SOURCE: An interview in Look, Vol. 27, No. 7, April 9, 1963, pp. 26-7.

[In the following excerpt, Berguist probes Guevara's views on Marxism, world politics, and social reform in Cuba.]

[Berguist]: Many early Castro supporters certainly didn't have today's Marxist-oriented revolution in mind. When you were fighting in the Sierra Maestra mountains, was this the future Cuba you envisioned?

[Guevera]: Yes, though I could not have predicted certain details of development.

Could you personally have worked with a government that was leftist but less "radical"—government that nationalized certain industries, but left areas open for private enterprise and permitted opposition parties?

Certainly not.

Historically, the extreme Right and Left in Latin America (and Europe) have combined for different purposes, in an effort to topple "centrist" governments like Rómulo Betancourt's in Venezuela. Why does Cuba levy more violent attacks at Betancourt than at a dictator like Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner?

Paraguay's dictatorship is obvious. Betancourt is a traitor; he has sold out to the imperialists, and his government is as brutal as any dictatorship.

But Nasser of Egypt takes help from the "imperialist" West, as well as from the East. Has he "sold out"?

No, he is a big anti-imperialist. We are friends.

You once said Cuba would resist becoming a Soviet satellite to the "last drop of blood." But how "sovereign" were you when Khrushchev arranged with Kennedy for the missile withdrawal without consulting you?

As you know from Fidel's speech, we had differences with the Soviet Union.

You've traveled widely since our last talk—from the Punta del Este Conference in Uruguay to Moscow. Since you call yourself a "pragmatic Marxist" who learns from the "university of experience," what have you learned?

At Punta del Este, I learned in a shocking, first-hand way about the servilismo [servility] of most Latin-American governments to the United States. Your Mr. Dillon was a revelation to me.

I've heard many Cubans refer to the period when Anibal Escalante was a director of ORI as "our Stalin" period. But Anibalistas are still in the government. What can keep them from regaining power?

Escalante was shipped out of the country. He had to go. That period is finished. We are completely reorganizing ORI along different lines.

Bureaucracy seems a plague of most "Socialist" countries. I noticed it in Moscow. Hasn't it also invaded Cuba?

Bureaucracy isn't unique to socialism: General Motors has a big bureaucracy. It existed in Cuba's previous bourgeois regime, whose "original sins" we inherited. After the Revolution, because we were taking over a complex social apparatus, a "guerrilla" form of administration did develop. For lack of "revolutionary conscience," individuals tended to take refuge in vegetating, filling out papers, establishing written defenses, to avoid responsibility. After a year of friction, it was necessary to organize a state apparatus, using planning techniques created by brother Socialist countries.

Because of the flight of the few technicians we had, there was a dearth of the knowledge necessary to make sensible decisions. We had to work hard to fill the gaps left by the traitors. To counteract this, everyone in Cuba is now in school.

During the last mobilization, we had many discussions about one phenomenon: When the country was in tension, everyone organized to resist the enemy. Production didn't lessen, absenteeism disappeared, problems were resolved with incredible velocity. We concluded that various forces can combat bureaucracy. One is a great patriotic impulse to resist imperialism, which makes each worker into a soldier of the economy, prepared to resolve whatever problem arises.

What about Cuba's new school system, which separates many children from their parents? Isn't it completely disrupting family life?

The revolutionary government has never had a definite policy, or dealt with the philosophical question of what the family should be. When the process of industrial development takes place, as in Cuba, women are increasingly at work and less at home caring for children. Nurseries must be established to leave the child somewhere. In places like the Sierra Maestra, where there can be no central schools after a certain age, because pupils are too widely scattered in the countryside, we think it better for the children to receive schooling in a specialized center like Camilo Cienfuegos School City. There they can also train for their later work in life. The child spends his vacations with his family—certainly this is no worse than the "boarding schools" of the wealthy people we knew, who did not see their children for eight to ten months a year. There are the problems of families divided, where half the members are revolutionary, the other half not with the Revolution—even pathetic cases of parents who left for Miami, but whose children of 12 or 14 did not want to go. If we hurt the family, it is because we haven't thought about it, not because we are against the family.

Recently, at a trade-union banquet, you noted that "youth" was conspicuously lacking among "exemplary workers" honored that night. Since this is such a "young" Revolution—why?

Perhaps an artificial division has arisen in the thinking of our people. In the armed defense of the Revolution, young people have always been disposed to heroic adventure. Ask them to make long marches, to take to the trenches or mountains, to sacrifice their lives if need be, and they respond. But when the word "sacrifice" refers to an obscure, perhaps even boring job that has to be done daily with efficiency and enthusiasm, older people of experience still excel them. Socialism cannot be achieved by either armed fight or work alone. We must now create a new authentic national hero—a work hero whose example is contagious, as potent as any military hero's.

Finally, what of claims by Cubans that "socialism" here is "different"?

Perhaps it was more spontaneous, but we are part of the Socialist world. Our problems will be solved by our friends.