The Che Guevara Reader: Writings on Politics & Revolution

by David Deutschmann (Editor), Maria del Carmen Ari Garcia (Editor)

Overview

Selected writings—speeches, essays, and letters—by one of the most widely known guerilla fighters, political theorists, and organizers, Che Guevara.

Widely revered as a true revolutionary, this collection of writings from Ernesto Che Guevara highlight his principled politics and praxis in the fight against capitalism and US imperialism. Incisive speeches, critical essays, and personal letters not only serve as a primer of the Cuban revolutionary movement, but also analyze the importance of practicing international solidarity, reflect on violent resistance, and explicate the dangerous failures of capitalism.

Accompanied by an extensive bibliography of Guevara's writing, a timeline of his life, and an all-encompassing glossary of individuals, organizations, and publications, the Che Guevara Reader provides insights into the historical, political, and cultural context for Guevara's radicalization. From some of his most famous speeches such as "Create Two, Three, Many Vietnams" to intimate, personal letters addressed to comrades around the world and his own children, this book extends Che's legacy and paints a stunning picture of a revolutionary struggling for a better world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644211120
Publisher:	Seven Stories Press
Publication date:	06/21/2022
Series:	The Che Guevara Library
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

ERNESTO GUEVARA DE LA SERNA was born in Rosario, Argentina, on June 14, 1928. While studying for a medical degree in Buenos Aires, he took a trip with his friend Alberto Granado on an old Norton motorcycle through all of Latin America, the basis for The Motorcycle Diaries. During his travels he witnessed the Bolivian revolution in 1953; and, in Guatemala in 1954, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz by US-backed forces. Forced to leave Guatemala, he went to Mexico City, where he linked up with exiled Cuban revolutionaries and met Fidel Castro in 1955. Che joined their expedition to Cuba, where the revolutionary war began in the Sierra Maestra mountains. At first Che was the troop doctor, and later became Rebel Army commander in July 1957. Following the rebels’ victory on January 1, 1959, he was a key leader of the new revolutionary government and also of the political organization that in 1965 became the Communist Party of Cuba.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction
David Deutschmann

This expanded edition of a book first published in 1997 on the 30th anniversary of Che Guevara’s death has a simple purpose: to make available to an English-reading audience a selection of articles, speeches and letters by Ernesto Che Guevara. It is not a biography nor a book of reminiscences by others — it is Che Guevara in his own words.

In the almost four decades since his death, the world’s image of Che Guevara has become increasingly distorted and somewhat one-dimensional. The romanticized portrait known to many is that of the individual guerrilla fighter — heroic to some, to others an adventurer. His organic connection to the Cuban revolution fades in this picture. His work side by side with Fidel Castro for nearly a decade; his contributions to Marxist theory; his efforts as a government minister in the first years of the new Cuba after the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship; his tireless labor grappling with the problems of guiding the economic development of a backward country besieged and attacked by U.S. imperialism; his championing the interests of the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America — all this is missing from most popular portrayals of Che Guevara outside of Cuba.

This is reflected in the fact that for two decades or more after his death his writings were largely unavailable in English. Several collections of speeches by Che were published in the 1960s, but most were long out of print. The 30th anniversary of his death saw several new biographies and many commentaries on his life and death, but still few efforts to publish the ideas of Che himself, in his own words.

This book presents the political lessons drawn by Che Guevara from his experiences and the many tasks that he took on: as Rebel Army commander and strategist of guerrilla warfare; as a leader of the July 26 Movement, which played a central role in the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship; as head of the National Bank and Ministry of Industry in the new government; as a forger of Cuba’s close ties with liberation movements throughout the African continent; and as a representative of the Cuban government on platforms throughout the world.

In a speech given before one million people in Havana on October 18, 1967, at a memorial service for Che Guevara, Cuba’s Fidel Castro placed significant emphasis on the breadth of Guevara’s political contribution:

“Those who attach significance to the lucky blow that struck Che down try in vain to deny his experience and his capacity as a leader. Che was an extraordinarily able military leader. But when we remember Che, when we think of Che, we do not think fundamentally of his military virtues. No! Warfare is a means and not an end. Warfare is a tool of revolutionaries. The important thing is the revolution. The important thing is the revolutionary cause, revolutionary ideas, revolutionary objectives, revolutionary sentiments, revolutionary virtues!

And it is in that field, in the field of ideas, in the field of sentiments, in the field of revolutionary virtues, in the field of intelligence, that — apart from his military virtues — we feel the tremendous loss that his death means to the revolutionary movement.

Che's extraordinary character was made up of virtues that are rarely found together. He stood out as an unsurpassed person of action, but Che was not only that — he was also a person of visionary intelligence and broad culture, a profound thinker. That is, the man of ideas and the man of action were combined within him.

But it is not only that Che possessed the double characteristic of the man of ideas — of profound ideas — and the man of action, but that Che as a revolutionary united in himself the virtues that can be defined as the fullest expression of the virtues of a revolutionary: a person of total integrity, a person of supreme sense of honor, of absolute sincerity, a person of stoic and Spartan living habits, a person in whose conduct not one stain can be found. He constituted, through his virtues, what can be called a truly model revolutionary.

Because of this, he has left to the future generations not only his experience, his knowledge as an outstanding soldier, but also, at the same time, the fruits of his intelligence. He wrote with the virtuosity of a master of our language. His narratives of the war are incomparable. The depth of his thinking is impressive. He never wrote about anything with less than extraordinary seriousness, with less than extraordinary profundity — and we have no doubt that some of his writings will pass on to posterity as classic documents of revolutionary thought.

Thus, as fruits of that vigorous and profound intelligence, he left us countless memories, countless narratives that, without his work, without his efforts, might have been lost forever.

An indefatigable worker, during the years that he served our country he did not know a single day of rest. Many were the responsibilities assigned to him: as President of the National Bank, as director of the Central Planning Board, as Minister of Industry, as commander of military regions, as the head of political or economic or fraternal delegations.

His versatile intelligence was able to undertake with maximum assurance any task of any kind. Thus he brilliantly represented our country in numerous international conferences, just as he brilliantly led soldiers in combat, just as he was a model worker in charge of any of the institutions he was assigned to. And for him there were no days of rest; for him there were no hours of rest!

If we looked through the windows of his offices, he had the lights on all hours of the night, studying, or rather, working or studying. For he was a student of all problems; he was a tireless reader. His thirst for learning was practically insatiable, and the hours he stole from sleep he devoted to study.

He devoted his scheduled days off to voluntary work. He was the inspiration and provided the greatest incentive for the work that is today carried out by hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country. He stimulated that activity in which our people are making greater and greater efforts.

As a revolutionary, as a communist revolutionary, a true communist, he had a boundless faith in moral values. He had a boundless faith in the consciousness of human beings. And we should say that he saw, with absolute clarity, the moral impulse as the fundamental lever in the construction of communism in human society.

He thought, developed, and wrote many things. And on a day like today it should be stated that Che’s writings, Che’s political and revolutionary thought, will be of permanent value to the Cuban revolutionary process and to the Latin American revolutionary process. And we do not doubt that his ideas — as a man of action, as a man of thought, as a person of untarnished moral virtues, as a person of unexcelled human sensitivity, as a person of spotless conduct — have and will continue to have universal value.

The imperialists boast of their triumph at having killed this guerrilla fighter in action. The imperialists boast of a triumphant stroke of luck that led to the elimination of such a formidable man of action. But perhaps the imperialists do not know or pretend not to know that the man of action was only one of the many facets of the personality of that combatant. And if we speak of sorrow, we are saddened not only at having lost a person of action. We are saddened at having lost a person of virtue. We are saddened at having lost a person of unsurpassed human sensitivity. We are saddened at having lost such a mind. We are saddened to think that he was only 39 years old at the time of his death. We are saddened at missing the additional fruits that we would have received from that intelligence and that ever richer experience.”

Che Guevara first left Cuba in April 1965. From that time rumors began to circulate as to his whereabouts. He was “spotted” in almost every country of Latin America while speculation grew that Fidel Castro had eliminated his “rival.” A campaign began — which has managed to survive these past four decades — to separate Guevara from both the Cuban revolution and Fidel Castro. The most powerful and convincing rebuttal to this calumny is provided by Guevara himself in the words of the speeches and writings contained in this selection.

A companion volume to Che Guevara Reader which takes up this theme is Che: A Memoir by Fidel Castro. In the closest thing to a biography of Guevara to yet emerge from Cuba, Fidel Castro writes with candor and affection of his relationship with Guevara. In particular, Castro describes his last days with Che in Cuba, giving a remarkably frank assessment of the Bolivian mission of 1966-67, which resulted in Guevara’s death in October 1967 at the hands of the Bolivian Army acting under the instructions of the Central Intelligence Agency...

Table of Contents

Ernesto Che Guevara ix

Introduction to the second edition David Deutschmann 1

Chronology 7

Part 1 The Cuban Revolutionary War

Selections from Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War

A revolution begins 19

Alegría de Pío 23

The battle of La Plata 26

A betrayal in the making 30

The murdered puppy 35

Interlude 37

A decisive meeting 42

The final offensive and the battle of Santa Clara 47

El Patojo 57

What we have learned and what we have taught (December 1958) 61

The essence of guerrilla struggle (1960) 64

Guerrilla warfare: A method (September 1963) 70

Part 2 The Cuba Years 1959-65

Social ideals of the Rebel Army (January 29, 1959) 87

Political sovereignty and economic independence (March 20, 1960) 96

Speech to medical students and health workers (August 20, 1960) 112

Notes for the study of the ideology of the Cuban Revolution (October 1960) 121

Cuba: Historical exception or vanguard in the anticolonial struggle? (April 9, 1961) 130

A new culture of work (August 21, 1962) 143

The cadre: Backbone of the revolution (September 1962) 153

To be a Young Communist (October 20, 1962) 158

A party of the working class (1963) 169

Against bureaucratism (February 1963) 178

On the budgetary finance system (February 1964) 184

Socialism and man in Cuba (1965) 212

Part 3 International Solidarity

Speech to the Latin American youth congress (July 28, 1960) 231

The OAS conference at Punta del Este (August 8, 1961) 242

The Cuban Revolution's influence in Latin America (May 18, 1962) 275

Tactics and strategy of the Latin American revolution (October-November 1962) 294

The philosophy of plunder must cease (March 25, 1964) 305

At the United Nations (December 11, 1964) 325

At the Afro-Asian conference in Algeria (February 24, 1965) 340

Create two, three, many Vietnams (Message to the Tricontinental, April 1967) 350

Part 4 Letters

To José E. Martí Leyva 365

To José Tiquet 366

To Dr. Fernando Barral 367

To Carlos Franqui 368

To Guillermo Lorentzen 370

To Peter Marucci 371

To Dr. Aleida Coto Martínez 372

To the compañeros of the Motorcycle Assembly Plant 373

To Pablo Diaz González 374

To Lydia Ares Rodríguez 375

To María Rosario Guevara 375

To José Medero Mestre 377

To Eduardo B. Ordaz Ducungé 379

To Haydée Santamaría 380

To Dr. Regino G. Boti 381

To Elias Entralgo 382

To my children 383

To my parents 384

To Hildita 385

To Fidel Castro 386

To my children 388

Notes 390

Glossary 404

Bibliography of Che Guevara's writings and speeches 414

Index 432

Editorial Reviews

"If I were to recommend one of Che’s books to readers who want an introduction to his bold ideas, dialectical thinking and his concise yet expressive style, I would recommend this one."—Jonah Raskin, Counterpunch

From the Publisher