Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, by Che Guevara; Episodes of the Revolutionary War, by Che Guevara; Che Guevara Speaks: Selected Speeches and writings, ed. by George Lavan
Valdes, Nelson P.
REMINISCENCES OF THE CUBAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR, by Che Guevara. New York: Monthly Review Press, 288 pp. $6.95. EPISODES OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, by Che Guevara. New York: International...
...And can one demand U.S...
...To Guevara, in the guerrilla struggle the feeling of fellowship develops and every man becomes equal as class differences are transcended...
...And if one is acquainted with Che's thought, the book is rather superficial...
...That the editor chose to print a discussion on Cuba's economic planning, seemingly because Guevara attacks the Posadistas (a split-off Trotskyist group), while disregarding Guevara's position on Trotskyism in general, shows that the editing serves a factional bias...
...The Guevara myth is soon to be exploited by magazines, publishing houses, and movie makers...
...paper, $1.95...
...If one favors decentralization or "participatory democracy," he should not have as an idol a man who considered strong centralization the only way in which a socialist society could be created...
...Cloth, $4.95...
...This is what Guevara wanted on a national scale: to create a guerrilla-nation, a guerrilla communism...
...On the ideology of the Cuban Revolution the editor omitted the section in which Guevara states that the 26th of July movement was the "direct heir of the Orthodox Party" (a reformist social-democratic party in Cuba...
...The book represents, however neither the evolution nor the whole of Guevara's thought...
...MGM is working on the same subject...
...In the meantime, the duty of a revolutionary seems to be to buy a revolutionary poster...
...Everything else has been edited to the point of extinction...
...This is why the theme of struggle, of fighting in the trenches of production, of combating illiteracy and yankee imperialism appear in almost everything he said or wrote...
...Most of the selections have appeared before in radical publications in the United States...
...There are similar important deletions throughout the book...
...Interestingly, the role played by the urban underground is downgraded, as well as the guerrilla movement of the Escambray Mountains...
...Future writers on the subject should try to ascertain the impact that his guerrilla experience had on his revolutionary ideology...
...Che" Guevara is a case in point...
...Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War and Episodes of the Revolutionary War are both translations of Guevara's Pasajes de BOOKS la Guerra Revolucionaria published in Cuba in 1963...
...Of the 20 selections only 4 are important: Guevara's notes on "Man and Socialism in Cuba," his message to the Tricontinental Conference, his speech to the Afro-Asian Conference, and "Guerrilla Warfare: A Method...
...THE THEME OF STRUGGLE which permeates the thought of Ernesto Guevara has not yet been considered by anyone...
...New York: International Publishers...
...144 pp...
...To Guevara a socialist society could be achieved only in the guerrilla struggle where every man lives in constant asceticism and develops a consciousness of sacrifice which allows Communist morality to surface...
...A similarity between Che's dropping out of Cuba because, as he hints in his last essay before leaving the country, he did not seem to be able to create the "new man of the 21st century" and the hippies dropping out of American society has escaped most observers...
...Perhaps this is why Che left Cuba: he realized that the "guerrillalization" of a whole nation was futile...
...Suddenly, after his death he has become a folk hero of some young radicals in America and elsewhere...
...The translation of parts of Che's speech at Punta del Este, Uruguay, is another interesting case...
...paper, $1.65...
...In the same speech Guevara also stated that in 1965 Cuba would become the first nation in Latin America in per capita production of steel...
...The hero who fails in his task but whose mere act of revolt achieves liberation— this is how el Che is viewed by many people...
...The bibliography on Che's death fills pages...
...In it Che realistically explains the many sufferings and upheavals of guerrilla warfare...
...It appears we have reached the stage of "confusion in the revolution...
...SOME MEN SUFFER THE FATE of becoming the symbols of generations which misunderstand them...
...New York: Merit Publishers...
...three books have already appeared...
...EPISODES OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, by Che Guevara...
...In this speech Guevara outlined his economic plan for Cuba in which he projected a net growth of 12 per cent for the country, or 91/2 per cent more than the goal set by the Alliance for Progress...
...This is an important book, but not a comprehensive study of the revolutionary organizations that fought against the former dictator...
...Valentino Orsini, an Italian film maker, is already in Bolivia...
...Drop city is the utopia of hippieism, guerrilla warfare became the utopia of Guevaraism...
...In his introduction to Che Guevara Speaks Joseph Hanson promises "a faithful reflection of Che as he was or, better, as he developed...
...159 pp...
...Cloth, $4.50...
...CHE GUEVARA SPEAKS: SELECTED SPEECHES AND WRITINGS, edited by George Lavan...
...Guevara apparently brings to life the romantic hero, the type liberal historians have called obsolete...
...withdrawal from Vietnam while carrying a poster of the man who called for more Vietnams...
...New York: Monthly Review Press, 288 pp...
...But far more obvious aspects of Che's thought seem to have been overlooked by most radicals...
...These statements do not appear in the translation, for they would have betrayed Che's naivete...
...and the essay on Cuba's "exceptionalism" is cut in half, omitting Guevara's views on the role that the national bourgeoisie has in a revolutionary process...
...The Monthy Review Press translation is much better than that of International Publishers, but neither changes the main points made by Guevara...
Vol. 15 • May 1968 • No. 3
