Che Guevara - Guerrilla Warfare (1961)

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Camilo (Cienfuegos) was the subject of a thousand anecdotes; he created them naturally wherever he went. To his ease of manner, always appreciated by the people, he added a personality that naturally and almost unconsciously put the stamp of Camilo on everything connected with him. Few men have succeeded in leaving on every action such a distinctive personal mark. As Fidel has said, he did not have culture from books; he had the natural intelligence of the people, who had chosen him out of thousands for a privileged position on account of the audacity of his blows, his tenacity, his intelligence, and unequalled devotion. Camilo practiced loyalty like a religion.

Che Guevara
We are overcome by anguish at this illogical moment of humanity.

Che Guevara
The fundamental principle is that no battle, combat, or skirmish is to be fought unless it will be won.

Che Guevara
It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them.

Che Guevara
Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.

Che Guevara
The guerrilla band is not to be considered inferior to the army against which it fights simply because it is inferior in fire power.

Che Guevara
Violence is not the monopoly of the exploiters and as such the exploited can use it too and, moreover, ought to use it when the moment arrives.

Che Guevara
Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy.

Che Guevara
When forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.

Che Guevara
The dictatorship tries to function without resorting to force so we must try to oblige it to do so, thereby unmasking its true nature as the dictatorship of the reactionary social classes.

Che Guevara
Revolution, in history, is like the doctor assisting at the birth of a new life, who will not use forceps unless necessary, but who will use them unhesitatingly every time labor requires them. It is a labor bringing the hope of a better life to the enslaved and exploited masses.

Che Guevara
We should not allow the word "democracy" to be utilized apologetically to represent the dictatorship of the exploiting classes.

Che Guevara
Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.

Che Guevara
The guerrilla is supported by the peasant and worker masses of the region and of the whole territory in which it acts. Without these prerequisites, guerrilla warfare is not possible.

Che Guevara
The guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area. This is an indispensable condition.

Che Guevara
Guerrilla warfare is a people's warfare; an attempt to carry out this type of war without the population's support is a prelude to inevitable disaster.

Che Guevara
War is always a struggle in which each contender tries to annihilate the other. Besides using force, they will have recourse to all possible tricks and stratagems to achieve the goal.

Che Guevara