The Awakening of Latin America

by Ernesto Che Guevara

  I maintain—and have said a thousand and one times—that revolutions are not exported. Revolutions are born in the hearts of the people. Revolutions are engendered by the exploitation that the governments—such as those of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela—impose on their peoples. Later, the liberation movements may or may not receive help — especially moral support—but the fact remains that revolutions cannot be exported.

  I’m not saying this to the Assembly as a justification; I’m simply stating it as the expression of a fact that was scientifically established many years ago. Therefore, it would be wrong for us to pretend to export revolutions—especially to Costa Rica, which has a regime that has absolutely nothing in common with us and is not one of the regimes that is notorious in Latin America for its direct, indiscriminate oppression of its peoples.

  As for Nicaragua, I would like to tell its representative that, even though I didn’t understand all of his arguments about accents (I think he was referring to Cuba, Argentina and maybe the Soviet Union, as well), I hope that he has found no trace of a US accent in my address, because that would be a dangerous thing to have.

  It is true that my accent may contain traces of the Argentine way of speaking, because I was born in Argentina; that’s no secret to anybody. I am both Cuban and Argentine, and—I hope the illustrious gentlemen of Latin America won’t be offended—I consider myself a Latin American patriot and just as much a citizen of any Latin American country as anyone else and am prepared to give my life for the liberation of any of the Latin American countries whenever necessary without asking anything of anybody, without making any demands and without exploiting anybody. And this temporary representative to this Assembly is not the only one who’s prepared to do this. All of the Cuban people suffer every time there is an act of injustice—not only in Latin America, but anywhere in the world. Here, I will repeat what I’ve before said so often, citing Martí’s marvelous maxim that every true human should feel on their cheek the blow dealt to the cheek of any other human. All of the Cuban people feel this way, gentlemen.

  If the representative of Nicaragua wants to take a glance at his map or inspect some places that are difficult to access for himself, he can go, in addition to Puerto Cabezas—I don’t think he’ll deny that a large part of the Bay of Pigs expeditionaries set out from there—to Bluefields and Monkey Point (which I think should be called Punto Mono; I don’t know what strange historical reason there is for these places’ having English names, since they are in Nicaragua). There, he can find some Cuban counterrevolutionaries—or “revolutionaries,” as the representatives of Nicaragua prefer to call them. There are all kinds of them. There is also a lot of whiskey, but I don’t know whether it was smuggled in or whether it was imported legally. We know that those bases exist. And, naturally, we aren’t going to demand that the OAS investigate if they are there or not. We are only too familiar with the OAS’s collective blindness to ask any such thing.

  People say we have admitted that we have nuclear weapons. There aren’t any. I think the representative of Nicaragua has made a slight mistake. We have simply defended our right to have whatever weapons we can obtain for our defense, and we have refused to give any other country the right to decide what kind of weapons we will have.

  The representative of Panama, who has been kind enough to call me “Che,” as the Cuban people call me, began by speaking about the Mexican Revolution. The Cuban delegation spoke about the US massacre of the Panamanian people, and the delegate of Panama began by speaking about the Mexican Revolution and then went on in that style, without making any reference at all to the US massacre which caused the government of Panama to break off relations with the United States. Perhaps, in the language of sellout politics, this is called tactics; in revolutionary terminology, gentlemen, this is called utter abasement. Reference was made to the 1959 invasion. A group of adventurers headed by a bearded coffee grower—who had never been in the Sierra Maestra and is now in Miami or on a base somewhere else—managed to whip up the enthusiasm of a group of kids and carry out that adventure. Officials of the Cuban government worked together with the Panamanian government to put that effort down. It is true that they left from a Cuban port, and it is also true that we argued with them in a friendly way at the time.

  Of all the statements that we have heard here against the Cuban delegation, the one that seems completely inexcusable was the one made by the delegate of Panama. I had absolutely no intention of offending either his delegation or his government. But something else is also true: I didn’t have any intention of defending the government of Panama, either. I wanted to defend the Panamanian people with a denunciation at the United Nations, since their government has neither the courage nor the self-respect to call a spade a spade. I don’t want to offend the government of Panama, but neither do I want to defend it. I extend my sympathy to the fraternal Panamanian people, and I will try to defend them with my denunciation.

  There is one very interesting thing among the statements that the representative of Panama made. He said that, in spite of all the Cubans’ bragging, the [US naval] base is still there. In his address, which is still fresh in the memories of the representatives, he had to admit that we have denounced over 11,300 acts of provocation “of all kinds” from the base, running from trivial ones to shots fired. I have explained that we don’t want to engage in acts of provocation, because we are aware of the consequences they may bring for our people; we have raised the problem of the Guantánamo Base in all international conferences and have always demanded respect for the Cuban people’s right to recover that base by peaceful means.

  We haven’t engaged in any bragging, because we don’t do that; men like ourselves, who are prepared to die and who are leading an entire nation of people who are prepared to die in the defense of their cause, don’t need to brag. We didn’t brag at the Bay of Pigs; we didn’t brag during the October Missile Crisis, when our people were faced with the US threat of a nuclear mushroom and everybody manned the trenches and the factories to increase production. Nobody took a single step backward; nobody complained; and thousands of people who didn’t belong to the militias joined them voluntarily when US imperialism was threatening to drop one or several atom bombs or to make a nuclear attack on Cuba. That is what our country is like, and a country such as that, whose leaders and people—I can hold my head high when I say this—have no fear of death and are well aware of the responsibility of their actions, will never brag. What they will do is fight to the death, if necessary, and all of the Cuban people will fight to the death alongside their government if they are attacked.

  The representative of Colombia stated in measured tones—and I, too, must change my tone—that there were two incorrect statements. One concerned the US invasion in 1948 that was triggered by the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, and the tone of voice of the representative of Colombia showed that he was very sorry about that death; he was deeply grieved.

  In my address, I referred to another, earlier intervention which the representative of Colombia may have forgotten: the US intervention which resulted in the separation of Panama from Colombia. Later, he said that there weren’t any liberation troops in Colombia, because nothing needs to be liberated there. In Colombia, where people talk so naturally about representative democracy and there are only two political parties, which have shared power on a fifty-fifty basis for many years, in line with an imaginary democracy, we might say that the Colombian oligarchy has reached the apex of democracy. They are divided into Liberals and Conservatives, Conservatives and Liberals—four years for one group, followed by four years for the other. Nothing changes.

  That is what elected democracies are like; that is what the representative democracies that the representative of Colombia—that country in which, it is said, 200,000 or 300,000 people have been killed in the civil war since Gaitán’s death—defends so enthusiastically are like. Yet he says that nothing needs to be liberated there, there is no need for revenge,
there aren’t any thousands of dead to be avenged and no armies have been massacring the people since 1948. Some changes have been made; the generals have different names; the officers have different names or take their orders from a different class than the one that massacred the people throughout four years of struggle and that continued to massacre them intermittently for several years after that. Yet he says that nothing needs to be liberated there.

  Doesn’t the representative of Colombia remember that there are armed forces in Marquetalia—which even the Colombian newspapers have called “the independent Republic of Marquetalia”—and that one of their leaders has been nicknamed “Tiro Fijo” in an effort to turn him into a run-of-the-mill bandit? Doesn’t he know that 16,000 men of the Colombian Army carried out an enormous operation there with US military advisers, helicopters and probably—though I can’t state this as fact—planes from the US Army, as well?

  It would seem that either the representative of Colombia’s information is unreliable because he’s been away from his country or that his memory is somewhat deficient. Moreover, the representative of Colombia stated with great confidence that, if Cuba had remained in the orbit of the Latin American states, things would be different. I’m not exactly sure what he meant by that business of the orbit—satellites have orbits, and Cuba is not a satellite. It is not in any orbit; it’s flying free. Naturally, if it were in the same orbit as the other Latin American states, I would have given a honeyed speech several pages long in much more elegant Spanish, with many more nouns and adjectives, and I would have talked about the beauties of the inter-American system and about our firm, unyielding defense of the free world headed by the country around which the others orbit—and you all know who that is; there is no need for me to mention names.

  The representative of Venezuela also employed a moderate—though emphatic—tone. He said that the accusations of genocide were infamous and that it was really incredible that the Cuban government would bother about such things, which concerned Venezuela, when it did the same against its own people. I must say something here that is a known truth and that we have always stated publicly: yes, we carried out executions; we executed some individuals, and we will continue to execute individuals as long as it is necessary. Our struggle is a struggle to the death. We know what a lost battle would mean, and the counterrevolutionaries must also know what it would mean if a battle were lost in Cuba now. US imperialism imposed these conditions.

  But we don’t perpetrate assassinations—such as the ones that, if I’m not misinformed, members of the Digepol division of the Venezuelan police are carrying out right now. They have engaged in a series of barbaric actions, including executions; after killing students and other people, they dump the bodies, leaving them to be found.

  The free press of Venezuela was suspended several times recently because it carried information about such things. Venezuelan military planes whose pilots have US advisers have strafed extensive rural areas and have killed peasants. The people’s rebellion is growing in Venezuela, and we will see its results in the future.

  The representative of Venezuela is outraged. I remember the outrage of the Venezuelan representatives when the Cuban delegation to the Punta del Este meeting read the secret reports that spokesmen of the United States of America were kind enough to send us—indirectly, of course. At that time, I read to the participants in the Punta del Este meeting the opinion that the representatives of the United States had of the Venezuelan government. They made an extremely interesting announcement, which—forgive me for paraphrasing, but I can’t quote it word for word right now—went something like this: “These people will have to change, or everybody will go before a firing squad.” A “firing squad” was how they referred to the Cuban revolution.

  The members of the US embassy announced in irrefutable documents that that would be the fate of the Venezuelan oligarchy—which was accused of theft and a lot of other serious things—if it didn’t change its methods.

  The members of the Venezuelan delegation were very indignant. Naturally, they were indignant at the United States and at the Cuban representatives who decided to read the opinions that the US authorities had of their government and of their people. But the only response to all this was that Mr. Moscoso, who had kindly seen to it that we got the documents, was removed from his position.

  I am reminding the representative of Venezuela of this because revolutions are not exported; revolutions act, and the Venezuelan revolution will act when its time comes. Those who don’t have a plane waiting—as there was in Cuba—in which to flee to Miami or somewhere else, will have to face whatever the Venezuelan people decide. They shouldn’t blame other peoples or other governments for what may happen there. If the representative of Venezuela is interested, I would recommend that he read some very interesting opinions about guerrilla warfare and how to combat it—opinions that some of the most intelligent members of COPEI have written and published in the Venezuelan press…

  He will see that bombs and assassinations aren’t effective against an armed people. It is precisely this that makes the peoples more revolutionary. As we know very well, it is not right for me to do a professed enemy the favor of teaching him anti-guerrilla strategy, but I’m doing this because I know he’s so stubborn that he won’t follow my advice.

  And then there’s Mr. Stevenson. Unfortunately, he is not here. I understand very clearly why Mr. Stevenson is not here.

  We have listened yet again to his measured, serious statements, which are worthy of such an intellectual.

  Similar emphatic, measured, serious statements were made to the first commission during session 1149A on April 15, 1961, the day on which US pirate planes bearing Cuban insignia—which, as I recall, had taken off from Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, or perhaps from Guatemala (it has not been determined exactly)—strafed several Cuban airports and reduced our air force to almost nothing. After carrying out their “heroic feat” without running any risk, the planes landed in the United States. Mr. Stevenson said some very interesting things in response to our denunciation.

  Forgive me for having spoken at such length, but I think it is worth remembering once more the measured phrases such a distinguished intellectual as Mr. Stevenson uttered just four or five days before Mr. Kennedy calmly announced to the world that he accepted full responsibility for what had happened in Cuba. The following are not exact quotes of what Mr. Stevenson said, because I didn’t have time to obtain the minutes of all the meetings:

  “The accusations made against the United States by the representative of Cuba concerning the bombings that were reported against the airports at Havana and San Antonio de los Baños are completely groundless.”

  Mr. Stevenson rejected those accusations categorically.

  “As the president of the United States declared, the armed forces of the United States will not intervene in Cuba under any circumstances, and the United States will do everything it can to prevent its citizens from taking part in actions against Cuba.”

  Just over a year later, we did them the courtesy of returning the body of a pilot who had crashed on Cuban soil. Not that of Major Anderson; another one from that same period.

  “As for the events which, it is said, took place this morning and yesterday, the United States will study the requests for political asylum in line with its customary procedures.”

  They were going to give political asylum to the people they’d sent.

  “Anyone who believes in freedom and seeks asylum against tyranny and oppression will always meet with understanding and a warm welcome from the American people and from the government of the United States.”

  So said Mr. Stevenson in his long and tiresome speech.

  Two days later, the hosts of Brigade 2506—which will surely go down in the annals of the history of Latin America for its heroism—landed at the Bay of Pigs. Two days later, the heroic brigade surrendered after having suffered almost no casualties, and then began that parade—which some of you must r
emember—of men wearing the uniforms of US Army counterrevolutionaries, all of them claiming to be cooks or health personnel or saying they had come on the expedition as sailors.

  That was when President Kennedy did the honorable thing. He didn’t try to keep up a policy of lies that nobody believed but clearly stated that he took responsibility for everything that had happened in Cuba. He accepted the responsibility, but the Organization of American States didn’t. Nor, as far as I can remember, did it demand that any of its members take responsibility for their actions—responsibility in terms of their own history and that of the United States, because the Organization of American States was in its orbit.

  It didn’t have time for such things.

  I thank Mr. Stevenson for his history-making reference to my “long life as a communist and revolutionary” which reached its highest point in Cuba. As always, the US agencies—not only the news agencies but also the espionage ones—have confused matters. My history as a revolutionary is short, really having begun on the Granma and continued up to the present.

  I didn’t become a member of the Communist Party until after I had arrived in Cuba, and I can tell this assembly that the Cuban revolution follows Marxism-Leninism as its theory of action. Personal references aren’t important; what is important is that Mr. Stevenson once more has said that there has been no law-breaking, that the planes didn’t come from here—nor did the ships, of course—that the pirate attacks came out of the blue and that everything came from nowhere. He spoke in the same tone of voice, with the same confidence and the same accent of a serious and resolute intellectual that he employed in 1961 when he stated emphatically that those Cuban planes had come from Cuban territory and that their pilots were political exiles—before he was disproved. It is easy to understand why my distinguished colleague Mr. Stevenson has thought it wise to withdraw from this Assembly.