that he would go on talking. It was terribly hot and the warm smoke of the fresh tobacco was as invigorating as the coffee we were drinking from big glasses. Guevara’s “S”-shaped pipe hung there smoking and swaying in harmony with the rhythms of his Cuban-Mexican banter as he continued.
The Awakening of Latin America Page 20