In 1966-67, he led a nucleus of revolutionaries from Bolivia, Cuba, and Peru who fought to overthrow the military dictatorship in Bolivia. In the process, they sought to forge a Latin America-wide movement of workers and peasants that could lead the battle for land reform and against U.S. imperialist domination of the continent and advance the struggle for socialism. Guevara was wounded and captured on Oct. 8, 1967. He was shot the next day by the Bolivian military, after consultation with Washington.

As part of the commemoration of this anniversary in Cuba, dozens of articles, speeches, and interviews by those who worked with Che are being published, dealing with the Cuban revolution, its impact in world politics, and the actions of its leadership. Many of Guevara's collaborators and family members have spoken at conferences and other meetings, bringing Che to life for a new generation and explaining the importance of his rich political legacy today. These materials contain many valuable firsthand accounts and information, some of which are being written down and published for the first time. They are part of the broader discussion taking place in Cuba today on how to advance the revolution.

The Militant is reprinting a selection of these contributions as a weekly feature, under the banner "Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution."

The following is a speech given by Enrique Oltuski at a conference at the University of Havana on "Che: Man of the Twenty-First Century," October 1 -4. Oltuski worked closely with Ernesto Che Guevara in the Ministry of Industry, which Guevara headed in the early 1960s, and today is Cuba's deputy minister of fishing. Translation, subheadings, and footnotes are by the Militant.

What is happening in the world that makes the figure of Che grow larger and larger every day. Is it not because he fills a moral void? Is it not because he inspires confidence in the future? Is it not because he is the human being we all want to be? Is it not because Che is the herald of the new man?

Asthma, which he eventually would bring under control with his willpower and which he began to suffer at age two, compelled him to rest during periods of acute attacks. As a child of educated parents, books were familiar objects in the house, and thus books became a refuge over long hours.

As a 15-year-old he read Freud, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Zola, Sarmientos, Faulkner, Steinbeck. An interesting mix of authors, seeds of the future forest of ideas, planted as yet with no order.

Over time and as his intellect grew, his interest in works with a social content grew. He intensified his reading of Marxism and also read Kafka, Camus, and Sartre.

His travels to South America were decisive in his formation. He became conscious of the Indian of the Americas; there arose in him a fraternal spirit toward the indigenous peoples. With his stay in the mines of Chuquicamata in Chile, he got to know the life of the copper miners, and the oppression they are subjected to by the Yankee owners. He felt in his own blood and bone how the U.S. archeologists pillaged the ruins of Machu Picchu. His love for his fellow man led him to live side by side with lepers, who bid him farewell as a brother.

He met Bolivian and Guatemalan revolutionaries. In Mexico he joined up with the Cuban revolution. He was no longer a mere spectator; he was now a revolutionary who wanted to change things.

When they went to the encampments in the final stage of their training as a Granma(1) expeditionary, Che told of his travels through Latin America. The anecdotal side was not what he wanted to stress; rather the poverty, how the people lived, how the Mayan Indians lived in Guatemala, the corruption of the governments. He wrote a great deal on these topics: his trip from one country to the other, the persons he met, but above all the poverty, the state of slavery that the Indian of the Americas lived in.

Later came the epic events in Cuba, his apprenticeship as a guerrilla together with his teacher Fidel; the invasion, the battle of Santa Clara, the Ministry of Industry.

With the Ministry of Industry the first steps were taken to create an organizational structure of a socialist character in Cuba. The system of management being developed at the time was based on a fundamental theoretical conception; the aim was to develop man's consciousness and to develop the productive forces in such a way that, in a given period of time, the development of the productive forces would coincide with the formation of the new man. In this way a just society would be created, where man would be brother of man, and where happiness of the individual would be the happiness of all.

The system of the Ministry of Industry was being consolidated as the result of an experience where man was at the center. Man's education, the development of his consciousness, and moral and material incentives played a principal role.

The element of voluntary work
A new element made its appearance as part of this conception: voluntary work. Che characterized voluntary work as an absolutely selfless contribution, a transformation of work into a social duty - and more than a duty, a social pleasure. The idea of work as a completely integral function of man was also part of the theoretical conception that Che was completing during his years in Cuba.

In August 1964, at a ceremony awarding communist certificates to the best workers of the Ministry of Industry, Che, with his fine human sensibility, cited a few paragraphs from a book by the poet León Felipe:

"But man is a hard-working and stupid child, who has turned work into tiresome toil, he has turned the drumstick into a hoe, and instead of tapping out a song of joy on the land, he began to dig . . . "

The poet continued:

"I want to say that no one has been able to dig to the rhythm of the sun, and that no one has yet cut a stalk of corn with love and grace."

Che stated in reply:

"That's why I wanted to quote those lines. Because today we could tell that great desperate poet to come to Cuba to see how man, after passing through all the stages of capitalist alienation, and after being considered a beast of burden harnessed to the yoke of the exploiter, has rediscovered his course, has found his way back. Today in our Cuba, work takes on new meaning every day. It is done with new joy."

And we say as in the song: Che, you are the poet.

But there was another element in the conception of the new life, the new society, the new man. It was the human warmth that consciousness also develops. This too was part of forming the new man.

But... what was Che's personal life like? How was this human sensibility manifested, a sensibility that has so rarely been reached? Let us poke through the recollections of those who had the privilege of knowing him.

Stories of those who worked with Che
Arsacio Vanegas, the Mexican who trained the future guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra, relates the following:

"I opened the door that afternoon in Mexico City, as I was attending to my friend María Antonia González, who was then ill, and whose house served as general headquarters to the Cuban exiles.

"Before me appeared a young man, with uncombed hair, attractive in appearance, whose clothing indicated that his economic situation was not particularly flourishing.

"`I'm looking for Ñico López,' he said.

"`Who's looking for him?'

"`Doctor Guevara.'

"`I'm sorry, but he's not here.'

"The voice of María Antonia came from inside the apartment.

"`Who is it, Vanegas?'

"`A young doctor who's looking for Ñico.'

"`Well, stop fooling around, tell him to go to hell. This isn't the time for social visits.'

"`It's the owner of the house, María Antonia González, and she doesn't feel well.'" Vanegas said, trying to smooth things over.

"`Boy, does she have a temper,' said the young man. He left a message and rapidly left.

"The day Che and Fidel met they talked a long time. I waited outside and when they left the house where they were meeting, Fidel told me:

"`Vanegas, my friend, Doctor Guevara is now a member of the July 26 Movement. Make arrangements with him to begin his training.'

"I told Che to bring adequate clothing because we would be scaling some hills. We would meet near Guadalupe, at the Buenavista movie theater. Everybody was assembled there and we began to walk north. As we climbed the hill we practiced how to breathe, how to guide ourselves, learning which direction was north, where the sun rose, where it set. Days later we quickened the pace. It was very hard to climb the hill with its steep slopes. Che had gone separately, falling behind, and suddenly I heard a strange sound. I told the guys to keep walking, and I went back to where Che was.

"`What's the matter, doctor?' He didn't say anything to me. He made signs for me to wait, and I did so for a long time, until his attack of asthma passed.

"`I don't want you to tell anybody what happened, Vanegas, because this must not hinder me from going on the expedition.'

"I tried to limit Che in the exercises, because I was concerned with his asthma. Che eventually became very upset, and told me, `Don't prohibit me from doing exercises. They don't affect me, and if they do, it's my problem.'

"When the exercises began in the gym, I taught the people to defend themselves, how to grab other people's clothes, how to hit someone, what the vulnerable parts are, how to hurt them, even to the point of causing death, and so on. One day he called to me:

"`Hey, Vanegas, how long are we going to go through this routine. What is it we're learning? I'm not going to join the circus or be a gymnast.'

"I said something rude to him, and grabbed him by surprise and threw him on the canvas. `This is what I'm showing you, and if you don't know how to defend yourself, I'm going to break your arm.'

"He remained there thinking, and said to me with a humility that I found moving:

"`That's OK, Vanegas. You're right. Pardon me.'"

Enemies of Cuba falsify Che's image
Orlando Borrego, Che's first deputy minister of the Ministry of Industry, tells us:

"Today Che is a figure of world stature. Now that Che is an example and a banner of young people around the world, the enemies of the Cuban revolution are trying to give a false image of his personality. Today those of us who had the privilege of knowing him and living at his side during that fleeting but profound stay in our country, cannot fail to remember his affection and human warmth in his relations with his comrades during wartime, with the workers during peacetime, with his subordinates in the Ministry of Industry, with his family, with members of his escort, with his friends, and above all, with Fidel."

Aleida March, his companion in the mountains of the Escambray, in the battle of Santa Clara, and in life, recalls:

"Che spent very little time at home. Only Saturday night and some Sunday afternoons, after voluntary work. There was never a lot of time to talk. Che told me to study history, that someday we would sit down together in front of the fire to talk about this favorite topic of his, and that was what I studied when he went off to Bolivia.

"After the Africa campaign we were together in Tanzania for almost a month and we talked about many things we had not had time to speak about before. We read and Che wrote. In Prague, for the first time, we had a home life. I cooked, washed the clothes. We lived the life we had not been able to.

"At the beginning Che did not want to return. He thought this would implicate Cuba, but Fidel insisted he come and train.

"During the training in Cuba, I brought Celita and Ernestico, the youngest children, to see him. I didn't bring the older ones, so that they wouldn't recognize him. Che wanted to have children. The children were more attached to me, because they saw their father so little. He used to say: `Enjoy them now because when they're older they'll be mine. Before the birth of Aleidita, our first child, Che thought it would be a boy and wanted to name him Ernesto. I said no, that calling him Ernesto Guevara would be a large burden for him to carry. `We'll name him Camilo,'(2) Che compromised. `That way he'll be a combination of two guerrilla fighters.'

"I didn't think Che would one day leave Cuba, until he returned from Africa and told me that this time the departure for Bolivia would be definitive. Che did not think about death; he was always an optimist. He thought he would triumph and that we would be reunited later.

"Che liked poetry. He left behind letters to his children, his parents, and his closest comrades. He left me a tape recording of his voice, with the poems he loved most."

Revolution is more than social justice
Harry Villegas, "Pombo," who was with Che from age 16, tells us:

"With Che we learned what the revolution really was. The revolution was not only a question of social justice, but a moral question. For us it was a new outlook on life; simply put, it was to become a new man. The revolution wasn't a question of living one day at a time; Che set goals for us, objectives for which it was necessary to fight each day. That was what it meant to be a revolutionary.

"My relations with Che began as those between a commander and his subordinate. Che was always our commander, our guide, and as such we respected him. But gradually and in a very subtle way, these relations became transformed into more fraternal ties and sentiments, of comrades, of friends. We saw his concern for us, as if he were our father. He wanted to prepare us for when the revolution triumphed, so we could be useful in building the new society.

"On October 8, 1967, I was 100 meters from Che in the Yuro ravine, although I didn't know this at the time. The ravine was in front of us and further, behind the ravine, was the little schoolhouse at La Higuera. We saw the movement, we heard the soldiers speaking, all of which gives an idea of how close we were.

"The news reached us via the radio. They gave details of how Che was dressed, of his two watches, since he also carried the watch Tuma had left with him before dying, to give to his son. All that convinced us that Che had really been killed.

"For us this was a mortal blow. At first, we felt crestfallen. But we were children of Che. We were the clay he had molded, and we understood that one had to overcome that state of mind, and we were able to overcome it. We reached the conclusion that the war was not over, that Che continued to be present among us with his ideas and his example, that it was necessary to continue the struggle until the final victory, something that revolutionaries could achieve."

Reviewing everything said by Vanegas, Aleida, Borrego, Harry, and many comrades who knew Che, who lived side-by-side with him, who were influenced by his ideas and above all his example, confirms once again his exceptional qualities as a revolutionary, because a revolutionary is one who changes things. His thinking knew no boundaries, and neither did his confidence in man.

The idea that the development of social consciousness would give birth to the new man, where intelligence triumphs over natural forces and where both of these triumph over personal selfishness, is the central concept of his thought and the force that moves and will continue to move men of good will around the world.

All this intellectual and physical strength harbored a sensitive man, human, who loved, laughed, joked, composed and recited verses, and who at the same time would suffer the injustices of the world he wanted to change.

The example, the teachings of Che have not died with him, nor have the men who can carry them out. Because despite having been an exceptional individual, Che was not someone out of reach. As Fidel once said about Camilo, among the peoples of the world there are many Ches, and they will complete his work.

1. Granma was the name of the boat that carried 82 revolutionary combatants, including Che and Fidel Castro, from Mexico to Cuba in December 1956. The fighters formed the core of the Rebel Army that led the struggle to overturn the U.S.-back Batista dictatorship.

2. Camilo Cienfuegos was a Granma expeditionary who rose to commander in the Rebel Army in January 1959. He became Rebel Army chief of staff. His plane was lost at sea on October 28, 1959.  
 
 
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