The congress had been formally inaugurated in the Sierra Maestra mountains July 26, in conjunction with the main rally celebrating the seventh anniversary of the attack led by Fidel Castro on the Moncada garrison, in eastern Cuba. That action had launched the armed struggle against the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
After the Sierra Maestra ceremony the congress then moved to Havana. Delegates worked in three separate commissions and debated the political, social, and economic problems facing Latin American youth, and presented a number of resolutions that were adopted by the congress. Among the basic positions of the congress, the delegates endorsed the revolutionary government of Cuba, called for international solidarity against U.S. imperialism, an end to racial and religious discrimination, the provision of economic opportunities for youth, industrialization of the backward countries, an end to the Cold War, and the recognition of China by the United Nations. On August 7, in a speech to a mass rally at the congress, Castro read the revolutionary government's decree nationalizing the holdings of U.S.-owned corporations in Cuba. The congress closed August 8.
Guevara's speech will appear in Che Guevara Talks to Young People, to be published later this year by Pathfinder. The translation is copyright (c) 1999 Pathfinder Press, and is reproduced by permission. The subtitles are by the Militant.
It would take a long time to extend individual greetings, on behalf of our country, to each of you, and to each of the countries represented. We nevertheless want to draw attention to some of those here who are representing countries victimized by natural catastrophes or catastrophes caused by imperialism.
We would like to extend special greetings tonight to the representative of the people of Chile, Clotario Blest, [Applause] whose youthful voice you heard a moment ago. Nevertheless, his maturity can serve as an example and a guide to our fellow working people from that unfortunate land, which has been victimized by one of the most terrible earthquakes in history.(1)
We would also like to extend special greetings to Jacobo Arbenz, [Applause] president of the first Latin American nation [Guatemala] to fearlessly raise its voice against colonialism, and to express the cherished desires of its peasant masses through a deep-going and courageous agrarian reform. And we would also like to express our gratitude to him and to the democracy that fell in that country for the example it gave us, and for enabling us to make a correct appreciation of all the weaknesses that government was unable to overcome.(2) Doing so has enabled us to get to the root of the question, and to decapitate in one blow those who held power, and the henchmen serving them.
We would also like to greet two of the delegations representing the countries that have perhaps suffered the most in the Americas. First of all, Puerto Rico, [Applause] which even today, 150 years after declaring its freedom for the first time in the Americas, continues fighting to take the first step, perhaps the most difficult one, that of achieving, at least formally, a free government. And I would like the delegates of Puerto Rico to convey my greetings, and those of all Cuba, to Pedro Albizu Campos. [Applause] We would like you to convey to Pedro Albizu Campos our deep-felt respect, our recognition of the example he has shown with his valor, and our fraternal feelings as free men toward a man who is free, despite being in the dungeons of the so-called U.S. democracy.(3) [Shouts of "Down with it!"]
Although it may seem paradoxical, I would also like to greet today the delegation representing the purest of the North American people. [Ovation] I would like to salute them not only because the North American people are not to blame for the barbarity and injustice of their rulers, but also because they are innocent victims of the rage of all the peoples of the world, who sometimes confuse a social system with a people.
I therefore extend my personal greetings to the distinguished individuals I've named, and to the delegations of the fraternal peoples I've named. All of Cuba, myself included, open our arms to receive you and to show you what is good here and what is bad, what has been achieved and what has yet to be achieved, the road traveled and the road ahead. Because even when all of you come to deliberate at this Latin American Youth Congress on behalf of your respective countries, I'm sure that each one of you came here full of curiosity to find out exactly what type of phenomenon known as the Cuban revolution has been born on a Caribbean island .
Many of you, from diverse political tendencies, will ask yourselves, as you did yesterday and as perhaps you will also do tomorrow: What is the Cuban revolution? What is its ideology? And immediately a question will arise, as it always does in these cases, both by adherents and adversaries: Is the Cuban revolution communist? Some say yes, hoping the answer is yes, or that it is heading in that direction. Others, disappointed perhaps, will also think the answer is yes. There will be some disappointed people who think the answer is no, as well as those who hope the answer is no.
After going through the time-worn explanations to determine what communism is, I might be asked whether this revolution before your eyes is a communist revolution. (I leave aside the hackneyed accusations of imperialism and the colonial powers, who confuse everything.) I would answer that if this revolution is Marxist - and listen well that I say "Marxist" - then it would be because it discovered, by its own methods, the road pointed out by Marx. [Applause]
Recently one of the leading figures of the Soviet Union, vice premier Mikoyan, [Applause] a lifelong Marxist, said, toasting the success of the Cuban revolution, that it was a phenomenon Marx had not foreseen. [Applause] He then noted that life teaches more than the wisest books and the most profound thinkers. [Applause]
The Cuban revolution was moving forward, not worrying about labels, not checking what was said about it, but constantly scrutinizing what the Cuban people wanted of it. And it quickly found that not only had it achieved, or was on the way to achieving, the happiness of its people; it had also become the object of curious glances by friend and foe alike - the hopeful glances of an entire continent, and the furious glances of the king of monopolies.
But all this did not come about overnight. Permit me to relate some of my own experience, an experience that can serve many peoples that are in similar circumstances, so that they get a living idea of how our revolutionary thinking of today arose. Because the Cuban revolution you see today is not the Cuban revolution of yesterday, even after the victory, certainly a line of continuity exists. And much less is it the Cuban insurrection prior to the victory, at the time when those eighty-two youths made the difficult crossing of the Gulf of Mexico in a boat that took in water, to reach the shores of the Sierra Maestra.(4) Between those youths and the representatives of Cuba today there is a distance that cannot be measured in years - or at least not measured correctly in years, with twenty-four-hour days and sixty-minute hours.
All the members of the Cuban government, young in age, with a youthful character and youthful illusions, have nevertheless matured in the extraordinary world of experience; in living contact with the people, with their needs and aspirations.
The hope we all had was to arrive one day somewhere in Cuba, and after a few shouts, a few heroic actions, a few deaths, and a few radio programs, to take power and drive out the dictator Batista. History showed us that it was much more difficult to overthrow a whole government backed by an army of murderers; these murderers were also partners of that government and were backed by the greatest colonial power on earth.
That was how little by little all our ideas changed. We, the children of the cities, learned to respect the peasant. We learned to respect his sense of independence, his loyalty; to recognize his age-old yearning for the land that had been snatched from him; and to recognize his experience in the thousand paths of the forest. And the peasants learned from us the value of a man when he has a rifle in his hand, and when that rifle is ready to be fired at another man, regardless of how many rifles the other man has. The peasants taught us their know-how and we taught the peasants our sense of rebellion. And from that moment until today, and forever, the peasants of Cuba and the rebel forces of Cuba - today the Cuban revolutionary government - have marched united as one.
The revolution continued progressing and we drove the troops of the dictatorship from the steep hillsides of the Sierra Maestra. We then came face to face with another reality of Cuba: the worker - whether an agricultural worker or a worker in the industrial centers. We learned from him too, while we taught him that at a certain moment, there is something much more powerful and effective than a peaceful demonstration: a well-aimed shot fired at the right person. [Applause] We learned the value of organization, while again we taught the value of rebellion. And out of this, organized rebellion arose throughout the entire territory of Cuba.
By then much time had passed. Many deaths marked the road of our victory, many of them in combat while others were innocent victims. The imperialist forces began to see that in the heights of the Sierra Maestra was something more than a group of bandits, more than a group of ambitious assailants against the ruling power. Their bombs, their bullets, their planes, and their banks were generously offered to the dictatorship. And with these resources in front, they again attempted, for the last time, to ascend the Sierra Maestra.
Much time had already gone by. By then columns of our forces had already left to invade other regions of Cuba and had formed the "Frank País" Second Eastern Front under the orders of Commander Raúl Castro.(5) [Applause] Our strength was growing within public opinion, and we were now headline material in the international sections of newspapers in every corner of the world. Despite all this, the Cuban revolution at that time possessed 200 rifles -not 200 men, but 200 rifles - to stop the regime's last offensive, in which they amassed 10,000 soldiers and every type of instrument of death.(6) And the history of each one of those 200 rifles is a history of sacrifice and blood, because they were rifles of imperialism that the blood and determination of our martyrs had dignified and transformed into rifles of the people. This was how the last stage of the army's great offensive unfolded, under the name of "encirclement and annihilation."
What I am saying to you, studious young people from throughout the Americas, is that if today we are putting into practice what is called Marxism, it is because we discovered it here. In those days, after defeating the dictatorship's troops and inflicting 1,000 casualties on their ranks - that is, five times as many casualties as the sum total of our combat forces - and after seizing more than 600 weapons, a small pamphlet written by Mao Zedong fell into our hands. [Applause] And that pamphlet, which dealt with the strategic problems of the revolutionary war in China, described the campaigns that Chiang Kai-shek carried out against the popular forces, which the dictator called, just like here, "campaigns of encirclement and annihilation."
Not only had the same words been used on opposite sides of the globe to designate their campaigns, but both dictators used the same type of campaign to try to destroy the popular forces. And the popular forces on both sides of the world used the same methods to combat the dictatorship's forces, without knowing the manuals that had already been written about the strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare. Because naturally, whenever somebody passes through an experience, it can be utilized by somebody else. But it is also possible to pass through the same experience without knowing of the earlier one.
We were unaware of the experience of the Chinese troops over twenty years of struggle in their territory. But here we knew our own territory, we knew our enemy, and we used something that every man has on his shoulders - and if he knows how to use it, it's worth a lot - we used our heads to fight the enemy. As a result, we defeated it.
Later there followed the westward invasions, the breaking of communication lines, and the crushing fall of the dictatorship when no one expected it. Then came January 1, and the revolution again, without thinking about what it had read but hearing what it needed to from the lips of the people, decided first and foremost to punish the guilty ones, and it did so.(7)
The colonial powers immediately splashed the story all over the front pages, calling this murder, and they immediately tried to do something the imperialists always try to do: sow division. "Communist murderers are killing people," they said, "but there is a naive patriot named Fidel Castro, who had nothing to do with it and can be saved." [Applause] They tried to sow divisions among men who had fought for the same cause, with pretexts and trivial arguments. They maintained this hope for a certain time.
But one day they came upon the fact that the Agrarian Reform Law approved here was much more violent and deep-going than the one their very wise, self-appointed advisers had counseled. All of them, by the way, are today in Miami or some other city of the United States. Pepín Rivero of Diario de la Marina, or [Humberto] Medrano of Prensa Libre.(8) [Shouts and hisses] And there were others, including a prime minister in our government, who counseled great moderation, because "one must handle such things with moderation."
"Moderation" is another one of the words colonial agents like to use. All those who are afraid or who think of betraying in one form or another are "moderates." [Applause] As for the people, in no way are they moderates.
The advice given was to divide up marabú land - marabú is a shrub that grows in our fields - and to have the peasants cut marabú with machetes, or to settle in some swamp, or to have them grab a piece of public land that somehow might have escaped the voracity of the large landowners. But to touch the holdings of the large landowners was a sin greater than anything they imagined was possible. But it was possible.
I recall in those days a conversation I had with a gentleman who told me that he had no problems at all with the revolutionary government, because he owned no more than nine hundred caballerías. Nine hundred caballerías comes to more than ten thousand hectares.(9)
Of course, this gentleman did have problems with the revolutionary government, and his lands were seized and divided up, and turned over to individual peasants. In addition, cooperatives were created, on lands that agricultural laborers were accustomed to working, doing so in common for a wage.(10)
Here lies one of the peculiar features of the Cuban revolution that must be studied. For the first time in Latin America, this revolution made an agrarian reform that attacked property relations that were not feudal. There were feudal remnants in tobacco and coffee, and in these areas the land was given to individuals who had been working small plots of land and wanted their land. But with sugarcane, rice, and cattle, given the manner in which these were worked in Cuba, the land was seized as a unit and worked as a unit by workers who were given joint ownership over all these lands. They are not owners of a parcel of land, but of the whole great joint enterprise called a cooperative. And this has enabled our deep- going agrarian reform to move rapidly. Each one of you should let it sink in, as a truth that cannot be challenged in any way, that here in Latin America no government can call itself revolutionary unless its first measure is an agrarian reform. [Applause]
Furthermore, a government that says it's going to carry out a timid agrarian reform cannot call itself revolutionary. A revolutionary government is one that makes an agrarian reform that transforms the system of property relations on the land, not just giving the peasants land that was not in use, but fundamentally giving the peasants land that was in use, land that belonged to the large landowners, the best land, with the greatest yield, land that moreover had been stolen from the peasants in past epochs. [Applause]
That is agrarian reform, and that is how all revolutionary governments must begin. On the basis of an agrarian reform the great battle for the industrialization of a country can be waged, a battle that is not as simple, which is very complicated, and where one must fight against very big things. We could very easily fail, as in the past, if it weren't for the existence today of very great forces in the world that are friends of small nations like ours. [Applause]
One must note here for the benefit of everyone - both those who like it and those who hate it - that at the present time countries like Cuba, revolutionary countries, non-moderate countries, cannot respond half-heartedly to the question of whether the Soviet Union or People's China is our friend. They must respond with all their might that the Soviet Union, China, and all the socialist countries, and many colonial or semicolonial countries that have freed themselves, are our friends. [Applause]
And this friendship, the friendship with these governments throughout the world, is what makes it possible to carry out a revolution in Latin America. Because when they carried out aggression against us with sugar and petroleum, the Soviet Union was there to give us petroleum and buy sugar from us. Had it not been for that, then we would have needed all our strength, all our faith, and all the devotion of this people - which is enormous - to withstand the blow this would have signified.(11) And the forces of disunity would then have done their work, basing themselves on the effect that the measures of the "U.S. democracy" against this "threat to the free world" [Applause] would have on the standard of living of the entire Cuban people. They attacked us openly.
There are government leaders here in Latin America who still advise us to lick the hand that wants to hit us, and spit on the one who wants to help us. [Applause] And we answer the government leaders of these countries who, in the middle of the twentieth century, recommend bowing down. We say, first of all, that Cuba does not bow down before anyone. And secondly, that Cuba knows the weaknesses and defects of the governments that advise this approach; it knows this through its own experience, and the rulers of these countries know it too, they know it very well. Nevertheless, Cuba has not deigned or permitted itself, and has not thought it permissible up to the present time, to advise the rulers of these countries to shoot every traitorous official, and to nationalize all the monopoly holdings in their country. [Applause]
The people of Cuba shot their murderers and dissolved the army of the dictatorship. Yet it has not been telling any government of Latin America that they should use the firing squad on the murderers of the people or put an end to the forces propping up the dictatorships. But Cuba knows well that there are murderers inside each one of the nations. The Cubans who belong to our own Movement can attest to that fact; they were killed in a friendly country by henchmen remaining from the previous dictatorship.(12) [Applause and shouts of "Put them up against the wall!"]
We do not ask that they apply the firing squad for the murder of our militants, although we would have done so in this country. [Applause] What we ask, simply, is that if it is not possible to act with solidarity in the Americas, one should at least not be a traitor to the Americas. Let no one in the Americas parrot the idea that we are bound to a continental alliance that includes our great enslaver, because that is the most cowardly and most denigrating lie a ruler in Latin America can utter. [Applause and shouts of: "Cuba sí, Yankees no."]
We, the members of the Cuban revolution - who are the entire people of Cuba -call our friends friends, and our enemies enemies, and we don't allow halfway terms: someone's either a friend or an enemy. [Applause] We, the people of Cuba, don't tell any nation on earth what they should do with the International Monetary Fund, for example. But we will not tolerate them coming to tell us what to do. We know what has to be done. If they want to do it, good; if they don't want to do it, that's up to them. But we will not tolerate anyone telling us what to do, because we were here on our own up to the last moment, awaiting the direct aggression of the mightiest power that exists in the capitalist world, and we did not ask help from anyone. We were prepared here, together with our people, to resist up to the final consequences of our rebel spirit.
That is why we can speak with our head held high, and with a very clear voice in all the congresses and council meetings where our brothers of the world meet. When the Cuban revolution speaks, it may make a mistake, but it will never tell a lie. From every tribune in which it speaks, the Cuban revolution expresses the truth that its sons and daughters have learned, and it always says this openly to its friends and to its enemies. It never throws stones from behind a corner, nor does it give advice that contains a dagger hidden within it, covered in velvet.
We are subject to attack. We are attacked a great deal because of what we are. But we are attacked much, much more because we demonstrate to each nation of the Americas what it's possible to be. For imperialism there's something much more important than Cuba's nickel mines or sugar mills, or Venezuela's oil, or Mexico's cotton, or Chile's copper, or Argentina's cattle, or Paraguay's grasslands, or Brazil's coffee. What is important to them is the totality of these raw materials that the monopolies feed upon.
That is why every time they can, they put an obstacle in our path. And when they themselves are not able to put the obstacles there, unfortunately in Latin America others are willing to put them there. [Shouts] Names are not important, because no one individual is to blame. We cannot say here that [Venezuelan] President Betancourt is to blame for the death of our compatriot and co-thinker. President Betancourt is not to blame; President Betancourt is simply a prisoner of a regime that calls itself democratic. [Shouts and applause] That democratic regime, a regime that could have been another example in Latin America, nevertheless committed the great blunder of not using the firing squad in a timely way. And today the democratic government of Venezuela is a prisoner of the henchmen with whom Venezuela was familiar up until a little while ago, with whom Cuba was familiar, and with whom the majority of Latin America is familiar.
We cannot blame President Betancourt for this death. We can only say here, backed by our record as revolutionaries and our conviction as revolutionaries: the day President Betancourt, elected by his people, feels himself such a prisoner that he cannot continue forward and decides to ask for the help of a fraternal people, Cuba is here, to show Venezuela some of its experiences in the revolutionary field. [Applause]
President Betancourt should know that it was not, and could not be, our diplomatic representative who started this whole conflict that led to a death. It was they; at the far end it was the North Americans or the North American government; a little bit closer, Batista's men. A little bit closer still, all those who were the reserve force of the U.S. government in this country in anti-Batista clothing - those people wanted to defeat Batista and maintain the system: people like Miró Cardona, Quevedo, Díaz Lanz, and Hubert Matos.(13) [Shouts] And in our direct sight, the forces of reaction that operate in Venezuela. Because it is very sad to say this, but the leader of Venezuela is at the mercy of his own troops who might assassinate him, as happened a little while ago with a car loaded with dynamite.(14) The Venezuelan president, at this moment, is prisoner of his repressive forces.
And this hurts. It hurts because the Cuban people received from Venezuela the greatest amount of solidarity and support when we were in the Sierra Maestra. It hurts, because much earlier than we did, Venezuela was at least able to get rid of the most hateful system of oppression represented by Pérez Jiménez.(15)
And it hurts because when our delegation was in Venezuela - first of all Fidel Castro, and later our president Dortico's [Applause] -they received the greatest demonstrations of support and affection.
A people that has achieved the high degree of political consciousness and the high combative faith of the Venezuelan people will not for very long be prisoners of a few bayonets or a few bullets. Because bullets and bayonets can change hands, and the murderers themselves can wind up dead.
But it is not my mission here to itemize the stabs in the back that the governments of Latin America have given us in recent days and to add fuel to the fire of rebellion. That is not my task because in the first place, Cuba is still not free of danger, and today it is still the focus of the imperialists' attention in this part of the world. Cuba needs the solidarity of all of you, the solidarity of those from the Democratic Action party in Venezuela, from those of the URD [Democratic Republican Union], or of the Communists, of COPEI [Independent Popular Electoral Committee], or any other party. It needs the solidarity of all the people of Mexico, of all the people of Colombia, of Brazil, and of each one of the nations of Latin America.
It's true that the colonialists are scared. They too are afraid of missiles, and they too are afraid of bombs, like everyone else. [Applause] And today they see, for the first time in their history, that these bombs of destruction can fall on their wives and children, on everything they had built with so much love - anyone can love their wealth and riches. They began to make estimates; they put their electronic calculating machines to work, and they saw that this arrangement was no good.
But this does not mean in any way that they have renounced the suppression of Cuban democracy. They are again making laborious estimates on their multiplying machines, to find out which of the alternative methods is best for attacking the Cuban revolution. They have the Ydígoras method, the Nicaraguan method, the Haitian method - they no longer have the Dominican method, for the moment.(16) They also have the method of the mercenaries in Florida, the method of the OAS [Organization of American States]; they have many methods. And they have power; they have power to continue improving these methods.
President Arbenz and his people know that they have many methods and a great deal of might. Unfortunately for Guatemala, President Arbenz had an army of the old style, and was not fully aware of the solidarity of the peoples and of their capacity to push back aggression of any type.
That is one of our greatest strengths: the strength that is being exerted throughout the world - regardless of the specific political faction within each country - to defend the Cuban revolution at a particular moment. And permit me to say that this is a duty of the youth of Latin America, because what we have here is something new, and it's something worth studying. I do not want to tell you what is good here; you yourselves will have to assess what is good.
There are many bad things, I know that. There is much disorganization here, I know that. All of you will already know this, perhaps, if you have been to the Sierra Maestra mountains. Guerrilla methods are still used, I know that. We lack technicians in fabulous quantities in accordance with our aspirations, I know that. Our army has still not reached the degree of maturity necessary, nor have the militia members achieved sufficient coordination to constitute themselves as an army, I know that.
But what I also know - and I would like all of you to know it - is that this revolution has always acted with the will of the entire people of Cuba. Every peasant and every worker, if they handle a rifle poorly, are working every day to handle it better, to defend their revolution. And if at this moment they cannot understand the complicated mechanism of a machine whose technician fled to the United States, then they are studying every day to learn it, so that their factory runs better. And the peasants will study their tractor, to resolve the mechanical problems it has, so that the fields of their cooperative yield more.
All Cubans, from the cities and the countryside, sharing a single feeling, are marching toward the future, thinking with absolute unity, led by a leader they have absolute confidence in, because he has shown in a thousand battles [Applause] and on a thousand different occasions his capacity for sacrifice, and the power and foresight of his thinking.
The nation before you today might disappear from the face of the earth because an atomic conflict may be unleashed on its account, and it might be its first target. Even if this entire island were to disappear along with its inhabitants, its people would consider themselves completely satisfied and fulfilled if each one of you, upon arriving in your countries, would say:
"Here we are. Our words come from the humid air of the Cuban forests. We have climbed the Sierra Maestra and seen the dawn, and our minds and our hands are full of the seed of that dawn. We are prepared to plant it in this land, and defend it so it can grow."
And from all the other brother countries of the Americas, and from our land - if it still remains as an example - from that moment on and forever, the voice of the peoples will answer: "Let it be so: Let freedom triumph in every corner of the Americas!" [Ovation]
NOTES:
1. Clotario Blest was a longtime leader of the Chilean labor
movement, and vigorous supporter of Cuban revolution. One of
the founders of the United Federation of Workers of Chile
(CUT).
A series of earthquakes and tidal waves hit southern Chile May 21-29, killing an estimated 5,700 people.
2. Seeking to crush political and social struggles in Guatemala accompanying a limited land reform initiated by the regime of Jacobo Arbenz, mercenary forces backed by the CIA invaded the country in 1954. Arbenz refused to arm the people and resigned, and a right-wing dictatorship took over. Among those volunteering to fight the imperialist-organized attack was Ernesto Guevara, who had been drawn to Guatemala by the upsurge in struggle there.
3. Pedro Albizu Campos, leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, was imprisoned by the U.S. government for proindependence activities in 1937-43, 1950-53, and 1954-64. He was released shortly before his death in 1965.
4. Fidel Castro and eighty-two other members of the July 26 Movement, including Guevara, left the Mexican port of Tuxpan November 25, 1956, aboard the yacht Granma. They reached Cuba's southeastern coast December 2, initiating the revolutionary war against the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Over the next two years, the Rebel Army conducted an ever-widening struggle that won increasing popular support in the countryside and cities, culminating in the revolution's victory on January 1, 1959. See Guevara, Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58 (New York: Pathfinder, 1996).
5. Formed in March 1958, the Rebel Army's Second Eastern Front was named after Frank País, a central leader of the July 26 Movement in Santiago de Cuba. In the early months of the revolutionary war he played a key role in sending supplies and reinforcements to the Rebel Army. País was murdered by Batista's police on July 30, 1957. Some sixty thousand Santiago residents attended País's funeral, and a week-long general strike shook Oriente province and much of the island.
6. Between May and July 1958, the Batista regime launched an offensive to "encircle and annihilate" the Rebel Army in the Sierra Maestra. Despite the massive disparity of troops and equipment, the Batista army was defeated in numerous skirmishes and after the decisive battle of El Jigue withdrew, enabling the Rebels to assume the offensive throughout the island. See Ernesto Che Guevara, Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58, pp. 323-40.
7. In the first weeks after the victory of the revolution, several hundred of the most notorious murderers and torturers of the Batista regime were tried by popular tribunals and executed. This measure had the overwhelming support of the Cuban people.
8. José Ignacio "Pepín" Rivero was the editor of the right- wing daily Diario de la Marina (1947-60), which had close ties to the Catholic church hierarchy. An opponent of the Cuban revolution, Rivero took asylum in Vatican offices in Cuba May 10, 1960. Humberto Medrano was managing editor of Prensa Libre in Havana (1949-60). He opposed revolutionary measures and left Cuba via the Panamanian embassy in May 1960.
9. One hectare equals 2.47 acres; in Cuba, one caballería equals 33 acres.
10. The Agrarian Reform Law of May 17, 1959, set a limit of 30 caballerías (approximately 1,000 acres) on individual landholdings. Implementation of the law resulted in confiscation of the vast estates in Cuba - many of them owned by U.S. companies. These lands passed into the hands of the new government. The law also granted sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and squatters a deed to the land they tilled. Another provision of the law established the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA). See Fidel Castro's June 1959 speech on the implementation of the law, published in the May 31, 1999, issue of the Militant.
11. In June 1960 three major imperialist-owned oil refineries in Cuba announced their refusal to refine oil that Cuba purchased from the Soviet Union. On June 29, the revolutionary government responded by taking control of the Texaco, Standard Oil, and Shell refineries. U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower then ordered the reduction by 700,000 tons of sugar that the United States had agreed to purchase from Cuba. The Soviet Union then announced that it would purchase all Cuban sugar the United States refused to buy. Responding to Washington's economic aggression, the revolutionary government decreed the nationalization of major U.S. companies in Cuba on August 6.
12. Andrés Coba, coordinator of the July 26 Movement in Venezuela - which organized solidarity with the Cuban revolution - was gunned down July 27, 1960, in Caracas. The assailants were agents of Venezuela's political police. Coba died the morning of Guevara's speech.
13. José Miró Cardona, a leader of bourgeois opposition to Batista; prime minister of Cuba, January-February 1959; went to the United States in 1960; served as president of counterrevolutionary Revolutionary Democratic Front, and later Cuban Revolutionary Council in exile; later moved to Puerto Rico. Miguel Angel Quevedo editor of Bohemia until defection to the United States July 18, 1960.
José Luis Díaz Lanz, head of Cuban Air Force January-June 1959; defected to the United States June 29, 1959; conducted air raid on Havana October 21, 1959. Hubert Matos, small landowner; joined Rebel Army in March 1958; commander of Column 9 of Third Front led by Juan Almeida; as military head of Camaguey province in October 1959 he was arrested for attempted counterrevolutionary mutiny; imprisoned until 1979; currently head of right-wing Cuba Independent and Democratic in United States.
14. On June 24, 1960, an attempt was made on the life of Venezuelan president Rómulo Betancourt when a car loaded with dynamite was detonated alongside his passing vehicle. Betancourt was unhurt.
15. In January 1958, after ten years in power, Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez was overthrown by a popular uprising.
16. Gen. Miguel Ydígoras was military strongman in Guatemala from 1958 until 1963. The Somoza family dictatorship in Nicaragua lasted from 1933 to 1979. Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier ruled Haiti from 1957 to 1971; he was succeeded by his son Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier, who ruled until being overthrown in 1986. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo became dictator of the Dominican Republic in 1930. At the time Guevara gave this speech, Trujillo had lost Washington's favor; he was assassinated in 1961.