BY HARRY VILLEGAS  
In his 1966 “Message to the Tricontinental,” Che made a thorough and deep-going analysis of this policy of imperialist domination. At the same time he expounded, in all their strategic and continental dimensions, his anti-imperialist ideas and course of action that by then were already being put into practice through his own personal example. In that message, Che proclaimed: “Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism and a call for the unity of the peoples against the great enemy of the human race: the United States of North America.”

This deep conviction of the Heroic Guerrilla concerning the role played by the United States was rooted in the innumerable acts of imperial aggression that make up the history of contemporary colonialism and neocolonialism in this hemisphere. To mention only a few examples of bloody interventions in our century, there are the cases of Mexico, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Haiti, and Cuba.

The continent as a whole has experienced the varied forms through which this imperialist policy has been systematically implemented. Neocolonialism has left its imprint of economic and political domination and deep social crisis, with its resulting hunger, poverty, unemployment, marginalization, and devastation. An entire region has been ravaged by foreign control over its natural resources and products, the exploitation of its workers, and the sharp impoverishment of its economies. Tribute is exacted in ways that violate the sovereignty of the nations of Latin America, pillage their material and spiritual patrimony, deepen their dependence and subjugation to imperialism, and close off possibilities of development and progress.

Together with a handful of heroic Bolivian, Peruvian, and Cuban combatants who accompanied him to Bolivia, Che fought to change this reality of the 1960s—a reality whose cruel mechanisms of plunder have since been deepened and refined. Che’s death resounds vividly in his stirring message to revolutionaries around the world:

“Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear, if another hand reaches out to take up our arms, and other men come forward to join in our funeral dirge with the rattling of machine guns and with new cries of battle and victory.”

With the new century virtually upon us, this image of Che remains present in the revolutionary dreams of Latin Americans. Among them are receptive ears.

The apostle of Cuba’s independence, José Martí, also conceived of a continent-wide anti-imperialist struggle. On the eve of his death in combat, in his last letter to a Mexican friend, Martí was unambiguous:

“I am in danger each day now of giving my life for my country and for my duty—because I understand that duty and am eager to carry it out—of preventing the United States, as Cuba obtains her independence, from extending its control over the Antilles and consequently falling with that much more force upon our countries of America. Whatever I have done till now, and whatever I shall do, has been with that aim.”

Simón Bolivar, Miranda, O’Higgins, San Martín, and other great figures of Latin America’s independence struggle also raised the ideal of a free and united Latin America.

Che’s dream was the dream of Martí and Bolivar. In elaborating his strategy, given the struggles already under way in different countries of the continent, Che envisioned the possibility of forming a guerrilla nucleus, a mother column that would pass through the necessary and difficult stage of survival and development. Later on it would give birth to new guerrilla columns extending outward toward the Southern Cone of Latin America, giving continuity to a battle that would become continent-wide in scope. He took into account the experience of the mother column in Cuba’s Sierra Maestra mountains, which gave rise to new guerrilla columns and fronts, culminating in the defeat of the Batista dictatorship and the victory of the Cuban revolution....

Never has such a small group of individuals undertaken an enterprise of such gigantic proportions. That small detachment of heroic combatants was Che’s “sling of David.” As our commander in chief pointed out, Che did not outlive his ideas, he enriched them with his blood.
 
 
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