Che Guevara Talks to Young People

by Ernesto Che Guevara

  Some professionals have gone to prison for direct counterrevolutionary acts, for sabotage. But even from prison they have been rehabilitated: they first work in jail; then, after their release, they work, and continue to work, in our industries. We trust them as completely as we trust any of our technicians. And they are reincorporated, even though they have known the harshest and darkest side of the revolution, which is repression. In a triumphant revolution repression is necessary because the class struggle does not end with the revolution’s triumph. In our case, after the victory of the revolution the class struggle was sharpened to the maximum.

  Acts of sabotage, assassination attempts – you probably noticed yesterday that they greeted us with a bomb right in the middle of the event.16 They carried out their show of force – their counter-revolutionary fun. That’s the way it’s always been.

  We attack and are relentless towards those who take up arms against us; it does not matter if these are outright weapons of destruction or ideological weapons to destroy our society. The rest, those who are dissatisfied, those who are unhappy yet honest, those who state that they are not socialist nor will they ever be, to them we simply say: “Before, no one ever asked you whether or not you were a capitalist – you had a contract and you fulfilled it. We say: fulfil your contract, do your work, espouse whatever ideas you like; we won’t interfere with your ideas.”

  That is how we keep on building, with many problems, with many leaps backwards. The revolution’s road is not one of continuous successes, sustained advances, or rhythmic strides forward. At times we reach an impasse, when we lose revolutionary momentum, when we get disoriented. We have to regroup our forces, analyse our problems, analyse our weak points, and then march forward. That is how revolutions are made and consolidated. They are made the same way we began ours – by a group of men, supported by the people, in an area favourable for the struggle.

  We have now reached the point where I must play the role of theoretician of something I know nothing about. With my limited knowledge, I will try to define what I understand an architect to be.

  I believe an architect – as with practically every other professional – is a man in whom the general culture achieved by humanity up to that moment converges with humanity’s general level of technology or with the particular technology of a given nation.

  The architect, like every professional, is a man living within society. He can attend international apolitical meetings – and it’s correct for them to be apolitical – to maintain peaceful coexistence. But I don’t understand how, as a man, he can say he is apolitical.

  To be apolitical is to turn one’s back on every movement in the world. It is to turn one’s back on who will be president or leader of a nation. It is to turn one’s back on the construction of society, or on the struggle to prevent the new society from arising. In either of the two cases, one has to take a political position. In present-day society every one of us is by nature political.

  The architect-political person – the convergence of the culture of humanity up to that point and its technology – confronts this reality.

  Culture is something that belongs to the world. It belongs, perhaps as does language, to the human species. But technology is a weapon and should be used as a weapon, as everyone does.

  We can show you this mural over here, for instance. There is a weapon in it, a US-made M-l, a Garand rifle. When it was in the hands of Batista’s soldiers and they were firing on us, that weapon was hideous. But that same weapon became extraordinarily beautiful when we captured it, when we wrested it from a soldier’s hands, when it became part of the arsenal of the people’s army. In our hands that weapon became an object of dignity. And without changing at all either its structure or its function of killing men, it acquired a new quality: now it was being used for the liberation of peoples.

  Technology is the same. Technology can be used to subjugate peoples or it can be used to help liberate them. [Applause] That is one conclusion that flows from the document you approved.

  In order to use the weapon of technology for society’s benefit, one has to control society. To control society, the elements of oppression must be destroyed, and the social conditions prevailing in some countries must be changed. The weapon of technology must be placed at the disposal of all technicians, at the disposal of the people. That task belongs to all of us who believe that change is required in certain regions of the globe.

  We cannot have technicians who think like revolutionaries but do not act like revolutionaries. There is an urgent need to make a revolution in most of our continents, in almost all of Latin America, in all of Africa and Asia, wherever exploitation has reached inconceivable degrees.

  Whoever pretends that a technician, an architect, a doctor, an engineer, or any type of scientist should merely work with the instruments in his own specific field while his people starve to death or fall in battle, has in fact taken the side of the enemy. He is not apolitical, he is political – but in opposition to movements for liberation.

  Naturally, I respect the opinions of all who are present here. Clearly there must be a few youth and many professionals here who think a socialist system, or what is known of it up to now, is a system of oppression, misery, and mediocrity – as is crudely stated and spread around in propaganda. They think that man can achieve full self-realisation only when there is free enterprise, free thought, and all the things imperialism throws at us. Many of these people are honest in their thinking, and I am not here to argue. One cannot argue about these problems. For quite a long time, for generations, these people have been moulded by the collective education capitalism has put in place in order to train its technical personnel. And had it not trained technical personnel faithful to its principles, it would already have fallen.

  But it has begun to fall because the world is awakening. Today none of the old assertions are accepted any longer just because they were written long ago. Instead, people demand proof in practice of what is asserted; they want a scientific analysis of all assertions. Out of this dissatisfaction, revolutionary ideas are born and spread more and more throughout the world, backed by the living examples of how technology can be put at the service of man, as has happened in the socialist countries. That is what I could tell you on this.

  I would like to add something directed to my compañeros, the students of Cuba. And since this will be about something a little bit specific, a little bit provincial for you, I beg you to simply not listen if it holds no interest for you. But we have to pay attention to our students, and we have to do this every single day.

  Our young people were born in the midst of great turmoil. This is a country where not too long ago US sailors performed their bodily functions on the head of our apostle [José] Marti’s statue,17 yet today our entire people stand firm against US imperialism. An extraordinary phenomenon has occurred: a total change in the consciousness of the masses, with just a few years of revolutionary work. But as with any drastic and abrupt change, not everything is fully understood. So not everything is clear in the minds of our students. Their minds – unlike the minds of our people – are yet to free themselves from a whole number of apprehensions.

  That is why we wanted to insist again at this moment of struggle – when we are facing Yankee imperialism directly, when it threatens us daily, when its aggressiveness is so clear – that the task of the students is more important than ever. They have to accelerate their studies in order to become the true builders of the new society. At the same time, they also have to deepen their consciousness so they know exactly how that society is to be built. So that they won’t be mere builders without ideas, but rather, they will put their hands, their heads, and their hearts at the service of the society being born. And at the same time, they must be ready with rifle in hand, because the defence of our society is not a task that falls to only one or another layer in society. The defence of the Cuban Revolution is the continuous task of every Cuban at all times, in every trench.

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bsp; Your task, compañero students, is to follow Lenin’s advice to the fullest: “Every revolutionary must be the best at his place of work, at his place of struggle.” And your place of struggle today is the university; it is study, the training of our professionals as rapidly as possible in order to fill the gaps we have, to fill the holes left by imperialism when it took away our technical personnel, to confront the country’s general backwardness, and to hasten the building of a new society.

  That is the fundamental task, but not the only task. Because one should never put aside the conscious study of theory, or the possibility of having to grab a rifle at any moment, or the permanent necessity to defend the revolution with ideological weapons every minute of our lives.

  This is a hard task, one in which we need to mobilise the strength of our students. This is a generation of sacrifice. This generation, our generation, will not have the goods, not even remotely, that the generations to come will have. We need to be clear on this, conscious of this, conscious of our role, because we have had the immense glory of being the vanguard of the revolution in the Americas. And today we have the glory of being the country imperialism hates the most. At every step we are in the vanguard of the struggle.

  We have not renounced a single one of our principles. We have not sacrificed a single one of our ideals. Nor have we left unfulfilled a single one of our obligations. That is why we are in the vanguard, that explains the glory felt by every Cuban in each corner of the world he visits. But all this demands effort.

  This generation – the one that has made the apparent miracle of establishing a socialist revolution a few steps from US imperialism – has to pay for this glory with sacrifice. It must make sacrifices every day in order to build through its efforts the future you aspire to, the one you dream about, a future in which every resource, every means, every piece of technology, will be at your disposal so you can transform them and breathe new life into them and – if you will permit me to use this rather idealistic phrase – put them at the service of the people.

  To do that, material goods must be produced, imperialism’s attacks must be repulsed, and all difficulties must be confronted. That is why our generation will have a place in the history of Cuba, and a place in the history of Latin America. We cannot let down the hopes that all revolutionaries, all oppressed peoples in Latin America and perhaps in the world, have placed in the Cuban Revolution.

  Furthermore, we must never forget that the power of the Cuban Revolution’s example does not operate solely here at home. We have obligations that go far beyond the borders of Cuba. We have the obligation to bring the ideological flame of revolution to every corner of the Americas and to every corner of the world where we can get a hearing. We have the obligation to feel all the miseries occurring in the world, all exploitation and injustice. We have the obligation that Marti summed up in a phrase we have often used, and which we should post on the headboard of our beds, in the most visible place: “Every true man must feel on his own cheek the blow to the cheek of another.”

  That must sum up the ideas of the revolution in relation to every country of the world.

  Our youth must always be free, discussing and exchanging ideas, concerned with what is happening throughout the entire world, open to using technology coming from any part of the world; welcoming whatever the world might offer us. And you must always be sensitive to the struggle, the sufferings, and the hopes of oppressed peoples everywhere.

  This is how we will build our future.

  Today, coming to the real and practical issues, let me say that you have quite a task in front of you. You are starting to hold congresses where technology will be the prime concern, and politics will disappear from the relations and the exchanges of experiences between men. But you, students of the world, should never forget that behind technology there is always someone controlling it; and that someone is society. You can either be for or against that society. There are those in the world who think that exploitation is good and there are those who think it is bad and must be ended. And even when there is no discussion of politics, a political being cannot renounce this inherent aspect of the human condition.

  Never forget that technology is a weapon. If you feel the world is not as perfect as it should be, then you must struggle to put the weapon of technology at the service of society. You must rescue society before that can be accomplished, so that technology benefits the greatest number of human beings possible, so that we can build the society of tomorrow – whatever name you choose to give it – the society we dream of and that we call – as it was called by the founder of scientific socialism – communism.

  Patria o muerte! [Homeland or death]

  Venceremos! [We will win]

  [Ovation]

  What a Young Communist should be

  (On the second anniversary of the unification of the revolutionary youth organisations, 20 October 1962)

  In December 1959 the Rebel Army’s Department of Instruction, headed by Che Guevara, launched a revolutionary youth organisation, the Association of Rebel Youth (AJR). In October 1960 the AJR fused with other revolutionary-minded youth groups, thus bringing together within its ranks young people from three organisations: the 26 July Movement; the youth wing of the Popular Socialist Party; and the 13 March Revolutionary Directorate. In April 1962 the AJR adopted the name Union of Young Communists (UJC).

  The second anniversary celebration took place on the eve of the October 1962 “missile” crisis instigated by Washington. In April 1961 Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces and popular militia had dealt Washington its first military defeat in the Americas at Playa Girón on the Bay of Pigs. The US rulers, however, continued to believe they could overthrow the revolutionary government and prepared for new military action against Cuba, with the direct participation of the US armed forces. Operation Mongoose, under the direct supervision of US attorney general Robert Kennedy, was set up by the White House in November 1961 to conduct covert operations in preparation for an invasion. In face of the growing threat, the Cuban government reached a mutual defence agreement with the Soviet Union in August 1962. The pact included the installation of Soviet-controlled nuclear-armed missiles on the island.

  On 22 October US President Kennedy publicly demanded removal of the Soviet missiles. Washington ordered a naval blockade of Cuba, accelerated its invasion preparations, and placed US armed forces on nuclear alert. The determination of Cuba’s workers and farmers – who mobilised in the millions to defend their revolution – stayed the hand of the Kennedy administration. Some 260,000 soldiers in regular units and 140,000 in support tasks took up arms and occupied their places in the trenches. Together with them were 42,000 Soviet troops. The rest of the population took up their assigned posts in production and basic services. Top Pentagon officials, whose intelligence services underestimated the number of Cuban and Soviet troops by half, informed Kennedy to expect as many as 18,000 US casualties during the first ten days alone of an attempted invasion. Fearing the domestic political consequences of such stunning casualties, Washington backed off its imminent invasion plans.

  On 28 October, following an exchange of communications between Washington and Moscow, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, without consulting the Cuban government, announced his decision to withdraw the missiles. The revolutionary government responded with indignation to the agreement reached without its participation, and on behalf of the Cuban people put forward a series of measures that would be necessary for a just and lasting normalisation of relations between Washington and Havana.

  Also speaking at the second anniversary meeting was Joel Iglesias, the president of the UJC. Iglesias had joined the Rebel Army in May 1957 at the age of fifteen, earning the rank of commander. He had headed the commission that worked under Guevara’s guidance to prepare the founding of the AJR.

  Dear compañeros:

  One of the most pleasant tasks of a revolutionary is observing how, over the years of revolution, the institutions born at the very begin
ning are taking shape, being refined, and strengthened; how they are being turned into real institutions with power, vigour, and authority among the masses. Those organisations that started off on a small scale with numerous difficulties and hesitations became, through daily work and contact with the masses, powerful representatives of today’s revolutionary movement.

  The Union of Young Communists, under different names and organisational forms, is almost as old as the revolution itself. At the beginning it emerged out of the Rebel Army – perhaps that’s also where it got its initial name. But forging an organisation linked to the army, in order to introduce Cuba’s youth to the massive task of national defence, was the most urgent problem at the time and the one requiring the most rapid solution.

  The Association of Rebel Youth and the Revolutionary National Militia grew out of what was formerly the Rebel Army’s Department of Instruction. Later, each took on a life of its own. One became a powerful formation of the armed people, representing the armed people, with its own character but united with our army in the tasks of defence. The other became an organisation whose purpose was the political development of Cuban youth.

  Later, as the revolution was consolidated and we were able to lay out the new tasks before us, Compañero Fidel proposed changing the name of the organisation, a name change that is an expression of principle. The Union of Young Communists [Applause] has its face to the future. It is organised with the bright future of socialist society in mind, after we travel the difficult road we are now on of constructing a new society, then the road of completely solidifying the class dictatorship expressed through socialist society, until we finally arrive at a society without classes, the perfect society, the society you will be in charge of building, guiding, and leading in the future. And towards that end, the Union of Young Communists raises as its symbols those of all Cubans: study, work, and the rifle. [Applause] And on its emblem appear two of the finest examples of Cuban youth, both of whom met tragic deaths before being able to witness the final results of this battle we are all engaged in: Julio Antonio Mella and Camilo Cienfuegos. [Applause]