The Awakening of Latin America

by Ernesto Che Guevara

  Therefore, when speaking of the liberation movements, recalling the old feats of our wars of independence, we must remember today’s Cuba, because this Cuba is part of an old effort of the masses to obtain their definitive liberation, an effort that has not yet completely succeeded even in Cuba. We must struggle to wipe out the old economic systems that oppress us, to free ourselves of all of the problems that dependence on foreign capital—mainly, dependence on US monopolies—has brought us in our development and to defend the freedom and well-being of our people that we have achieved in these years of struggle.

  May 25, 1810, witnessed one of the many cries that were emitted in different countries in that period. The Spanish monopoly was coming to an end, and everywhere the peoples were trying to win their freedom. A similar cry had been made in Bolivia the year before, and the struggle for freedom had also begun on the other side of Latin America. That cry of May 25, 1810, was neither the only nor the first one of its kind, but it had the essential virtue of holding firm and being consolidated; it had the virtue of triumphing at that time.

  Likewise, today’s Cuban revolution has been neither the only nor the first such effort. Other revolutions have taken place in this period and have tried to take the step that the Cuban revolution has taken, but not all the required conditions existed and the governments created by those popular movements were overthrown. The most advanced, most moving case is that of Árbenz’s Guatemala, which was destroyed by the US monopolies.

  Cuba, like the heroes of May 25, 1810, has no other or special virtue; it is neither more nor less than an example of how the people can achieve victory—not an original one, not one based on proposals conceived of for the first time and not using a strategy that is unique in history.

  The Cuban revolution simply made the most of the historical moment in which it developed. It applied revolutionary strategy correctly and united the masses who sought change under the leadership of a movement that, at a given moment, interpreted the aspirations of the Cuban people. The revolution followed a leader with extraordinary qualities who, like all great leaders, united the people and, in the special conditions in which we were waging our struggle in the Sierra, in the difficult conditions of guerrilla warfare, and on the plains, brought together an army of peasants that advanced on the cities and drew in the working class. An army of peasants defeated the dictatorship’s army in many pitched battles; and, coming from the countryside, entered the city and then dedicated itself to destroying systematically the old established order—naturally, beginning with the most powerful arm of the reaction, which was the army. The first thing every victorious revolution must do is completely reform the defeated army, replacing it with a new army and establishing class rule.

  We did that, and that was our virtue. This is the experience that we can show the other peoples of the world—especially the other Latin American peoples, with more strength and more suffering because we speak the same language, have gone through the same experiences and understand one another very easily.

  Therefore, we have an experience here—naturally, not the only one; we would never consider that the Cuban experience blazes the only path for Latin America’s liberation. But it is an important one, an effective demonstration that the repressive armies can be destroyed, that the people can arm their combative vanguard by teaching it how to fight and destroy the enemy army, how to harass and finally crush it. We can also show here how the masses grow and develop—the development of revolutionary consciousness is one of the most interesting phenomena.

  We all know that, to be successful, a revolution requires certain objective and subjective conditions. The government against which the revolution is directed has to be given a sound beating and have lost its ability to react. The objective conditions exist throughout Latin America; there are no Latin American countries where they aren’t at a peak. However, the subjective conditions haven’t ripened to the same extent in all countries. We have shown that, in Cuba’s special conditions, the subjective conditions ripened during the armed struggle; the armed struggle was a catalyst that made those conditions more acute, carrying them to an extreme; and political awareness was born.

  Awareness of the need for change in a given social situation and confidence in the possibility of effecting that change—those are what we call subjective conditions. The masses in Latin America are very aware of the need for change, but they aren’t always aware of the possibility of bringing about change, the possibility of seizing power. The peoples aren’t always aware of their strength.

  The armed struggle in Cuba developed the people’s faith in their own strength, turning it into confidence in victory and even enabling us to throw ourselves against the enemy’s weapons; defeat its numerical superiority in terms of armed soldiers, firepower and modern weapons; attack it at a disadvantage of sometimes one to 10; and destroy all its focal points until victory was won. After this, the other stage also begins—the stage we’re living in now—which may be more difficult, more arduous, than the stage of the war. I repeat: this is what we can show you. We have the moral duty and obligation of showing it to you so you can study and analyze—but not copy—it.

  When enough time has passed to make the Cuban revolution a topic for historical studies and the future generations call some of those who took part in this revolution heroes of that time, then the revolution will have the virtues which I’ve just listed: of having shown other Latin American peoples what an armed people can do when it has chosen its revolutionary strategy well and when its revolutionary army is well led.

  Naturally, every Latin American country has specific conditions. Some of them have wonderful conditions for guerrilla struggle; in some, the peasants have very advanced thinking, and the war can be fought more favorably. In others, the working class, the urban population, is much more advanced, and the conditions for waging a war are more difficult.

  We aren’t experts who have specialized in subversion—although there are experts who are specialists in combating subversion—but we do know one thing, and that is that an armed man is worth just as much as or more than another man who is armed, depending on the ideology motivating him to take up arms. Moreover, to be armed, a man must obtain a weapon, and weapons don’t appear through spontaneous generation; neither are they found just around the corner; the weapons are held by the enemy’s army, the oppressor’s army. To achieve revolutionary liberation, you must use those weapons you have and, with them, take new weapons away from the enemy and turn your small army into a great people’s army.

  Please excuse my military emphasis on weapons, but we’re celebrating a day on which the Argentine people expressed their determination to seize independence from Spanish rule and, after holding an open meeting—after having those discussions which we remember year after year in ceremonies such as this and after hearing the statements of the Spanish bishops, who refused to seek independence and who expressed the racial superiority of Spain. After all, that political triumph had to be implemented and the Argentine people had to take up arms. And then, after taking up arms and expelling the Spanish invaders from all their borders, even more compañeros had to ensure Argentina’s independence—and that of her sister Latin American nations—so the Argentine armies crossed the Andes to help liberate other peoples.

  When the liberating feats are remembered, we are especially proud—more than of having obtained our territory’s freedom and of having defended it against encroachment by the royalist forces—the role our forces, our armies, played in the liberation of Chile and Peru.

  Rather than an act of altruism by the revolutionary forces, it was a pressing need of military strategy to obtain a victory of continental scope, since partial victories were impossible. The only alternatives were the complete triumph or the complete defeat of revolutionary ideas, and that is also true today. Here on this small Caribbean island, surrounded by the sea—and by enemies, too—the history made in Argentina is being repeated.

  Our revolution needs to s
pread its ideas, needs other people to embrace it, needs other Latin American peoples, filled with energy, to take up arms—or seize power, whichever, because, when you seize power, you have to take up arms afterwards—and help us in this task, which is the task of all Latin America and all humankind: the global task of struggling against the destruction wrought by our monopolist, imperialist enemy, which won’t be defeated until the last of its magnates goes to jail or to the scaffold. It won’t end until we bring about the total defeat of imperialism, and we draw closer to that day every time the popular forces wage and win a battle anywhere in Latin America or in the rest of the world.

  The Asian and African peoples are just as much our brothers—just as much brothers and sisters in our destiny—as are the other Latin American peoples. The people of Algeria, who are winning their independence, and the people of Vietnam and of Laos, who are giving their lives to obtain theirs, are just as much our brothers as are the people of Venezuela, Paraguay, Peru and Argentina.

  They are all part of a single struggle—which imperialism calls by the same name, even though ideologies change and are acknowledged as communist or socialist, Peronist or any other “-ist,” representing the political ideology in a given country. There are only two positions in history: either you’re for the monopolies, or you’re against them, and all those who are against the monopolies can be called by the same name.

  In this, US imperialism is right: those of us fighting for our peoples’ liberation are united in the struggle (even if we don’t know it) by our goal of wiping out imperialism. We are all allies, although we may not know this, either; although our own forces are sometimes divided by internal quarrels; and even though pointless arguments sometimes divert our attention from the prime need to oppose imperialism. But all of us who struggle honestly for the liberation of our respective countries are enemies of imperialism. There is no possible position now other than that of struggle or collaboration, and I know that none of you are collaborating with the enemy, none of you is even remotely in favor of imperialism, and all of you are decidedly for Argentina’s liberation.

  “Liberation,” because Argentina is once again in chains. These chains are sometimes hard to see; chains aren’t always visible to everyone, but they are shackling the country. Oil goes out on one side, US companies come in on all sides of the country and old victories are being eaten away—and all this is going on slowly, as if a subtle poison were penetrating Argentina, as it is in many other Latin American countries. However, the people are reacting energetically against this penetration, which, in general terms, is subtle but always weighs on the backs of the people. And, when the administrations try to cleanse their hands with an election, this brings on disasters such as the latest one.

  Then comes brazen intervention by imperialism, its puppets and all of its aides-de-camp. This creates a familiar situation, and the popular struggles begin. If the leaders of the reaction are skillful, they may channel things toward new forms that will enable them to deceive the people once more; if the leaders of the reaction aren’t skillful enough, or if the people are more alert than they are, the impetus of the masses may take them farther than they have come so far; it may enable them to take the step needed for the working class to seize power. The masses of workers and peasants in our country may learn to take a new path or continue along paths they know well and destroy a power that is already tottering, which is based on fear of bayonets, on the disunity of our forces, and on unawareness of the possibility of change and of struggle, unawareness of how great the people’s strength really is and of the comparatively enormous weakness of the repressive force.

  If our people learn their lessons well, if they don’t allow themselves to be deceived again, and if new disputes don’t divert them from their main purpose, which should be that of seizing power—neither more nor less than seizing power—new conditions may arise in Argentina: the conditions represented, in its time, by May 25; the conditions of a total change. Only, in this period of colonialism and imperialism, total change will mean the step that we have taken, the step toward the declaration of a socialist revolution and the establishment of a power dedicated to the construction of socialism.

  When you come right down to it, socialism is an economic stage of humankind; like it or not, we must pass through this stage. We may delay or advance it—that part of the struggle corresponds to the leaders of the two great opposing forces. If the reaction does an effective job of directing its guns, its weapon of division and its weapon of intimidation, it may keep socialism from coming to a given country for many years. But, if the people use their ideology correctly, apply their revolutionary strategy well, choose the right moment for making their attack, and do so fully and without fear, revolutionary power may come very soon in any Latin American country—specifically, Argentina.

  Compañeros, whether the historic experience of May 25 is repeated in these new conditions or not depends on the Argentine people and their leaders—that is, it depends on you. Therefore, you have a great responsibility: to struggle and lead the people, who have already begun using every conceivable means to express their determination to break the old chains and to free themselves of the new ones with which imperialism is threatening to shackle them.

  Let us, therefore, take up the hackneyed, often distorted example of May 25; let us take up the example of the liberating revolution that issued from its borders—filled with a new ideology that was not its own but which it had adopted to convey its message to the rest of Latin America—and let us think of these moments, when a type of May 25 has appeared in the Caribbean, revolutionary proclamations are being launched from here that will reach all Latin American peoples and the Declaration of Havana stands out as a declaration of human rights for the peoples of this era.

  Let us think about the indestructible unity of all of Latin America; let us think about everything that links and unites us—not about what divides us. Let us think about all of the qualities we have in common; about our economies, which are all distorted; about the fact that each nation is shackled by the same imperialism. Let us think about being part of an army that is fighting for liberation in every part of the world that has not been liberated yet, and let us get ready to celebrate another May 25—not in this generous land, but in our own land, under new symbols: under the symbols of victory, the construction of socialism and the future.

  1963

  Article

  This article was first published in Cuba Socialista in September 1963. It summarizes some of the main points Che made in his book Guerrilla Warfare that was first published in 1961.

  Guerrilla Warfare: A Method

  Guerrilla warfare has been employed throughout history on innumerable occasions and in different circumstances to obtain different objectives. Lately it has been employed in various wars of liberation when the vanguard of a people has chosen the road of irregular armed struggle against enemies of superior military power. Asia, Africa and Latin America have been the scenes of such actions in attempts to win power in the struggle against feudal, neocolonial or colonial exploitation. In Europe, guerrilla units have been used as supplements to native or allied regular armies.

  Guerrilla warfare has been employed in the Americas on several occasions. We have had, as a case in point, the experience of Augusto César Sandino fighting against the Yankee expeditionary force on Nicaragua’s Segovia [River]. Recently we had Cuba’s revolutionary war. In the Americas since then the problem of guerrilla war has been raised in theoretical discussions by the progressive parties of the continent with the question of whether its utilization is possible or convenient. This has become the focus of highly controversial polemics.

  This article will express our views on guerrilla warfare and its correct utilization. Above all, we must emphasize at the outset that this form of struggle is a means to an end. That end, essential and inevitable for any revolutionary, is the conquest of political power. In the analysis of specific situations in different countries of
America, we must therefore use the concept of guerrilla warfare in the limited sense of a method of struggle in order to gain that end.

  Almost immediately the questions arise: Is guerrilla warfare the only formula for seizing power in Latin America? Or, at any rate, will it be the predominant form? Or will it simply be one formula among many used during the struggle? And ultimately we may ask: Is Cuba’s example applicable to the present situation on the continent? In the course of polemics, those who want to undertake guerrilla warfare are criticized for forgetting mass struggle, implying that guerrilla warfare and mass struggle are opposed to each other. We reject this implication, for guerrilla warfare is a people’s war; an attempt to carry out this type of war without the population’s support is a prelude to inevitable disaster. The guerrilla is the combat vanguard of the people, situated in a specified place in a certain region, armed and willing to carry out a series of warlike actions for the one possible strategic end—the seizure of power. The guerrilla is supported by the peasant and worker masses of the region and of the whole territory in which it acts. Without these prerequisites, guerrilla warfare is not possible.

  We consider that the Cuban revolution contributed three fundamental lessons to the revolutionary movement in the Americas. First, popular forces can win a war against the army. Second, it is not always necessary to wait for all conditions favorable to revolution to be present; the insurrection itself can create them. Third, in the underdeveloped parts of America, the battleground for armed struggle should, in the main, be the countryside.1

  These are the contributions to the development of the revolutionary struggle in America, and they can be applied to any of the countries on our continent where guerrilla warfare may develop. The Second Declaration of Havana points out: