Che Guevara Addresses the UN General Assembly

1. Colonial Legacy & Africa

Guevara opened by situating Cuba within a global wave of anti-colonial liberation. Cuba expressed unconditional solidarity with the peoples of Africa and their liberation movements against colonialism and apartheid — movements that the UN Charter’s own language on self-determination was written to protect.

He condemned the Belgian-US intervention in the Congo as a direct assault on a sovereign African state. The Stanleyville operation — a combined Belgian paratroop and US airlift mission — was, in Guevara’s framing, a colonial rescue operation dressed as a humanitarian mission. The real target was the legitimacy of Congolese independence.

“Lumumba is not forgotten.”

Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, had been assassinated in January 1961 — with Belgian and CIA involvement later documented in declassified records. Guevara named his murder explicitly and refused to allow the UN to pretend otherwise.

Apartheid South Africa was treated as a standing violation of the UN Charter — Article 2(4) and Chapter VII obligations — not as a domestic matter. Moise Tshombe, the Katanga separatist leader who had facilitated Lumumba’s capture and was by 1964 Prime Minister of the Congo under Belgian and US backing, was called out by name as a puppet of Western interests.

In a passage that would define Guevara’s post-Cuba trajectory, he made a personal offer: if it would serve the liberation of any African people, he was ready to lay down his life in that struggle. This was not rhetorical — he would go to the Congo in 1965.

2. Vietnam

Cuba extended its full support to North Vietnam. Guevara framed the expanding US military presence not as containment but as a direct violation of Vietnamese self-determination — the same right the UN Charter enshrines for all peoples.

He described what he called the “escalation spiral”: each escalation justified by the previous one, a logic that could sustain unlimited intervention indefinitely. The argument was structural — once you accept the frame that the spiral justifies itself, there is no principled stopping point short of total victory or defeat.

3. Puerto Rico

Cuba formally raised Puerto Rico’s colonial status before the General Assembly — a deliberate provocation, since the US insisted Puerto Rico’s status was an internal American matter not subject to UN jurisdiction. Cuba disagreed.

Guevara honored Pedro Albizu Campos — the Puerto Rican independence leader who had died earlier in 1964 after years of imprisonment — by name. The argument was clean: under the same UN Charter principles that applied to Algeria, Kenya, and the Congo, Puerto Rico had the right to self-determination. The fact that the colonizing power was also a permanent Security Council member did not extinguish that right.

4. The 1,323 Provocations

Cuba had kept a running documented count. 1,323 violations of Cuban airspace, territorial waters, and sovereignty — catalogued and presented to the General Assembly. This was not rhetoric; it was a legal record submitted to an international body.

The list included: the Bay of Pigs invasion (April 1961), the full economic embargo, the suspension of Cuba’s sugar quota, the refusal to allow US-based refineries to process Soviet petroleum Cuba had legally purchased, systematic harassment of Cuban shipping, and ongoing covert operations.

“We do not accept the term ‘coexistence’ for this situation.”

Guantanamo was addressed directly: Cuba’s formal demand for the return of the naval base, raised at every international conference and repeated here. The base, leased under a 1903 agreement signed by a US-occupied Cuba, was not, in Cuba’s view, a legitimate permanent installation. Cuba would pursue its return by peaceful means — but would not stop raising the demand.

5. Latin America: Betrayed Governments

One of the most personal passages in the speech concerned the Latin American governments that had broken diplomatic relations with Cuba under US pressure at the 1962 Punta del Este OAS meeting.

Guevara described a meeting with the President of Bolivia, who — with tears in his eyes — explained that he had no choice but to break relations with Cuba. The United States had forced him. Shortly after doing Washington’s bidding, that same president was overthrown in a military coup. His loyalty to the US yielded him nothing.

Colombia’s representative, having suggested that Cuba’s troubles stemmed from failing to stay “in the orbit of the American States,” received Guevara’s sharpest one-liner of the session. The line worked as both a rebuttal and a declaration: Cuba was not in orbit, had no intention of entering orbit, and considered orbit itself the problem.

Marquetalia: Guevara named the Colombian government’s military operation against guerrilla peasant communities directly. A 16,000-man Colombian army force, operating with US military advisers, helicopters, and US aircraft, was deployed against guerrilla fighters in the mountains. The commander of the guerrillas had been given a derogatory nickname in the press to make him sound like a criminal. The scale of the operation — 16,000 men against a few hundred peasant guerrillas — spoke for itself.

6. Revolution Cannot Be Exported

“Revolutions are not exportable. Revolutions are born among the people.”

This was the core political argument of the entire speech. Cuba did not cause revolution in Latin America. The conditions that produced revolution — landlessness, military repression, oligarchic governments maintained by US support, exclusion of the majority from political life — were created by those governments and their patrons. Cuba was a symptom of those conditions having reached a breaking point in one country, not an external contagion.

The closing self-definition: Cuba as the “Free Territory of America.” Not a Soviet satellite, not an anomaly, but a proof of concept — a country in the Western Hemisphere that had broken from the system and survived.

7. The Second Declaration of Havana (Quoted)

Guevara closed the main speech by quoting the Second Declaration of Havana, Cuba’s 1962 manifesto addressed to Latin America. The “200 million brothers” passage invoked a continental solidarity across nations — not with governments, but with the people those governments were failing.

The closing prophecy: the hungry masses of Latin America, those who had been excluded from history, would write it themselves. The Declaration had been a direct response to Cuba’s expulsion from the OAS — a defiant recasting of the verdict as irrelevant.

“Our country or death.”

Costa Rica

Costa Rica’s representative had cited press accounts about Cuba — accounts Guevara characterized as “yellow press” fabrications. He then turned the table: Costa Rica had allowed the Bay of Pigs invasion to be organized from its own territory. Guevara confirmed Cuba’s knowledge of bases in the Tortugueras zone and bordering zones — precise geography, not a general accusation.

Manuel Artime — the CIA-backed leader of Brigade 2506, the Bay of Pigs invasion force — was named directly. Guevara noted that press agencies worldwide had reported Artime was caught smuggling whisky at training bases in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The bases weren’t just “training revolutionaries to free Cuba” — they were running smuggling operations. Cuba stated it was “absolutely sure these statements are true.”

Nicaragua

Nicaragua’s representative had raised the question of atomic weapons in Cuba. Guevara denied their presence, then deployed his symmetry argument: if Cuba must prove it has no atomic weapons by accepting inspection, then the same logic should apply to every US atomic base worldwide. Inspect them all simultaneously, or the principle is not a principle — it’s a weapon aimed selectively at Cuba.

Panama

The Panama section was a sharp piece of irony. Cuba had, in a friendly and advance manner, informed Panama that a counter-revolutionary expedition was departing from Cuban ports headed toward Panamanian territory. Panama was given warning. Panama still allowed the operation to proceed.

Guevara observed that Panama’s UN representative had “not the slightest intention” of defending the Government of Panama before the Assembly. Cuba was doing more to defend the Panamanian people than Panama’s own government.

Colombia

Colombia’s representative had said there was “nothing to liberate” in Colombia — that their two-party democracy was functioning and stable. Guevara’s response was to cite the numbers: between 200,000 and 300,000 Colombians had died in the civil war that followed the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948. The army had been massacring civilians for sixteen years. Liberals and conservatives had rotated power every four years under a power-sharing agreement — and nothing had changed for the Colombian people.

He returned to Marquetalia: 16,000 Colombian army troops, US military advisers, helicopters, and what were almost certainly US aircraft, deployed against peasant guerrillas in the mountains. The guerrilla commander had been given a derogatory nickname to make him seem like a common criminal rather than a political actor. Colombia asked Cuba not to interfere in its affairs. Cuba asked what those affairs consisted of.

Venezuela

Venezuela’s representative had accused Cuba of genocide and demanded Cuba not interfere in Venezuelan affairs. Guevara gave one of the most direct passages in the entire document:

“Yes, we are executing; yes, we have executed; we shall continue to execute as long as that is necessary.”

The context is essential: Guevara was defending Cuba’s revolutionary tribunals — which tried and executed members of the Batista security apparatus for documented crimes — against accusations from a Venezuelan government that deployed Digepol, its secret police, to commit extrajudicial murders, kidnappings, and disappearances with no trial at all. He cited press records documenting Digepol’s “barbarous acts, executions, assassinations” and the disposal of corpses without trial, inquiry, or accountability.

Venezuelan military aircraft — with US advisers and US equipment — were bombing peasants in the Falcón region. Venezuela’s free press had been suspended for reporting on it. Cuba had trials and verdicts. Venezuela had death squads.

Adlai Stevenson — The Bay of Pigs Lie

Guevara noted that Stevenson was absent from the chamber when he began this section of the rejoinder — that “before being given the lie again, my distinguished colleague thought it best to retire from this Assembly Hall.”

He also challenged the OAS’s authority to approve US surveillance flights over Cuban territory: “What is this Organization of American States to approve surveillance flights over the territory of a country?” — a direct legal challenge to the OAS’s jurisdictional claims under international law.

On the economic blockade: when Cuba passed its first nationalization laws, the US unilaterally cancelled Cuba’s sugar quota, then refused to allow US-based refineries to process Soviet petroleum Cuba had legally purchased. These were unilateral economic weapons wielded against a sovereign state exercising its own legal rights.

The Medicine Telegram — A Live Test of the Blockade

In one of the most tactically precise moments of the entire session, Guevara announced from the podium that Cuba would place an order for $1.5 million in medicines from the United States. The medicines were necessary to save Cuban lives and could not be manufactured in Cuba. A telegram to Stevenson would be sent and read publicly in committee.

“So that it can be very well known whether or not there is any truth to the accusations Cuba makes. In any case, up to the present time, it has been true.”

This was a formal test, performed in public, before the international community. Either the blockade was real — in which case a government would let people die for a trade embargo — or it was not real, and Cuba would get its medicines. The test itself was the point.

Bolivia — The Last Caliph

Guevara returned to Bolivia. The president who had broken with Cuba under US pressure — weeping as he explained he had no choice — had since been overthrown in a US-aligned military coup. He had done Washington’s bidding and been discarded anyway.

Guevara closed the rejoinder with a quotation attributed to the last Moorish caliph of Granada, weeping as he abandoned the city after the Reconquista:

“Do not weep like a woman for what you did not know how to defend as a man.”

It was addressed, without naming them, to every Latin American leader who had capitulated to US pressure while claiming they had no choice.

Exchange 1: Can Relations Improve?

When Niven pressed — arguing that Cuba’s own UN speech made it clear Cuba couldn’t “forget” the US either — Guevara acknowledged the asymmetry. Cuba wanted to be left alone. The US had a 90-mile neighbor that had broken from its orbit. The inability to “forget” Cuba says more about US intentions than about Cuban provocations.

Exchange 2: The Economics of Normalization

Exchange 3: The Two US Conditions

The argument operates on a principle of equal sovereignty. If the US can impose conditions on Cuba before normalizing relations, then Cuba can impose conditions on the US — including ending racial discrimination, reversing its foreign policy in Latin America, or any other domestic or foreign policy issue. Once the principle of conditional normalization is accepted, there is no logical limit. Guevara refused the frame.

Exchange 4: The Missile/Inspection Standoff

Exchange 5: Exporting Revolution