El Patojo had been a journalist, had studied physics at the University of Mexico, had left his studies and then returned to them, without ever getting very far. He earned his living in various places, at various jobs, and never asked for anything. I still do not know whether that sensitive and serious boy was overly timid, or too proud to recognize his weaknesses and his personal problems to approach a friend for help. El Patojo was an introvert, highly intelligent, broadly cultured, sensitive. He matured steadily and in his last moments was ready to put his great sensibilities at the service of his people. He belonged to the Guatemalan Workers [communist] Party and had disciplined himself in that life—he was developing into a fine revolutionary cadre. By then, little remained of his earlier hypersensitivity. Revolution purifies people, improves and develops them, just as experienced farmers correct the deficiencies of their crops and strengthen their good qualities.
After he came to Cuba we almost always lived in the same house, as was fitting for two old friends. But we no longer maintained our earlier intimacy in this new life, and I only suspected El Patojo’s plans when I sometimes saw him earnestly studying one of the native Indian languages of his country. One day he told me he was leaving, that the time had come for him to do his duty.
El Patojo had had no military training; he simply felt that duty called him. He was going to his country to fight, gun in hand, to somehow reproduce our guerrilla struggle. It was then that we had one of our few long talks. I limited myself to recommending strongly these three things: constant movement, constant wariness and eternal vigilance. Movement—never stay put; never spend two nights in the same place; never stop moving from one place to another. Wariness—at the beginning, be wary even of your own shadow, friendly peasants, informants, guides, contacts; mistrust everything until you hold a liberated zone. Vigilance—constant guard duty; constant reconnaissance; establishment of a camp in a safe place and, above all, never sleep beneath a roof, never sleep in a house where you can be surrounded. This was the synthesis of our guerrilla experience; it was the only thing—along with a warm handshake—that I could give to my friend. Could I advise him not to do it? By what right? We had undertaken something at a time when it was believed impossible, and now he saw that it had succeeded.
El Patojo left and in time came the news of his death. At first we hoped there had been a confusion of names, that there had been some mistake, but unfortunately his body had been identified by his own mother; there could be no doubt he was dead. And not only he, but a group of compañeros with him, all of them as brave, as selfless, as intelligent perhaps as he, but not known to us personally.
Once more there is the bitter taste of defeat and the unanswered question: Why did he not learn from the experience of others? Why did those men not heed more carefully the simple advice that we had given them? There is an urgent investigation into how it came about, how El Patojo died. We still do not know exactly what happened, but we do know that the region was poorly chosen, that the men were not physically prepared, that they were not sufficiently wary and, of course, that they were not sufficiently vigilant. The repressive army took them by surprise, killed a few, dispersed the rest, then returned to pursue them, and virtually annihilated them. They took some prisoners; others, like El Patojo, died in battle. After being dispersed, the guerrillas were probably hunted down, as we had been after Alegría de Pío.
Once again youthful blood has fertilized the fields of the Americas to make freedom possible. Another battle has been lost; we must make time to weep for our fallen compañeros while we sharpen our machetes. From the valuable and tragic experience of the cherished dead, we must firmly resolve not to repeat their errors, to avenge the death of each one of them with many victories, and to achieve definitive liberation.
When El Patojo left Cuba, he left nothing behind, nor did he leave any messages; he had few clothes or personal belongings to worry about. Old mutual friends in Mexico, however, brought me some poems he had written and left there in a notebook. They are the last verses of a revolutionary; they are, in addition, a love song to the revolution, to the homeland and to a woman. To that woman whom El Patojo knew and loved in Cuba are addressed these final verses, this injunction:
Take this, it is only my heart
Hold it in your hand
And when the dawn arrives,
Open your hand
And let the sun warm it…
El Patojo’s heart has remained among us, in the hands of his beloved and in the loving hands of an entire people, waiting to be warmed beneath the sun of a new day that will surely dawn for Guatemala and for all the Americas. Today, in the Ministry of Industry where he left many friends, there is a small school of statistics named “Julio Roberto Cáceres Valle” in his memory. Later, when Guatemala is free, his beloved name will surely be given to a school, a factory, a hospital, to any place where people fight and work to build a new society.
1. The Second Declaration of Havana was read by Fidel Castro to a mass rally in Revolution Plaza on February 4, 1962, in response to Cuba’s expulsion from the OAS.
2. Ernesto Che Guevara, Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (Melbourne and New York: Ocean Press), 2006.
Speeches (1962)
This speech was given on May 18, 1962, to the members of the Cuban Department of State Security [DSE]. It was not published until after Che Guevara’s death, but contains some of the ideas Che developed in his famous 1966 “Message to the Tricontinental.”
The Cuban Revolution’s Influence in Latin America
First of all, I would like to apologize, because I had intended to prepare some data and figures that would clearly express some analyses on Latin America in general, its relations with imperialism and the relations Latin America will have with the Cuban revolutionary government. However, as always in these cases, my good intentions have remained nothing more than intentions, and I will have to speak from memory, so I will talk in general terms and not quote any figures.
I won’t recount at length the history of the process of imperialism’s penetration in Latin America, but it is useful to know that the part of the Americas called Latin America has nearly always lived under the yoke of the big imperialist monopolies. Spain dominated a large part of the Americas and other European countries penetrated this area later on, just after the birth of capitalism, in the stage of capitalist expansion. Britain and France were among the countries that acquired colonies here.
After the wars of independence, several countries fought over Latin America, and, with the birth of economic imperialism at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, the United States quickly came to dominate all of North, South and Central America. Other imperialist powers still persisted in the southern part of the Americas; Britain had a strong position in the extreme south, in Argentina and Uruguay, until the end of the last war.
At times, our countries have been the scenes of wars caused by monopolies of different nationalities fighting over spheres of influence. The Chaco War is one of the examples of the struggle for oil waged between Shell (owned by English and German groups) and Standard Oil. It was a very bloody war lasting four years, in which Bolivia and Paraguay lost the best of their young men in the Chaco jungle.
There are other examples of this kind: the action in which Peru, representing Standard Oil, grabbed a part of Ecuador’s territory, where Shell was influential. Wars have also been waged for other kinds of products. The United Fruit Company has caused wars in Central America in order to control banana-growing territories. Wars have also been waged in the south, between Chile, Bolivia and Peru, over possession of nitrate deposits—which were very important before a method of creating synthetic nitrate was discovered. At best, we have been unwitting actors in a struggle between empires.
After the war, however, the last redoubts of British imperialism—German imperialism had already been ousted—ceded to US imperialism. The fact that the economic domination of the Americas has since been complet
ely unified has brought about a trend toward unity among the forces that are struggling against imperialism. We must be ever more closely united in the struggle, because it is a struggle all of us share. It is expressed now, for example, in the peoples’ solidarity with Cuba. Everyone is quickly learning that there is only one enemy, which is imperialism, and that here in Latin America it bears the name of US imperialism.
Imperialism’s penetration has varied greatly depending on historical, political and economic circumstances — and also, perhaps, reflecting how far our countries are from the imperialist capital. Some countries, such as Panama, are completely colonized and this determines their way of life. Other countries retain more of their national characteristics and are still in a stage of cultural struggle against imperialism. All, however, have the common denominator of imperialism’s control over their great reserves of materials for use in its industries. Such reserves are strategic not only for war but for its many other industries, its control of banking and its near monopoly on foreign trade.
We are very interested in Latin America for several reasons: because we are a part of it culturally and historically; because we belong to a group that is fighting for its freedom; and because Latin America’s attitude is closely related to our future and to our revolution’s future and its desire to spread its ideology. Revolutions have this characteristic, they expand ideologically. They do not remain limited to a single country but expand to other areas—or, to use an economic term, even though this is not the case—to other spheres of influence.
The Cuban revolution has had an enormous influence in Latin America, although to varying degrees in every country. We should analyze the reasons for the influence of the Cuban revolution and why this has been greater in some countries than in others. We should also analyze in detail the political life in each of the countries and the attitudes of the progressive parties in each of them—with all due respect and without interfering in the internal affairs of any party—because those attitudes are very important for analyzing the current situation.
In some countries the popular struggle has developed acutely; in other countries, the popular struggle has been slowed. In some countries, Cuba is a sacred symbol for the entire people; in others, Cuba symbolizes a liberation movement that is viewed from afar. The origins are complex, but always related to each struggle’s approach on how to seize power, and they are greatly influenced by solutions that have been found for this problem. In some cases, they are also related to the greater or lesser predominance of the working class and its influence; in others, they are related to their proximity to our revolution.
We can analyze these countries in groups.
Two countries in South America are very important in terms of their ideological influence. One of them is Argentina, which is one of the relatively strong powers in Latin America. In the extreme south, Uruguay presents very similar characteristics. Both are cattle-raising countries and have very powerful oligarchies that control foreign trade on the basis of their ownership of large landholdings and cattle—although they have now to share these with the United States.
They are countries with a very concentrated urban population. In Uruguay’s case, we cannot say that the working class is prevalent, because Uruguay is a country with very little development. In Argentina, the working class prevails, but it is in a very difficult situation, because it is employed only in processing industries and is dependent on raw materials from abroad. The country does not yet have a solid industrial base. It has one enormous city, Buenos Aires, where close to 30 percent of the total population lives, and has close to 3 million square kilometers of habitable land, not counting the territory in Antarctica that is under dispute and is of no demographic value.
This immense country has a population of over six million people in its capital in an area a little larger than Havana. It has vast expanses of uncultivated land where the farming class has a relatively large amount of land. It also has a small group of agricultural workers wandering from one place to another following the crops, much as the cane cutters used to do here, however the cane cutters could pick coffee or harvest tobacco and alternate this with other seasonal crops.
In Argentina and Uruguay, which have these characteristics, and in Chile, where the working class is the majority, the philosophy of civil wars against despotic powers has been rejected and the taking of power in the future by means of elections or in some other peaceful way has been proposed more or less directly and explicitly.
Just about everyone knows of the latest events in Argentina, where some relatively leftist groups came to possess more or less real power. These groups represent the progressive sector of the Argentine working class but are distorting many of the people’s aspirations through a clique of the Peronist party that is completely out of touch with the people. And when elections were proposed, the gorillas — as the ultra-reactionary groups in the Argentine army are called—intervened and put an end to that situation.
Something similar happened in Uruguay, though there the army there has no real clout. Nardone (the ultra-reactionary now in power) carried out a kind of coup. The situation created by repeated rightist coups, combined with the philosophy of taking power by means of elections and popular fronts, creates a certain apathy toward the Cuban revolution.
The Cuban revolution embodies an experience that Cuba does not want to be unique in Latin America. It reflects a way to take power. Naturally, it is not a form that appeals to the masses of people who are under great pressure, oppressed by domestic oppressive groups and by imperialism. Some theoretical explanations concerning the Cuban revolution are in order, and these will affect the attitude of those people toward the revolution.
In countries where groups have openly proclaimed their determination to seize power by armed struggle there is more understanding. This position is of course very difficult and very controversial to adopt, and we don’t have to participate directly in it. Every country and every party in its own country should seek the formulas of struggle recommended by its own historical experience. Yet the Cuban revolution is a fact, and one of continental scope. Cuban reality has at least some ongoing influence in the lives of the Latin American countries.
Those known as ultra-leftists—or sometimes, provocateurs—try to implant the Cuban experience without thinking particularly about whether or not this would be the right place to do so. Such people, who exist everywhere, simply take an experience that has occurred in Latin America and attempt to transfer it to each of the other countries. This causes more friction among the leftist groups. The history of the defense of Cuba in those countries by each of the political organizations is also a history of division. It is important to say this here so you will understand something of those problems, including their history of pettiness and their struggles to achieve small advances in controlling organizations.
Without intending to, Cuba has therefore been viewed as being mixed up in those polemics. I say “without intending to”: this experience has been enough for us; we will never aspire to lead the politics or the method of carrying out a revolution, achieving power, in any other country. We are again, however, at the heart of the polemics.
In Chile, where the parties of the left have greater ascendancy, a vigorous trajectory and an ideological firmness which may well be greater than that of other parties in Latin America, the situation has been similar. The difference being that the Chilean Communist Party and the other leftist parties have themselves already posed the dilemma: to take power either through peaceful means or by the way of violence. They are all preparing for a future struggle which I think will come about, because there is no other historical experience, nor is one possible here in Latin America in the present conditions of the conflict developing between the superpowers. The exacerbation of the struggle between imperialism and the peace camp proves that imperialism will never simply hand over control. From a strategic point of view, such a thing would be ridiculous, if the imperialists still have the
weapons. To gain control, the left must be very powerful and must force the reactionaries to capitulate. Those conditions don’t as yet exist in Chile. This is the part of South America where, for the people of the region, the Cuban revolution presents different characteristics.
Moving north we come to the countries where the Cuban revolution is really a beacon for the peoples. We can leave Bolivia aside, because some years ago it had a very timid bourgeois revolution that was severely weakened by concessions it had to make regarding its economy, which is single-crop and completely tied to the imperialist economy. Its bourgeoisie has had to be maintained in part by imperialism. Imperialism, of course, takes its wealth with one hand and using a quarter of the wealth it takes out it then props up the government with the other. This has created a situation of dependence and, in spite of the Bolivian government’s efforts to throw off the imperialist yoke—many of these efforts have been obviously sincere—it has not managed to do so. Bolivia does maintain a correct attitude on some matters regarding Cuba and they remain as friendly as possible in international conferences. It has carried out agrarian reform, although in a very truncated form: the church’s possessions have not been seized; the cooperatives created have no real development; and, importantly, are cooperatives of a traditional kind, based on earlier regional experiences of primitive communism. Such cooperatives, worked by Indians, have been maintained through tradition and operate now as they have always done. The struggle is not manifested very strongly in Bolivia. The terms are changing a little; it is not a case of direct struggle by the oppressed masses of peasants and workers against imperialism, but one of struggle against a national bourgeoisie, which has made a series of concessions, like overthrowing the feudal overlords and the domestic large landowners, so the class struggle is not so acute.
The Awakening of Latin America Page 41
