The United States claims it has the right to make spy flights because the Organization of American States has approved them. Who does the OAS think it is, that it can approve spy flights over a country’s territory? What role does the United Nations play? What is the United Nations for, if our future is to depend—as the representative of Colombia has so clearly stated—on the orbit of the OAS? This is a very serious and very important question which must be raised before this Assembly. Cuba, a small country, cannot grant a big country the right to violate our airspace—especially when it does so while making the amazing claim that its actions have the legal backing of the OAS, which expelled Cuba and with which Cuba has no ties of any kind.
The statements made by the representative of the United States are very serious.
I would like to say only two small things. I don’t intend to take up all of this Assembly’s time with these replies and rejoinders.
The representative of the United States says that Cuba blames the blockade for its economic disaster, when that disaster is the result of the government’s poor administration. Before any of this had happened, when the first nationalizing laws began to be passed in Cuba, the United States began to take repressive economic actions, such as its unilateral elimination of the sugar quota that Cuba had traditionally had on the US market. It also refused to refine the oil that, making use of our legitimate rights and supported by every possible law, we had purchased from the Soviet Union.
I won’t repeat the long history of acts of economic aggression by the United States, but I will say that, in spite of those acts of aggression and with the fraternal support of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries, we have made progress and will continue to do so. We will continue to denounce the economic blockade, but it won’t stop us; come what may, we will continue to constitute a small headache when we come to this Assembly or any other to call a spade a spade and the representatives of the United States gendarmes of repression all over the world.
And, yes, the blockade has stopped shipments of medicine to Cuba.
To show that this is so, our government will try to buy medicines here in the United States in the coming months and will send a telegram to Mr. Stevenson which our representative will read in the commission or in any other suitable place, so everyone will know whether or not Cuba’s accusations are based on fact—which they have been so far. The last time we tried to buy $1.5 million worth of medicine which was not made in Cuba and was needed for saving lives, the US government stepped in and prevented that sale.
A short while ago, the president of Bolivia told our delegates with tears in his eyes that he had to break off relations with Cuba because the United States was forcing him to do so. So our delegates bade farewell to La Paz.
I cannot state that what the president of Bolivia said was true, but I do know that we told him that that agreement with the enemy wouldn’t do him any good, because his days were numbered.
The president of Bolivia, with whom we didn’t have any ties at that time and with whom we have no ties now—our relations with his administration were simply those that should be maintained with all Latin American nations—has been overthrown by a military coup. Now, a governing junta has been established there.
In any case, people like that who don’t go down with dignity should remember something that I think the mother of the last caliph of Granada said to her son, who was crying because he had lost the city: “You do well to cry like a woman over what you didn’t defend as a man.”
1. Che Guevara’s initial address to the United Nations General Assembly earlier on the same day (December 11, 1964) is published in Che Guevara Reader, pp. 325-39.
Letter (1964)
Letter to Mr. Roberto Las Casas
Havana
February 21, 1964
Year of the Economy
Mr. Roberto Las Casas
Rua 3 de Maio
Belem-Pará 1494
Brazil
Dear Compañero,
I am taking this new opportunity of contact between you and our revolution to thank you and your wife for your great kindness.
I wanted to send you a small souvenir of Cuba, but the lack of an appropriate past and the extinction of our Cuban traditions force me to resort to this very modest expression of modern art.
I trust that your wife will appreciate the intention more than its material expression.
With revolutionary greetings,
Homeland or Death!
We will win!
Commander Ernesto Che Guevara
Page 1 of Che Guevara’s Sierra notebook
Reading Lists Cuba 1956–65
The following are facsimilies of pages from Che’ Guevara’s notebooks listing the books he read in the Sierra Maestra.
Page 1
El Plano Inclinado [The Inclined Plane], A.M. Olmedilla
El Oro del Guadalcín [The Gold of Guadalcín], A.M. Olmedilla
Martí el Apóstol [Martí the Apostle], Jorge Mañach
Las Avispas [Wasps], Aristophanes
Las Aves [Birds], Aristophanes
La Odisea [The Odyssey], Homer
Jerome 60° Latitud norte [Jerome 60° N. Lat.], Maurice Bedel El Son Entero [The Whole Son], Nicolás Guillén Goethe, E. Ludwig
Pensamiento y Acción de José Martí [The Thought and Actions of José Martí]
Reineke el zorro [Reinike the Fox], Goethe
Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare
Novelas ejemplares [Exemplary Novels], Cervantes
Fausto, Goethe
Obras Escogidas [Selected Works], Lenin
Las doctrinas de Ameghino [The Doctrines of Ameghino], J. Ingenieros
La guerra libertadora cubana de los 30 años [The 30-Year Cuban War of Liberation], E. Roig de Leuchsenring
Page 2 of Che Guevara’s Sierra notebook
Crónicas de la guerra [Chronicles of the War], Miró
Hombre [Man], Kurt Hahn
Escritos de Máximo Gómez [Writings of Máximo Gómez]
Entre la libertad y el miedo [Between Freedom and Fear], Arciniegas
Page 2
Los hombres de blanco [Men in White], A. Soubiran
Batibeco, Curzio Malaparte
Novelas Escogidas [Select Novels], Rómulo Gallegos
Tragedias, Aeschylus
Estudio de la Historia [A Study of History], Toynbee
El Señor Presidente, M.A. Asturias
Leyendas Guatemaltecas [Guatemala Legends], M.A. Asturias
El lenguaje del cine [The Language of Film], Renato May
Céspedes, Herminio Portell Vila
Vida del Buscón [Life of Buscón], Quevedo
La Tierra del Mambi [Mambiland], James J. O’Kelly
Sien de Alondra [Temple of the Lark], M.A. Asturias
El Criterio, Balmes
La Campaña de Calixto García [The Campaign of Calixto García], A. Escalante
Un gran cirujano, Very
El carácter de Céspedes, G. Peralta
Historia de Cuba, E. Santovenia
Teoría general del Estado, Lóvena
Guerra y Paz [War and Peace], Leo Tolstoy
Obras [Works], José Martí
PART THREE
THE AMERICAS UNITED: REVOLUTIONARY INTERNATIONALISM 1965–67
Introduction
Revolutionary internationalism was fundamental to Ernesto Che Guevara’s political perspective, first conceived of in terms of Latin America and later, after he had acquired more experience in the struggle, of the entire Third World.
In 1965 Che led a group of Cuban internationalists to aid the liberation struggle in Africa in the aftermath of the CIA’s assassination of the Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. In the Congo Che reaffirmed the principle of armed struggle and, despite the obstacles, he was convinced that the decision to commence fighting in Latin America should not be delayed, since the continent presented the best conditions for success. In fact, conditions were alr
eady being prepared to initiate the guerrilla movement in Bolivia.
In order to play this international role, Che renounced the positions he held in the Cuban government. Bolivia was seen by Che Guevara and the Cuban leadership as the key to extending the struggle on a continental scale.
This involved great sacrifice and extraordinary bravery on the part of the small group of Cuban and Bolivian combatants, who, along with Che, fought with determination to kick-start the revolutionary movement, a struggle in which Che, through his example and his ethics, became an important figure in the history of the Americas.
Congo Diary
The following is an excerpt from the epilogue to Che’s Congo Diary,1 which, like his diary of the revolutionary war in Cuba’s Sierra Maestra, he had the opportunity to revise while he was in Tanzania from December 1965 to March 1966. His diary opens with the blunt statement, “This is the story of a failure,” but in it he draws crucial lessons for future struggles, especially in Latin America, from the positive and negative experiences of the Cuban internationalists in Africa.
Unlike Latin America, where the process of neocolonialism has developed amid violent class struggles and where the national bourgeoisie participated in the anti-imperialist struggle before its eventual capitulation, Africa presents a picture of a process planned by imperialism. Very few countries there have obtained their independence through armed struggle. On the whole, everything has happened with the smoothness of a well-oiled machine. In effect, it is only the southern cone of Africa that remains officially colonized, and the general outcry against that system is likely to bring about its rapid demise, at least in the Portuguese colonies. The Union of South Africa presents different problems.
In the African liberation struggle, the advanced stages of the process are similar to current models of a people’s war. The problem is how to root it more deeply, and this is where questions arise that I am unable to answer. I would simply like to outline a few points resulting from my feeble and fragmentary experience. If the liberation struggle is to be successful in the present conditions in Africa, it is essential to update some Marxist analytical schemas.
What is the primary contradiction of the epoch? If it is between the socialist and the imperialist countries, or between the imperialist countries and their working classes, the role of the so-called Third World will be significantly reduced. But there are more and more serious reasons to believe that the primary contradiction is between the exploiting and exploited nations. Here I cannot begin an attempt to demonstrate this point, and to show that it is not opposed to the characterization of the epoch as one of transition to socialism. It would lead us onto difficult side-roads and require a mountain of data and arguments. I will leave this as a hypothesis that has been suggested by practice.
In this case, Africa will play an active and important role in this primary contradiction. Nevertheless, if we take the Third World as a whole to be an actor in this contradiction, at this present time in history, then we can see that there are gradations between countries and continents. In summary, we can say that Latin America as a whole has reached a point at which the class struggle is intensifying and the national bourgeoisie has totally capitulated to the power of imperialism, so that in the short-term historical future, the liberation struggle will be crowned by a revolution of a socialist character.
1. Ernesto Che Guevara, Congo Diary (Melbourne and New York: Ocean Press), 2011.
Message to the Tricontinental: “Create two, three… many Vietnams”
This excerpt from Che Guevara’s “Message to the Tricontinental” was published in a special supplement of the magazine Tricontinental, April 16, 1967, when he was already leading the guerrilla movement in Bolivia. In fact, it had been written the year before, while he was engaged in the military training in Pinar del Río province of the Cubans who were to go to Bolivia.
This call to arms for the Third World is often regarded as his political testament.1
It is the hour of the furnace, and the light is all that can be seen.
—José Martí
The fundamental field of imperialist exploitation covers the three backward continents—Latin America, Asia and Africa. Each country has its own characteristics, but the continents, as a whole, have their own features as well.
Latin America constitutes a more or less homogeneous whole, and in almost its entire territory US monopoly capital holds absolute primacy. The puppet or—in the best of cases—weak and timid governments are unable to resist the orders of the Yankee master. The United States has reached virtually the pinnacle of its political and economic domination. There is little room left for it to advance; any change in the situation could turn into a step backward from its dominance. Its policy is to maintain its conquests. The course of action is reduced at the present time to the brutal use of force to prevent liberation movements of any kind.
Behind the slogan “We will not permit another Cuba” hides the possibility of cowardly acts of aggression they can get away with, such as the aggression against the Dominican Republic;2 or before that, the massacre in Panama and the clear warning that Yankee troops are ready to intervene anywhere in Latin America where a change in the established order endangers their interests. This policy enjoys almost absolute impunity. Despite its lack of credibility, the OAS is a convenient mask. The ineffectiveness of the UN borders on the ridiculous or the tragic. The armies of all the countries of Latin America are ready to intervene to crush their own people. What has been formed, in fact, is the International of Crime and Betrayal.
On the other hand, the indigenous bourgeoisies have lost all capacity to oppose imperialism—if they ever had any—and are only dragged along behind it like a caboose. There are no other alternatives: either a socialist revolution or a caricature of revolution. […]
In Latin America, the struggle is going on arms in hand in Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia, and the first outbreaks are already beginning in Brazil. Other centers of resistance have appeared and been extinguished. But almost all the countries of this continent are ripe for a struggle of the kind that, to be triumphant, cannot settle for anything less than the establishment of a government of a socialist nature. In this continent virtually only one language is spoken save for the exceptional case of Brazil, with whose people Spanish-speakers can communicate in view of the similarity between the two languages. There is such a similarity between the classes in these countries that they have an “international American” type of identification, much more so than in other continents. Language, customs, religion, a common master, unite them. The degree and forms of exploitation are similar in their effects for exploiters and exploited in a good number of countries of our America. And within it rebellion is ripening at an accelerated rate.
We may ask: This rebellion, how will it bear fruit? What kind of rebellion will it be? We have maintained for some time that given its similar characteristics, the struggle in Latin America will in due time acquire a continental dimension. It will be the scene of many great battles waged by humanity for its own liberation.
In the framework of this struggle of continental scope, those that are currently being carried on in an active way are only episodes. But they have already provided martyrs, who will figure in the history of the Americas as having given their necessary quota of blood for this final stage in the struggle for the full freedom of humanity. There are the names of Commander Turcios Lima, the priest Camilo Torres, Commander Fabricio Ojeda, the Commanders Lobatón and Luis de la Puente Uceda, central figures in the revolutionary movements of Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela and Peru.
But the active mobilization of the people creates its new leaders—César Montes and Yon Sosa are raising the banner in Guatemala; Fabio Vázquez and Marulanda are doing it in Colombia; Douglas Bravo in the western part of the country and Américo Martín in El Bachiller are leading their respective fronts in Venezuela.
New outbreaks of war will appear in these and other Latin American countries
, as have already occurred in Bolivia. And they will continue to grow, with all the vicissitudes involved in this dangerous occupation of the modern revolutionary. Many will die, victims of their own errors; others will fall in the difficult combat to come; new fighters and new leaders will arise in the heat of the revolutionary struggle. The people will create their fighters and their leaders along the way in the selective framework of the war itself.
The Yankee agents of repression will increase in number. Today there are advisers in all countries where armed struggle is going on. It seems that the Peruvian army, also advised and trained by the Yankees, carried out a successful attack on the revolutionaries of that country. But if the guerrilla centers are led with sufficient political and military skill, they will become practically unbeatable and will make new Yankee reinforcements necessary. In Peru itself, with tenacity and firmness, new figures, although not yet fully known, are reorganizing the guerrilla struggle.
Little by little, the obsolete weapons that suffice to repress the small armed bands will turn into modern weapons, and the groups of advisers into US combatants, until at a certain point they find themselves obliged to send growing numbers of regular troops to secure the relative stability of a power whose national puppet army is disintegrating in the face of the guerrillas’ struggles.
This is the road of Vietnam. It is the road that the peoples must follow. It is the road that Latin America will follow, with the special feature that the armed groups might establish something such as coordinating committees to make the repressive tasks of Yankee imperialism more difficult and to help their own cause.
Latin America, a continent forgotten in the recent political struggles for liberation, is beginning to make itself heard through the Tricontinental in the voice of the vanguard of its peoples: the Cuban revolution. Latin America will have a much more important task: the creation of the world’s second or third Vietnam, or second and third Vietnam.
The Awakening of Latin America Page 48