Scanned February 2007 from Fair Play for Cuba Committee pamphlet published in 1962 by Walter Lippmann, February 2007.

Why is the United Party of the Socialist Revolution a necessity?

I would certainly have liked a little more time to make a serious study of this topic, since the subject of the United Party of the Socialist Revolution is a matter of extraordinary importance to the Revolution. I, therefore, told some of my comrades that I was going to give a sort of provisional talk now, since I expect to return to this question in the future when I have more time to develop it thoroughly.

I am, therefore, simply going to express at this time a series of fundamental ideas with which the United Party of the Revolution is concerned.

In the first place, what is the United Party of the Revolution and why is it being organized? Of course, on previous occasions, in different public ceremonies, we have already referred to thlo4ues.- tion and have expressed certain ideas about it.

The United Party of tile Revolution was, in the first place, a necessity. Why was it a necessity? To begin with, you cannot make a revolution, and above all, you cannot carry a revolution forward without a strong and disciplined organization.

This necessity is becoming more and more evident as the revolutionary process advances and deepens and faces even more difficult tasks.

It has always been said, and rightly so, that it is easier to win power than to hold it; it is easier to win power than to govern.

And that is a great truth. The tasks a revolutionary movement faces in the struggle for power become enormous and multiply the minute that revolutionary movement seizes power. It has also been said in various books, (and we are really reviewing all of the boors we have read and studied, seeing that we all studied in places where we often had to learn a lot of foolishness, things of no great importance); it has been said that the harder it is to win power, that is, consolidate it, the easier it is to keep it; that the easier it is to win power, the harder it is to hold on to it.

The only truth there can be in that assertion is basically the following: that it is in the struggle for power that the cadres who will later govern the country are trained. The longer and more protracted the struggle, the greater the number of men it trains capable of later discharging other duties.

To recall briefly the experience, our experience, an experience that was relatively short when compared with much longer struggles which other countries had to wage, armed struggles, as for example in China where the guerillas fought for more than 20 years before they seized power. Of course, the struggle for power does not begin only at the moment of armed conflict.

I remember when we gave the word to strike, prematurely, when the revolutionary movement made what you could call an error in evaluating the objective conditions, already trying to seize power in April, 1958.

At that time, we still had very few men. If I am not mistaken, the total of our guerilla forces numbered about 180 combatants. When we decided to open the Second Front, we did it with 50 men; we opened the front around Santiago de Cuba with 35 men; and this left other forces that numbered no more than 130 men, all told, perhaps less; there were fewer than 100 men left in the Sierra Maestra at the time.

Resisting with Limited Resources

Well, if, at that time, we had succeeded in overthrowing the tyranny from the military point of view, our military leaders would not have been able to get the experience they got later. Up to that time, our guerilla forces had never launched a serious frontal attack from prepared positions against the enemy forces. It had been, indeed, a guerilla war.

However, it was during the last stage of the struggle, right after the failure of that attempt to seize power, when the guerilla forces faced the most complex and crucial military problems. Once, we had to defend some national territory that we could not abandon because we had set up workshops, the Rebel Radio Station, and a whole lot of fighting equipment there which we would lose if the enemy took over.

We had to make a stand there with the limited resources at our disposal.

Among other things, we had to regroup all our forces, excepting those at the Second Front in Oriente, to resist the enemy offensive and we8

However, that new situation brought about a serious battle in defense of that territory, which was getting smaller and smaller, to the point where we could not, allow it to get any smaller. We fought some important battles. Once, the enemy surrounded us and we surrounded them, in turn. An enemy battalion surrounded us and other enemy forces surrounded our other forces. But we had our first successes here in that sector, we became stronger and were able to counterattack. But one thing is certain: A complex battle developed and we acquired a lot of experience from it. And the experience,'and arms, and men strengthened by that struggle made it possible for us to start more important operations, for example, the invasion of Las Villas.

The Fight Against the Army

It goes without saying that without the men forged by those 71 days of fighting, it would have been difficult to undertake the invasion of Las Villas from Oriente.

The more we analyse the conditions under which we began that operation, the number of men who carried it out, facing an enemy militarily much stronger, the more extraordinary a feat it seems. crossing all Camaguey from Oriente without cover, without anything in our favor, and arriving in Las Villas was a truly :great feat.

One often wonders how this was possible. The answer is simply that the men who made the crossing were comrades who already had an extraordinary confidence in themselves, had developed a great composure, a great skill and were men who were fully tested. These are the things that made it possible to undertake that operation, and those operations in the lowlands that at first seemed incredible.

In other words, the continuation of the struggle kept developing a set of human values, and the ability to carry out more and more difficult tasks, and we kept on acquiring more experience.

So that by the war not ending in April but at the end of the year, the Revolution, at the moment of triumph, could count on a large group of comrades tested in battle and quite experienced.

Can anyone deny that all the experience acquired in those months has become of the greatest importance to the Revolution now? If we have a large number of comrades competent in defending the Revolution against imperialist attacks; if the Armed Forces of the Revolution can face up to the enemy planes, to oppose his aggression, then that is due, in great part, to the fact that the prolongation of the struggle developed a group of leaders. Of course, not in what they

understood when the war ended; but still they at least were tested men, known men, who in time, after the triumph of the conquest of power were able to develop even more.

And so, we have many comrades who took part in all those military actions who today have been trained in our military academies and who have devoted themselves fervently to study. Of course, all this involved a little work. The guerilla war from which most of our leaders sprang up -- although at a given moment it was no longer a guerilla war, but a war of major proportions, of maneuvers, and of positions -- made those who came out of it feel a certain scorn for military academies, a certain disdain for military theories and military manuals. That is an attitude we must overcome, though it will be hard at first. But this training has already brought about a change in the thinking of our war companions, a change in their attitude. And in fact today there is not a single revolutionary leader who is not interested in attending the academies.

Well, then, our military schools are training comrades of high rank, and it is not rare to find a major going to a school for sergeants and taking a course for privates, for one of the things we are doing is to see that, they learn about the problems of the people whom they are going to lead. And they are doing so with extraordinary enthusiasm.

But the continuation of the struggle resulted in all those men ending up the war with much, and enough experience of a military nature, experience that was to develop still further in the months ahead.

This is an example from the military field which is exactly the same as other fields, when it comes to organization, when it comes to the solution of administrative and political problems. During the struggle, of course, we didn't have vast areas to administer. In China, for example, they had a lot of problems, indeed, to resolve, even before they seized power. There were certain problems that we discussed after seizing power, such as the problems relating to art, which the revolutionary movement in China discussed before they seized power.

The Political Struggle Developed Revolutionary Values

It can't be said that there weren't experienced men among us. No one can deny that the political struggle in our country has developed a series of values in the public life of our country, revolutionary values and well-trained men. In the end, however, the Revolution came to power. Under what conditions does a revolution come to power? Does it come with an organized and disciplined movement perfectly prepared for the c' 'pies of government? No. Do all of the revolutionary forces organic, embodied in that revolutionary movement come to power? No.

There is only one revolutionary movement, not two or three or four revolutionary movements. There is really one revolutionary movement and, in the long run, revolution or counter-revolution. A revolutionary movement can be more or less limited; with a revolution, it is possible to reach the objectives the revolution has set (and it cannot be denied that they may be revolutionary as far as they go) and from that moment, either the revolution ceases to be truly revolutionary or it goes forward. In other words, one movement can be more or less radical, which cannot be the case with two, three or four revolutionary movements. That's absurd. Furthermore, those other movements are really counter-revolutionary.

The Various Revolutionary Forces

The truth is that a revolution does not come to power with an organization that embodies all of the revolutionary forces. There were different revolutionary organizations, and these different revolutionary organizations represented different revolutionary forces. In the common goal that united all revolutionary and nonrevolutionary organizations -- because there were forces against Batista's tyranny which you could not call revolutionary -- there were politicians who were simply against Batista because he had kept them out of his government; there were politicians of the ruling classes, those very ruling classes that Batista's government represented, who were really angling for a change of power. The politicians ousted from power, for example, on March 10th, that whole political group headed by the celebrated Sr. Carlos Prio Socar?s, was a group that in the long run represented the same interests as Batista. They, as agents of imperialism dressed in mufti, and Batista, as an agent of imperialism with a milit ary apparatus, an apparatus of force and oppression.

All those people...What did those people intend to do when they got into the government? Did they intend to do anything different from what they did? Let us imagine for just a second that the group of Prio, Tony Varona and their ilk had come to power. Of course, that was-vi?ually impossible. Here you had Prio, Tony Varona and that whole crowd after maybe ten or twelve years in exile alone and they've entered into an election, in a deal with Batista, content just to serve as senators or mayors or provincial governors. That's the way everything ended up. But let us imagine hypothetically that those people had regained power, were once again ruling our country.

What would they have done? What would they have done that was different from what they did in the years when they were in power? They were definitely going to do exactly the same thing, that is, serve the interests of imperialism and serve the interests of the upper middle classes here, insofar as those interests did not conflict with the interests of imperialism, because the interests of imperialism -- that is, the foreign monopolies -- had a privileged position here in our country, even at the expense of the native middle classes.

They Were Going to Squeeze You Dry

Those people in power would have simply limited themselves to doing the same as they had done. They would not have passed a single revolutionary law; they would not even have reduced rents, as the Revolution did, let alone instituted an Agrarian Reform or Educational Reform, or reform of any kind. Everybody knows what those people would have done. What would they have done? Don't you know? I am talking to the people. What would they have done, had they attained power? Listen to me, Lionel, it seems that this subject was not explained to your students at the School of Revolutionary Instruction. Man, everybody knows that!

What they did was to rob; what the government and that whole crowd would simply have done was to rob. That is, they were going to squeeze you dry for their services to the ruling economic interests. They would have maintained a professional army, instruments of repression; they would have maintained all the organs of persecution; they would have maintained the existing social system -- that's all. In other words, there was a group representing the dominant economic interests and imperialists which was against Batista simply because they wanted to be the ones in the government; they did not at all like having Batista and Batista's clique instead of them doing the robbing. Of course, they would be against Batista.

What did they do against Batista? Not a thing, absolutely nothing! They devoted themselves to the purchase of arms, to bringing arms here. Often they were successful in bringing them into the country, although they never had the least success in using them; they never even used them.

Everyone remembers the great supply of arms which they smuggled. into the country and which the police seized. At the time when we were beginning to set up a revolutionary movement, to train some young people; at a time when we were expecting to see those bigwigs of public life, men with money and property, do something effective against the Batista dictatorship. They had arms, they had money, they had everything; in fact, all they lacked was the will to fight. They were merely playing at revolution. It is true that they brought arms into the country, were looking for people, instructed them in the use of the arms. There were a number of cliques. They acted exactly as they did in the ward politics. Some of them had one or two machine guns hidden and they were looking for people in the wards to fight Batista. How did they win them over? They taught them how to use a machine gun. But, it was the same old, classical politics carried over into the insurrection. Well, these characters were politicking with machine guns; for, indeed, they were all of them thinking of when Batista would fall, one way or the other, and they would bring back the same old thing.

Playing Politics with Arms

We, for our part, went about recruiting young people, picking from the youthful elements we moved around in those who were more serious, more willing, more involved and had a more sincere revolutionary inclination. And what sometimes happened? Where we had organized a cell, they would come -- the genuine articles, Autenticos, the Prio, the Aureliano crowd, all of them, with a machine gun.

In the first place, we didn't have machine guns; and in the second place, even if we had had them, we would not have been able to teach anyone to use them. You cannot imagine what these people did. For example, they had a room full of arms and when they wanted to win over someone, they would tell him: "How can you join that bunch if they have no arms, haven't got a thing?" And they would take him to the house where there were thirty M-1's, forty machine guns. I remember that some people left us that way.

There were a lot of people, serious and willing to fight who, in despair of fighting Batista, in view of his abuses, crimes and villainies, joined the organization which taught them how to use machine guns. There were a lot of people like that who were ready to fight, and proved it later on. But the greatest majority, the leadership of that whole movement, was a group of people who did nothing but play politics with arms.

This was a stage we passed through. They took some people away from us. We trained them, spoke to them, explained to them what a revolution was, what we proposed to do, but the months passed and as there was no....they became discouraged and joined any group which offered them arms. It was a most interesting experience. Some day when we are discussing the insurrection, I'll have a lot to say about the experiences in those days when we were organizing....

Our attitude at first was one of willingness to collaborate with any movement prepared to fight for the downfall of Batista, for this Was essential to us. We spent months, too, waiting for all those people.

Fooling the People

Don't forget that there were a number of political leaders who had prestige among the people, with wealth; some had wealth, but no prestige; others had prestige, but no wealth. During one stage, we were simply taking stock of what was happening, ready to collaborate with any movement; above all, when you consider that the university had become a focus of rebellion. We thought that we could organize the movement around the university forces.

When We Decided to Start Organizing a Revolutionary Movement

We did not decide to organize a revolutionary movement until we became convinced that the people were really being deceived and that it was all madness, all that madness; people were desperate and were joining just any organization. There were twenty organizations at that "Montreal meeting"; there came a whole series of....I do not even wish to recall all that, but many of those important bigwigs -the Pardo Lladas and that whole crowd -- were terribly divided. We decided then to start organizing a revolutionary movement with ideas that we would eventually carry out. We were convinced that absolutely nothing was going to come out of all that, about which part of the people had conceived certain illusions; and we were convinced, moreover, that the tactics were wrong.

The whole plan of organizing an army and taking barracks and overthrowing Batista in twenty-four hours seemed absurd to us and we fully realized that civilians -- because in our country there was no background nor tradition of military instruction -- those men called upon to fight in the streets against a professional army with discipline and technical training that had at its disposal tanks, aircraft, fighter planes, weapons of all types and, moreover, organization and experience; experience....I do not mean military experience, but experience in killing people in the streets and splitting up groups and breaking up demonstrations and all that -- we realized that in those circumstances an organization of civilians, armed but without training, could be completely defeated in a putsch-type movement like the one we were planning.

It was not a type of insurrection that is accompanied by a condition indispensable for overthrowing a government, such as a strong and powerful mass movement, that is, a general strike. Neither the objective nor subjective conditions existed for organizing a general strike and it was simply a completely adventurous type of operation. We became convinced that it was all absurd and that was when we conceived the idea of launching another type of struggle, like the one we finally carried out, seizing an army barracks.

I remember that I always had a plan. I do not know whether I managed to convince many people, but when they told me that they had brought in 50 Garand M-1's in a ship, I said to them: "But there are places where you can get more than 50 M-1's; there are places where there are a thousand rifles, greased and well cared for. You don't have to buy them, you don't have to grease them, you don't have to bring them in, you don't have to do anything; all you have to do is take them." I always really believed that there are far more weapons in a barracks than you can import in tons of oil and grease and so on.

I do not know whether I convinced them of that. In the end, we set about getting the first weapons in order to see how we could get the second weapons and how we could launch the revolutionary struggle with the second weapons.

What we always had in mind was, first, to attempt an uprising in one region and try to keep it going and, if that failed, then to go into the mountains with all those weapons and begin a struggle in the mountains.

It seemed to us that revolutionary conditions had to be created by fighting. We were smart enough to realize that we could wage that type of struggle and, under existing conditions, carry it forward to success. From that point of view, we made only one mistake. Do you know what it was? We believed that to begin that type of struggle, we needed more resources than was actually the case. Reality later taught us the following: that while we thought we needed several hundred armed men, (and we were unable to gather those forces and

had to start with fewer than one hundred men) experience later demonstrated that it was possible to begin the struggle with far fewer than one hundred -- with ten or twelve men. Had we known that, possibly we would not have planned to take Moncada Barracks. We would have planned to take Bayamo Barracks, close as it was to the mountains of the Sierra Maestra. And with the forces we used to attack Moncada Barracks, we would have been able to take Bayamo Barracks and would have certainly succeeded in taking it. And we wouldn't have had to work as hard as we did to get weapons for 82 men; so much fuss was not needed and the fuss was created in order to get money; no one believes that the fuss was....The fuss had two objectives: agitation regarding the revolutionary struggle. No, it had three objectives: one, to paralyze the politicking elements that were making a tremendous effort to bring the country into a truce and an electoral solution, that is, a nonrevolutionary solution; second, to uplift the revolutionary spirit of the people; and third, to gather the minimum resources necessary for us to carry on the revolutionary movement.

We were correct in opposing the elections of those days as a political sell-out, and in .doing everything to encourage the revolutionary mood of the people. But the fact was that to start some action, we needed a great deal less than we had imagined.

Now, why did we follow those tactics? Can anyone imagine that you can win revolutionary power with a handful of men? We never imagined such a thing. Our entire revolutionary strategy was geared to our revolutionary understanding. We knew that you can win power only with the support of the people, by mobilizing the masses. We never thought we could win power with ten, twelve or a hundred men. We intended to lay the groundwork for revolutionary struggle through a guerilla action and to develop the struggle until it becomes a mass struggle, and to win power simply with the backing of the masses, as we eventually did. There is no question that the conquest of revolutionary power was due fundamentally to the support of the masses.

Our People Were Eager For a Revolutionary Change

We simply thought out how to take advantage of existing objective conditions, the objective conditions existing in our country and, above all, the system of exploitation prevailing in our country. The situation of the peasants. It wouldn't have occurred to anyone, at least not to me -- although there are counterrevolutionaries who think that way, who try to bring off a revolution the way we did. But it would never have occurred to us to start a revolutionary struggle in a country where there are no owners of vast estates; a revolutionary struggle with guerillas in the countryside where there are no estate owners, where the peasants are owners of the land, where there are cooperatives and people's farms, where there is full employment for the entire population. That would not have occurred to us.

Everyone in our country was aware of conditions in the rural areas. Peasants who were not squatters were tenants. Squatters on public lands were the victims of constant evictions and abuse. Cane workers toiled three of four months during the harvest, and two or three months during "the dead season."

Unemployment in the countryside was high. The rural population had migrated to the city where in turn there was already much unemployment. Those who were not squatters were tenants. A tenant on the coffee plantation had to pay one-third or one-quarter of his crops. The tobacco tenant farmer or sharecropper also had to pay 25 or 30 per cent of his crop. The cane planter had to pay a lower percentage, but still it was high, considering the value of raw cane. He had to pay at least 5 per cent of the value of the raw cane. As for prices, the peasants were victims of all kinds of levies and speculating. Their crops were bought cheap and speculators took advantage of their condition to exploit them miserably. In the countryside, commodities were very dear; the peasants had to sell their produce cheap. That was the situation in the countryside. The coffee planters were in the mountains. Who picked the coffee? Well, tens of thousands of men and women from the cane fields, from the sugar plantations, who had no work during "the dead season" went into the mountains to pick coffee. Coffee was grown in the mountains, because the peasants, evicted by the sugar and cattle barons, had taken refuge in the mountains and planted coffee there. It is not because coffee grows exclusively in the mountains, but because that was the only place where they could go to survive.

When we reached the Sierra Maestra, however, it was evident that we had not organized certain aspects of the struggle we were undertaking. For example, we hadn't even made a geographical survey of the Sierra Maestra. We hadn't even set up a preliminary organization in the Sierra Maestra; in short, we could not have started the struggle under worse conditions. It may be good to point up these things so that they can serve as examples to other exploited peoples. We have to say that we did not know a single peasant in the Sierra Maestra and, furthermore, the only ideas we had of the Sierra Maestra were those we had acquired in geography books, and I am sure that if you were to ask anyone here what they learned in their geography books about the Sierra Maestra, they would not know the name of a single river in the Sierra Maestra. They might know that the sources of the Cauto is there, in the Sierra Maestra, and the Contramaestre and the Yara. And what we knew of the Yara was the song about the Rio Yara -- that's all.

In other words, conditions were very difficult, but it's true that where the objective conditions are favorable, the Revolution can develop, that it's only on the basis of objective conditions that you can, at a given historical moment, make a revolution. This was fully demonstrated, because the other circumstances, the subjective ones, did not exist. We began that struggle on the basis of certain premises, correct premises, the premise of an exploitative social system in our country and the conviction that our people wanted a revolutionary change. Though they may not have been very aware of it, nevertheless, that's what they wanted. It showed in their general discontent, in the fact that a rebel band immediately found support among wide sectors of the public, in the rebellious spirit of the people and in the degree of political maturity of our people; in spite of all the confusion sown, in spite of all of the propaganda and of all of the lies of imperialism and reaction.

We started with that assumption. That assumption was correct and since it was correct, the hopes and possibilities we had envisaged were fulfilled. So, this teaches the first lesson: that there can be no revolution, in the first place, unless there are objective circumstances at a given historical moment to facilitate and make the revolution. In other words, a revolution cannot be created out of the minds of men. We can give one very clear and evident example. Let us suppose that Marti had been born not in the middle of the past century, the 19th century, but had been born in the middle of the 18th century. With all his extraordinary intelligence, Marti would not have played the role he actually played in the era when he lived and carried on his revolutionary action, under really objective conditions, to start a struggle, a struggle that could not have been launched one century earlier.

Lenin. Let us suppose that Lenin had been born at the end of the 18th century. Well, he could not have developed the theories he developed as leader of the Russian proletariat, as interpreter of Marxism, since if Marx, in turn, had been born in the 18th century, in the middle of the 18th century, he would possibly have done only what Voltaire, Diderot and all those intellectuals did. One could not have been the intellectual of a class that did not exist; the other, creator of the doctrine of a revolution that could not be realized.

In other words, revolutions do not spring from the minds of men. People can interpret an historical law, a certain moment of historical development. To make a correct interpretation is to propel the revolutionary movement. In Cuba, our role has been that of propellers of that movement, through evaluating a series of objective conditions. Of course, the analysis is not as simple as this, inasmuch as there was another series of circumstances that favored the revolutionary movement we started -- certain circumstances which, in the first place, were not taken into account. In the second place, many people thought we were romantics, that we were going to die right there. In the third place, many thought we were ambitious. In the fourth place, many thought that the group of revolutionary leaders was a group of leaders of conservative or non-radical ideas. There is no doubt that had we, when we were getting strength, been known as people with very radical ideas, the social class which is fighting us today would have fought us right then and not only since we took power.

There was a series of circumstances which favored the role of we who initiated, on an objective basis, the guerilla movement in the mountains.

And what did we find in the Sierra Maestra? Well, we met with the first peasants who wanted to join us, peasants who were in a bad way; first, we had met setbacks and were scattered. Some peasants helped to bring the remnants of our forces together. This group of peasants, a very small group, helped us to go deeper into the Sierra Maestra. Some peasants began to join our ranks.

Terror of the Army

But to the majority of peasants what were the hard facts at that time? First of all, there was great fear of the Army. This was the important fact. In the second place, it was difficult for them to realize how such a small group of starving people, ragged, with only a few arms, could destroy all those forces moving about in trucks, trains, airplanes -- with so many resources. That is why at first we were, indeed, in a very precarious and difficult position. Indeed, many times we had to move around without the people seeing us. Why? Because in a village or group of 100 persons, there was always a Batista supporter, a grafter, a political sergeant, a something. Well, although he did not see us, he was able to find out where we were from rumors that an armed group had passed through. And he would then go and inform the army.

Nevertheless, we succeeded fairly well in passing through unnoticed until we reached one area, the area of La Plata. And what did we find there? The Army had taken advantage of the existence of our expedition, which it had already assumed to be entirely liquidated, to carry out a series of evictions and terrible abuses.

At the time, there was a certain amount of resistance among the farmers there to a company -- La Viti, who owned an estate and the Media Luna sugar mill -- I believe it is one of the sugar mills with thousands of acres of land in the area of Niquero. They owned large tracts of land in that area. They even owned Pico Turquino Mountain!

There was a private road going through there. You know that the history of peasants' evictions had always been intimately connected with the problems of roads. A private road is a boundary which the company sets, saying: "To enter, you must go this way; no one can get in." There was one of these roads there and the peasants had been fighting against them. There was a peasants' movement there, very embryonic, it is true. They received us well. Well, then, in those days we planned our first operation. All right, I wish to establish the following: that the day on which we took the first district, that of La Plata on January 17, we-launched a surprise attack at dawn on a mixed patrol of soldiers and marines consisting of twelve men -- we were about sixteen. We took them by surprise and overcame them. We took all their arms. Our forces came out of the operation that day with twenty-nine men. Then we turned inland towards the Palma Mocha River to the east, on the coast, facing Pico Turquino.

They Wanted to Evict the Peasants

When we arrived in the morning, a large caravan of peasants were coming down the hillside. These peasants who were about ten kilometers from the scene of action had heard nothing about what had happened. We asked them what had happened to them, but we already knew, for we had captured a harbor pilot who was part of the patrol before we attacked their post and we questioned him thoroughly and found out that a certain Corporal Baso had been around Palma Mocha River telling the peasants to leave the area, that it was going to be bombarded the following day. The patrol was staying at the house of the Viti Company's foreman. They had taken advantage of the presence of our expedition which they had already said was liquidated. No one knew we were there. However, they took advantage of this circumstance to evict the peasants. No airplane had bombed or was going to bomb. It was absurd to think of bombing these hillocks. Nevertheless, this corporal had told all the peasants living along the Palma Mocha River and on the slopes of Pico Turquino that they were going to bomb the next day, so that the peasants would abandon their houses. Then the patrol went around burning all the houses and simply evicting the peasants.

Just imagine, when we were going up along the Palma Mocha River early that morning, we saw a stream of peasants, some with seven children, ten children, four children, coming down and when we met

up with them and asked them, "Why are you coming down?" they replied, "Because they are going to bomb." And I told them: "That's a lie. How can you believe that? No one knew yesterday that we were around here, no one knew that we were going to attack that post which we did

early in the morning. They have done this to make you all abandon the area. Go on back." And the peasants, just imagine, when they saw us there in the flesh, after having attacked a post, thought it the more true that the place was going to be bombed. Very few went back. For -- just think of it -- a marine corporal had been there the day before, saying to them: "Clear out, they are going to bomb here." And the following day, early in the morning, while they are going down, they meet up with a patrol of revolutionaries who had just captured a post and was going to set up camp right there. What doubt could these peasants have had that they were really going to bomb the place? There was no bombing because it was absurd to bomb woods many square kilometers in area with no idea of where the devil a patrol might be. But we saw no bombing. So they had taken advantage of our expedition to force them off the land.

A Heroic Worker

There, when we crossed over into the area of San Lorenzo, what did we find? The peasants there were scared, too. It was reported that some people from Maffo with money, who owned a coffee warehouse, were going to evict them because they had title to all the land around. Wherever we went, we found peasants who were faced with lawsuits. All the peasants were faced with the problem of eviction. Even those who were not being evicted lived in fear of being evicted.

Naturally, we began to do some political work among the peasants, explaining to them the aims of the Revolution. But the problem of the peasants was not only that the landowners wanted to deprive them of their lands and were actually taking their land away, and in a number of cases, had already done so, but that in addition, it took a thousand labors to cultivate the land on the slopes of these hills. There were places in the mountains that even goats could hardly climb. Still, the peasants had cultivated the slopes with sweet potatoes and coffee.

Here, we thought, was the truly heroic type of worker. And how did he work? He worked in the lowlands for a fortnight, saved up fifteen or twenty pesos, bought a little salt, a little lard, and would go back into the hills. And for years while he went on like this, harvesting a few coffee beans; nobody helped him. But not only that. When this peasant cleared a patch of hill, a couple of rural police would show up and if it wasn't the rural police, it was a man sent by the chief of the nearest post to collect a fee for the clearing.

The unfortunate guajiro would come down into the lowlands to work for a fortnight under extreme hardships for a peso because they paid him a peso in the valley to keep a tiny coffee plantation going, and a corporal of the rural police or a sergeant from a distant post had some character in charge of collecting money every time there was a clearing. This made the peasants extremely annoyed.

These peasants had another problem: when they sold their coffee, they were paid thirteen pesos, fourteen pesos for it. They lent them money and charged them high interest. BANFAIC was already in operation, of course, but to whom did the BANFAIC lend money? They lent money to the peasant who already had a crop, to the person who already held cash, who was almost a capitalist, or to the one who with a lot of hard labor had been able to plant half a caballeria and was harvesting 100 quintals. They were willing to finance the man who collected 100 quintals, but those who didn't have a single quintal to harvest, in other words, the vast majority of the campesinos in the Sierra, would get no money because they didn't have title to the land. The BANFAIC demanded title to land. They also demanded that the peasant must already have a crop, that he harvest beans. If he didn't,. no loan. This was the situation of the peasants.

Besides, whenever a rural guard came, he was sure to carry off at least a fine rooster, if not a little pig and things of that sort.

Misery and Illiteracy

The merchandise they sold to the peasants was sold at an extremely high price. There was not one school there; not one teacher. If these peasants had realized much sooner what they could have done, it is possible that with only half a dozen rifles they could at least have made themselves independent in the mountains! For the conditions were very favorable. It was a better fate for the peasant to grab a rifle and rise up than to be thrown off his land and endure the hardship and misery he suffered.

These were the conditions, the objective conditions, that we found in the Sierra Maestra. Everything else, organization of the military apparatus, organization of the political apparatus, was still to be done! These things we had already done in the valley. In the valley we formed the suitable organization, but it was very embryonic. It was very new and, therefore, it did not have the discipline of a revolutionary organization tempered by many years of battle.

It is beyond question that in the valley, many young people struggled, made sacrifices, staked their lives, and fought heroically. Of course, it was a heroic type of fight, but it was not able to get the results that we were beginning to-get in the mountains.

The arena of the struggle was the mountains. There began our task of organizing a guerilla movement, giving it experience, and at the same time, winning, conquering the masses of peasants for the Revolution. It was perfectly logical that in those objective conditions existing in the Sierra Maestra, the revolutionary work should develop until it could count on practically unanimous support of the peasants -- as it eventually did.

In other words, we were already counting on that social force although we had few weapons and a great many difficulties. The struggle continued to unfold; it developed throughout the land. Guerilla fighting became nationwide: first, in the Second Front of Las Villas; then, in the Second Front of Oriente. The tactics we were promoting had triumphed. In other words, events had demonstrated that, under certain conditions, that way was correct. We began to give up the putschist type of tactics, organizing forces to try to win the power in a frontal attack at great disadvantage against armed forces. The tactics we favored were wearing down the forces of the tyranny.

Needless to say, that's why we have tremendous faith in guerilla warfare. We believe in guerilla fighting under the conditions of our country, which are similar to the conditions in many Other Latin-American countries -- and don't think that this is the reason...(applause)...you didn't let me finish....We seriously believe we have the right to think so because we have gone through the experience.

The Revolutionary Movement is Invincible

Naturally, we know that when this conviction takes hold of other people equally oppressed by imperialism and the cliques in the pay of imperialism, by the military castes; equally exploited by the landowners, other people going through the same things as the Cuba of hungry peasants, exploited, landless, without schools, without doctors, without credit, without aid of any sort; when they become convinced as we were convinced -- and we are convinced, above all, by facts -- I am sure that no imperialist force, no reactionary one, no military caste, no NATO army will be able to withstand the revolutionary movement.

We simply believe that given Cuba's circumstances, we must be on guard against one tactical move. Our enemies tried to use the same tactics, but with only one difference: they think they can make a revolution in a country that has done with landlords, that has done with rent; where there is a teacher in every neighborhood, hospitals, doctors, credits, aid; where the day of the middleman is over, speculation is done with, harvests guaranteed. In other words, conditions that are the absolute opposite of the conditions in which we made our Revolution.

All of the Military Science of the Pentagon is Going to Clash with Reality

In other words, we made a revolution under given conditions and along come the counter-revolutionaries to try to fight under conditions that are the very reverse of the conditions we fought under. In short, whatever had to happen to them, happened. In the Sierra Maestra and those areas where they tried to form counter-revolutionary groups, they were always knocked out of action within forty-sight hours.

They copied one part, but did not copy the other. You can't copy the other. They copied the idea of guerrillas, but got them from among the enemy, among the reactionaries. Now, the Pentagon has followed suit, finally, but on the other side of the coin. We do not have to copy anything. We leave things as they are and see what happens. And we know that all the military science of the Pentagon is going to clash with reality; reality being the conditions under which the peoples of Latin America live.

The Spark That Kindles the Fire

There is only one way to combat the revolutionary guerrilla: with the disappearance of imperialism, its monopolies, and Its exploitation. That is why we don't worry when we hear that General Taylor or some other general who was in Korea or wherever is setting up an anti-guerrilla school in Panama or Argentina. It's a waste of time.

In short, they are afraid; they're showing that they are really afraid. But they imagine they cap escape it, the revolutionary struggle of the peoples. There is no remedy at all for the revolutionary struggle-.of the peoples except the disappearances of those conditions that drive people to revolt. That is why we can't help laughing at those schools of Taylor. We are sure than-any handful of men can launch the struggle wherever the objective conditions that existed in Cuba are present -- and I refer to no country in particular -- that revolutionary movement, that group, following the rules that guerrillas have to follow, we are absolutely sure that is the spark that would start the fire.

We were like a match in a haystack. I won't say in a cane field because a match in a cane field is serious business. A match in a haystack! That was the guerrilla movement, given the conditions that existed in our country. Little by little, the struggle became a struggle of all the people. Naturally, it spread; it was the people, simply all of the people, who were the sole actors in that struggle and it was the masses who decided the issue.

When our tactics began to pay off, the people immediately started to join. All the revolutionaries began to join and were converted to these tactics and to the struggle of the entire Cuban revolutionary movement. And, in the end, to the struggle of all the people.

How was it possible -- though finally by the end of December, the regular forces of tyranny were completely broken -- for the revolutionary movement to avoid what's happening in Santo Domingo today, to avoid what reaction and imperialism have always tried to do everywhere in America? Only by the revolutionary consciousness that has been developed in the people, the active participation of the masses.

What was it that made the maneuvers of the American embassy and of reaction disappear like candy in a school yard? Simply the general strike. It was not necessary to fire one more shot. That was the right moment to give the signal for a general strike.

Sure, we launched it at a very premature moment. But what did is mean? That the subjective criteria predominated, that we didn't understand the objective conditions. Our own Revolution can show ,ampler of everything. We had hoped that the conditions were ripe; and that the tyranny would collapse; that is what we wanted, what we hoped for. It so happened that we converted those desires into reality, but only in our imagination.

And what does a revolutionary have to do? He has to interpret reality. We did not interpret that reality and we made a mistake. The suit was that the strike didn't come off because conditions were .t completely ripe, because of the tactics employed; but mostly cause, fundamentally, conditions were not ripe; the military force of the Revolution amounted to less than 200 men.

The Conquest of Revolutionary Power

When the signal was given the second time, we had already isolated whole provinces, destroyed complete enemy units; the enemy had been really split wide open. On other occasions, the enemy had always been able to cross any territory he wanted to and had always dominated the situation in the country. The signal must be given at the right time and then strategy is easy to carry out: the conquest of revolutionary power by the masses. This is what makes the difference between a true revolutionary movement and a coup d'etat.

What factor mobilized the masses? The guerrilla war was the factor that mobilized the masses, that made the struggle, the repression $cute, intensified the contradictions of the regime; and the people simply seized power; the masses seized power. This was the first basic characteristic.

It's possible to liquidate the force, the military apparatus, the machinery that propped up the regime. In other words, a series of evolutionary laws was passed: first, the seizure of power by the masses; second, the liquidation of the apparatus, of the military machinery that held the regime of privilege together.

What do reaction and imperialism try to do? What do they try to preserve in any crisis? The history of Latin America is full of examples. What they try to preserve at all costs is the military apparatus, the military machine of the system. In the final analysis, neither imperialism nor the ruling classes give a hoot who the president is, who is a representative, who is a senator.

Naturally, reaction and imperialism would like to have for president, if possible, a man who is not a complete crook; it is to their interest, if possible, that he be honest, that he spend money to advance the interests of the ruling classes. It is to their interest to have the public administration function with honesty and, in the end, they prefer a government that steals less to one that steals more.

What is imperialism interested in? It is interested, naturally, in a government that looks after the interests of the monopolies. It is all the same to them whether it be Perez Jimenez or Romulo Betancourt. If you want examples, there's one for you.

What more can a Perez Jimenez give them than a Romulo? Perez Jimenez respected the interests of the oil companies in Venezuela. Romulo more than respects these interests; he worships them. He goes to the extreme of even imposing taxes in order to get himself out of the mess he's in and exempting the military and the United States oil companies, the American interests, from these taxes. He has absolute respect for all the landowners, the big bourgeoisie, the interests of home owners, owners of apartment buildings, big businessmen, owners of large estates -- these he respects. And what's more, he pays all the debts Perez Jimenez incurred, money that the bourgeois financiers lent him. In fact, he paid it back, penny for penny. He couldn't renounce these debts.

Romulo Serves Imperialism

And so, he is wholehearted in serving the interests of imperialism, of the ruling economic classes, the big bourgeoisie of Venezuela and the military caste. Yes, indeed, he finds it necessary to burn one candle for the Department of State and another candle for the military, although the two candles were really serving the same interests. He is trying to please the military and at the same time, see that the American ambassador (that was the role of Mr. Moscoso) (laughter)...the role of Mr. Moscoso in Venezuela was to visit officials, to tell the high officials of Venezuela: "Don't conspire against Betancourt; Betancourt offers a solution; if you stage a coup d'etat, there will be another Cuba."

What does this prove? That it suits the imperialists to dress up their domination of Latin America in a certain civilian garb, the trappings of "representative democracy" which disappear, as they have disappeared in Venezuela, as soon as the contradictions become intensified.

In fact, at this very time, they have just begun the suppression of the Communist Party and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left. They have shut down the newspaper of the Democratic Republican Union; muzzled their newspaper. And who is left there? The COPEY party, the must reactionary party in Venezuela. And with whom are they allied? With the worst elements, those who were left behind with the Betancourt regime when the best people dropped him: the crooks, the gangsters, the Mujalistas, that whole gang working together.

In other words, we have the perfect union of the American embassy, military reaction, a political party which is the most reactionary, representing the interests of the exploiters and the worst elements, crooks and thieves of the Betancourt clique. Yes, it has come to this. There is no more "representative democracy" there; they lack even that!

Well, the same is true of Peru. What more can you expect from an Odria than from a Prado? It's no problem for them.

It is only logical that the national bourgeoisie, the ruling classes, should prefer a type of government -- as I said before, that it' possible, is respectable and, if possible, runs things in a way that will cause the least trouble. They have been partial, frequently, to military regimes; and why? Because they are governments by repression, by force, against the workers' movement, against the peasant movement.

Down with One and Up with Another

But, at any rate, when a revolutionary movement comes to a head, ,.url a popular movement turns into a revolution, they remove this military group and another military man or a junta of military and civilian groups always emerges. They remove a military man here, put him there, appease the people and, in the end, after a while, the Dame military man is doing the same things. Or the same thing happens that happened in Venezuela, for one must take into account the special conditions in every country.

In Venezuela a military figure of prestige arose, one, moreover, the few military figures to act in a democratic, popular way: Wolfgang Larrazabal.

And what happens? There is a great movement of unity, a movement of unity resulting in the overthrow of Perez Jimenez. And what is the first thing that Betancourt did? He divided the nation. He ran for election, destroyed the unity of the people, exactly when the people of Venezuela had a wonderful opportunity to get rid of the military caste.

Imperialism and the Bourgeoisie are Trying to Keep the Military Machine Intact

Well, I want to say simply that the first thing imperialism and the bourgeoisie try to do is to keep the military machine intact. What are they doing in Santo Domingo? In Santo Domingo, they are trying to keep the military machine intact. It's all the same to them whether it's Trujillo or Trujillo's brother or Balaguer or Juan Bosch. It does not matter to them that there is a military machine intact with aircraft, tanks and police skilled in persecution and repression of the people. All the imperialists aim for is to maintain the military machine. All the efforts of the Dominican people are, therefore, to destroy the military machine.

When a moment of crisis arrives, as it arrived in Cuba on the 1st of January or has now arrived in Santo Domingo, the key to this whole situation is whether the people take control of the weapons or whether the military machine remains intact with weapons in hand and the people defenseless. When a crisis of this kind arises in any country, the prime objective of the people's movement is to destroy the military machine and seize its arms. This is an indispensable condition; without it, the revolution can be checked, can be betrayed, and can be crushed.

Imagine what would have happened if the people of Venezuela had, been able to take control of the arms when the regime of Perez Jimenez fell. Goodbye imperialism, goodbye oil companies, goodbye Romulo Betancourt or whatever traitor, to call things by their right name!

Of course, we do not invent this; it is all very clearly stated in a book by Lenin -- I imagine that all of you or most of you are familiar with it -- called "The State and Revolution." It is a

point he stressed very much and it is undeniably a vital, perfectly. comprehensible truth, even to those who have not been through the experience of Cuba.

This is just what we have seen happen throughout Latin America. The revolution must first destroy the military machine of the old system and take over control of the weapons.

Of course, that is not the only condition for a revolution; but It is an indispensable condition for revolution.

In this way, the Cuban revolutionary process carried through a series of laws, laws that are fundamental to any revolutionary process. First, the conquest of power by the masses, that is, the conquest of power by the people; and, second, destruction of the military apparatus of the ruling economic class.

In other words, the military machine was in the pay of imperialism, of the landowners, of the financial, of the commerical and industrial bourgeoisie.

Those people, those people can now talk about democracy when they had renounced even that bourgeois democracy, a democracy that was for them alone.

Everyone remembers perfectly well what happened in Havana the day after the attack on the Palace. There was the most shameful procession of representatives of those economic classes marching to the Palace. Gentlemen, can you imagine anyone with honor marching to the Palace after that slaughter, after that bloodshed, after those acts perpetrated upon wounded men who fell prisoner, murdered students, people who sacrificed themselves in a heroic deed? Can you imagine that bunch of "boot lickers" lining up at the entrance of the Palace the following day to congratulate Mr. Batista?

And who went there? Well, simply the big bourgeoisie and their lumpen, their gangsters, their Mujalistas; the whole gang. Of course, the labor leaders went there right away; or, as they said, the workers. What a farce -- the workers! Instruments of reaction and imperialism in the labor movement, the reactionary clergy, big business, that whole crowd; the landowners, the industrialists, the whole crowd in Indian file to pay their respects. What did they care? I can assure you that none of those gentlemen visited the Presidential Palace after a revolutionary law was passed. None! And as we know, none of those gentlemen has yet marched to the Presidential Palace where so many revolutionary laws have been made.

On the other hand, they went there to congratulate Batista the day after the massacre. Why? Because, those people, those shameless people who now prate of democracy (perhaps many of them get together in Miami on a Sunday to talk about democracy or if not, to hear a sermon of some priest or other. I say some priest or other, not a revolutionary priest). They now talk about democracy.

If someone should ask them, "Good, but what are you fighting for?" "We are fighting for democracy," they say. Actually, they're not even fighting for bourgeois democracy, a regime with a minimum of freedom -- but only what the ruling class permits. With this said, let's go on to something else.

When they owned all the newspapers, all the radio and television stations, and even wrote the history books, it was understandable that we should fall for all those tales. But today it is really absurd to try to fool anyone with them. And they are less likely to succeed with the people learning and understanding more every day.

What these people cared about was the government, however bloody, however large the number of youths assassinated, of bodies piled up early in the morning. They didn't care about that. How many died on April 9? They didn't care. How many died in those torture chambers, assassinated? Why is it that wherever you go, you find a marker and a murdered youth -- on nearly every highway? And they weren't the only ones. If you were to put a marker everywhere a youth had been murdered, the roads would be full of crosses and markers. In the hills, what they did: in the mountains, the murderers. One still learns of a child, every now and then; what can be done with him? He has such problems. He has to be taken to the doctor because he is the only surviving son of a family of six brothers and they killed the father. So the child has psychological problems. One still finds things like that everywhere.

What did these sufferings of our people matter to the bourgeoisie, that whole ruling class? They were indifferent to them. They went to see Batista, because Batista was obviously the one who protected their class interests. And, as you would expect, they were preparing to take immediate advantage of a change, should a change come about.

I will never forget the first days after the triumph, the visitors I received at home.

It turns out that one -- I'm not going to make propaganda now -but I think that I acted quite decently. Anyone who asked for an interview with me I saw right away. I say that this was quite decent. Who showed up at my house? Well, from early in the morning, from the cardinal's nephews to the whole Pepin Rivera family of Diario de la Marina; bankers, businessmen, all the factory managers, the whole pack. What a list it was! During the first days I tried to receive those people. I thought it was one of my obligations to receive people who asked for interviews. I didn't have much to do those days because I had no part in the government either. They filled up my house, not only the first day, but the second day, too, and the third day. And I said to myself, "What do those people want?"

Of course, I knew. But what really disgusted me was to see that procession of all those people of former days. (I asked myself) First, what are they thinking? And I said, well, the conceited ones, the more they think they can come here to see us freely, the better; the more of a surprise they'll get. (le/ngthy applause)

They came to offer their paper, the same paper that had been serving Batista during the tyranny. They came to offer their banks, the same banks that had served Batista to the very last. And then to talk only about the day that the American ambassador, Mr. Bonsal, arrived. Three days before, the entire bourgeois press, radio, and television began to herald the arrival of Mr. Bonsai as a great event. They gave it such publicity that it really began to jar and insult every revolutionary and every man of honor who may not have been revolutionary. Any honorable person holding any position in the country must have felt ashamed of all that publicity surrounding the arrival of a foreign official, as though the great chief executive of the country were arriving -- the great governor of the country. They began to surround it all with an atmosphere as though a proconsul, Bonsai, were coming.

The First Interview I Had with Bonsal

I remember the first meeting with Bonsai. It's a shame I don't have the habit of keeping a diary of my impressions and of events. Well, no matter, I received him there in Cojimar -- the great Bonsal. The American ambassador! From the first moment he began to talk, he spoke about the Electric Power Company, about the Telephone Company, about the problem of the banks, about the problem of the estates of North American companies, the history of what those companies had done for the country.... Good, those were the very first words that gentleman began with. Furthermore, his manner was truly the manner of someone who comes to a country to give instructions. Of course, he didn't have the slightest idea what sort of people he was dealing with. His manner from the outset was something shocking, that of a gentleman...practically, those were the mannerisms of that gentleman. Finally, he left.

I don't think there was a single interview in which that gentleman didn't harp on the same old theme. But at that time there wasn't yet the Agrarian Law or nationalization of...well, I do not quite recall what month it was; I believe Miro Cardona was still Premier.

Well, of course, from the very outset he began to rub us the wrong way, from the very first moment immediately; simply over the. Ah! The American Military Mission and all that, because one of the first things we found when we got to Havana and at Ciudad Libertad -- Ciudad Libertad after the triumph -- were the officers of the American Military Mission delighted with their life there, with their uniforms, with their job. They were still there; Batista's army was there; Batista's army leaves, enters the Rebel Army, and they still went to the office every day "to render their services." They were ready to render their services calmly to the people.

I remember when I met those officers. I arrived there and I said to myself: "And these people, what are they doing here?" And I went there and called over two or three officers -- and I don't remember whether it was in Spanish or English, I don't remember -- and I told them to leave. How could they give us classes, seeing that we had defeated the army they had been teaching. How could they give us classes?

Of course, all that reaction, all that press, was very interested in what the Ambassador would do. They began to deify him, to prepare the ground. All they managed to do, actually, was to make us look forward even less to the arrival of Mister Ambassador. From the very outset, a series of clashes began because of the opinions and points of view, etc., so that those meetings became strained and intolerable until somewhat later, I recall, after he spent three months asking for an interview -- it was three months before we gave him an interview. Finally, I had no alternative, according to the elementary rules of protocol, but to give it to him.

Why? Because we just couldn't stand that gentleman's proposals. Good, that's how it was with us. Imagine how those ambassadors must talk in other places where they find a Romulo Betancourt, a Prado, or that type of individual. We certainly know that the American ambassador must talk to them as one talks to a servant.

Well, we were speaking about the reaction of all that bourgeoisie and big bourgeoisie the day after the Revolution seized power. Those were the conditions. Two requirements had already been fulfilled. And let us now delve a little deeper into the subject. We must look at it all, eh? I assure you. Let's go into the subject.

The Revolution had (accomplished) two things: it had already come into power with the masses; secondly, it had liquidated the military apparatus of the ruling social class. It had an army of the people, that is, it now had the people armed.

Bearded ones, who hadn't gone to military school, were, however, the army of the people. In fact, the Rebel Army was the firmest, the most solid part of the Revolution.

How were the existing classes related one with the other? Well, in the hands of the ruling class at this moment were: all the financial resources, all the economic resources, the entire press, all of radio; that is, to say, all the big radio and television stations, the big printing presses, the publishing houses, all these, were in their hands. Besides this, were the American magazines, all the imperialist literature in our country. They held all these resources in their hands, the economic resources...they were, to put it simply, still the owners of the country. And in the government....Of course, we were the ones to put him there; in other words, it was simply due to the Rebel Army and the fighting of the Rebel Army that a president of the republic was proclaimed.

I am not going to say that we are now revolutionary sages, nor that we were sages then. Far from it. But I will tell the truth, how we always thought, at least how I used to think. One can introduce personalities when one speaks of how we thought then, because the revolutionary forces were still fragmented. I was sure that neither Urrutia nor anyone could prevent the achievement of a revolutionary program. We certainly knew what a revolutionary program was. If we didn't plunge in with a whole set of basic measures, it was because we understood that a series of revolutionary reforms and laws, given the conditions in which the struggle against Batista was developing, would simply weaken the camp of those forces opposed to the Batista tyranny.

We had succeeded, fortunately, in welding together against Batista a large number of political and social forces. We had succeeded in welding together, into a broad front for the struggle, many sectors of the country. Of course, we had to go through certain embarrassing situations. For example, there were the opinions of the Prio-Miro Cardona group, that whole bunch in the Front, who were in Miami, opposed to a broad, complete unity. They all were in favor of excluding the Socialist Party from that unity. We defended the inclusion of the Socialist Party. Carlos Rafael is witness to all the difficulties we were in because we had to prevent a split, we had to keep (the united front) together. They wanted to have a meeting in Miami to discuss who would make up the union of forces against Batista. We knew that if the discussion took place in Miami, those people were going to impose their conditions and, to put it simply, to break the little unity there was.

Then, we argued that the meeting should be held in the Sierra Maestra, that the delegates of the Front should come to the Sierra Maestra to confer with us. We knew that in any discussion held in the Sierra Maestra, we would be able to lay down the conditions, but that, on the other hand, in Miami, they would be the ones who would lay down the conditions. We weren't going to accept that, because we weren't at all disposed to go along with the exclusions they proposed, and that would have created a problem at a most inopportune moment.

But in the long run, with a little cooperation from some quarters, you could say we all agreed on the prime objective: the prime objective of overthrowing the Batista tyranny. Of course, we had already had a previous experience with the Front. It was when some delegates went and said they represented "the 26th of July" and formed a front there. We had been in the mountains a long time already, more than a year, struggling under difficult conditions, under many privations and without help from the outside; and we became boiling mad, all of us, when we found that they had made a pact in our name in Miami. What we did was to send that letter there which those elements called a divisionist letter, and things like that. The only thing we could not accept at all was that pact.

Then, of course, we made a proposition that had a very clear intention, and always formed part of our proposals. It was the following: proposals that made all reconciliation with the army impossible. We always tried to create the worst conditions for a putsch. In other words, we wanted to make a putsch impossible. We were always worried lest, since the revolutionary forces were not yet very developed, a military coup would take place through the maneuvers of imperialism and reaction, like that famous coup of which so much has been said, Barquin's coup. Still, let it be said in passing, that among those officers there were some good ones, honest, who are today with the Revolution. Well, when the historical record eomes to be written, let them clear up what properly needs to be cleared up.

The leader of that coup was a man who had been shaped by the ideology, and by the methods, and by the style of the North American Department of State or of the Pentagon...I believe he was part of that junta, that junta which bred dictators and this, the Inter-American Organization...I believe they threw us out of it, or didn't admit our representative. They do not comply with the laws of the Organization of American States, well, they do not fulfill their international commitments. The question is that we always tried to prevent a military putsch. When the Revolution did not have sufficiently developed forces, the people would have accepted that change and would have been deceived as other peoples at other times have been deceived, because they do not understand that the system itself, and not individuals, must change. We always feared that maneuver. And what did we do? We said that we would never accept a coup, that we reserve the right to clean out, reorganize and rebuild the armed forces of the Republic. Clearly, no military organization is inclined to accept, even remotely, a formula that implies that a civilian movement could come and rebuild it. And our first move then was this: but, I want you to know first that when we sent word (to strike) from the Sierra Maestra, we were just 120 armed men. Of course, to anyone, it must have seemed a colossal and monstrous absurdity that such a small force should give the word. The followers of Prio and all those people then said that what we were doing was contributing to the strengthening of Batista, because we were scaring the military off with our declarations.

We Stood Alone

The military didn't want to know about us then; they changed their minds later on, due to the progress of the war: many of them were taken prisoner and later freed, and they were well treated. The fact is that at that time, first in the campaign that developed around Moncada which was a slaughter of soldiers for all that, and also through our own proposals, because we were interested in seeing that the military did not stage a coup, and we always warned, "If there's a military coup, the war goes on, and on, and on." And we said that from first to last.

The eventuality that worried us was that imperialism might promote a coup before our forces became strong enough to decide events. That was a most correct tactic, and we expounded it in the letter to Miami denouncing the pact, and the pact was broken. We were alone, but it was a time when it was a thousand times better to walk alone than in bad company.

We Reject the Miami Pact

Another thing: Why, at that time when we were just 120 armed men, weren't we interested in a kind of broad unit with all the organizations that were in exile; yet, later on, when there were thousands of us, we certainly were interested in that broad unity? Very simple. Because in any union at a time when there were 120 of us, the conservative and reactionary elements, or representatives of interests, non-revolutionary but against Batista, would have formed a clear majority. In that unity, we would have been a very small force. However, when the struggle was over, all those organizations agreed that the movement should march ahead victoriously and that the tyranny should be overthrown. At that time, they were interested in unity, but we already were the decisive force in that unity.

At a Miami meeting of representatives of those organizations -- there were so many, I can hardly remember them; but there were several--there were Just one or two revolutionary organizations represented: the Directorate and the 26th of July Movement, and that was all. Then -- I'm talking of Miami, don't make such a face, Carlos_ (apparently an aside to someone, Ed). Or were you represented at Miami? Well, in that group of...at-a meeting in Miami, they could have tried to set the conditions. What did we decide to do? Well; we were going to prolong the situation, and not have a meeting until the war ended. It was better to sidestep the position those people took, opposed as it was to the point of view we were going to present . . . and they were interested in excluding the Socialist Party. This was a basic point of theirs. They would never have accepted it. We understood that it was better not to discuss this problem and to end the war.

That unity did mean definitely that the front against Batista would be maintained, and solid. That is, a broad front, with everyone against Batista. Now then, money didn't matter to me, arms didn't matter to me. Actually we were capturing weapons by the hundreds; as for money, we were collecting taxes from the sugar mills, and we already had millions of pesos. It simply represented a broad front, but a front in which we were the main force. Under those conditions, we were more interested in maintaining that front than in any other interest we could have had, inasmuch as, if anyone were left out of that front, the interests of the reactionaries and rightists would have prevailed. These are the conditions under which the overthrow of Batista took place.

The Power of the People

Then there was the phase when we broke the pact that had been made without our agreement, with no representation from us, and without our authorization and, furthermore, that did not represent any revolutionary goals. That was when Urrutia was proclaimed a candidate against one of their candidates. It would have been better if the Revolution had not made any commitment, but we were obliged to name a candidate. Of course, this was not important, nor is it important in any revolution. In a revolution in which the military apparatus does not exist, In a revolution that conquers power with the people, destroys the military apparatus and has a revolutionary army, it does not matter if it'is Tom, Dick, or Harry, who is nominated.

At any rate, we never had the least worry -- I say this with all clarity -- that the Revolution could be distorted, that the reactionary elements could seize the government, because the force of the masses and the armed force were there, were in revolutionary hands.

What were we worried about? I believe, I do not know what historians will say and that's up to them, but we'll give our opinion -I believe that what happened those first months was correct, considering the interrelation of the existing forces, the social, the political order, and the ideological order, it was convenient to have Urriitia and all those people in the Revolutionary Government. Especialiy, the interrelation of the ideological forces still existing in the country. We had the sympathy of the masses and we had the Rebel Army.

How was the revolutionary leadership formed? The revolutionary leadership was mostly a one-man leadership: that is to say, at that time numerous decisions were made pretty nearly by one man. Why were they made by one man? Simply because a well developed revolutionary organization did not exist. There were differences between those who had been in the mountains and those who had been in the plains; between the leadership in the mountains and the leadership in the plains. There were differences that lasted all through the war and some persisted.

I Never Wanted to be a Dictator

It is not always the most pleasant thing to speak about those problems. But even so, one is able to talk about them. Why? Because a part of those comrades with whom we differed at the time, a part, some of those comrades, today take a magnificent revolutionary position and have fully identified themselves with the Revolution. Another part of that leadership is today in Miami, in Puerto Rico, in the American Department of State, or here making counterrevolution. There certainly were differences. Besides, something else took place: the military arm of the Revolution had developed in a really extraordinary way, and this extraordinary development also changed its relation within the 26th of July Movement. The preponderant force at that time was represented by the Rebel Army. And when we arrived in the plains we found within the Rebel Army -- which was a military organization that was led, as armies are led in war, through decisions of a-supreme commander -- almost a kind of one-man leadership, due to the way the Revolution developed and ended.

I remember, and I can speak of those things calmly for a good reason, a little unpleasant though it may be to speak in the first person. I'm going to say the following because, if some people are going to speak of it, it is well for interested parties to speak of it, too. I remember that we felt we had to be on guard against dictatorship. We always said that one of the things we had to fight against was dictatorship, because our country suffered from dictatorship and also suffered the consequences of dictators. From the time of the War of Independence a series of dictators cropped up; among other peoples of Latin America a series of dictators cropped up. Fortunately, I really was not born with any bent to be a dictator, although leading an army at war creates the kind of authority, as armies do, that makes for one-man rule. It can create the habit of dictatorship in men, the habit of being overbearing, the habit that takes pleasure in giving orders. I never really got any special pleasure from giving orders. I remember that, even during the war, I did not issue orders in a military way. I knew that they would be carried out, but I always liked to give my reasons for them: that this ought to be done for such and such a reason. It always seemed much better to me that people should accept orders because they are convinced of the reasons for them.

The First Stage of Revolutionary Government

That's why they talked so much about dictatorship at the time, why they had already begun to talk about it. Who talked about dictatorship? Were they who talked about dictatorship really worried about it? They were worried only by the fact that the Rebel Army was getting the upper hand in the Cuban revolutionary process. The talk of dictatorship was not against a non-existent dictator; the argument against caudillismo was against a growing revolutionary force. And one heard certain remarks about caudillismo and such things, but this what they were really directed against. But the fact is that when the Revolution comes to power, the Revolution, that's the way it we being led.

There is something else. We, the principal leaders of the Revolution, did not even meet to discuss many of the problems. Some of my other comrades were very confident and many of those decisions were taken in the heat of events and were not collective decisions. At tl time, on the other hand, the first Revolutionary Government include( elements representing those classes. I said that it was proper to 1 through that stage. First, we probably had prejudices of our own. I do not know whether it is unfair for us to call it prejudice; but, among other things, it was necessary...we acted, certainly, imbued with the idea that the revolutionary struggle could not be interpreted in terms of personal ambitions, and things of that sort; second the circumstances gave rise to the naming of a president and a count of ministers...

Let us return to the main thread of the theme, which was somehow lost. The main thread was as follows: There was a group that formed part of the government and largely decided who the ministers of the government would be. They put in the government men who, in some cases, were people with anachronistically conservative or more or lo conservative minds; in short, it was a conservative type of government.

Good, I recall that in those early days the responsibility for making revolutionary laws was left in their hands. The policy we adopted was that there was a council of ministers all set up and that V was not a matter of calling the President on the telephone or anything like that. Throughout that whole period, we waited to see what would happen. And what finally happened had to happen. The first went went by and they had not passed a single revolutionary law. We had ' put up with this because some of those gentlemen had a certain following among the people; and if they had no following because of their merits, they had a following because the entire press and radio and television, which were in the hands of the social class whose ideological and economic interests those gentlemen represented, defended them and had taken it upon themselves to wage a big propaganda campaign for them. The interests those gentlemen represented were diametrically opposed to the interests of those peasants whom we met when we arrived in the Sierra Maestra; diametrically opposed to the interests of the farm laborers who worked three months during harvest and then went through the endless "dead season" hungry; diametrically opposed to the interests of the great majority of the country.

What Did Miro Cardona & Company Represent?

And it was simply necessary to pass through that stage, to use it to unmask those gentlemen.

Now, under what conditions does the Revolution come to power? Why do all these things happen? Well, all these things happen as a result of the absence of what we stated before: a single revolutionary movement, organically embodying all revolutionary forces. So, it had to happen. We represented part of those forces; but did not have the organization.

How were the revolutionary forces represented? What were the revolutionary forces, in the first place, the revolutionary social forces? The working class, the peasants, the students, and more or less wide strata of the petite bourgeoisie. Those were what could be called revolutionary forces whose interests were opposed-to the interests of the big bourgeoisie, in the first place, to the interests of imperialism and of the financial, commercial, and industrial bourgeoisie: small property owners, small businessmen, that whole stratum of the petite bourgeoisie; intellectuals, students, peasants, and the working class. They were the forces, the revolutionary classes.

Now, what did Urrutia represent in all that? What did Miro Cardona represent? What did Felipe Pazos represent? What did Justo Carrillo represent? What did those gentlemen represent? I am not going to ask what Manolo Fernandez represented, because, I believe, he represented trash; he was a "mad anarchist."

Reporter: He aspired to be another Peron, from the Ministry...

Dr. Castro: To tell the truth, I do not know that gentleman. I was told later that he was very famous for his conversations in cafes and that he talked for hours and hours and hours; I do not know him. The truth is, I did not know many of those people; they were there in the government...

Then, what organizations represented these forces? The working class, the most advanced, most developed elements of the working class, of the industrial and agricultural workers? What political organization represented that class? Not the entire class, because within those classes there were sectors with a petit bourgeois mind, especially those with higher incomes. Certainly, no one can deny that the petite bourgeoisie was against Batista.

The P.S.P. Represented the Working Class

The Popular Socialist Party represented the most advanced elements of the working class, both in the city and in the country. It also had some followers in the countryside; among the small farmers we found a few militant followers of the Popular Socialist Party in the Sierra Maestra. But, fundamentally, it represented that class.

The 26th of July Movement represented, in the first place, the peasants; that is, the entire peasant movement which was organized around the Rebel Army. It represented...the 26th of July Movement attracted many people, too, from the working class who did not belong to any party, laborers, groups of workers who belonged to some party of the petite bourgeoisie, any political party, decent people, also joined the 26th of July Movement, professional people, intellectuals, youth, students, and elements of the petite bourgeoisie, the most progressive and the most revolutionary elements of the middle class and of the petite bourgeoisie also joined. It can be said that those were the forces that the 26th of July represented.

Similarly, the Revolutionary Directorate represented more or lest the same sectors, but fundamentally the student sector, where Jose Antonio Echeverria, Faure Chomon and their companions came from. The Revolutionary Directorate sprang up from the student groups and in turn also worked to win members from labor sectors, intellectual sectors and peasant sectors.

That is to say, the revolutionary forces of society were represented in three organizations. It is a fact, I believe, that we have all learned to agree in matters of politics and revolutionary theory. Isn't that so?

You, what sector did you belong to, to the intellectuals? (pointing to Soto).

SOTO: To the middle class.

DR. CASTRO: No, you did not belong to the petite bourgeoisie...

Well, you came from the petite bourgeoisie but were a member of the Socialist Party, a vanguard organization... Listen, if you are going to say that to the people, they are not going to understand well the revolutionary instruction you give them in class. You were an intellectual, you were a member of the party of the working class. And that business of being an intellectual is something among us here! Now, no, no! Lionel, now you are an intellectual. It's true that I recognize you sincerely as an intellectual of the working class, so don't let the jokers here misunderstand you and harm the program of revolutionary instruction.

Those are the forces.

They Defended the Bourgeoisie

Whom did Prio Socarras represent? I still believe that one can say he represented the "lumpen bourgeoisie," to coin a phrase. Of course, like the crowd that followed him, his role was to defend the interests of the Yankee monopolies, to defend the interests of the landowners and of the big bourgeoisie. Without any doubt all those groups... Pazos? Pazos was a bourgeois intellectual; Justico was a bourgeois intellectual; Manolo was so much loose garbage. Ray, for all his ideology, his mind, was a perverse defender of bourgeois ideology. The great debates in the Council of Ministers were simply over the question whether works projects were to be carried out by the Administration or by contractors. That was one of the tremendous arguments we had with that gentleman. Our position was that the projects should be carried out and that it was inconceivable that a worker would work better on a job for a contractor than for the state. It was one of the first points we clashed over in the Council.

Let me say that the President signed the Agrarian Law and signed some other legislation, but the situation was becoming more difficult every day.

The other elements who had really played at revolution, who had been in exile, and were portrayed as great men here on the bourgeois radio and television and in the press, they represented simply the interests of the dominant classes.

Well now, the revolutionary sectors, the revolutionary classes, were represented by three separate organizations. Those three separate organizations, of course, maintained contacts. They helped each other during the revolution, during the revolutionary struggle, but organically they were three completely separate organizations each of which had its own leadership, its own tactics, its own sphere of action. It is well known, in fact, that there was friction between our colleagues in the Directorate and us because of the hassle over arms.

REPORTER: All of our comrades in the Directorate and we were closely united in the Revolution.

The Force Lenin Spoke About

DR. CASTRO: How absurd those problems really appear today! How different are the power, security and confidence, the force of the revolution of today from those early days when the Revolution had to face the most trying moments, when it had to face the responsibilities of power, to launch a revolutionary program, and when a large part of the government, all of the press, all of the mass media and, above all, a force -- a force that I believe was the greatest -- the force Lenin had spoken about, that is, the force of custom or of the manner and habits of thinking and looking at things prevalent among a vast segment of the populace.

That is, force of habit, a series of prejudices, instilled, sustained, and spread by the ruling economic classes, by imperialism and by capitalism in our country, constituted, beyond any doubt whatever, one of the most powerful forces that faced the Revolution. And yet, the revolutionary elements of society, the revolutionary social forces, were divided into three organizations, into three separate forces, (taking) three separate paths.

Revolutionary Unity

How much more healthy the situation would have been if, when the Revolution came to power, these forces had been an organic unit as they are today, with a single leadership, with a single program, with one tactical orientation, with one strategic orientation? Now, of course, this is to pose something illusory. Why? Because the conditions that produced this unity are the conditions that were engendered by the revolutionary process itself.

Our force, that of the 26 of July Movement, at that time made up primarily of the elements of the Rebel Army, was a force that comprised many comrades, many of them officers of the Rebel Army, who, in a revolutionary way, from a revolutionary point of view, had been magnificent fighters, valiant in battle. Many of them were of peasant origin and lacked any solid political instruction.

From inclination, from feeling, from a spirit of rebelliousness, they had joined the ranks of the Rebel Army, enemies of abuse, enemies of crime, men who, while lacking opportunity and with no political instruction at all, developed into officers. Many of these comrades were easy prey then to the lies and confusion sowed in our ranks.

Of course, there were some comrades -- there weren't many, fortunately, who attained some prominence in the Rebel Army, elements who, even before they joined our ranks, knowingly defended the interests of the bourgeoisie and the ideology of the bourgeoisie. They had reactionary ideas. Many of the comrades of the Rebel Army, magnificent comrades, today politically conscious militant comrades of the Rebel Army, having acquired unusual training in the course of these three years, were good comrades, but soldiers who, at the time, still lacked any solid ideological training. That was the situation.

In other words, the very force the Revolution counted on was fundamentally of peasant origin, of working-class origin,. including politically, many comrades in the Army who could neither read nor write.

Conditions that made it possible for the revolutionary forces that exist today to take shape were maturing through the revolutionary process. And that organic unity of the revolutionary forces, that is to say, that unity was forged, precisely, and it necessarily had to be forged, through the revolutionary process itself, which is in fact how it was forged.

What is the meaning of the organization of this Party, this organization? What does the unification of all these revolutionary forces mean? What does the unity of these three organizations mean? What, clearly and in all truth, does it mean for the people, and what does it mean for the Revolution? It means that all the revolutionary forces of society, all the revolutionary forces of society, that is, the working class, the peasant class, the students, the revolutionary strata of the petite bourgeoisie, and the intellectuals -- that is to say, the only sectors or classes in society, the only classes in society who, by their very nature and because of the place they occupy in the society, are called upon to be revolutionaries, are today all united within a single revolutionary organization.

The Working Class

In other words, then, all the forces which were previously divided among these separate organizations are now fused in a single organization, under a single revolutionary leadership. What does this mean? It means simply a tremendous strengthening of the Revolution.

From the very first moments, these forces, except for some differences and except for some initial friction, advanced, though separately, of course, by common agreement from the beginning of the Revolution. We went through that first stage of the Revolution with more or less discussion, with more or less exchange of views.

That is, a revolution acquires extraordinary strength when the revolutionary strata of the people, the revolutionary classes, represented in their class organizations, become united in a single organization. And the facts have shown this to be so.

Consider, for example, what forces support the Revolution. They are not the big landowners, they are not the owners of sugar mills, nor big bankers, nor businessmen, nor industrialists, nor any of those people, though there may be an individual here or there who does support the Revolution, for there are always exceptions; there is always the exceptional case of some philanthropist, some honest individual who, besides, becomes enthusiastic over the Revolution and can pass beyond his own class interests.

The working class...Who joined the procession at the funeral of Manuel Ascunce? (16-year old volunteer in the literacy campaign, lynched in the Escambray by counterrevolutionaries in October, 1961 - Ed.) Fundamentally, of course, it was the entire population, but who made up the bulk of that demonstration? Simply the workers. Who make up the bulk of the National Revolutionary Militia? The workers. Who gave their lives in the fighting at Playa Giron, who fell and died fighting the mercenary invaders? It was the force composed of battalions principally from the capital, though units from Matanzas and Cienfuegos also participated, fighting bravely there, too, workers in the overwhelming majority.

In other words, the fundamental strength of the Revolution, the backbone of the Revolution, is made up of the working class.

The Revolution in the Escambray Mountains

Now who, along with the workers, supports the Revolution? Let's not say, rather let us distinguish between agricultural workers -the agricultural workers on the sugar latifundias who today are members of sugar cane cooperatives -- they were a group that before they formed cooperatives, belonged to the working class and should be viewed as such; the peasants, the peasants of the Sierra Maestra,

the peasants of the Baracoa area, the peasants of the Escambray, certainly, because the best proof of what we're saying is the following: despite the fact that a group of elements in no way revolutionary developed there, a group of free-loaders, and we are going to distinguish clearly between the role played there by the "Second Front of the Escambray" and the Revolutionary Directorate. But the situation was such that that band of free-loaders practically forced out from the Escambray the more revolutionary elements, for neither Menoyo nor those people started the Second Front. The Second Front was started by comrades of the Directorate, but the group that developed under the leadership of Menoyo and those people ended up by virtually displacing the comrades of the Directorate out of one Zone. Among those gentlemen, the more revolutionary elements were practically pushed aside. That was the situation prevailing in Las Villas when Che Guevara arrived there.

Those people, who had formed a clique there, at a certain point began to act on their own, and followed an outrageous line of action. There are some facts, for example, which are worth recalling. Just one of those gentlemen of Menoyo's "Second Front," himself murdered thirty-three persons. During the entire war, even during the most difficult times among our forces throughout the Sierra Maestra, in a war lasting over two years, we found it necessary to impose the death penalty to hardly more than ten persons. And one single individual, one man alone, had executed thirty-three peasants. And the terrible thing is that this was a group that was up there sponging off the people.

In the Escambray a Revolutionary Tradition Was Not Awakened, as in the Sierra Maestra

A revolutionary tradition was not awakened there, as it was in the Sierra Maestra. The whole way in which the nucleus of the so-called "Second Front" was developed had a negative influence on that entire Escambray area. When the war ended, all of the jobs, from the mayoralty of Cienfuegos, Trinidad, and Topes de Collantes, to the director of public works of Hanabanilla and other places were distributed. They later went there to go politicking as much as they could. That contributed to the development in the Escambray region of a counterrevolutionary movement they organized.

However, even though that counterrevolutionary nucleus developed there, when they had 200 or 300 or 400 and even 500 men -- not all from the Escambray, because there were a lot of worthless people who went up there to the Escambray. That's not all. The people in the Escambray were a small minority -- the forces that hunted down the counterrevolutionaries there had 3,000 men from the Escambray. In other words, the Revolutionary Militia from the Escambray numbered 3,000 when they had hardly 100, which definitely shows that the small farmers benefited from agrarian reform, rescued by the Revolution from taxes, given teachers, doctors, and credits, even when on some occasions, the revolutionary policy came to peasants more slowly than in other places. Despite that, that is despite the fact that they actually carried on counterrevolutionary work there, negative work, the number of people they managed to get from the Escambray was very, very small. And the Revolution had thousands of militiamen and still has thousands of militiamen there.

Since the Escambray was cleaned up, after the revolutionary work was done there, there are innumerable Revolutionary Defense Committees and militiamen in the Escambray. The anti-illiteracy campaign in the Escambray culminates on the 9th; more than 20,000 people have learned how to read and write in the Escambray. The Escambray is today a revolutionary reserve. And it is undeniable that the small peasant, the poor peasant, the small farmer, that numerous sector of the population, is decidedly with the Revolution, in spite of the fact that culturally it had the highest rate of illiteracy in the country, where they lacked the experience that the organized labor movement had, and the degree of political awareness of the labor movement, the proletariat. That sector is with the Revolution.

Now, the students are with the Revolution. What better proof is there that the students are with the Revolution than the 100,000 volunteers who are teaching people how to read and write? In other words, while the students, in Venezuela, in Caracas, for example, are in the streets protesting against repression, struggling against imperialism, fighting the fascist measures of Mr. Romulo Betancourt and while throughout Latin America there is a vigorous student movement struggling against imperialism, in our country 100,000 students have gone into the countryside to teach people how to read and write. An overwhelming majority of the intellectuals are with the Revolution; honest professional men are with the Revolution, and a wide and numerous stratum of the petite bourgeoisie is with the Revolution. That cannot be denied.

That social stratum, the upper bourgeoisie, the counterrevolution; is trying to drag them back, while the Revolution is trying and is succeeding in keeping the best elements with the Revolution. As you can see, Lionel, it is not bad to come from the petite bourgeoisie. Those are truths.

The Working Class Is With The Revolution.

I believe that our people can perfectly understand these things because they see them. When it sees a congress of 10,000 labor delegates, when they see huge gatherings, when they see hundreds of thousands of militiamen, they realize that the working class is with the Revolution. When they see 100,000 volunteer teachers, they realize that the students are with the Revolution. When they see peasant meetings, tens of thousands of peasant militiamen, they realize that the peasants are with the Revolution, and they realize that the intellectuals are with the Revolution, the more honest professional men. The facts prove it,

And, this precisely has been the significance of the unity, the efforts of all the revolutionary sectors of society united in a single revolutionary organization.

Because now another question comes up: How many revolutions could three separate organizations have made? That is, those organizations that represented the revolutionary sectors of society, could they have made three separate revolutions? Or did they have to make one revolution?

I believe this is an important point. In discussing the question of the United Party of the Revolution,-it is, above all, desirable for the people to understand the historical roots of the revolutionary process and of the unity of the organizations, so that everyone can realize that there are certain positions or certain attitudes that are purely utopian, illusory, idealistic, false.

We recall that during the interrogation [of the prisoners from Playa Giron - Ed.] one fellow spoke up about a third position and a string of idiocies along the same lines.

First, I must say one thing. In the first place, we are gaining a lot of experiences with the Revolution itself. The Revolution itself is revolutionizing us. The Revolution itself is making us more and more revolutionary everyday. There was a time when we were not revolutionaries. Yes, there was a time when there was nothing revolutionary about me. Ah, was it because I was reactionary, thieving and corrupt? No, nothing of the sort. There was a time when -politically I could be considered a complete illiterate as a result of my class origins.

And, did I know more about revolution twenty years ago than Marinello, Carlos Rafael, Anibal, Blas? No, sir. Twenty years ago, many of us knew not one word about revolution, among other things, because twenty years ago many of us...I believe that twenty years ago Raul was just learning to read and write; we were just boys.

But even though many of us were not just boys, we came from social classes other than the working class, and I am very much aware of that; very much aware, furthermore, of the influence that class origin must have had. on our thinking. But by the same token I am very much aware of this too, very much aware of instilling in myself revolutionary thought, clear, straight, and cleansed of everything that could have remained in me by reasons that have nothing to do with the consciousness and will of men. But many of us, even when we were students at college, were still political illiterates. I was a political illiterate when I finished, even when I received my bachelor's degree.

Should I be ashamed to admit it? No, quite the contrary. I am very proud to know that I was a B.A. and knew nothing about politics or revolution, and yet today I do know something. Because that proves that I have made some progress.

Don't think I am talking about my own case just because it is my own. I believe I am talking about a case I know better than others and which can serve...As we have had here today the pleasant surprise of seeing the students of the National School of Revolutionary Instruction present, I have taken advantage of the opportunity to expound some ideas that might be useful. It must be an example similar to many others.

What is the most revolutionary class? The working class, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Why? Because its social position makes it ?volutionary. Which are the reactionary classes, by definition? The wealthy classes. Their social position as the exploiting class makes their minds and their thinking reactionary.

But in the Revolution there are many cases of revolutionary comrades coming from strata other than the working classes. What has happened in some countries with the presence of numerous people from the middle class in the labor movement? Well, they have instilled the thinking of the petite bourgeoisie and of the middle class in the labor movement. That has happened and we have to struggle se that it does not happen here. We therefore have a tremendous struggle in revolutionary education. Why? So that the presence of so many of them shall not inculcate the ideas of a vascillating social class that does not understand discipline, that is given to despairing, that has a whole string of vices, which I am not now inventing, but have been known throughout the history of the revolutionary movement from the middle of the past century until today.

Now, does that mean that a good revolutionary cannot come from that stratum? No A magnificent revolutionary can come from it; in fact, the great theoreticians of revolutionary thought came from those strata. But why did they come from those strata? Because they were the ones who went to school and to the universities.

I have not come here to present an autobiography, far from it; nor an analysis of how I came to be revolutionary. If I ever have the time, and right now I don't see where I will find the time, I may write about it. But I can say this. Whenever I discovered something, I always held firmly to it, as many other people do.

My first contacts at the University -- even with bourgeois political economy -- for I remember that I began to see contradictions and began to have a few revolutionary ideas while taking a course on bourgeois political economy.

Later on, naturally, at the University, we began making our first contacts with the Communist Manifesto, with the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and all that. This marked (the beginning of) a process. I can certainly say, admitting it honestly, many of the things which we have done in the Revolution are not things we invented -- far from it.

When we left the University, especially in my own particular case, I had already been greatly influenced -- I wouldn't say that I was a Marxist-Leninist, far from it. It is possible that I had two million petit bourgeois prejudices and a string of ideas that I'm glad not to have anymore, but fundamentally -- if I did not have all those prejudices, I would not have been in the position to make a contribution to the Revolution, as I did.

Anyway, let's put things as they are.

I meant to say that had I been in the position of Carlos Rafael (Rodriguez), we would have faced a much more difficult situation when we went up into the mountains. Definitely, certain circumstances were really quite favorable. Our revolutionary thinking was already strongly influenced precisely by contact, and that is how arose.... I remember that when we were reading the history of Latin American independence, even in the classical history books, of course, books written by bourgeois authors explain that the influence of the Declaration of the Rights of Man of the French Revolution was a factor that greatly influenced the thought of Latin American liberators. Ideas naturally always spread and win adherents.

One thing is indisputable -- I'll come back to this point later on -- these ideas already formed much of our revolutionary thinking, although we could hardly say that we were polished revolutionaries. We still cannot honestly claim to be polished revolutionaries. Why not? Because we ourselves realize full well that our love for the accomplishments of the Revolution, our passion for the Revolution, is something that we felt growing from day to day, our attitude in the race of all the problems.; at most, today we believe that we are thorough-going revolutionaries and five years from now we may find out that we were really still ignoramuses.

We All Have Much To Learn.

I believe that we all have a great deal of studying to do. Am I a convinced revolutionary? Yes, I am a convinced revolutionary, that Is so. To some of those who have at times asked me, some people have asked me if I used to think at the time of Moncada as I do today, I say, "I thought very much like I do today." That is the truth. Anyone who reads what we said on that occasion will see that many fundamental things about the Revolution are expressed in that document, and that it is, moreover, a carefully written document. It was writ= ten with sufficient care to expound some basic points without at the same time raising problems that could limit our scope of action within the Revolution, so as to prevent the movement which we believed could lead to the overthrow of Batista from being very much reduced and limited. In other words, it was necessary to try to broaden that movement as much as possible.

If we had not written that document carefully, if it had been a more radical program -- although it is true that many people were somewhat skeptical about programs and often paid them scant attention -- of course, the revolutionary movement of struggle against Batista would certainly not have gained the scope it did and which made victory possible. Anyone who reads the manifesto, the speech on that occasion, will realize what the basic ideas were.

There are some things, like certain suggestions we made on that occasion, such as increasing the cane workers' share of the sugar, which were brought up to me later on at meetings with the cane workers. They would say to me: "Good, but didn't you mention an increase?" And I told them: "Yes, but at that time we could not say what we can say today and that is that we have made those cane workers owners of the land which is much more than having granted them an increase in the share of sugar."

Certain suggestions were made at that time simply through care not to damage the scope of the revolutionary movement. I remember that on that occasion among the books the police caught us with was a text of Lenin. And then one of the lawyers asked at the Moncada trial: "And that book? Whose is it?" "That book was ours." And, of course, as I was somewhat irritated, I added: "Yes, that book was ours and anybody who does not read those books is an ignoramus." And that shut him up!

By that time, our revolutionary thinking had, in general, already taken shape. We were not, however, complete revolutionaries; we were far more revolutionary when we attained power. We are convinced revolutionaries. I say so with all due sincerity, because I believe that these appearances should not become a matter of theoretical explanation of things and... There is something that can help more to shape the political thinking of the people, and that is to speak this way, with complete frankness and clarity and honesty.

I consider myself more revolutionary today than I was even on t first of January. Was I a revolutionary on the first of January? Yes, I believe I was a revolutionary on the first of January. That all of the ideas I have today I had on the first of January.

Now then, am I at this moment a man who has studied thoroughly all of the political philosophy of the Revolution, the entire history? No, I have not studied it thoroughly. Of course, I am absolutely convinced and have the intention -- an intention we all ought to have -- to study. Recently, while looking through some books up there in the capital, I found that when I was a student I had read up to page 370 of Capital. That's as far as I got. When I have the time, I plan to continue studying Karl Marx's Capital.

I Believe Absolutely in Marxism!

In my student years I had studied the Communist Manifesto and selected works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. Of course, it is very interesting to reread now the things I read at that time. Well, now, do I believe in Marxism? I believe absolutely in Marxism! Did I believe on the first of January? I believed on the first of January Did I believe on the 26th of July? I believed on the 26th of July! Did I understand it as I do today, after almost ten years of struggle? No, I did not understand it as I do today. Comparing what I understood then with what I understand today, there is a great difference. Did I have prejudices? Yes, I had prejudices on the 26th of July, yes. Could I have been called a thoroughgoing revolutionary on the 26th of July? No, I could not have been called a thoroughgoing revolutionary. Could I have been called a thoroughgoing revolutionary on the first of January? No, I could have been called almost a thoroughgoing revolutionary. Could I be called a thoroughgoing revolutionary today? That would mean that I feel sati fled with what I know and, of course, I am not satisfied. Do I have any doubt about Marxism and do I feel that certain interpretations were wrong and have to be revised? No, I do not have the slightest doubt!

What occurs to me is precisely the opposite: the more experience we gain from life, the more we learn what imperialism is -- and not by word, but in the flesh and blood of our people -- the more we have to face up to that imperialism; the more we learn about imperialist policies throughout the world, in South Vietnam, in the Congo, in Algeria, in Korea, everywhere in the world; the more we dig deeper and uncover the bloody claws of imperialism, the miserable exploitation, the abuse they commit in the world, the crimes they commit against humanity, the more, in the first place, we feel sentimentally Marxist, emotionally Marxist, and the more we see and discover all the truths contained in the doctrine of Marxism. The more we have to race the reality of a revolution and the class struggle, and we see what the class struggle really is, in the setting of a revolution, the more convinced we become of all of the truths Marx and Engels Wrote and the truly ingenious interpretations of scientific socialism Lenin made.

The more we read today, with the experience, the load of experience we have, in those books, the more convinced we become of their inspired vision, of the foresight they had.

But there is something more than what anyone, any revolutionary leader can say to explain why Marxism made its way in history. It is enough to read the history of Marx, the biography of Marx, which is a book I believe everyone should read when the Government Printing Office publishes it, which is the biography of Marx by Mehring.

But who was Marx, his life, his work, his sacrifices? How did he study? And it will be seen that Marx was a man little known in his time, even hated by many intellectuals, by many pseudo-revolutionaries. His work was known only in small circles. In his time, many other socialist writers had far more renown and prestige than Marx and were better known than Marx. A whole series of writers on socialism who wrote that they were socialists, but who were socialists as a Cuban in 1917 might have been, who had conceived of an ideal world, a more just world, without slaves and without exploiters; they were idealistic socialists, utopian socialists. Then, many of these people devoted themselves to working out a program, writing about a utopia, expressing a revolutionary sentiment on an idealistic basis, not on a scientific basis. But many of those writers had the opportunity to make themselves known; many of those thinkers, many of those thoughts penetrated broad segments of the proletariat in Europe, in France, in Italy, in Germany, in Belgium, in England. Marx writes his scientific, eminently scientific work, not writing things as he wished them to be, but writing things as he saw them, as they would have to be as a result of the very development of human society. From his study of history, from his study of economics, he drew a series of conclusions. It is a fact that the work of Marx has made a way for itself. Indeed, the work itself, the truths it contained were so superior and so solid and had such a firm basis, compared to anything of all other socialist writers, that the workers he wrote for -- because he wrote for the workers and knew that one day, the workers would understand his work. He had a blind faith that the workers would understand his revolutionary work, his ought end, as they interpreted the truth, it would become the dominant thought among workers throughout the world.

Engels Carries on The Work of Marx

And Marx's work by itself -- and this is the fullest proof of the scientific value, of the theoretical value, of the real value of a revolutionary doctrine -- the fact that it showed the way by itself, for when all the most advanced workers, the most progressive intellectuals, began to search through everything that had been written on socialism, they rejected all other socialist theories as lacking a sound basis, as lacking a scientific character, and adopted the theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. After the death of Marx, Engels undertook to steer the thought... One must keep in mind that Engels was a great thinker, too, but that Engels sacrificed his own intellectual work, because Marx was so poor and lived in such misery and hunger and under such terrible conditions that he saw his children die of hunger, that Engels who knew Marx's genius better than anyone else stuck to working as a merchant simply so that Marx could write Capital, on which he had been working for twenty years. It was one of the most noble, most self-denying and most beautiful lives; and one of the most altruistic sacrifices ever made was the sacrifice Engels made for Marx.

This, aside from Marx's own life, his conduct, his spirit as a self-denying and exemplary father, the sacrifices he made, are sufficient in themselves to destroy one of the greatest hoaxes that the bourgeoisie, capitalism and imperialism have spread about. Marxism: that it is an enemy of the family, children, women. One has only to read the life of Marx to begin to real