Che addresses the Punta del Este Conference, August 1961 -- Che Photo #18

Che addresses the Punta del Este Conference, August 1961 -- Che Photo #18

Che addresses the Organization of American States (OAS) Conference in Uruguay, 1961. At the conference the United States was already working to have Cuba expelled from the OAS which is was several months later.

Che gave two fiery, famous speeches at the conference. From one of them comes this tremendous quote:

The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba—confident that it is expressing the general opinion of the peoples of Latin America—reaffirms that democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy, with discrimination against Blacks and outrages by the Ku Klux Klan, or with the persecution that drove scientists like Oppenheimer from their posts, deprived the world for years of the marvelous voice of Paul Robeson, held prisoner in his own country, and sent the Rosenbergs to their deaths against the protests of a shocked world, including the appeals of many governments and of Pope Pius XII. The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba expresses the Cuban conviction that democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians, but rather it lies in the right of the citizens to determine their own destiny, as this assembly of the people is now doing. Furthermore, democracy will come to exist in Latin America only when people are really free to make choices, when the poor are not reduced—by hunger, social discrimination, illiteracy, and the legal system—to the most wretched impotence. To sum up, the National General Assembly of the People of Cuba condemns: the exploitation of human by human and the exploitation of the underdeveloped countries by imperialist finance capital.

From a collection of Soviet archival photos of Che. The Left Chapter will be doing a daily series of these often unusual Che photos from this archive over the month of February -- some with quotes and history.