CHE GUEVARA, WAS A GREAT LEADER OF THE WORKING CLASS
Comrades.
I want first to congratulate the leadership of the PHASM for having organized this International Symposium, and not only for the date, given that the presentation and the contents seem to me very successful.
They only managed to assassinate, exactly 54 years ago now, the person of the great revolutionary. His ideas, his legacy, his example, his ability to stimulate (even now dead) the anti-capitalists and anti-imperialists, ARE STILL TOTALLY VALID!
For Ché there was no alternative, it was a global, strategic battle against the class enemy, the enemy of most people, and this enemy had to be destroyed.
Ché Guevara was, and still is, an example to the entire world working class.
In reality he was one of the best leaders of the working class in the world, without having performed a basically trade union task. Their revolutionary program and proposals attacked and destroyed (just as they attack it now) Capitalism, which is the great enemy of our class.
Someone, especially the bourgeois, will say that he was a professional, and that for this reason he had nothing to be a member of the working class. This is how the defenders of economic exploitation of the vast majority of humanity make their ideological struggle.
In the PHASM we know well that both professionals can be members of the working class, objectively, and cease to be, subjectively, manual workers. It all depends on the class consciousness that each one has. And Ché Guevara proved to have her, both in all his time at the side of Fidel Castro, and in his stay, organizing the guerrillas, in Bolivia (where, without trial, the CIA murdered him, by order of the President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson).
The armed struggle, revolutionary and class, was what transformed Cuba, and other countries.
Ché Guevara always encouraged anyone to be revolutionary, as his famous phrase sums up: "Be always able to feel, in the depths of your being, any injustice, committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. It's the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary."
In addition, he followed the teachings of another great revolutionary, José Martí, thoroughly applying the slogan: "The important thing is what is done, not what is said."
In contrast to what revolutionaries have always done and will do, today, in the XXI Century, it is increasingly clear that the leaders of Capitalism do the opposite of what they say. Hypocrisy, lies and false promises are the sustenance, and basis, of Capitalism. The recent news, with the names of those who have money in tax havens, has shown us once again.
As leader of the UIS of Pensioners and Retirees of the PHASM, the organization that brings together the most veteran people, the members of the working class with more years of union struggle, I can affirm that Ché Guevara was an example and a stimulus for all of us. That is why remembering him as a revolutionary is easy for us, and at the same time obligatory, to learn from his legacy and serve as a formation for the new generations, who were not alive and fighting when Ché was fighting.
Those of us who are more than 70 years old today remember the living, revolutionary, internationalist Ché, received by governments all over the planet, especially in the countries that built socialism. We remember his most famous speeches, we remember his letter saying goodbye to Fidel Castro when he left Cuba to promote the Revolution in Bolivia.
When we met, as young people, who had murdered Ché, all revolutionaries felt committed, even more, to our obligation to follow his example, and we welcomed the new revolutionaries that the vile assassination of Ché Guevara set in motion.
Another great legacy of Ché, as a revolutionary physician, was his work so that people's health is always the first goal of any just society. This is what Cuba is now doing, training thousands of doctors from dozens of countries for free, exporting vaccines and medicines for free, sending hundreds of doctors on missions to recover tens of thousands of people from blindness and other ailments, or correctly attacking COVID-19 (without making it a business, as pharmaceutical multinationals do), and a long etc.
Regarding his personality, I think it can be summarized by saying that he was characterized by a great demand that he fostered from his person, by his iron will, his insatiable desire for knowledge, his long vision, his deep communist conviction. He did not forgive the flattery, he always wanted and demanded to be treated like his companions.
As a Spanish trade unionist, and a member of the leadership of the ISMM, I want to end this contribution to the Symposium by pointing out that it is difficult to find, in the territories of our plurinational state, anyone (not even the reactionary right dares) who criticizes the life of revolutionary comrade Ché Guevara. He had defects, as we have all human people, but he knew how to overcome them by always doing the work collectively.
This is another and very important legacy of Ché. Collectives, if they function democratically, with transparency and sincerity among their members, are essential instruments to advance revolutionary processes.
I invite you to shout to the entire working class:
"LONG LIVE THE MEMORY AND TEACHINGS OF CHÉ, ONE OF THE GREATEST REVOLUTIONARIES!"
"CHE, WITH WHAT HE CONTRIBUTED, IS STILL ALIVE, AND CONTINUES TO MAKE REVOLUTION"
"LET'S BE LIKE CHÉ!"
Barcelona, 9 october 2.021
Kim Boix
General Secretary of the UIS (International Union of Trade Unions) of Pensioners and Retirees (PYJ) of the PHAM
Head of the FSM in the Spanish State (except the Basque Country)
