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 interview below is with Arturo Guzmán, who is today an economic advisor to CUBALSE, a Cuban state import company. The interview was originally published in the Oct. 6, 1997, issue of Trabajadores, the weekly newspaper of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC), under the title "The work of a giant." Translation and footnotes are by the Militant.

Guzmán's time is just about freely convertible. His current job as financial adviser to CUBALSE is directly linked to the intense effort to obtain hard currency, and he puts all his long experience in economic management into this task. Additionally, he does not like to squander what for him is "something very intimate, cherished memories." He is referring to the early 1960s, when he held a whole range of management responsibilities in the Ministry of Industry, from factory administrator up to working closely with Che as first deputy minister.

Nevertheless, his kindness, in combination with the spirit of those days of remembrance, proved stronger. In the end, he made time to see us.

"I did not know Che. I had been involved in the clandestine struggle in Havana and was a professional accountant. In February 1960 I received a sheet of paper designating me as administrator of an `intervened' factory called Técnica Cubana, in Cárdenas. This was a plant producing paper from sugarcane bagasse.

"A short time after that, I saw Che for the first time. He came to visit the factory, and we showed him the installations and explained the production process. Afterward I asked if he wanted to see more. `Where are the warehouses?' he asked. We went there and he began to examine the packing slips, in order to verify that what each one said matched what was actually there. Aleida, his companion, helped him. She would read: `x amount of 15-watt light bulbs' and there had to be that number of bulbs. He was giving me a practical lesson that's lasted my entire life. `This is important,' he was telling me. `It is your responsibility. Nothing can be missing here.'

"I think that to be able to assess what this extraordinary man did at the National Bank, the Department of Industrialization of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, and the Ministry of Industry," Guzmán states, "one would have to recreate the whole atmosphere of those days, which you would find hard to understand if you didn't live through them.

"The conditions were exceptionally adverse. First of all there was the exodus of technicians. In Técnica Cubana, when I arrived, there were 18 engineers - Cuban, Canadian, and North American. In a short time, there were only two Cuban engineers left, plus one middle-level technician.

"There was no machine tool industry on a national level. The U.S. blockade of spare parts, raw materials, and goods of every type was getting under way, and there were no means to produce spare parts. We didn't even have the blueprints to make them. One must remember that 95 percent of the basic means of production that were nationalized came from the U.S. There was enormous dependency. That is the context in which Che accomplished the feat of avoiding a collapse of industry, maintaining production, organizing it, and even managing to make it grow steadily. Statistics of the time show that between 1960 and 1967 industry grew at an average annual rate of 4 percent.

"What's more, this was done over five years, and with scientific and technical personnel like ourselves, to boot. We were people with no training; combatants of different backgrounds, with no authority other than our political credibility.

"Just so you get an idea, on August 10, 1963, all the administrators of industry in the country took an exam, and it was determined that anyone lacking a sixth-grade education could not continue in administration. There were 132 comrades who had to either go back to school, or return to their original work places. Looking at it from today's standpoint, having a sixth-grade education is nothing great.

"At a meeting shortly after that, Che stated that his Directing Council - that is, all of us - were "makeshift luminaries." And he didn't stop there. He gave us a period of 10 years to obtain a university degree in the fields we were heading. Since I knew this wasn't a joke but was very serious, I went and enrolled in industrial engineering.

"Once he gave us a little book on linear equations. Then, every so often, he would ask me - and I imagine he did this with the others - whether I had read the book, whether I had studied it. Finally he realized that we were not making great use of the book, and he called us together one day at 7:00 in the morning, and began to give us classes."

His vision of the future
"One of the things that should be stressed is the all- embracing nature of the system Che created in the Ministry of Industry. There was a policy on cadre development, an economic policy, a policy on scientific development, there was a plan for future perspectives, we talked about making chemicals from sugarcane in the long term, of the production of nickel, steel, fertilizers._

"The basic feature of the cadre policy was promotion of scientific and technical personnel from the ranks, based on performance on the job. At a certain moment, with one or two exceptions, all of us on the Directing Council came from the ranks.

"In addition, the cadre policy was based on great rigor in selecting scientific and technical personnel, and a demanding attitude toward the fulfillment of tasks. In the ministry there was a system of councils, offices, and meetings. Agreed-to tasks were to be carried out to the letter. If an agreement could not be fulfilled, you were required to submit in writing, prior to the deadline, the reasons for it, and you had to receive written authorization for nonfulfillment of the agreement.

"Fifteen minutes after the time set for a meeting, no latecomers would be allowed in. Discipline was conscious, above all, but it was also obligatory. If you failed to meet an agreed-upon task, you weren't scolded, you were sanctioned. Every day that a statistical report was delayed was one day's less pay for the director responsible. Guanahacabibes was set up to deal with administrative problems of a more serious nature.1 In other words, `Praise the lord, but pass the ammunition.'

"Che's emphasis on reducing costs is completely valid today. He promoted the use of statistics and economic projections, economic analysis, mathematical techniques. At that time there was a large computer, an Elliot, which occupied the entire basement of the Ministry of Labor and was run from there. Who knows what Che would have achieved with today's computers?

"I was director of the heavy chemical branch of industry for a time, and discussions on the production plan were held on the sixth or eighth of every month. Those days and no others. Which means that you had to have your report ready. I had a Friden, a gigantic machine, and I was extremely happy that they gave it to me. Now, on the fifth of the month, the country's books were closed for record keeping. And it was record keeping that was 100 percent accurate, because if it wasn't accurate_ if you came to the Ministry of Industry with a report that had inaccurate figures - well, better you should dry up and disappear before entering. There was one type of record keeping - accurate - and that's that.

"Moreover, one must keep in mind that everything was within a single ministry. For example, when I was leading the heavy chemical branch, there were five enterprises in it, and one of them was the Consolidated Sugar Enterprise headed by Alfredo Menéndez and Esteban Breto, with a team of technical personnel, and it produced six million tons of sugar a year.

"We had a really powerful apparatus of supervision: it eventually had some 400 members, between accountants and inspectors, to review performance of that entire industrial universe.

"It was a systematic, rigorous job that compelled you to respond at every moment and to each and every problem.

He did not impose his views
"As is well known, Che's economic policies were carried out in the framework of the budgetary finance system. And there's one thing that says a lot about his personal qualities, which is that he didn't impose his views but submitted them for discussion. In the magazine Nuestra Industria Económica, which at that time was one of the three publications we had in the Ministry of Industry, there were articles on the economic accounting and the budgetary finance systems, both from defenders and opponents.

"He also created a policy on scientific development and established institutes such as ICIDCA, compelling us to come up with the personnel and resources required from what little we had.

"Che founded a Vice Ministry of Technological Development, which aimed to promote science and technology, as well as a Vice Ministry of Industrial Construction. There was a lack of experience in the country. Nevertheless, factories were built such as the domestic utensils plant in Santa Clara, which was up and running in two years, and the textile mills of Gibara and Alquízar.

"Only a genius could oversee all that, in the midst of the blockade, of sabotage, of counterrevolution, of the lack of trained personnel in everything.

"Che had no special background for this task. He was a doctor, a guerrilla fighter, and everything he did began when he was assigned there. In addition, he had political, military, and international responsibilities, a host of things. But one of his hours at the ministry was the equivalent of months of work.

"When you look back at that time, and see this as whole, you say: `This was the work of a giant.'"

1 Guanahacabibes was a work camp for administrators in the Ministry of Industry who committed serious infractions. Going there for a period of time was voluntary political punishment. If an administrator refused to go, he would be removed from his position. After completing a period of time there, persons were reinstated in their old post.  
 
 
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