story of this war either. We will merely indicate some of the significant milestones.
In 1954, after the crushing defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the Geneva accords were signed, dividing the country into two zones with the stipulation that elections were to be held in eighteen months to determine who would govern Vietnam and how the country would be reunified.
The North Americans did not sign that document, beginning maneuvers to displace Bao Dai, a French puppet, with a man who fit in better with their aims. This turned out to be Ngo Dinh Dien, whose tragic end -- that of a lemon squeezed by imperialism -- is known to everyone. In the months following the signing of the accord, optimism reigned in the camp of the popular forces. They dismantled redoubts of anti-French struggle in the south part of the country and waited for the agreement to be carried out. But the patriots soon grasped that there were to be no elections unless the United States felt capable of imposing its will at the ballot box, something it could not do, even with all the methods of electoral fraud it knew.
Again they initiated struggles in the south part of the country and these have been gaining in intensity up to the present moment in which the North American army has reached almost a half million invaders, while the puppet forces are declining in number, and above all, have completely lost the will to fight.
It is about two years since the North Americans began systematically bombing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in another attempt to put a brake on the militancy in the south and to impose a conference from a position of strength.
At the beginning, the bombings were more or less isolated and were presented in the guise of reprisals for alleged provocations from the north.
Then they increased methodically in intensity until they became converted into a gigantic battle carried out by the air forces of the United States day after day, with the aim of destroying every vestige of civilization in the northern zone of the country. It is an episode in the somber and famous escalation.
The material aims of the Yankee circles have been achieved in good part despite the intrepid defense put up by the Vietnamese antiaircraft batteries, the more than 1,700 planes brought down and. military supplies provided by the socialist camp.
There is a painful reality: Vietnam, this nation representing the aspirations, the hopes for victory of an entire disinherited world, is tragically alone. -435-
This people must endure the pounding of North American technique, operating almost scotfree in the south, with some possibilities of defense in the north, but always alone.
The solidarity of the progressive world for the Vietnamese people has something of the bitter irony faced by the gladiators in the Roman Circus when they won the applause of the plebs.
To wish the victims success is not enough, the thing is to share their fate, to join them in death or victory.
When we analyze the isolation of the Vietnamese we feel anguished over its logical meaning for humanity.
North American imperialism is guilty of aggression. Its crimes are immense and known to the whole world. We already know this, gentlemen!
But they are likewise guilty who at the decisive moment vacillated in making Vietnam an inviolable part of socialist territory -- yes, at risk of a war of global scale, but also compelling the North American imperialists to make a decision.
And they are guilty who keep up a war of insults and tripping each other, begun some time ago by the representatives of the two big powers in the socialist camp.
We ask, in order to get an honest answer:
Is Vietnam isolated or not, doing a dangerous balancing act between the two disputing powers?
And -- what grandeur has been shown by this people! What stoicism and valor in this people! And what a lesson for the world their struggle holds!
For some time it has not been clear if President Johnson was seriously thinking of initiating some of the popular reforms necessary to soften the sharpness of the class contradictions that are appearing with explosive force and more and more frequently.
What is certain is that the improvements announced under the pompous label of the Great Society have gone down the drain in Vietnam.
The greatest of the imperialist powers feels in its heart the drain caused by a poor, backward country and its fabulous economy feels the effect of the war.
Killing is ceasing to be the best business for the monopolies.
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Defensive arms, and not in sufficient number, is all these marvelous soldiers have, besides love for their country, their society, and a courage beyond compare. But imperialism is sinking in Vietnam; it sees no way out and it is searching desperately for a way that will permit it to emerge with dignity from the dangerous situation in which it finds itself.
But the "four points" of the North and the "five" of the South have caught it in a pincers, making the confrontation still more decisive.
Everything appears to indicate that peace, this precarious peace to which they give that name only because no global conflagration has occurred, is again in danger of being broken by any irreversible and inacceptable step taken by the North Americans.
And for us, the exploited of the world, what should our role be in this?
The peoples of three continents are watching and learning a lesson for themselves in Vietnan.
Inasmuch as the imperialists are utilizing the threat of war to blackmail humanity, the correct reply is not to be afraid of war. The general tactic of the peoples must be to attack vigorously and uninterruptedly wherever a confrontation occurs. But in those places where this miserable peace which we endure has not been broken, what should our task be?
To free ourselves at any price.
The world panorama is one of great complexity. The task of winning freedom still faces the countries of old Europe, those sufficiently developed to experience all the contradictions of capitalism while remaining too weak to follow the course of imperialism or to initiate this road. In these countries, the contradictions will become explosive in the next years, but their problems and, hence, their solutions are different from those facing our dependent and economically backward peoples.
The fundamental field of imperialist exploitation covers the three backward continents -- the Americas, Asia and Africa.
Each country has its own characteristics, but the continents, as a whole, also have theirs.
The Americas constitute a more or less homogeneous whole and almost everywhere North American monopoly capitalism holds absolute primacy.
The puppet, or in the best of cases, weak and timorous, governments are unable to resist the orders of the Yankee master.
The North Americans have reached virtually the pinnacle of their political and economic domination. They can now advance little; any change in the situation could be converted into a decline in their primacy. Their policy is to maintain their conquests. The line of action is reduced at the present time to the use of brute force to block freedom movements no matter what their nature.
The slogan, "We will not permit another Cuba," is designed to cover up treacherous aggressions like the one perpetrated against Santo Domingo; or, before that, massacres like the one in Panama, and the clear warning that they are ready to send Yankee troops anywhere in the Americas where a change in the established order endangers their interests.
This policy enjoys almost absolute impunity. The OAS [Organization of American States] is a convenient mask, however discredited it is; the UN is of an inefficacy bordering on the ridiculous or the tragic; the armies of all the countries of the Americas are ready for use in mowing down their own people.
In practice what has been formed is an international of crime and betrayals.
In addition, the indigenous bourgeoisies have lost all capacity to oppose imperialism, if they ever had any -- and constitute only a source of supplies for it.
No other changes can be made; it's either a socialist revolution or a caricature of revolution.
Asia is a continent with different characteristics. The freedom struggles against a series of European colonial powers resulted in the establishment of more or less progressive governments whose subsequent evolution was, in some. cases to deepen the primary objectives of national liberation and in others to revert toward proimperialist positions.
From the economic point of view, the United States has little to lose and much to gain in Asia. The changes have favored the U.S.; it is struggling to displace other neocolonial powers, to penetrate new spheres of action in the economic field, sometimes directly, sometimes utilizing Japan.
But special political conditions exist there, above all in the peninsula of Indochina, which give Asia characteristics
of capital importance and which play an important role in the global military strategy of North American imperialisn.
Its blockade of China extends at least from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, South Vietnam and Thailand.
This dual situation ~- such a strategic interest as the military blockade of the People's Republic of China and the ambition of its capitalists to penetrate the big markets which they do not yet dominate -- makes Asia possibly one of the most explosive regions in the world today, despite the apparent stapility outside of the Vietnam area.
Belonging geographically to this continent, but with its own contradictions, the Middle East is boiling, and no one can forecast what the cold war will lead to between the progressive countries of this zone and Israel, which is backed by the imperialists.
One more rumbling volcano in the world, Africa, appears almost like virgin territory for a neocolonial invasion.
Changes have occurred which, to a certain degree, have compelled the neocolonial powers to give up their former absolute prerogatives. But when the processes continue without interruption to their conclusion, colonialism gives way, without violence, to a neocolonialisn, the consequences of which are the same so far as economic domination is concerned.
The United States formerly did not have colonies in this region and now it is struggling to penetrate the former preserves of its partners.
It can be said that Africa constitutes, in the strategic plans of North American imperialism, a long-range reserve; its current investments are of importance only in the Union of South Africa and it is beginning to penetrate into the Congo, Nigeria and other countries, where violent competition is flaring up (of a "peaceful" nature up to now) with other imperialist powers. It does not yet have big interests to defend except its pretended right to intervene any place on the globe where its monopolies are making good profits or where big reserves of raw materials are to be found.
All the above leads up to posing the possibilities for the peoples to win their freedom in the immediate or near future.
Analyzing the African scene, we see that the Portuguese colonies of Guinea, Mozambique and Angola are struggling with some intensity, with particular success in Guinea and variable successes in the other two.
Also we still see a struggle between Lumumba's successors and the old accomplices of Tshombe in the Congo, a struggle that appears at the moment to be inclining in favor of the latter, those who have "pacified" a big part of the country to benefit thenselves, although war remains latent.
In Rhodesia the problem is different ~- British imperialism utilized all the machinery at its disposal to hand over power to the white minority which now holds it illegally. The conflict, from England's point of view, is completely against these officials, except that this power, with its customary diplomatic skill -- it is also called hypocrisy in good Spanish -- maintains an appearance of distaste for the measures taken by the Ian Smith government and is supported in its crafty attitude by some of the Commonwealth countries which follow it and is attacked by a good part of the countries of black Africa, whether they are economic vassals of English imperialism or not.
In Rhodesia the situation could become highly explosive if the efforts of the black patriots to rise up in arms materializes and this movement is actually supported by the neighboring African nations. But today all these problems are aired in bodies as innocuous as the UN, the Common~ wealth or the OAU [Organization of African Unity].
Nevertheless the political and social evolution of Africa causes us to forecast a continental revolutionary situation.
The freedom struggles against the Portuguese must end victoriously, but Portugal signifies nothing in the imperialist list.
The confrontations of revolutionary importance are those that hold at bay the whole imperialist apparatus, although we would not, because of that, cease struggling for the liberation of the three Portuguese colonies, for the deepening of their revolutions.
When the black masses of South Africa or Rhodesia initiate their genuinely revolutionary struggle, or when the impoverished masses of a country set out against the ruling oligarchies to redeem their right to a decent living, a new era will have opened in Africa.
Up to now barracks coups have occurred in which one group of officers replaces another or a regime that no longer serves their caste interests and those of the powers that surreptitiously control them; but there have been no popular convulsions.
In the Congo, these characteristics were given a temporary impulse by the memory of Lumumba, but they have been losing
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momentum in recent months.
In Asia, as we have seen, the situation is explosive, and Vietnam and Laos where the struggle is now going on are not the only points of friction. The same holds true for Cambodia, where at any moment North America can launch a direct invasion; Thailand, Malaysia must be added, and, naturally, Indonesia, where we cannot believe that the final word has been said despite the annihilation of the Communist party of that country after the reactionaries took power. And, of course, the Middle East.
In Latin America, the struggle is going on arms in hand in Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia and the first buds are already appearing in Brazil.
There are other centers of resis-—tance that have appeared and been extinguished.
But almost all the countries of this continent are ripe for a struggle of such nature that, to end in a triumph, it cannot be accommodated to anything less than the establishment of a government of socialist nature.
In this continent practically only one language is spoken, save for the exceptional case of Brazil, with whose people those who know Spanish can speak, in view of the similarity between the two languages.
The similarity of the classes is so great among these countries that they can be identified as an “international American" type, much more so than in other continents. Language, customs, religion, a common boss unites then.
The degree and forms of exploitation are similar in their effects for exploiters and exploited in a good number of countries of our America.
And rebellion in them is ripening at an accelerated rate.
We can ask: This rebellion -- how can it be fructified? What kind of rebellion will it be?
We have maintained for some time that given its similar characteristics, the struggle in the Americas will, in time, acquire continental dimensions. It will be the scene of many big battles in behalf of humanity, in behalf of its liberation. ,
Measured against the scope of this continental-wide struggle, the present struggles keeping it going in an active way are only episodes, but they have already provided their martyrs who will figure in the history of the Americas for having given their quota of necessary blood in this final stage of struggle for the full freedom of mankind. ’
FABRICIO OJEDA -- VENEZUELAN MARTYR
Written there are the names of Comandante Turcios Lima, the priest Camilo Torres, Comandante Fabricio Ojeda, the comandantes Lobatén and Iuis de la Puente Uceda, the biggest figures in the revolutionary movements of Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela and Peru.
But the active mobilization of the people creates new leaders -- César Montes and Yon Sosa raised the banner in Guatemala; Fabio Vazquez and Marulanda did it in Colombia; Douglas Bravo in the west of the country and Américo Martin in El Bachiller, leading their respective fronts in Venezuela.
New buds of war are appearing in these and other American countries, as has now occurred in Bolivia, and these will continue to grow, with all the vicissitudes which this dangerous occupation of the modern revolutionist involves.
Many victims will die, victim of
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FABRICIO OJEDA --
FABRICIO OJEDA -- VENEZUELAN MARTYR
their own errors, others will fall in the harsh combat that is looming; new bat-~ tlers and new leaders will arise in the heat of the revolutionary struggle.
The people will continue to form their fighters and their leaders within the selective framework of the war itself, and the Yankee agents of repression will increase in number.
Today there are advisers in all the countries where armed struggle is going on and the Peruvian army, advised and trained by the Yankees, managed, it seems, to inflict a defeat on the revolutionists of that country.
But if the guerrilla centers conduct their activities with sufficient political and military skill, they become practically unbeatable and necessitate new deliveries by the Yankees.
In Peru itself, with tenacity and firmness, new figures, although not yet fully known, are reorganizing the guerrilla struggle.
Little by little, the obsolete arms that sufficed to repress the small armed bands, will be converted into modern arms and the groups of advisers into North American combatants, until the time arrives when they find themselves obliged to send growing numbers of regular troops to assure the relative stability of a power whose national puppet army disintegrates in face of the battles undertaken by the guerrillas.
This is the Vietnamese road; the road which the peoples must follow, the road which the Americas will follow, with the special feature that armed groups can establish something like coordinating committees to make the repressive task of Yankee imperialism more difficult and to help their own cause.
The Americas, a continent forgotten in the latest political struggles for freedom, which is beginning to make itself felt through the Tricontinental by means of the Cuban revolution which is the voice of the vanguard of its peoples, will undertake a much more outstanding task -- the creation of the second or third Vietnam, or the world's second or third Vietnam.
In short, it must be remembered that imperialism is a worldwide systen, and it must be beaten in a worldwide confrontation. - The strategic objective of this struggle must be the destruction of imperialism.
The participation which is up to us, the exploited and backward of the world, is to eliminate the bases sustaining imperialism -- our oppressed peoples from whom capital, raw materials, technicians and cheap workers are extracted; and to whom new capital, means of domination, arms and all kinds of goods are exported, adding up to absolute dependence.
The fundamental element of this strategic goal will be, then, the real liberation of the peoples, a liberation that will be obtained through armed struggle in the majority of cases, and which, in the Americas, will have almost unfailingly the property of becoming converted into a socialist revolution.
In focusing on the destruction of imperialism, it is necessary to identify its head, which is none other than the United States of North America.
We must carry out generally a task, the tactical aim of which is to draw the enemy from his surroundings, compelling him to fight in places where his habits run counter to the prevailing reality.
The adversary must not be underestimated; the North American soldier has technical ability and is backed by means of such magnitude as to make him fearsome. He lacks essentially the ideological motivation which his most hated rivals of today have to the highest degree -- the Vietnamese soldiers.
We can triumph over this army only to the extent that we succeed in undermining his morale. And this is done by inflicting defeats on him and causing him repeated suffering.
But this narrow line of victories entails immense sacrifices by the peoples, sacrifices which must be demanded from now on, in full frankness, and which perhaps will be less painful than those which they will have to undergo if we were to continu- | ally flee from the fight in order to try to get others to draw the chestnuts from the fire.
It is clear that the last country to free itself will probably do so without an armed struggle; and the suffering of a war as long and as cruel as those conducted by the imperialists will be spared this people.
But perhaps it will be impossible to avoid this struggle and its effects in a conflict of worldwide character and it will suffer as much or more.
We cannot forecast the future, but we must never give way to the miserable temptation to be the standard-bearers of a people who yearn for freedom but reject the struggle that goes with it and wait for victory like a beggar.
It is absolutely correct to avoid any useless sacrifice. Because of this it is extremely important to be clear on the actual possibilities which dependent Latin America has to free itself in a peaceful way.
The answer to this question is clear to us -- the present moment may or may not be the one indicated to initiate a struggle, but we cannot permit ourselves to harbor any illusions, we have no right to believe that freedom can be won without a struggle.
And struggles will not be mere street fights with stones against tear gas, nor peaceful general strikes; nor will the struggle be one in which an infuriated people destroys the repressive framework of the ruling oligarchy in two or three days. It will be a long, cruel struggle in which the front will be in guerrilla hideouts, in the cities, in the homes of the combatants; in which the repression will seek easy victims among their relatives. In the stricken peasant populace, in the towns and cities destroyed by the enemy's bombs, we are pressed into this struggle; there is no other way but to prepare for it and decide to begin it. The beginning will not be easy; it will be extremely difficult. Every repressive means, every bit of denagogy and brutality within the capacity of the oligarchies will be placed in the service of their cause.
Our mission, in the first moments, is to survive, then to act, the perennial example of the guerrilla carrying on armed propaganda in the Vietnamese meaning of the term; that is, the propaganda of gunfire, of battles that are won or lost, but which are waged, against our enemies.
The great lesson of the invincibility of guerrilla warfare catching on among the masses of the dispossessed. The galvanization of the national spirit; the preparation for more difficult tasks, for resistance to more violent repression. Hate as a factor in the struggle; intransigent hate for the enemy, which takes one beyond the natural limitations of a human being and converts one into an effective, violent, single-minded, cold killing machine.
Our soldiers must be like that; a people without hate cannot triumph over a brutal enemy.
The war must be taken as far as the enemy carries it; into his home, into his places of diversion, making it total.
He must be prevented from having a moment's tranquility, a moment's calm outside the barracks and even within them -- attack him wherever he is to be found; -440—
make him feel relentless pursuit wherever he goes.
Then his morale will begin to decline. He will become still more bestial; but signs will be noted of the decay which begins to appear and which will develop into genuine proletarian internationalisn, where the banner under which the struggle is carried on is the sacred cause of benefiting all humanity, so that to die under the colors of Vietnam, Venezuela, Guatemala, Laos, Guinea, Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil -- to mention only the current scenes of armed struggle -- is equally glorious and desirable for an American, an Asian, an African and even a European.
Every drop of blood spilled ina land under whose flag one was not born, is an experience that is treasured by anyone who survives and who can then apply the lessons learned in the struggle for freedom in his own place of origin. And every people that frees itself is a phase in the battle for freedom of the very peoples that have already won a victory.
It is time to moderate our disputes and to place everything at the service of the struggle.
That big controversies are agitating the world struggling for freedom, all of us know; and we cannot hide it. That they have acquired a character and a sharpness that makes a dialogue and reconciliation appear extremely difficult, if not impossible, we know that, too.
To seek ways to initiate a dialogue which the disputants reject is a fruitless task.
But the enemy is there, pounding day after day and threatening new blows and these blows will unite us today, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.
Whoever first obtains and prepares this necessary union will win the gratitude of the peoples.
In view of the virulence and the intransigency with which each cause is defended, we, the dispossessed, cannot take part in any way by declaring a position on the differences, even when we at times agree with some of the arguments on one side or the other, or to a greater degree with those of one side rather than those of the other.
At this moment of the struggle, the form in which the present differences are made public constitutes a weakness, but in the situation confronting us, to hope to reach an agreement on them through words is an illusion. History will determine which positions will be wiped out and which will be confirmed.
In our world of struggle, everything involving a dispute around tactics, methods of action for the attainment of limited objectives, must be analyzed with the respect due other's appreciations. As for the great strategic objective, the total destruction of imperialism by means of struggle, on that we must be intransigent.
We would sum up as follows our aspirations for victory: destruction of inperialism by means of eliminating its strongest bulwark -- the imperialist domain of the United States of North America. To take as the tactical line the gradual freeing of the peoples, by ones or by groups, involving the enemy in a difficult struggle outside of his terrain; liquidating his bases of support, which are his dependent territories.
This means a long war. And, we repeat it once again, a cruel war.
Let no one be mistaken on this when he sets out to initiate it and let no one vacillate in initiating it out of fear of the results which it can draw upon his.own people. It is almost the only hope for victory. We cannot evade the need of the hour.
Vietnam teaches us this with its permanent lesson in heroism, its tragic daily lesson in struggle and death in order to gain the final victory.
Over there, the imperialist troops find the inconveniences of those accus-— tomed to the standard of living which the North American nation boasts. They have to confront a hostile land, the insecurity of those who cannot move without feeling that they are walking on enemy territory; death for those who go outside of fortified redoubts; the permanent hostility of the entire population.
All this continues to provoke repercussions inside the United States; it is going to arouse a factor weakening the full vigor of imperialism; the class struggle inside its own territory.
How close and bright would the fu-
AS CHE
The Pentagon has just sent "three or four" military advisers to Bolivia to pre¢ede a larger group which will provide antiguerrilla training for the armed forces of the Barrientos dictatorship. This was confirmed by State Department sources April 13. The advisers will not themselves participate in any military —447-
ture appear if two, three, many Vietnams flowered on the face of the globe, with their quota of death and immense tragedies, with their daily heroism, with their repeated blows against imperialism, with the obligation it would signify for imperialism to disperse its forces under the lash of the growing hate of the peoples of the world!
And if we were capable of uniting so as to give our blows greater solidity and certainty, so that aid of all kinds for the people locked in combat would be even more effective.
How great the future would be, and how near!
If we, on a small point on the map of the world, carry out the duty which we hail and place at the disposition of the struggle this small bit which we are permitted to give: our lives, our sacrifice, it can happen that one of these days we will draw our last breath on a bit of earth already ours, watered with our blood. Let it be known that we have measured the scope of our acts and that we consider ourselves no more than elements in the great army of the proletariat; but we feel proud at having learned from the Cuban revolution and its great main leader the great lesson to be drawn from his attitude in this part of the world: "What difference the dangers to a man or a people, or the sacrifices they make, when what is at stake is the destiny of humanity."
Our entire action is a call for war against Yankee imperialism and a cry for the unity of the peoples against the great enemy of the human species: the United States of North America.
Wherever we are surprised by death, let it be welcome if our call for war has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms, and other men prepare to sing the mournful songs to the chattering of machine guns and new calls for war and for victory.
-- Che
WAS