1. See Ernesto Che Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, pp. 121-29..
Selected Letters (1960)
Letter to Mr. Ernesto Sábato
Havana
April 12, 1960
Year of the Agrarian Reform
Mr. Ernesto Sábato
Santos Lugares, Argentina
Esteemed Compatriot,
Around 15 years ago, when I met a son of yours, who should be close to 20 years old now, and your wife at a place that I think was called Cabalando, in Carlos Paz, and later, when I read your book Uno y el universo [One and the Universe], which fascinated me, I didn’t think that you—who possessed what, for me, was the most sacred thing in the world at that time, the title of writer—would, with the passing of time, ask me for a definition, a “task of reunion,” as you call it, based on an authority affirmed by many subjective phenomena and some facts.
I have made these preliminary comments only to remind you that, in spite of everything, I belong to the land of my birth and still feel all its joy, desperation and deception deeply. It would be difficult to explain to you why “this” is not the liberating Revolution. I may have to tell you that I saw the quotation marks around the words you denounce right at the beginning, and I identified that word with the same thing that had happened in a Guatemala that I had just left, defeated and nearly disillusioned. All of us whose first participation was in that strange adventure and whose revolutionary spirit was deepened through our contact with the masses of the peasants, all of us who shared this profound interrelationship during two years of cruel struggle and truly great work felt the same.
You say our revolution couldn’t be a “liberating” one, but we were part of a new, people’s—not plutocratic—army and used our weapons to destroy the old one. You say our revolution couldn’t be a “liberating” one, but our combat banner depicted a tractor breaking the wire fence around a large landholding—now the insignia of our National Institute of Agrarian Reform—not a cow. You say our revolution couldn’t be a “liberating” one, but tears of joy ran down the maids’ faces the day Batista left and we entered Havana; such manifestations continue; and so do ingenious conspiracies by the Country Club set, who are the same kind of people as the members of the Country Club you know there, who sometimes joined you in your hatred of Peronism.
Here, the intellectuals’ submission was much less subtle than in Argentina. Here, the intellectuals were outright slaves; they didn’t pretend indifference, as they do there, or intelligence; it was simple slavery at the service of a cause of opprobrium, without any complications; they acted as mere echoes. But all this is nothing more than literature.
To refer you to a book on Cuban ideology, as you did with me concerning Argentina, is to refer you to a year ahead; now, all I can show you is a first attempt—a serious one, perhaps, and eminently practical, as are all the things that inveterate empiricists do—at putting theory to this revolution in this book, Guerrilla Warfare. It is almost childish of me to expound what I know by simply putting down one word after another; I don’t pretend to explain the great things that disturb you, and the second book that I’m thinking of publishing—if the circumstances in Cuba and abroad don’t force me to take up arms again (a task that I disdain as a government official but which excites me as a man who loves adventure)—may not be able to explain them, either. Anticipating what may or may not arrive (the book), I can tell you briefly that this revolution is the most genuine creation of improvisation.
In the Sierra Maestra, impressed by so much improvisation and by how well all the resources adapted to one another and functioned under a central organization, a communist leader who was visiting us said that it was the most perfectly organized chaos in the universe. This revolution is like this because it advanced much more quickly than its earlier ideology. When all is said and done, Fidel Castro was a bourgeois party’s candidate for deputy—the candidate of a party as bourgeois and respectable as the Radical Party in Argentina. It was a party which followed in the footsteps of its deceased leader, Eduardo Chibás, who had characteristics similar to those of Irigoyen. And we, who followed him, were men with little political preparation but plenty of good will and innate honesty. Thus, our watchword was, “In [19]56, we will be either heroes or martyrs.” A little earlier, our battle cry— or, rather, Fidel’s—had been “Honor against money.” We summed up our simple thoughts in simple phrases.
The war revolutionized us. There is no experience more deeply moving for a revolutionary than the act of war. Not the isolated act of killing, of carrying a gun or of fighting in one way or another, but the totality of war— of knowing that an armed man is like a combat unit, is worth the same as any other armed man and does not have to fear other armed men; the leaders’ explaining to the defenseless peasants that they can take up arms and showing those soldiers that an armed peasant is worth as much as the best of them; learning that the strength of one is worth nothing if it is not backed by the strength of all; and also learning that revolutionary watchwords must reflect the people’s most cherished yearnings and discovering from the people what those yearnings are and making them goals in political work. That was what all of us did, and we learned that the peasants’ love of the land was the strongest stimulus of struggle that could be found in Cuba.
Fidel understood many more things; he developed into the extraordinary leader of people that he is today and has become an enormous force for uniting our people. More than anything else, Fidel draws people together; he is a true leader who ends disagreements, destroying them with his disapproval. While some of the politically ambitious tried to use him and others challenged him, all his adversaries feared him. That is how this revolution was born; how its watchwords were created; and how, little by little, theories were developed about reality to create an ideology that came tagging along after the events.
We distributed land in the Sierra Maestra long before we launched our Agrarian Reform Law there. After understanding a series of factors in practice, we set forth our first, timid law, which didn’t tackle the basic need, which was that of suppressing the large landowners.
There were two reasons why the regional press didn’t think we were so very bad: first, because Fidel Castro is a very able politician, who didn’t publicize his intentions beyond certain limits and was admired by reporters representing the big mass media, who identified with him and took the easy path of sensational reporting; and, second, simply because the US media people, who are really into polls for measuring everything, took one of their polls, added up the scores and pigeonholed him. When, in response to their questions, he said, “We will nationalize the public services,” they thought this meant “We won’t do this if we receive reasonable support”; when he said, “We will do away with large landholdings,” they interpreted this as “We will use the large landholdings as a source of funds for our political campaign or simply keep the money”; and so on.
They never dreamed that what Fidel Castro and our movement said so naively and drastically was really what we planned to do. For them, we were the great confidence trick of the mid-century, because we told the truth while appearing to lie. Eisenhower says we betrayed our principles; this is one interpretation of the truth: what we betrayed was their image of us, as in the story of the lying shepherd—only the other way around. They didn’t believe us, either.
Now, we’re speaking in a new way, too, because we’ve continued to advance much more quickly than we’ve been able to think and structure our thoughts; we’re in continuous movement, and theory advances very slowly—so slowly that, after writing (in the few moments of my free time) the manual that I’m sending you, I’ve discovered that it’s almost inapplicable to Cuba. In contrast, it may be applicable to our country [Argentina], only it must be used with intelligence, without any haste or deception. Therefore, I’m hesitant about trying to discover the movement’s ideology. When it came time to publish the manual, everybody thought it had been written many years ago.
Wh
ile situations outside the country are being exacerbated and international tension is mounting, our revolution, in order to survive, must become more radical; and, every time it does so, tension increases, so the revolution has to become even more radical. This is a vicious circle that seems to be spiraling tighter and tighter, approaching the breaking point. We’ll have to wait and see how we get out of this predicament, but I can assure you that the Cuban people are strong, because they have fought and won and know the value of victory; they know what bullets and bombs are, and they also know what oppression is. They will fight with exemplary courage.
At the same time, I assure you that, even though I’m now making a timid gesture in this direction, we won’t have theorized very much by then, and we must deal with whatever happens with the agility instilled in us by guerrilla life. At that time, I know that your weapons of an honest intellectual will be aimed against the enemy—our enemy—and that we will have you with us, fighting alongside us, when that time comes.
This letter has been rather long, and it is not entirely free of the affectation that trying to show a thinker that I’m a thinker, too—which I am not— imposes on simple people like me. In any case, I will be glad to hear from you.
Cordially,
Ernesto Che Guevara
Letter to Mr. José Tiquet
Havana
May 17, 1960
Year of the Agrarian Reform
Mr. José Tiquet
Publicaciones Continente, S.A.
Paseo de la Reforma No. 95
Mexico City, D.F.
Dear Friend,
Please forgive me for the delay in replying to you. It was due to lack of time, not negligence.
I would be very pleased to pay for your trip to Cuba, but I don’t have the funds to do so. My income is limited to my pay as a major in the Rebel Army—which, in line with the austerity policy of our revolutionary government, is only what is needed to provide us with a decent standard of living.
Far from annoying, your letter pleased me very much.
Yours with affection,
Commander Ernesto Che Guevara
Letter to Mr. Gustavo Jiménez
Havana
December 30, 1960
Year of the Agrarian Reform
Mr. Gustavo Jiménez
Nayarit 73
Mexico City 7, D.F.
Dear Gustavo,
I found your affectionate letter, reminding me of old times, waiting for me when I returned from a trip abroad on an official mission for the government, and was very pleased to see it.
My life is developing very differently from how it was in those days. It can be summed up in a single word: work—work, work and more work.
The revolution needs all my time. If you should have the opportunity to visit, you would see how hard I work.
I married a Cuban over a year ago, and we had a daughter last month.
Please give my greetings to your parents.
Very affectionately,
Commander Ernesto Che Guevara
1961
Article
This article, published in Verde Olivo magazine, April 9, 1961, discusses the historical significance of the Cuban revolution and refutes the argument, including among some sectors of the Latin American left, that the Cuban revolution was an exception and would not be repeated.
Cuba: Historical Exception or Vanguard in the Anticolonial Struggle?
The working class is the creative class; the working class produces whatever material wealth exists in a country. And while power is not in their hands, while the working class allows power to remain in the hands of the bosses who exploit them, in the hands of landlords, the speculators, the monopolies and in the hands of foreign and national interest groups, while armaments are in the hands of those in the service of these interest groups and not in their own hands, the working class will be forced to lead a miserable existence no matter how many crumbs those interest groups should let fall from their banquet table. —Fidel Castro
Never in the Americas has an event of such extraordinary character, with such deep roots and such far-reaching consequences for the destiny of the continent’s progressive movements, taken place as our revolutionary war. This is true to such an extent that it has been appraised by some to be the decisive event of the Americas, on a scale of importance second only to that great trilogy—the Russian revolution, the victory over Nazi Germany and the subsequent social transformations and the victory of the Chinese revolution.
Our revolution, unorthodox in its forms and manifestations, has nevertheless followed the general lines of all the great historical events of this century that are characterized by anticolonial struggles and the transition toward socialism.
Nevertheless some sectors, whether out of self-interest or in good faith, claim to see in the Cuban revolution exceptional origins and features whose importance for this great historical-social event they inflate even to the level of decisive factors. They speak of the exceptionalism of the Cuban revolution as compared to the course of other progressive parties in Latin America. They conclude that the form and road of the Cuban revolution are unique and that in the other countries of the Americas the historical transition will be different.
We accept that exceptions exist which give the Cuban revolution its peculiar characteristics. It is clearly established that in every revolution there are specific factors, but it is no less established that all follow laws that society cannot violate. Let us analyze, then, the factors of this purported exceptionalism.
The first, and perhaps the most important and original, is that cosmic force called Fidel Castro Ruz, whose name in only a few years has attained historic proportions. The future will provide the definitive appraisal of our prime minister’s merits, but to us they appear comparable to those of the great historic figures of Latin America. What is exceptional about Fidel Castro’s personality? Various features of his life and character make him stand out far above his compañeros and followers. Fidel is a person of such tremendous personality that he would attain leadership in whatever movement he participated. It has been like that throughout his career, from his student days to the premiership of our country and as a spokesperson for the oppressed peoples of the Americas. He has the qualities of a great leader, added to which are his personal gifts of audacity, strength, courage, and an extraordinary determination always to discern the will of the people—and these have brought him the position of honor and sacrifice that he occupies today. But he has other important qualities—his ability to assimilate knowledge and experience in order to understand a situation in its entirety without losing sight of the details, his unbounded faith in the future, and the breadth of his vision to foresee events and anticipate them in action, always seeing farther and more accurately than his compañeros. With these great cardinal qualities, his capacity to unite, resisting the divisions that weaken; his ability to lead the whole people in action; his infinite love for the people; his faith in the future and with his capacity to foresee it, Fidel Castro has done more than anyone else in Cuba to create from nothing the present formidable apparatus of the Cuban revolution.
No one, however, could assert that specific political and social conditions existed in Cuba that were totally different from those in the other countries of the Americas, or that precisely because of those differences the revolution took place. Neither could anyone assert, conversely, that Fidel Castro made the revolution despite a lack of difference. Fidel, a great and able leader, led the revolution in Cuba, at the time and in the way he did, by interpreting the profound political disturbances that were preparing the people for their great leap onto the revolutionary road. Certain conditions were not unique to Cuba but it will be hard for other peoples to take advantage of them because imperialism—in contrast to some progressive groups—does learn from its errors.
The condition we would describe as exceptional was the fact that US imperialism was disoriented and was never able to accurately assess the true
scope of the Cuban revolution. This partly explains the many apparent contradictions in US policy.
The monopolies, as is usual in such cases, began to think of a successor for Batista precisely because they knew that the people were opposed to him and were looking for a revolutionary solution. What more intelligent and expert stroke than to depose the now unserviceable little dictator and to replace him with the new “boys” who would in turn serve the interests of imperialism? The empire gambled for a time on this card from its continental deck, and lost miserably.
Prior to our military victory they were suspicious of us, but not afraid. Actually, with all their experience at this game they were so accustomed to winning, they played with two decks. On various occasions emissaries of the US State Department came, disguised as reporters, to investigate our rustic revolution, yet they never found any trace of imminent danger. By the time the imperialists wanted to react—when they discovered that the group of inexperienced young men marching in triumph through the streets of Havana had a clear awareness of their political duty and an iron determination to carry out that duty—it was already too late. Thus, in January 1959, the first social revolution in the Caribbean and the most profound of the Latin American revolutions dawned.
It could not be considered exceptional in that the bourgeoisie, or at least a part of it, favored the revolutionary war over the dictatorship at the same time as it supported and promoted movements seeking negotiated solutions that would permit them to substitute elements disposed to curb the revolution for the Batista regime. Considering the conditions in which the revolutionary war took place and the complexity of the political tendencies that opposed the dictatorship, it was not at all exceptional that some elements adopted a neutral, or at least a nonbelligerent, attitude toward the insurrectionary forces. It is understandable that the national bourgeoisie, choked by imperialism and the dictatorship—whose troops sacked small properties and made extortion a daily way of life—felt some sympathy when they saw those young rebels from the mountains punish the mercenary army, the military arm of imperialism.
The Awakening of Latin America Page 28
