In the process of reading some 800 pages documenting the life of El Che immediately following a thorough pouring over his Motorcycle Diaries, I find it quite difficult not to be instilled with the revolutionary’s will to put in motion the unstoppable wheels of change. His political wants and ruthless pursuits of them, coupled with his understanding of the necessity of violence for quick reform, naturally stir me and make me wish that there were such opportunities in this country as The Argentine found all over the tumultuous Latin America of the mid-1900s.
It is my firm hope that somehow I will eventually stumble across a way in which I can offer my services to the spread of socialism in such a way as to better the lives of a great many people.
However, one can no longer hope to do things for the good of the common people without America interfering, even more the case concerning socialism. The only hope, it seems, is to turn to a sense of nationalism in places where dictators and America work hand in hand.
My lack of any studies in Spanish has effectively cut me off from anything south of America. Had I truly realized what this would mean at this point in my life, I may very well have studied Spanish and only Spanish.
Though I realize that if I were to go to Canada I could live successfully as a member of a somewhat socialistic nation and be perfectly content, I am forced to wonder what kind of impact might be made in certain places in Latin America.
For instance, I asked a native friend of mine why Puerto Rico did not renounce its status as United States Territory in favour of being recognized as a nation. His response was that, although many people wanted to, they simply could not because if the U.S. cut them off as an act of spite, they couldn’t survive on the commerce of other nations without America.
Indeed this has been the desired effect of the American Empire throughout all of Latin America. America has controlled some of the only sources of export for nations, from things like copper mines to the there-famous United Fruit. Where unions are allowed, they are seldom effectual. One man, fired and exiled for being a communist, stated that he was headed for work in a sulfur mine. Conditions there are so terrible, he prompted, that no one would care what his political affiliation was. Most have already forgotten incidents such as that of Coca-Cola’s hiring a death squad to suppress a strike, resulting in the murder of two union men along with their strong suggestion to cease the striking. The nationalization of labour under America's thumb becomes more and more of a pipe dream with every passing year.
Everywhere that people try to improve their lives, there is a U.S. run or backed company. Everywhere where people try to make change, there is a U.S. puppet government or American backed dictator and rigged democracy or show elections.
It is disheartening to think that the United States has succeeded in maintaining power long enough that the current residents, having grown up in this regime, have simply come to accept it and the obviously American-inspired feeling that they “simply could not” be without the shadow of America looming over them.
Realizing that the stability of Latin America is far from being to the point that America tries to portray it, it has become my endeavor to take up Spanish at the earliest possible time so that I might be available to assist or perpetuate in the self-liberation, nationalization, and political and economic reorientation of any courageous nation or people willing to struggle toward this end.
Whatever the struggle, whether in the nature of Marx’s London lectures to politicians or in the nature of Guevara’s struggles in the Sierra Maestra, I would gladly devote myself completely to this difficult life, having neither doubt nor romantic delusion.
It is only a matter of time, I pray, before I find a place where my efforts will create the maximum benefit through the gateway of Spanish.
Though I will, for a while longer yet, remain a person of hammers and sickles in a country of stars and stripes, I can only hope that by the time my learning is complete the civilians of Latin America have not totally resigned themselves to be forever under the cloak of a foreign dictatorship.
