To mark the anniversary of the death of Ernesto Che Guevara, a central leader of Cuba’s socialist revolution, in combat in Bolivia in 1967, we are featuring an excerpt from “Che’s ideas are absolutely relevant today” by Fidel Castro. Castro gave the speech on Oct. 8, 1987. He pointed to Che as an example for all revolutionary-minded youth to emulate. Reprinted by permission of Pathfinder Press.
[T]here can be no superior symbol, no better image, there cannot be a more fitting idea, when searching for the model revolutionary man, for the model communist. I say this with the deepest conviction — I always have had and I still have today, just the same or more so than when I spoke on that October 18 [10 days after Che was killed by CIA and Bolivian forces] and asked how we wanted our fighters, our revolutionaries, our party members, our children to be, and I said that we wanted them to be like Che.
Because Che is the personification, the image of that new man, the image of that human being if we want to talk about a communist society. [Applause] If our real objective is to build, not just socialism but the higher stages of socialism, if humanity is not going to renounce the lofty and extraordinary idea of living in a communist society one day.
If we need a paradigm, a model, an example to follow to attain these elevated ideas, then men like Che are essential. …
Che believed in man. And if we don’t believe in man, if we think that man is an incorrigible little animal, capable of advancing only if you feed him grass or tempt him with a carrot or whip him with a stick — anybody who believes this, anybody convinced of this will never be a revolutionary. Anybody who believes this, anybody convinced of this will never be a socialist. Anybody who believes this, anybody convinced of this will never be a communist. [Applause]
Our revolution is an example of what faith in man means because our revolution started from scratch, from nothing. We did not have a single weapon, we did not have a penny, even the men who started the struggle were unknown, and yet we confronted all that might, we confronted their hundreds of millions of pesos, we confronted the thousands of soldiers, and the revolution triumphed because we believed in man. Not only was victory made possible, but so was confronting the empire and getting this far, only a short way off from celebrating the twenty-ninth anniversary of the triumph of the revolution. How could we have done all this if we had not had faith in man?