Never Forget, Technology Is A Weapon


By Joburg Post

(To closing of First International Meeting of Architecture Students, 29 September 1963)


The first International Meeting of Architecture Students and Professors took place 27 -29 September 1963, on the eve of the Seventh Congress of the International Union of Architects held in Havana.


The final plenary session of the meeting of students and professors, which Guevara addressed, approved a number of resolutions, including a denunciation of Washington’s indictment on 27 September of four US young people for "conspiring’’ to travel to Cuba. Three of the youth were among fifty-eight people who earlier that summer had visited the island challenging the ban on travel to Cuba imposed by the administration of US president John F. Kennedy. After a four-year fight against this antidemocratic move, the US Supreme Court declared the travel ban unconstitutional in 1967.

Another resolution called for "active participation’’ by university students in their respective countries "in the struggles headed by the popular masses for deep-going transformations’’ of society. True political independence, the document said, could only be wrested in a "struggle against imperialism-headed by Yankee imperialism-and against colonialism’’, and would necessitate "replacing the decrepit socio-economic structure with one that meets the interests of the entire working people, as the Cuban Revolution has shown’’. As the congress of the international Union of Architects was concluding, the second major agrarian reform law, which confiscated holdings in excess of 165 acres, was enacted by the revolutionary government. This measure affected ten thousand capitalist farmers who owned 20 percent of Cuba’s agricultural land and constituted an important base for counter-revolutionary activity organized by Washington.

Through this measure, property relations on the land were brought into harmony with the state ownership of industry in Cuba, cementing the worker-framer alliance that has been the backbone of the revolutionary regime from its inception. Companero students and professors of architecture the world over: It is my duty to give the summary, as we call it in Cuba, that is, to make the closing remarks and conclude this international meeting of students. I must begin by making a very embarrassing confession: I am totally ignorant on all these questions. My ignorance reached the point of not realising that this international meeting of students was apolitical. I thought it was a student conference, without knowing that it was part of the International Union of Architects.

Therefore, as political people, that is, as students who participate in the active life of your country, and after reading the final resolutions of this meeting-which by the way shows that the ignorance was mutual because the resolutions are also very political-I thought I'd say, first of all, that I agree with the resolutions of this conference. It seemed to me that its conclusions were logical, not just revolutionary but also scientific-that is, scientific and revolutionary at the same time. So I was going to give a short speech, a slightly political one if you will. But I really don't know if this is the appropriate place to speak about political matters. At any rate you are the ones to decide whether I should do so, because I don’t know much about technology. Okay. I am not resorting here to cheap demagogy in order to get around your rules. I did not know your rules and simply came to make a summary in my capacity as a politician, a politician of a new type, a politician of the people, but a politician nonetheless, due to my functions. I was also impressed that the conclusions were approved, it seems, by a very broad majority.

I am in agreement with the vast majority of the resolutions; they outline the role of the student and the technician in society. I was somewhat amazed by the resolutions, I can honestly tell you, because the people visiting us have come from every country of the world. There are only a few countries, numerically speaking, where socialism has been built, but in terms of inhabitants their numbers are strong. The countries fighting for their liberation-under different systems and at different stages in their struggle-are many, but they also have different governments, and above all their professional layers do not always have the same interests. The capitalist countries, naturally, have their own ideology. For all these reasons, we were surprised by the tone of the discussions. I thought, perhaps a bit mechanically, that in general students from most capitalist, colonial, and semi-colonial countries belong to those layers of society whose economic resources place them outside the ranks of the proletariat, and that therefore, their ideology would be very far from the revolutionary ideology we hold in Cuba.

But my mechanical approach led me to forget that in Cuba also there was a layer of students, the majority of whom-given their social origins-did not belong to the proletariat either, yet that layer of students has participated in all the revolutionary actions in Cuba in recent times. They have given our people some of the most beloved martyrs in the cause of liberation. Some of them have now graduated, while others continue their studies, integrating them-selves into the Cuban Revolution and giving it their total support. I had forgotten there is something more important than the social class to which an individual belongs: youth, freshness of ideals, and a body of knowledge that, at the moment one emerges from adolescence, can be put at the service of the purest of ideals. Later on, the social mechanisms that exist in the various oppressive systems one lives under may change this way of thinking. But students in their big majority are revolutionary. Students may have more or less awareness of a scientific revolution, they may be more or less conscious of what they want for their people or for the world and how to achieve it. But students are, by nature, revolutionary because they belong to that layer of young people for whom life is opening up in front of them, and they are acquiring new knowledge every day. This is the way it has been in our country. And even though some professionals and students have clearly left us, we have seen with great satisfaction-and sometimes also with surprise-that the vast majority of students and professionals remained in Cuba in spite of all the opportunities they were given to leave the country, in spite of all the temptations offered by imperialism.

The reason is understandable: even if we keep in mind that under an exploitative social system students cannot choose their own career or follow their real inner vocation, there is always a meeting point between someone’s inner vocation and the career chosen; only rarely does this not occur. As a rule, the choice of most careers is also influenced by a series of economic factors, although the choice is made primarily because of individual preference. In our country professionals and students have been given the opportunity that a professional should really aspire to: the opportunity to have all the tools of their trade in order to accomplish their work. For the first time professionals in Cuba have felt them-selves true builders of society, participants in society, responsible for society. They cease to be simple wage earners-partly hidden behind various forms of exploitation-but nevertheless in their great majority wage earners, building for somebody else, interpreting the wishes and opinions of others, always creating wealth for someone else through their work. Clearly, in this beginning stage limitations have been great. Our scientists cannot carry out the research they would like.

Sometimes we lack dyes and all kinds of technical devices they need to carry out their research. Our architects cannot design with all the taste and beauty they are capable of-they lack the materials to do so. It is necessary to distribute to the maximum what we do have, so that more can be given to those who have nothing. At this stage it is essential to redistribute wealth so that everyone has a little. But very concretely, in exercising the profession you represent, the creative spirit of man is put to a test. There is the problem of the materials available and of the service to be provided, but it is up to our professionals to find the right solutions. In doing so, they have to carry out a fight as though they were fighting against nature, against an environment that is beyond man's control, in order to fulfil in the best possible way not only the desire to give more to our people, but also the personal satisfaction of building a new society with one's own hands, talents, and knowledge. Our revolution has been characterized by broad-mindedness. We have not had the great problems with professionals that other countries building socialism have had, with debates on art.

We have been very broad-minded. We do not agree with everything our professionals and artists believe. Often we have had heated discussions with them, but we have taken those who are not socialists, those who not only don't care for socialism, but resent socialism and dream about the old days, and we have managed to have them remain in Cuba, fighting, discussing, working, and building. And, in fact, from a practical standpoint they are socialists, which is what we are interested in. We have never fled from confrontation or discussion. We have always been open to discussing any idea. The only thing we don't allow is using ideas for purposes of blackmail, or sabotage against the revolution. In this respect we have been absolutely inflexible, as anyone. On the most basic level, our country has what is scientifically called the dictatorship of the proletariat, and we do not allow anyone to touch or threaten the state power of the proletarian dictatorship. But within the dictatorship of the proletariat there can be a vast field for discussion and expression of ideas. The only thing we demand is that the state's general policies in this stage of building socialism be respected. Such has been our approach. Some professionals have gone to prison for direct counter-revolutionary acts, for sabotage. But even from prison they have been rehabilitated: they first work in jail; then, after their release, they work, and continue to work, in our industries. We trust them as completely as we trust any of our technicians. And they are reincorporated, even though they have known the harshest and darkest side of the revolution, which is repression.

In a triumphant revolution repression is necessary because the class struggle does not end with the revolution's triumph. In our case, after the victory of the revolution the class struggle was sharpened to the maximum. Acts of sabotage, assassination attempts-you probably noticed yesterday that they greeted us with a bomb right in the middle of the event. They carried out their show of force-their counter-revolutionary fun. That's the way it’s always been. We attack and are relentless toward those who take up arms against us; it does not matter if these are outright weapons of destruction or ideological weapons to destroy our society. The rest, those who are dissatisfied, those who are unhappy yet honest, those who state that they are not socialist nor will they ever be, to them we simply say: "Before, no one ever asked you whether or not you were a capitalist-you had a contract and you fulfilled it. We say: fulfil your contract, do your work, espouse whatever ideas you like; we won't interfere with your ideas.’’ That is how we keep on building, with many problems, with many leaps backward. The revolution’s road is not one of continuous successes, sustained advances, or rhythmic strides forward. At times we reach an impasse, when we lose revolutionary momentum, when we get disoriented.

We have to regroup our forces, analyse our problems, analyse our weak points, and then march forward. That is how revolutions are made and consolidated. They are made the same way we began ours-by a group of men, supported by the people, in an area favourable for the struggle. We have now reached the point where I must play the role of theoretician of something I know nothing about. With my limited knowledge, I will try to define what I understand an architect to be. I believe an architect-as with practically every other professional-is a man in whom the general culture achieved by humanity up to that moment converges with humanity's general level of technology or with the particular technology of a given nation. The architect, like every professional, is a man living within society. He can attend international apolitical meetings-and it’s correct for them to be apolitical-to maintain peaceful coexistence. But I don't understand how, as a man, he can say he is apolitical. To be apolitical is to turn one's back on every movement in the world. It is to turn ones back on who will be president or leader of a nation. It is to turn one's back on the construction of society, or on the struggle to prevent the new society from arising. In either of the two cases, one has to take a political position. In present-day society every one of us is by nature political. The architect-political person-the convergence of the culture of humanity up to that point and its technology-confronts this reality. Culture is something that belongs to the world. It belongs, perhaps as does language, to the human species. But technology is a weapon and should be used as a weapon, as everyone does. We can show you this mural over here, for instance.

There is a weapon in it, a U.S-made M-1, a Garand rifle. When it was in the hands of Batista's soldiers and they were firing on us, that weapon was hideous. But that same weapon became extraordinarily beautiful when we captured it, when we wrested it from a soldier's hands, when it became part of the arsenal of the people's army. In our hands that weapon became an object of dignity. And without changing at all either its structure or its function of killing men, it acquired a new quality: now it was being used for the liberation of peoples. Technology is the same. Technology can be used to subjugate peoples or it can be used to help liberate them. That is one conclusion that flows from the document you approved. In order to use the weapon of technology for society's benefit, one has to control society. To control society, the elements of oppression must be destroyed, and the society conditions prevailing in some countries must be changed. The weapon of technology must be placed at the disposal of all technicians, at the disposal of the people. That task belongs to all of us who believe that change is required in certain regions of the globe. We cannot have technician who think like revolutionaries but do not act like revolutionaries. There is an urgent need to make a revolution in most of our continents in almost all of Latin America, in all of Africa and Asia, wherever exploitation has reached inconceivable degree.

Whoever pretends that a technician, an architect, a doctor, an engineer, or any type of scientist should merely work with his people starve to death or fall in battle, has in fact taken the side of the enemy. He is in not apolitical, he is political- but in opposition to movement for liberation. Naturally I respect opinions of all who are present here. Clearly there must be few youth and many professionals here who think a socialist system, or what is known of it up to now, is a system of oppressing, misery, and mediocrity-as is crudely stated and spread around in propaganda. They think that man can achieve full self-realisation only when there is free enterprise, free thought, and all the things imperialism throws at us. Many of these people are honest in their thinking, and I am not here to argue. One cannot argue about these problems. For quite a long time, for generations, these people have been moulded by the collective education capitalism has put in place in order to train its technical personnel faithful to its principles, it would already have fallen. But it has begun to fall because the world is awakening today none of the old assertions are accepted any longer just because they were written long ago. Instead, people demand proof in practice of what is asserted; they want a scientific analysis of all assertions. Out of this want a scientific analysis of all assertions.

Out of this dissatisfaction, revolutionary ideas are born and spread and more throughout the world, backed by the living examples of how technology can be put at the service of man, as has happened in the socialist countries. That is what I could tell you on this. I would like to add something directed to my companeros, the students of Cuba. And since this will be about something a little bit specific, a little bit provincial for you, I beg you to simply not listen if it holds no interest for you. But we have to pay attention to our students, and we have to do this every single day. Our young people were born in the midst of great turmoil. This is a country where not too long ago US sailors performed their bodily functions on the head of our apostle [Jose] Marti's statue, yet today our entire people stand firm against US imperialism. An extraordinary phenomenon has occurred: a total change in the consciousness of the masses, with just a few years of revolutionary work. But as with any drastic and abrupt change, not everything is fully understood. So not everything is clear in the minds of our students. Their minds-unlike the minds of our people-are yet to free them-selves from a whole number of apprehensions.

That is why we wanted to insist again at this moment of struggle-when we are facing Yankee imperialism directly, when it threatens us daily, when its aggressiveness is so clear-that the task of the students is more important than ever. They have to accelerate their studies in order to become the true builders of the new society. At the same time, they also have to deepen their consciousness so they know exactly how that society is to be built. So that they won't be mere builders without ideas, but rather, they will put their hands, their heads, and their hearts at the service of the society being born. And at the same time, they must be ready with rifle in hand, because the defense of our society is not a task that falls to only one or another layer in society. The defense of the Cuban Revolution is the continuous task of every Cuban at all times, in every trench. Your task, companero students, is to follow Lenin’s advice to the fullest: "Every revolutionary must be the best at his place of work Best at his place of work, at his place of struggle” and your place of struggle today is the university; it is study, the training of our professional as rapidly as possible in order to fill the gaps we have, to fill the holes left by imperialism when it took away our technical personnel, to confront the country's general backwardness, and to hasten the building of a new society. That is the fundamental task, but not the only task. Because one should never put aside the consciences study of theory, or the permanent necessity to defend the revolution with ideological weapons every minute of our lives.

This is a hard task, one in which we need to mobilise the strength of our students. This is a generation of sacrifice. This generation, our generation, will not not have the goods, not even remotely, that the generation to come will have. We need to be clear on this, conscious of this, conscious of our role, because we have had the immense glory of being the vanguard of the revolution in the Americas. And we have the glory of being the country imperialism hates the most. At every step we are in the vanguard of the struggle. We have not renounced a single one of our principles. We have not sacrificed a single one of our ideals. Nor have we left unfulfilled a single one of our obligations. That is why we are in the vanguard that explains the glory felt by every Cuban in each corner of the world he visits. But all this demands effect. This generation - the one that has made the apparent miracle of establishing a socialist revolution a few steps from US imperialism - has to pay for his glory with sacrifice. It must make sacrifices every day in order to build through its efforts the future you aspire to, the you dream about, a future In which every resource, every means, every piece of technology, will be at your disposal so you can transform them and breathe new life into them and-if you will permit me to use this rather idealistic phrase - put them at the service of the people.

To do that, material goods must be produced, imperialism’s attack must be repulsed, and all difficulties must be confronted. That is why our generation will have a place in the history of Cuba, and a place in the history of Latin America. We cannot let down the hopes that all revolutionaries, all oppressed people in Latin America and perhaps in the world, have placed in the Cuban Revolution. Furthermore, we must never forget that the power of the Cuban Revolution’s example does not operate solely here at home. We have the obligation to bring the ideological flame of revolution to every corner of the Americans and to every corner of the world where we can get a hearing. We have the obligation to feel all the miseries occurring in the world, all exploitation and injustice. We have the obligation that Marti summed up in a phrase we have often used, and which we should post on the heard board of our beds, in the most visible place: “Every true man must feel on his own cheek the blow to the cheek of another.” that must sum up the ideas of the revolution in relation to every country of the world.

Our young must always be free, discussing and exchanging ideas, concerned with what is happening throughout the entire world, open to using technology coming from any part of the world; welcoming whatever the world might offer us. And you must always be sensitive to the struggle, the sufferings, and the hopes of oppressed people everywhere. This is how we will build our future. Today, coming to the real and practical issues, let me say that you have quite a task in front of you. You are starting to hold congress where technology will be the prime concern, and politics will disappear from the relation and the exchanges of experience between men. But you, students of the world, should never forget that behind technology there is always someone controlling it; and that someone is society. You can either be for or against that society.

There are those in the world think that exploitation is good and the are those think is bad and must be ended. And even when there is no discussion of politics, a political being cannot renounce this inherent aspect of the human condition. Never forget that technology is a weapon. If you feel the world is not as perfect as it should be, then you must struggle to put the weapon of technology at the service of society. You must rescue society before that can be accomplished, so that technology benefits the greatest number of human beings possible, so that we can build the society of tomorrow - whatever name you choose to give it-the society we dream of and that we call - as it was called by the founder of scientific socialism - communism.
Paris on muerte! (Homeland or death) Venceremos! (We will win)

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