Che's Theory of Revolution

Within months of the overthrow of Batista's dictatoship, Che Guevera writes a cogent defense of what became known as "foquismo." Che writes: "We consider that the Cuban Revolution contributed three fundamental lessons to the conduct of revolutionary movements in America. They are:

  1. Popular forces can win a war against the army.
  2. It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them.
  3. In underdeveloped America the countryside is the basic area for armed fighting.
Of these three propositions the first two contradict the defeatist attitude of revolutionaries or pseudo-revolutionaries who remain inactive and take refuge in the pretext that against a professional army nothing can be done, who sit down to wait until in some mechanical way all necessary objective and subjective conditions are given without working to accelerate them."