What the revolution does do, however, is to direct that capacity. Our task today is to orient the creative talent of all the medical professionals toward the tasks of social medicine.
We are at the end of an era, and not only here in Cuba. Despite all that is said to the contrary and despite all the hopes of some people, the forms of capitalism we have known, under which we have been raised and have suffered, are being defeated throughout the world. The monopolies are being defeated. Collective science every day registers new and important triumphs. And we have had the pride and the self-sacrificing duty of being the vanguard in Latin America of a liberation movement that began some time ago, in the other subjugated continents of Africa and Asia. That very profound social change also demands very profound changes in the mentality of the people.
Individualism as such, as the isolated action of a person alone in a social environment, must disappear in Cuba. Individualism tomorrow should be the proper utilization of the whole individual, to the absolute benefit of the community. But even when all this is understood today, even when these things I am saying are comprehended, and even when everyone is willing to think a little about the present, about the past, and about what the future should be, changing the manner of thinking requires profound internal changes and helping bring about profound external changes, primarily social.
Those external changes are taking place in Cuba every day. One way of learning about this revolution, of getting to know the forces the people keep stored inside themselves, forces that have been dormant for so long, is to visit all of Cuba, visit the cooperatives and all the workplaces being created. And one way of getting to the heart of the medical question is not only knowing, not only visiting these places, but also getting to know the people who make up those cooperatives and work centers. Go there and find out what diseases they have, what their ailments are, what extreme poverty they have experienced over the years, inherited from centuries of repression and total submission. The doctor, the medical worker, should then go to the heart of their new work, which is as a person among the masses, a person within the community.
Whatever happens in the world, by always being close to the patient, by knowing his or her psychology so deeply, by being the representative of those who come near pain and relieve it, the doctor always has a very important job, a job of great responsibility in social life.
Some time ago, a few months, it so happened here in Havana that a group of students, recently qualified doctors, did not want to go to the countryside and were demanding extra payment for going. From the viewpoint of the past it is more than logical that this would occur; at least it seems that way to me, and I understand it. I remember that this was the way it was, the way it was thought about some years ago. Once more it is the gladiator in rebellion, the solitary fighter who wants to ensure a better future, better conditions, and to achieve recognition for what he or she does.
But what would happen if it were not those individuals — the majority of whose families could pay for their several years of study — who completed their courses and are now beginning to practise their profession? What if instead it was 200 or 300 peasants who had emerged, let’s say by magic, from the university lecture halls?
What would have happened, simply, is that those peasants would have run immediately, and with great enthusiasm, to attend to their brothers and sisters. They would have requested the posts with the most responsibility and the most work, in order to show that the years of study given them were not in vain. What would have happened is what will happen within six or seven years, when the new students, children of the working class and the peasantry, receive their professional degrees of whatever type.
But we should not view the future with fatalism and divide human beings into children of the working class or peasantry, and counterrevolutionaries. That is simplistic, it is not true, and there is nothing that educates an honorable person more than living within a revolution.
None of us, none of the first group that arrived in the Granma, who established ourselves in the Sierra Maestra, and who learned to respect the peasant and the worker, living together with them — none of us had a past as a worker or peasant. Naturally, there were those who had to work, who had known certain wants in their childhood. But hunger, true hunger, none of us had known, and we began to know it, temporarily, during the two long years in the Sierra Maestra. And then many things became very clear… we learned perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth. We learned it there, we who were not children of the working class or the peasantry. So why should we now shout to the four winds that we are the privileged ones and that the rest of the Cuban people cannot learn, too? Yes, they can learn. In fact, the revolution today demands that they learn, demands that they understand well that the pride of serving our fellow man is much more important than a good income; that the people’s gratitude is much more permanent, much more lasting than all the gold one can accumulate. Each doctor, in the sphere of their activity, can and should accumulate that prized treasure, the people’s gratitude.
We must then begin to erase our old concepts and come ever closer and ever more critically to the people. Not in the way we got closer before, because all of you will say: “No, I am a friend of the people. I enjoy talking with workers and peasants, and on Sundays I go to such and such a place to see such and such a thing.” Everybody has done that. But they have done it practising charity, and what we have to practise today is solidarity. We should not draw closer to the people to say: “Here we are. We come to give you the charity of our presence, to teach you with our science, to demonstrate your errors, your lack of refinement, your lack of elementary knowledge.” We should go with an investigative zeal and with a humble spirit, to learn from the great source of wisdom that is the people.
Often we realize how mistaken we were in concepts we knew so well; they had become part of us and, automatically, of our consciousness. Every so often we ought to change all our concepts, not just general, social or philosophical concepts, but also, at times, our medical concepts. We will see that diseases are not always treated as one treats illness in a big-city hospital. We will see then that the doctor also has to be a farmer, that he or she has to learn to cultivate new foods and, by his or her example, to cultivate the desire to consume new foods, to diversify the food structure in Cuba — so small and so poor in an agricultural country that is potentially the richest on earth. We will then see that under such circumstances we will have to be quite pedagogic, at times very pedagogic, that we will also have to be politicians; that the first thing we will have to do is not go offering our wisdom, but showing that we are ready to learn with the people, to carry out that great and beautiful common experience — to build a new Cuba.
We have already taken many steps, and the distance between January 1, 1959, and today cannot be measured in a conventional manner. Some time ago the people understood that not only had a dictator fallen here, but a system had fallen as well. Now the people should learn that upon the ruins of a crumbled system, one must build a new one that brings about the people’s absolute happiness.
…We have definitively become convinced that there is a common enemy. We know that everyone looks over their shoulders to see if someone will hear them, if someone is listening from some embassy who will transmit what they hear, before they clearly state their opinion against the monopolies, before saying clearly: “Our enemy, and the enemy of all Latin America, is the monopolistic government of the United States of America.”
If everybody already knows that this is the enemy, and if our starting point is knowing that whoever struggles against that enemy has something in common with us, then comes the second part. What are our goals here in Cuba? What do we want? Do we want the people’s happiness or not? Are we struggling for Cuba’s absolute economic liberation or not? Are we or are we not struggling to be a free country among free countries, without belonging to any military
bloc, without having to consult any embassy of any great power on earth about any domestic or foreign decision we make? Are we thinking of redistributing the wealth of those who have too much, to give to those who have nothing? Are we thinking here of doing creative work, a dynamic daily source of all our happiness? If so, then we already have the goals to which we referred… At times of great danger, at times of great tension and great creation, what counts are the great enemy and the great goals. If we agree, if we all already know where we are going, then whatever happens, we must begin our work.
I was telling you that to be a revolutionary requires having a revolution. We already have it. And a revolutionary must also know the people with whom he or she is to work. I think we still don’t know one another well. I think we still have to travel a while along that road… [Yet] if we know the goals, if we know the enemy, and if we know the direction in which we have to travel, then the only thing left for us is to know the daily stretch of the road and to take it. Nobody can point out that stretch; that stretch is the personal road of each individual; it is what he or she will do every day, what he or she will gain from their individual experience, and what he or she will give of themselves in practising their profession, dedicated to the people’s well-being.
If we already possess all the elements with which to march toward the future, let us then recall that phrase of José Martí, which at this moment I am not putting into practise, but which we must constantly put into practise: “The best form of saying is doing.” And let us then march toward the future of Cuba.
The full text of this speech is printed in the expanded edition of Che Guevara Reader, published by Ocean Press in 2003.
BOOKS FROM OCEAN PRESS
CUBA BY KORDA
Alberto Korda
The first publication of the work of the Cuban photographer celebrated for his iconic photograph of Che Guevara. If you don’t know his name, you know his photograph of Che staring into the distance like a prophet, an image that has been reproduced on millions of T-shirts and posters around the world.
ISBN 978-1-920888-64-0
CHE: A MEMOIR BY FIDEL CASTRO
Edited by David Deutschmann
Fidel Castro writes with great candor and emotion about a historic revolutionary partnership that changed the face of Cuba and Latin America, vividly portraying Che—the man, the revolutionary, and the intellectual—and revealing much about his own inimitable determination and character.
ISBN 978-1-920888-25-1 (Also available in Spanish 978-1-921235-02-3)
TANIA
Undercover with Che Guevara in Bolivia
Ulises Estrada
Tania is a gripping account of the extraordinary woman who fought and died alongside Che Guevara in Bolivia. Tania was one of Cuba’s most successful agents in Latin America, penetrating Bolivian high society and preparing for Che’s clandestine entry into the country. When her cover was blown, Tania joined Che’s guerrilla movement but was killed in an ambush in August 1967.
ISBN 978-1-876175-43-6 (Also available in Spanish 978-1-920888-21-3)
HAYDÉE SANTAMARÍA
Rebel Lives
Edited by Betsy Maclean
Haydée first achieved notoriety as one of two women who participated in the armed attack that sparked the Cuban revolution. Later, as director of the world-renowned literary institution, Casa de las Américas, she embraced culture as a tool for social change and provided refuge for exiled Latin American artists and intellectuals. Included are reflections by Alicia Alonso, Mario Benedetti, Ariel Dorfman, Melba Hernández, Roberto Fernández Retamar and Silvio Rodríguez.
ISBN 978-1-876175-59-7 (Also available in Spanish 978-1-921235-91-7)
CHE GUEVARA BOOKS FROM OCEAN PRESS
CHE
The Diaries of Ernesto Che Guevara
Ernesto Che Guevara
Director Steven Soderbergh based his two-part epic movie “Che” (Part One: The Argentine and Part Two: Guerrilla) on two classic diaries written by Ernesto Che Guevara: Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (an account of the guerrilla movement led by Fidel Castro that overthrew the Batista dictatorship in 1959) and The Bolivian Diary (Che’s famous, unfinished diary discovered in his backpack when he was captured and killed in Bolivia in October 1967).
ISBN 978-1-920888-33-6
THE AWAKENING OF A CONTINENT
Writings, Letters, and Speeches on Latin America, 1950-67
Ernesto Che Guevara
This classic anthology offers a vision of Che’s unique perspective on the continent of Latin America, showing his cultural depth, rigorous intellect and intense emotion. It includes the best of Che’s writing: examples of his journalism, essays, speeches, letters and poems, revealing his transformation from the impressionable medical student to his death as “the heroic guerrilla” in Bolivia.
ISBN 978-0-9804292-8-2
SELF PORTRAIT
A Photographic and Literary Memoir
Ernesto Che Guevara
Self Portrait, an intimate look at the man behind the icon, is a remarkable photographic and literary memoir that draws on the rich seam of diaries, letters, poems, journalism and short stories Che Guevara with his family in Cuba. Unique among the many books about Che Guevara, for the first time Che’s personal world is revealed, unveiling his extraordinary candor, irony, dry humor and passion.
ISBN 978-1-876175-82-5
CHE GUEVARA READER
Writings on Politics and Revolution
Far more than a guerrilla strategist, Che Guevara made a profound and lasting contribution to revolutionary theory and Marxist humanism as demonstrated in this bestseller. Four sections include Che’s writings on the Cuban revolutionary war (1956-59), the years in government (1959-65), the international struggles of the 1960s and a selection of letters.
ISBN 978-1-876175-69-6
CHE GUEVARA BOOKS FROM OCEAN PRESS
THE BOLIVIAN DIARY
Authorized Edition
Ernesto Che Guevara
Preface by Camilo Guevara, Introduction by Fidel Castro
This is Che Guevara’s famous last diary, found in his backpack when he was captured by the Bolivian army in October 1967. It became an instant international bestseller. Newly revised, with a preface by Che’s eldest son Camilo and extraordinary unpublished photos, this is the definitive, authorized edition of the diary, which after his death catapulted Che to iconic status throughout the world.
ISBN 978-1-920888-24-4 (Also available in Spanish 978-1-920888-30-5)
REMINISCENCES OF THE CUBAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR
Authorized Edition
Ernesto Che Guevara
Preface by Aleida Guevara
From 1956 to 1959, the people of Cuba struggled against immense odds to emerge victorious from years of brutal dictatorship, poverty, and corruption.
This is Che Guevara’s classic account of the popular war that transformed a nation, as well as Che himself—from troop doctor to world-famous revolutionary. Featuring a preface by Che Guevara’s daughter, Aleida Guevara, and a new translation with Che’s own corrections incorporated into the text for the first time, this edition also contains extraordinary photographs of the period. ISBN 978-1-920888-33-6 (Also available in Spanish 978-1-920888-36-7)
These two books are the basis of Steven Soderbergh and Benicio Del Toro’s new movies about Che Guevara.
The sequel to “The Motorcycle Diaries”
LATIN AMERICA DIARIES
“Otra Vez” or Once Again
Ernesto Che Guevara
This is Ernesto Guevara’s journal of his second trip through Latin America, revealing the emergence of a revolutionary now called “Che.”
It includes letters, poetry and journalism that document his return to exploring the continent of Latin America following his graduation from medical school in 1953. After leaving his native Argentina, Ernesto revisits Machu-Picchu in Peru, witnesses the aftermath of the 1952 Bolivian revolution and is deeply affected by his experience in Gua
temala during the 1954 US-inspired coup. He flees to Mexico where he encounters a group of exiled Cuban revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro, marking the beginning of a political partnership that profoundly changes the world and Che himself.
ISBN 978-0-9804292-7-5
Published in Spanish as Otra Vez 978-1-920888-78-7
This book also features a foreword by Alberto Granado, Che’s traveling companion in The Motorcycle Diaries.
e-mail
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Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries
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