Che Guevara Talks to Young People

by Ernesto Che Guevara

  Not only had the same words been used on opposite sides of the globe to designate their campaigns, but both dictators resorted to the same type of campaign to try to destroy the popular forces. And the popular forces here, without knowing the manuals that had already been written about the strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare, used the same methods as those used on the opposite side of the world to combat the dictatorship’s forces. Because naturally, whenever somebody goes through an experience, it can be utilised by somebody else. But it is also possible to go through the same experience without knowing of the earlier one.

  We were unaware of the experiences the Chinese troops accumulated during twenty years of struggle in their territory. But we knew our own territory, we knew our enemy, and we used something every man has on his shoulders – which, if he knows how to use it, is worth a lot – we used our heads to guide our fight against the enemy. As a result, we defeated him.

  Later came the westward invasions,4 the breaking of Batista’s communication lines, and the crushing fall of the dictatorship when no one expected it. Then came 1 January and the revolution – again without thinking about what it had read, but hearing what it needed to from the lips of the people – decided first and foremost to punish the guilty ones, and it did so.5

  The colonial powers immediately splashed the story all over the front pages, calling it murder, and they immediately tried to do what the imperialists always try to do: sow division. “Communist murderers are killing people,” they said, “but there is a naive patriot named Fidel Castro who had nothing to do with it and can be saved.” [Applause] Using pretexts and trivial arguments, they tried to sow divisions among men who had fought for the same cause. They maintained this hope for some time.

  But one day they came upon the fact that the Agrarian Reform Law approved here was much more violent and deep-going than the one their very brainy, self-appointed advisers had counselled.6 All of them, by the way, are today in Miami or some other US city. Pepin Rivero of Diario de la Marina, or Medrano of Prensa Libre. [Shouts and hisses] And there were others, including a prime minister in our government, who counselled great moderation, because “one must handle such things with moderation”.7

  “Moderation” is another one of the words colonial agents like to use. All those who are afraid, or who think of betraying in one way or another are moderates. [Applause] As for the people, in no sense are they moderates.

  The advice given was to divide up marabú land – marabú is a wild shrub that plagues our fields – and have the peasants cut marabú with machetes, or settle in some swamp, or grab a piece of public land that somehow might have escaped the voraciousness of the large landowners. But to touch the holdings of the large landowners – that was a sin greater than anything they ever imagined to be possible. But it was possible.

  I recall a conversation I had in those days with a gentleman who told me he had no problems at all with the revolutionary government, because he owned no more than nine hundred caballerias. Nine hundred caballerias comes to more than ten thousand hectares [25,000 acres].8

  Of course, this gentleman did have problems with the revolutionary government; his lands were seized, divided up, and turned over to individual peasants. In addition, cooperatives were created on lands that agricultural workers were already becoming accustomed to working in common for a wage.

  Here lies one of the peculiar features of the Cuban Revolution that must be studied. For the first time in Latin America, this revolution carried out an agrarian reform that attacked property relations other than feudal ones. There were feudal remnants in tobacco and coffee, and in these areas land was turned over to individuals who had been working small plots and wanted their land. But given how sugarcane, rice, and cattle were worked in Cuba, the land involved was seized as a unit and worked as a unit by workers who were given joint ownership. They are not owners of a single parcel of land, but of the whole great joint enterprise called a cooperative. This has enabled our deep-going agrarian reform to move rapidly. Each of you should let it sink in, as an incontrovertible truth, that no government here in Latin America can call itself revolutionary unless its first measure is an agrarian reform. [Applause]

  Furthermore, a government that says it’s going to implement a timid agrarian reform cannot call itself revolutionary. A revolutionary government is one that carries out an agrarian reform that transforms the system of property relations on the land – not just giving the peasants land that was not in use, but primarily giving the peasants land that was in use, land that belonged to the large landowners, the best land, with the greatest yield, land that moreover had been stolen from the peasants in past epochs. [Applause]

  That is agrarian reform, and that is how all revolutionary governments must begin. On the basis of an agrarian reform the great battle for the industrialisation of a country can be waged, a battle that is not so simple, that is very complicated, and where one must fight against very big things. We could very easily fail, as in the past, if it weren’t for the existence today of very great forces in the world that are friends of small nations like ours. [Applause]

  One must note here for the benefit of everyone – both those who like it and those who hate it – that at the present time countries such as Cuba, revolutionary countries, nonmoderate countries, cannot give a half-hearted answer to whether the Soviet Union or People’s China is our friend. With all their might they must respond that the Soviet Union, China, and all the socialist countries, and many colonial or semicolonial countries that have freed themselves, are our friends. [Applause]

  This friendship, the friendship with these governments throughout the world, is what makes it possible to carry out a revolution in Latin America. Because when they carried out aggression against us using sugar and petroleum, the Soviet Union was there to give us petroleum and buy sugar from us. Had it not been for that, we would have needed all our strength, all our faith, and all the devotion of this people – which is enormous – to withstand the blow this would have signified.9 The forces of disunity would then have done their work, playing on the effects these measures taken by the “US democracy” against this “threat to the free world” would have had on the living standards of the Cuban people. [Applause] They went after us viciously.

  There are government leaders here in Latin America who still advise us to lick the hand that wants to hit us, and spit on the one that wants to help us. [Applause] We answer these government leaders who, in the middle of the twentieth century, recommend bowing our heads. We say, first of all, that Cuba does not bow down before anyone. And secondly, that Cuba, from its own experience, knows the weaknesses and defects of the governments that advise this approach – and the rulers of these countries know it too; they know it very well. Nevertheless, Cuba until now has not deigned or allowed itself, nor thought it permissible, to advise the rulers of these countries to shoot every traitorous official and nationalise all the monopoly holdings in their countries. [Applause]

  The people of Cuba shot their murderers and dissolved the army of the dictatorship. Yet it has not been telling any government in Latin America to put the murderers of the people before the firing squad or to stop propping up dictatorships. But Cuba knows well there are murderers in each one of these nations. We can attest to that fact on the basis of a Cuban belonging to our own movement, who was killed in a friendly country by henchmen left over from the previous dictatorship.10 [Applause and shouts of “To the wall!”]

  We do not ask that they put the person who assassinated one of our members before a firing squad, although we would have done so in this country. [Applause] What we ask, simply, is that if it is not possible to act with solidarity in the Americas, at least don’t be a traitor to the Americas. Let no one in the Americas parrot the notion that we are bound to a continental alliance that includes our great enslaver, because that is the most cowardly and denigrating lie a ruler in Latin America can utter. [Applause and shouts of: “Cuba sí, Yanquis no!”]

 
We, who belong to the Cuban Revolution – who are the entire people of Cuba – call our friends friends, and our enemies enemies. We don’t allow halfway terms: someone’s either a friend or an enemy. [Applause] We, the people of Cuba, don’t tell any nation on earth what they should do with the International Monetary Fund, for example. But we will not tolerate them coming to tell us what to do. We know what has to be done. If they want to do what we’d do, good; if not, that’s up to them. But we will not tolerate anyone telling us what to do. Because we were here on our own up to the last moment, awaiting the direct aggression of the mightiest power in the capitalist world, and we did not ask help from anyone. We were prepared, together with our people, to resist up to the final consequences of our rebel spirit.

  That is why we can speak with our head held high, and with a very clear voice, in all the congresses and councils where our brothers of the world meet. When the Cuban Revolution speaks, it may make a mistake, but it will never tell a lie. From every tribune from which it speaks, the Cuban Revolution expresses the truth that its sons and daughters have learned, and it always does so openly to its friends and its enemies alike. It never throws stones from around a corner, nor gives advice that contains within it a dagger cloaked in velvet.

  We are subject to attacks. We are attacked a great deal because of what we are. But we are attacked much, much more because we show to each nation of the Americas what it’s possible to be. What’s important for imperialism – much more than Cuba’s nickel mines or sugar mills, or Venezuela’s oil, or Mexico’s cotton, or Chile’s copper, or Argentina’s cattle, or Paraguay’s grasslands, or Brazil’s coffee – is the totality of these raw materials upon which the monopolies feed.

  That’s why they put obstacles in our path every chance they get. And when they themselves are unable to erect obstacles, others in Latin America, unfortunately, are willing to do so. [Shouts] Names are not important, because no single individual is to blame. We cannot say that [Venezuelan] President Betancourt is to blame for the death of our compatriot and co-thinker. President Betancourt is not to blame; President Betancourt is simply a prisoner of a regime that calls itself democratic. [Shouts and applause] That democratic regime, a regime that could have set another example in Latin America, nevertheless committed the great blunder of not using the firing squad in a timely way. So today the democratic government of Venezuela is a prisoner of the henchmen Venezuela was familiar with until a short while ago – and with whom Cuba was familiar, and the majority of Latin America remains familiar.

  We cannot blame President Betancourt for this death. We can only say the following, backed by our record as revolutionaries, and by our conviction as revolutionaries: the day President Betancourt, elected by his people, feels himself a prisoner to such a degree that he cannot go forward and decides to ask the help of a fraternal people, Cuba is here to show Venezuela some of our experiences in the field of revolution. [Applause]

  President Betancourt should know that it was not – and could not have been – our diplomatic representative who started this whole affair that ended in a death. It was they – the North Americans or the North American government in the final analysis; a bit closer, it was Batista’s men. Closer still, it was all those dressed up in anti-Batista clothing who were the reserve forces of the US government in this country – those who wanted to defeat Batista and maintain the system: people like [José] Miró Cardona, [Miguel Angel] Quevedo, [Pedro Luis] Diaz Lanz, and Huber Matos. [Shouts] And in direct line of sight, it was the forces of reaction operating in Venezuela. It is very sad to say, but the leader of Venezuela is at the mercy of his own troops, who may try to assassinate him, as happened a while ago with a car packed with dynamite.11 The Venezuelan president, at this moment, is a prisoner of his repressive forces.

  And this hurts. It hurts, because the Cuban people received from Venezuela the greatest amount of solidarity and support when we were in the Sierra Maestra. It hurts, because much earlier than us, Venezuela was at least able to rid itself of the hateful system of oppression represented by [Marcos] Pérez Jiménez.

  And it hurts, because when our delegation was in Venezuela – first Fidel Castro, and later our president Dorticós [Applause] – they received the greatest demonstrations of support and affection.

  A people who have achieved the high degree of political consciousness, who have the high fighting spirit of the Venezuelan people, will not long remain prisoners of a few bayonets or a few bullets. Because bullets and bayonets can change hands, and the murderers themselves can wind up dead.

  But it is not my mission here to list all the stabs in the back we’ve received from Latin American governments in recent days and to add fuel to the fire of rebellion. That is not my task because, in the first place, Cuba is still not free of danger, and today it is still the focus of the imperialists’ attention in this part of the world. Cuba needs the solidarity of all of you, the solidarity of those from the Democratic Action party in Venezuela, the URD [Democratic Republican Union], or the Communists, or COPEI [Independent Political Electoral Committee], or any other party. It needs the solidarity of all the people of Mexico, all the people of Colombia, Brazil, and each of the nations of Latin America.

  It’s true the colonialists are scared. They too, like everyone else, are afraid of missiles, they too are afraid of bombs. [Applause] And today they see, for the first time in their history, that these bombs of destruction can fall on their wives and children, on everything they had built with so much love – insofar as anyone can love wealth and riches. They began to make estimates; they put their electronic calculators to work, and they saw this set-up would be self-defeating.

  But this does not mean at all that they have renounced the suppression of Cuban democracy. They are again making laborious estimates on their calculating machines as to which of the alternative methods is best for attacking the Cuban Revolution. They have the Ydigoras method, the Nicaraguan method, the Haitian method. For the moment, they no longer have the Dominican method.12 They also have the method of the mercenaries in Florida, the method of the OAS [Organisation of American States]; they have many methods. And they have power; they have power to continue improving these methods.

  President Arbenz and his people know they have many methods, and a great deal of might. Unfortunately for Guatemala, President Arbenz had an army of the old style, and was not fully aware of the solidarity of the peoples and their capacity to repel aggression of any type.

  That is one of our greatest strengths: the strength being exerted throughout the world – regardless of partisan differences in any country – to defend the Cuban Revolution at any given moment. And permit me to say this is a duty of the youth of Latin America. Because what we have here in Cuba is something new, and it’s something worth studying. I do not want to tell you what is good here; you will have to assess that yourselves.

  There are many bad things, I know. There is much disorganisation, I know. If you have been to the Sierra Maestra, then you already know this. We still use guerrilla methods, I know. We lack technicians in fabulous quantities commensurate to our aspirations, I know. Our army has still not reached the necessary degree of maturity nor have the militia members achieved sufficient coordination to constitute themselves as an army, I know.

  But what I also know – and what I want all of you to know – is that this revolution has always acted with the will of the entire people of Cuba. Every peasant and every worker, if they handle a rifle poorly, are working to handle it better every day, to defend their revolution. And if right now they can’t understand the complicated workings of a machine whose technician fled to the United States, then they are studying every day to learn it, so their factory runs better. And the peasants will study their tractor, to fix its mechanical problems, so the fields of their cooperative yield more.

  All Cubans, from both city and countryside, sharing the same sentiments, are marching towards the future, totally united in their thinking, led by a leader in whom they have ab
solute confidence, because he has shown in a thousand battles [Applause] and on a thousand different occasions his capacity for sacrifice, and the power and foresight of his thought.

  The nation before you today might disappear from the face of the earth because an atomic conflict may be unleashed on its account, and we might be the first target. Even if this entire island were to disappear along with its inhabitants, its people would consider themselves completely satisfied and fulfilled if each of you, upon returning to your countries, would say:

  “Here we are. Our words come from the humid air of the Cuban forests. We have climbed the Sierra Maestra and seen the dawn, and our minds and our hands are filled with the seeds of that dawn. We are prepared to plant them in this land, and defend them so they can grow.”

  From all the brother countries of the Americas, and from our own land – if it should still remain standing as an example – from that moment on and forever, the voice of the peoples will answer: “Thus it shall be: Let freedom triumph in every corner of the Americas!” [Ovation]

  To be a revolutionary doctor you must first make a revolution

  (To medical students and health workers, 19 August 1960)

  The following speech by Che Guevara inaugurated a series of political talks and discussions organised by Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health. The gathering was opened by José Rarmón Machado, head of the ministry and, like Guevara, a doctor and a Rebel Army combatant whose courage and leadership had earned him the rank of commander. Held in the assembly hall of the Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC), the gathering was attended by several hundred medical students and health workers, including militia members from the ministry. Representatives from throughout the continent taking part in the twelfth meeting of the Pan-American Health Organisation, held in Havana 14-26 August, were also present.