Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Please summarize what Guevara and Castro each believed and hoped to gain in each of the primary source narratives. Please use the text to support your answer. https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1961/04/09.htm https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1960/09/29.htm

Guevara believed the alliance between large landholders in Cuba and monopolies in the United States had created an economy that led to the underdevelopment of Cuba and the poverty of his people. He says the following:

U.S. capital arrived on the scene to exploit the virgin lands and later carried off, unnoticed, all the funds so "generously" given, plus several times the amount originally invested in the "beneficiary" country.

He believed that the alliance of Latin American landholders and American monopolies served to exploit the lands and people of Latin America, including Cuba, which created an economy that impoverished the local people.
He wanted the union of the working classes who had formerly been divided by race. He writes:

They call our miserably exploited Indians, persecuted and reduced to utter wretchedness, “little Indians” and they call blacks and mulattos, disinherited and discriminated against, “colored”—all this as a means of dividing the working masses in their struggle for a better economic future.

In other words, by dividing the people into races, imperialists broke up the alliance that could have developed among the working classes. He wanted an alliance that would unite working-class people of all races into a cohesive whole.
He also believed that the underdevelopment of Cuba resulted from monoculture—the development of one crop. He writes, "We, the 'underdeveloped,' are also those with the single crop, the single product, the single market. A single product whose uncertain sale depends on a single market imposing and fixing conditions." In Cuba, this system was based on sugar, which was raised for American monopolies. Guevara believed this system of raising only one crop kept Cuba poor and underdeveloped.
Castro also wanted to end the imperial dominance of the United States and end its hold on Cuba. He called for the nationalization of American territories in Cuba. He also spoke against the use of American military intervention and said, "For every little bomb of the imperialists, we build 500 houses." In other words, he believed the United States relied on military power, while he wanted to create better housing and living situations for people in Cuba.
He believed that he could defeat American military might with Cuban nationalist pride and development of Cuban natural resources. He writes the following:

Let them come. We will always have something to show. We will show the militia, the youth brigades, the great reforestation projects, the school cities we are building, we will show what our country is.

He believed that nationalist pride, the development of Cuban schools, and the restoration of natural resources would be a bulwark against American imperialism.

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