The Awakening of Latin America

by Ernesto Che Guevara

  That is our goal, the goal for which the best people in the world have struggled for years and years and for which many martyrs have died in every country in the world.

  If you, the members of this Assembly of the people of Camagüey, agree with all of the statements in the Declaration of Havana; if you denounce the system of large landholdings; if you denounce self-styled US democracy as false and as something that exploits the peoples; and if you declare that the peoples’ main goal is the abolition of the exploitation of human beings by others, raise your hands.

  Well, compañeros, the Declaration of Havana has been approved by acclamation. Now, I am going to read you the text of a telegram addressed to our Prime Minister setting forth the conclusions we have reached today, for your approval. If you approve it, the telegram will say the following:

  Commander Fidel Castro Ruz, Prime Minister of the revolutionary government [of Cuba]:

  In the same square in which, more than a century ago, Joaquín de Agüero, José Tomás Betancourt, Fernando de Zayas and Miguel Benavides gave their lives fighting for their homeland’s social justice and political freedom, the people of Camagüey, constituted in a Provincial General Assembly, resolve: first, to ratify the historic Declaration of Havana in all its points; second, to support its firm stand in the denunciation of US imperialism’s exploitation of the underdeveloped peoples of Latin America and the rest of the world; third, to call on the General Assembly of the United Nations to put an end to US imperialism’s bellicose plans and thus facilitate the definitive attainment of world peace; and, fourth, to pledge, by the example of Ignacio Agramonte and all the others who gave their lives fighting for our people’s happiness, to remain united and determined to defend our homeland’s soil against all attacks by “the brutal and turbulent North that scorns us.” With the flags of our homeland unfurled, Camagüey proclaims, We Will Win! Homeland or Death!

  I submit the text of this telegram for your consideration. Those in favor, raise your hands.

  Firmly convinced that this Provincial General Assembly of Camagüey will be followed by others, supported by the workers, peasants, students, intellectuals and people as a whole and by the rifles of our revolutionary army and militias, I declare this first General Assembly of the People of Camagüey concluded.

  Now, let’s sing our glorious national anthem.

  Farewell to the International Volunteer Work Brigades

  September 30, 1960

  Compañeros of Cuba and from every country in the world who have come to the foothills of the Sierra Maestra to deliver a message of solidarity with the Cuban revolution:

  This is a day of joy and of youth, but also a sad day of farewell. Today, we are bidding farewell to the compañeros from all over the world, who came here to work for the Cuban revolution and to get to know this revolution and its people better. You worked with great youthful revolutionary enthusiasm, and I think that, in addition, you learned about our people: a people like any other, composed of millions of individuals who now constitute a united mass and who are willing and determined to fight to the death to defend their recently acquired rights—to maintain them and to continue advancing toward new achievements.

  I would be making a mistake if I were to explain to you compañeros who come from many different parts of the world what a revolution was or if I were to urge you to follow this example as if it were the only one in the world.

  This is nothing more—but also nothing less—than a people that has begun a revolution and is very firmly committed to it. Many young people from other parts of the world already know—as the Cubans do—what it is to begin a revolution, and they also know what magnificent results the people obtain when they manage to break the bonds that have held back their development.

  Unfortunately, many compañeros from Latin America and other regions represent peoples that haven’t yet begun a revolution. They may not be able to understand what historical factors gave Cuba—a country no more subjected to colonialism than any other and no more exploited than any other—the strength required to begin the struggle that would break its chains.

  It’s difficult to explain, in terms of current theories, why it was here in Cuba that the first cry for definitive freedom was raised in Latin America and what it was that enabled us to advance as far as we have. I won’t try to explain it. Nor do we claim that the Cuban example is the only way to make the people’s most cherished hopes a reality or that this path of struggle is the only way to achieve true happiness, which consists of freedom and economic well-being. However, many of the things that we did here can be done in nearly all the countries that are oppressed—oppressed, colonial and semicolonial, not “underdeveloped,” as they call us, because we are not underdeveloped. We are, simply, badly developed, because imperialism, which seized our sources of raw materials a long time ago, set about developing them in line with its own needs.

  It is not necessary to give many examples. You know about Cuba’s sugar, Mexico’s cotton, Venezuela’s oil, Bolivia’s tin, Chile’s copper, Argentina’s cattle and wheat, and Brazil’s coffee. All have a common denominator: the economies of all these countries are based on a single product (or, at most, two)—and on a single market, as well.

  We know, then, that, on the road to liberation, we must struggle first against having a single market and then against having a single product; we must diversify foreign trade and domestic production. Up to here, it’s all very simple. The problem lies in how to do this—by parliamentary means, by armed struggle or by a combination of the two? I don’t know, nor can I give an exact answer to that question. All I can tell you is that, in Cuba’s conditions of imperialist oppression and of oppression by its domestic puppets, the only way out we saw for the Cuban people was that of armed struggle.

  To those who, overflowing with technical jargon, ask how much capital is required to begin an agrarian reform, I would say that the only capital you need is the people, armed and aware of their rights. With just that capital we carried out our agrarian reform here in Cuba, deepened it, have continued to advance in it and are setting out on the path of industrialization.

  Naturally, the efforts of an entire people can’t be summed up in such a simple formula, because this is a struggle that has already cost much blood and suffering, and which the imperialists are trying to make cost even more. This is why you must unite firmly around those weapons; this is the only way to lead the people to their definitive goals, by uniting uncompromisingly, not allowing anything or anybody to sow division, because, as Martín Fierro said, if brothers fight among themselves, the others will devour them. Imperialism is familiar with this maxim, which the poet adopted from the people; imperialism seeks to divide and conquer. Thus, it divided us into countries producing coffee, copper, oil, tin and sugar, and it also divided us into countries that compete for the market in a single country, constantly lowering prices, so it would be easier for imperialism to defeat our countries one by one.

  The maxim that can be applied to one country can also be applied to all countries that aren’t fully developed. We must unite. All the peoples of the world must unite to obtain freedom; economic well-being; confidence that all problems can be solved in the future, and the knowledge that, with enthusiastic, creative daily work, we can reach our goals and that nothing can prevent this.

  The imperialist powers exist. You know them, and so do we, because they have exploited us. The compañeros who were born in those countries know them, too, because they have lived inside the monster and know how terrible it is to live in those conditions when you have faith in the human spirit. The peace-loving countries, which are surrounded by nuclear bases and are unable to implement all their plans for development, also know them.

  We all know them, which is why we must try to unite in spite of the governments that seek to divide us; we must join together—not only young people, as we did here, but also older adults, the elderly and children—to prevent the most terrible of all the wars with which humankind is
threatened and to attain those goals that everyone wants. When the people know all this—and the people aren’t ignorant; they want to unite—all countries whose rulers have sold out will start pressuring many of you, putting you in jail and oppressing you in other ways to make you forget what you have learned in a free country or to make examples of you to keep the timid from taking the path of honor.

  This has already happened to people from other Latin American countries who have visited us, and, unfortunately, it will keep happening. Many of you will have difficulties; many of you will be called “the lowest kind of human being, allied to strange foreign oppressors and to the worst enemy”—an enemy which is trying to destroy what they call democracy and the Western way of life. The Western way of life is represented here by the people of Algeria, who are struggling, and by all other oppressed peoples that are struggling and giving their lives to achieve happiness, which they never enjoy.

  The path is not an easy one; it is not even easy for those who, like us, have managed to surmount the first obstacle and establish a people’s government. A very difficult stage still lies ahead, one in which the false democracies will punish the people more and more, and the people’s indignation and anger will continue to grow until they are filled with hatred and become a human wave that seizes weapons, fights and takes power. These are the current conditions: sooner or later, the people in the colonial and semicolonial countries—the countries which still bear the yokes of governments that are puppets of imperialist powers—will have to take up arms to establish governments that represent the people and join the other peoples in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe in order to create a better world.

  You will see many things. You will see that, though imperialism was caught napping in Cuba, it has woken up; the cries of the people have awakened it. You will see “international” police forces created, in which leadership is given to those who have the most experience in the struggle against communism (in the case of Latin America, the United States), to take up weapons and fight against any country that rebels—or, rather, to arm our Latin American brothers so they will do this under the shameful banner of the Organization of American States. You will see this in Latin America— and soon. You will see this because the people will rebel and because the imperialists will create those armies. But the history of the world will continue, and we—or this generation of our compañeros, if we should die in the struggle—will see that those peoples will win, even against those forces armed by the most powerful country on earth, and will destroy imperialism.

  We of this generation will see the world liberated once and for all, even if we have to go through the worst suffering and privations and even if, in their madness, the imperialists unleash a war that will precipitate their own demise. If any of the peoples manages to attain its independence without going through that struggle, the only prescription for development in this struggle is to unite the people and to carry out serious economic and social reforms, using the capital of weapons and the people. It is also very important to educate the people quickly.

  We, who have had the rich experience of the Cuban revolution, are thrilled to see our people acquiring greater knowledge, revolutionary faith and revolutionary awareness every day. Here is a simple example of that: you applauded all the delegations from our sister countries here today but applauded three of the delegations with particular fervor, because they are in special situations.

  One of these was the delegation representing the people of the United States—a delegation that should never be confused with the US government—a delegation of the people who don’t accept racial hatred and don’t differentiate among individuals on the basis of the color of their skin, religion or economic position. Another one that you applauded with great fervor, because it represents the opposite pole, was the delegation from the People’s Republic of China. So, you applauded the delegations of two peoples whose governments are at loggerheads—one whose government deceives or opposes its people and the other representing a government that has the full support of its people.

  You also warmly applauded the Algerian delegation. The people of Algeria are writing another marvelous page in their history, fighting as we had to fight in the mountains, but not, as in our case, against an invasion of their soil by people who had been born there—who, no matter how savage, always respect something. Rather, the Algerians are fighting against invading troops from a foreign country, who have been trained to kill, are steeped in racial hatred and have been educated in the philosophy of war.

  Our people also gave generous applause to the delegation representing the people of France, another delegation that does not represent its government.

  We ask ourselves: is our people’s success in carrying out our revolution due to their grasp of political affairs, as has been shown by their knowledge of which delegations to applaud the most fervently and in their differentiating between governments and peoples, even at moments such as this, when the Cuban delegation to the United Nations has been subjected to bitter hatred and brutal repression, expressed in both verbal and physical abuse? Was that political knowledge responsible for the revolution? To some extent. The Cuban people are so knowledgeable because they are carrying out the revolution. By exercising their revolutionary rights in the course of these 20 months since the triumph of the Cuban revolution, they have learned everything expressed here, which you, delegates from all over the world, have seen for yourselves on our island.

  The first prescription for educating the people is to have a revolution. Never think you can educate a people by means of education alone, with a despotic government still in place; the people must learn to win their rights. First of all, teach the people to win those rights; when they are represented in the government, they will learn everything that you teach them and much more; the people will learn everything effortlessly.

  We, who are members of the revolutionary government, which is a part of the people, have learned many things while in office—always asking the people, never divorcing ourselves from them, because a ruler who isolates himself in an ivory tower and tries to direct the people with formulas is a failure and is heading toward despotism.

  The people and the government should always be the same thing. Let me tell you, compañeros from other Latin American countries and from colonial countries that haven’t yet won their independence who are visiting us, that you don’t have to know how to read and write to lead the people; if you do know how to read and write, all the better, and, if you’re a philosopher or mathematician, that’s fine, too. But the most important thing you must know for leading the people is how to interpret what they want, and it’s much easier to do this if you’re a part of the people, if you’ve never been isolated from the people by education or any of the other barriers that separate many individuals from the people today.

  Therefore, we have a government of workers, peasants and people who knew how to read before—who were in the minority—and have learned the most important things in this struggle.

  You can see this here in the Young Rebels. When you listen to Major Joel Iglesias on Sunday, you will learn that this major of the Rebel Army was only 15 years old when he went to the Sierra Maestra; he barely knew how to read, and he didn’t know how to write. Now, he is leading the young people, not because he has become a philosopher in a year and a half, but because he can talk with and is a part of the people and because he feels what all of you feel every day and can express your feelings; he knows how to communicate with you.

  If governments consisted of people like these, they would be much better.

  Therefore, I congratulate all governments in the world whose leaders have suffered alongside their people; have learned how to read and write in the course of the struggle; and are now, as always, identified with the people.

  You came here from all over the world to learn about and work with us; but also, in spite of all the teachings you brought us, those of you who live in countries that haven’t gone throug
h this experience yet and who are preparing yourselves for it were able to learn something new, because this is a part of history, and history cannot be changed.

  There are many things to be learned from Cuba—not only the good things that you see every day, which show the people’s enthusiasm and fervor; you can also learn from the bad things, so that, when the time comes for you to govern, you won’t make the same mistakes we’ve made. Learn that organization should be closely linked to the people’s victory and that, the deeper that organization goes, the easier victory will be.

  You came here to work, to build a school city, but, when you arrived, not everything was ready. The school city was in recess, and you couldn’t finish that small monument to human solidarity that you wanted to leave there. It’s a shame, though it’s worth just as much to us the way it is as it would have been if you’d built the most beautiful castle; but it’s also a lesson that organization is important, that you can’t think that revolutionaries are celestial beings that have come to earth through the grace of God, that they simply open their arms and begin the revolution and all problems are solved as soon as they arise, thanks to their enlightenment.

  Revolutionaries have to be not only indefatigable workers but also organized. If, instead of learning through the mistakes you make in the struggle—as we have learned—you apply this experience of the need for organization to the revolutionary struggle, it will benefit the countries in which you fight for the revolution. This is one of the lessons that you can take from here, from this specific example, because we couldn’t offer you a positive experience in this regard. […]