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Cuba: Exceptional Case or Vanguard in the Struggle against
Colonialism?
The following selection is from Guevara's article "Cuba:
Exceptional Case or Vanguard in the Struggle Against Colonialism?
" in the April 9, 1961, issue of Verde Olivo,
the magazine of Cuba's armed forces.
. . . Some sectors, in good faith or with axes to grind, claim
to see in the Cuban Revolution a series of exceptional origins
and features whose importance for this great historical event
they even inflate to that of the decisive factor . They speak
of the exceptionalism of the Cuban Revolution as compared with
the course of other progressive parties in America and conclude
therefrom that the form and road of the Cuban Revolution are
unique and that in the other countries of America the historic
transition of the peoples will be different.
 We
accept that there are exceptions which give the Cuban Revolution
its peculiar characteristics. It is a clearly established fact
that every revolution has this type of specific factor, but
it is no less an established fact that all of them follow laws
which society cannot violate. Let us analyze, then, the factors
of this purported exceptionalism.
The first, perhaps the most important, the most original, is
that cosmic force called Fidel Castro Ruz, a name that in a
few years has attained historic proportions. The future will
accord our Prime Minister's merits their exact place, but to
us they appear comparable to those of the greatest historic
figures of all Latin America. And what are the exceptional circumstances
about the personality of Fidel Castro? There are various features
of his life and character which make him stand out far above
all his compañeros and followers. Fidel is a man of such
tremendous personality that he would gain the leadership in
whatever movement he participated in; and so it has been throughout
his career from his student days to the premiership of our country
and of the oppressed peoples of America. He has the qualities
of a great leader, and added to these are his personal gifts
of audacity, strength, courage, an extraordinary eagerness always
to discern the will of the people; and these have brought him
to the position of honor and sacrifice that he occupies today.
But he has other important qualities, such as his ability to
assimilate knowledge and experience in order to understand a
situation as a whole without losing sight of the details, his
immense faith in the future, and the breadth of his vision to
foresee events and anticipate them in action, always seeing
farther and better than his compañeros. With these great
cardinal qualities, with his capacity to bring people together
and unite them, opposing the division which weakens; with his
ability to lead the whole people in action; with his infinite
love for the people; with his faith in the future and his capacity
to foresee it, Fidel Castro did more than anyone else in Cuba
to construct from nothing the present formidable apparatus of
the Cuban Revolution.
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However, no one could assert that there were political and social
conditions in Cuba totally different from those in the other
countries of America, and that precisely because of that difference
the revolution took place. Nor could anyone assert, on the other
hand, that Fidel Castro made the revolution despite that difference.
Fidel, a great and able leader, led the revolution in Cuba,
at the time and in the way he did, by interpreting the profound
political disturbances that were preparing the people for the
great leap onto the revolutionary road. Also certain conditions
existed which were not confined to Cuba, but which it will be
hard for other peoples to take advantage of again because imperialism,
in contrast to some progressive groups, does learn from its
errors.
The condition that we would describe as exceptional was that
North American imperialism was disoriented and was never able
to measure accurately the true scope of the Cuban Revolution.
Here is something that explains many of the apparent contradictions
in North American policy. The monopolies, as is habitual in
such cases, began to think about a successor for Batista precisely
because they knew that the people were not compliant and were
also looking for a successor to Batista, but along revolutionary
paths. What more intelligent and expert stroke then than to
get rid of the now unserviceable little dictator and to replace
him with the new "boys" who could in their turn serve
the interests of imperialism very well? The empire gambled on
this card from its continental deck for a while, and lost miserably.
Prior to our military victory they were suspicious, but not
afraid of us; rather, with all their experience at this game,
which they were accustomed to winning, they played with two
decks. On various occasions, emissaries of the State Department,
disguised as newspapermen, came to investigate our rustic revolution,
but they never found any trace of imminent danger in it. When
imperialism wanted to react, when the imperialists discovered
that the group of inexperienced young men, who were marching
in triumph through the streets of Havana, had a clear awareness
of their political duty and an iron determination to carry out
that duty, it was already too late. And thus in January, 1959,
dawned the first social revolution of the Caribbean zone and
the most profound of the revolutions in America.
 We
don't believe that it could be considered exceptional that the
bourgeoisie, or at least a good part of it, showed itself favorable
to the revolutionary war against the tyranny at the same time
that it was supporting and promoting movements seeking for negotiated
solutions which would permit them to substitute for the Batista
regime elements disposed to curb the revolution. Considering
the conditions in which the revolutionary war took place and
the complexity of the political tendencies which opposed the
tyranny, it was not at all exceptional that some latifundist
elements adopted a neutral, or at least non-belligerent, attitude
toward the insurrectionary forces. It is understandable that
the national bourgeoisie, struck down by imperialism and the
tyranny, whose troops sacked small properties and made extortion
a daily way of life, felt a certain sympathy when they saw those
young rebels from the mountains punish the military arm of imperialism,
which is what the mercenary army was.
So non-revolutionary forces indeed helped smooth the road for
the advent of revolutionary power . Going further, we can add
as a new factor of exceptionalism the fact that in most places
in Cuba the peasants had been proletarianized by the needs of
big semimechanized capitalist agriculture, and had reached a
stage of organization which gave them greater class-consciousness.
We can admit this. But we should point out, in the interest
of truth, that the first area where the Rebel Army, made up
of the survivors of the defeated band that had made the voyage
on the Granma, operated, was an area inhabited by peasants whose
social and cultural roots were different from those of the peasants
found in the areas of large-scale semi-mechanized agriculture.
In fact, the Sierra Maestra, locale of the first revolutionary
beehive, is a place where peasants struggling barehanded against
latifundism took refuge. They went there seeking a new piece
of land, somehow overlooked by the state or the voracious latifundists,
on which to create a modest fortune. They constantly had to
struggle against the exactions of the soldiers, who were always
allied to the latifundists; and their ambition extended no farther
than a property deed. Concretely, the soldiers who belonged
to our first peasant-type guerrilla armies came from the section
of this social class which shows most strongly love for the
land and the possession of it; that is to say, which shows most
perfectly what we can define as the petty-bourgeois spirit.
The peasant fought because he wanted land for himself, for his
children, to manage it, sell it, and get rich by his work.
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Despite his petty bourgois spirit, the peasant soon learned
that he could not satisfy his land hunger without breaking up
the system of latifundist property. Radical agrarian reform,
the only kind that could give land to the peasants, clashed
directly with the interests of the imperialists, latifundists
and sugar and cattle magnates. The bourgeoisie was afraid to
clash with those interests. But the proletariat wasn't. In this
way the revolution's course itself brought together the workers
and peasants. The workers supported the demands against the
latifundists. The poor peasant, rewarded with ownership of the
land, loyally supported the revolutionary power and defended
it against its imperialist and counter-revolutionary enemies.
In our opinion no further factors of exceptionalism can be claimed.
We have been generous in stating those listed in their strongest
form. Now we shall examine the permanent roots of all social
phenomena in America, the contradictions which, ripening in
the womb of present societies, produce changes that can attain
the scope of a revolution like Cuba's.
First in chronological order, though not in the order of importance
at present, is latifundism. Latifundism was the economic power
base of the ruling class throughout the entire period which
followed the great liberating anticolonialist revolution of
the last century. But that latifundist social class, which is
found in all of the countries, generally lags behind the social
developments that move the world. In some places, however, the
most alert and clear-sighted members of the latifundist class
are aware of the dangers and begin to change the investment
form of their capital, at times going in for mechanized agriculture,
transferring some of their wealth to industrial investment,
or becoming commercial agents of the monopolies. In any case,
the first liberating revolution never destroyed the latifundist
bases which always constituted a reactionary force and upheld
the principle of servitude on the land. This is the phenomenon
that shows up in all the American countries without exception
and has been the substratum of all the injustices committed
since the era when the King of Spain gave huge grants of land
to his most noble conquistadores, leaving, in the case of Cuba,
for the natives, creoles and mestizos, only the realengos, that
is, the scraps left between where three circular grants touched
each other.
In most countries the latifundist realized he couldn't survive
alone and promptly entered into alliances with the monopolies,
that is, with the strongest and cruelest oppressor of the American
peoples. North American capital arrived on the scene to make
the virgin lands fruitful, so that later it could carry off
unnoticed all the funds so "generously" given, plus
several times the amounts originally invested in the "beneficiary"
country.
America was a field of inter-imperialist struggle and the "wars"
between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, the separation of Panama from
Colombia, the infamy committed against Ecuador in its dispute
with Peru, the fight between Paraguay and Bolivia, are nothing
but manifestations of the gigantic battle between the world's
great monopolistic combines, a battle decided almost completely
in favor of the North American monopolies following World War
II. From that point on, the empire dedicated itself to strengthening
its grip on its colonial possessions and perfecting the whole
structure to prevent the intrusion of old or new competitors
from other imperialist countries. All this resuIted in a monstrously
distorted economy which has been described by the shamefaced
economists of the imperialist regime in an innocuous term which
reveals the deep compassion they feel for us inferior beings
(they call our miserably exploited Indians, persecuted and reduced
to utter wretchedness, 'little Indians"; all Negroes and
mulattos, disinherited and discriminated against, are called
"colored"; individually they are used as instruments,
collectively, as a means of dividing the working masses in their
struggle for a better economic future). For us, the peoples
of America, they have another polite and refined term: "underdeveloped."
What is "underdeveloped"?
 A
dwarf with an enormus head and a swollen chest is "underdeveloped,"
inasmuch as his weak legs or short arms do not match the rest
of his anatomy. He is the product of an abnormal formation that
distorted his development. That is really what we are, we, who
are politely referred to as "underdeveloped," but
in truth are colonial, semi-colonial or dependent countries.
We are countries whose economies have been twisted by imperialism,
which has abnormally developed in us those branches of industry
or agriculture needed to complement its complex economy. "Underdevelopment,"
or distorted development, brings dangerous specialization in
raw materials, inherent in which is the threat of hunger for
all our peopIes. We, the underdeveloped, are also those with
monoculture, with the single product, with the single market.
A single product whose uncertain sale depends on a single market
that imposes and fixes conditions, that is the great formula
for imperialist economic domination. It should be added to the
old, but eternally young, Roman slogan Divide and Conquer!
Latifundism, then, through its connections with imperialism,
completely shapes the so-called underdevelopment, whose results
are low wages and unemployment. This phenomenon of low wages
and unemployment is a vicious circle which produces ever lower
wages and ever more unemployment, as the great contradictions
of the system sharpen and, constantly at the mercy of the cyclical
fluctuations of its own economy, provides the common denominator
of all the peoples of America, from the Rio Bravo, (The Latin
American name for the river called the Rio Grande in the United
States) to the South Pole. This common denominator, which we
shall print in capital letters and which serves as the starting
point for analysis by all who think about these social phenomena,
is called THE PEOPLE'S HUNGER; weary of being oppressed, persecuted,
exploited to the limit; weary of the wretched selling of their
laborpower day after day (faced with the fear of swelling the
enormous mass of unemployed) so that the greatest profit can
be wrung from each human body, profits that are later squandered
in the orgies of the masters of capital.
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We see, then, that there are great and inescapable common denominators
in Latin America, and that we cannot say we were exempt from
any of those leading to the most terrible and permanent of all:
the people's hunger. Latifundism, whether as a primitive form
of exploitation or as a form of capitalist monopoly of the land,
adjusts to the new conditions and becomes an ally of imperialism,
the exploitative form finance and monopoly capitalism takes
outside its national borders, in order to create economic colonialism,
euphemistically called "underdevelopment," which results
in low wages, underemployment, unemployment: the people's hunger.
It all existed in Cuba. Here, too, there was hunger. Here the
percentage of unemployed was one of the highest in Latin America.
Here imperialism was crueler than in many countries of America.
And here latifundism was as strong as in any brother country.
What did we do to free ourselves from the vast imperialist system
with its train of puppet rulers in each country and mercenary
armies to protect the puppets and the whole complex social system
of the exploitation of man by man? We applied certain formulas,
which on some previous occasions we have given out as discoveries
of our empirical medicine for the great evils of our beloved
Latin America, empirical medicine which was soon adopted into
the expositions of scientific truth.
The objective conditions for struggle are provided by the people's
hunger, their reaction to that hunger, the terror unleashed
to crush the people's reaction, and the wave of hatred that
the repression creates. America lacked the subjective conditions,
the most important of which is awareness of the possibility
of victory through violent struggle against the imperialist
powers and their internal allies. These conditions were created
through the armed struggle which made clearer the need for change
(and permitted it to be foreseen) and the defeat and subsequent
annihilation of the army by the people's forces (an absolutely
necessary condition for every true revolution). Having already
shown that these conditions are created through the armed struggle,
we have to explain once more that the scene of the struggle
should be the countryside. A peasant army, pursuing the great
objectives for which the peasantry should fight (the first of
which is the just distribution of the land ), will capture the
cities from the countryside. The peasant class of America, basing
itself on the ideology of the working class, whose great thinkers
discovered the social laws governing us, will provide the great
liberating army of the future, as it has already done in Cuba.
This army, created in the countryside, where the subjective
conditions keep ripening for the taking of power, proceeds to
take the cities, uniting with the workers and enriching itself
ideologically from contributions of the working class. It can
and must defeat the oppressor army, at first in skirmishes,
engagements, surprises; and in big battles at the end, when
the army will have grown from its small-scale guerrilla footing
to the proportions of a great popular army of liberation. One
stage in the consolidation of the revolutionary power, as we
indicated above, will be the liquidation of the old army. .
. .
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