Ernesto "che" Guevara

During the Cuban Revolution of 1956-1959, led by Fidel Castro, which Ernesto Che Guevara participated in and became a commander in the Rebel Army, the goals of the Revolution changed from one of deposing the Dictator Fulgencio Batista, to a broader based social and economic movement, which featured agrarian reform as one of its main tenants. A large part of the Guerilla forces led by Castro and Guevara, sometimes above 80 percent, were peasants, some dispossessed, all abused by feudal land arrangements of Cuba before the Revolution. Many of the campesinos worked day in and day out for just barely enough to support a family. Nearly all the peasants were diseased or malnourished. This fact led Castro and Guevara to understand the need for the Agrarian Reform program instituted soon after the Revolution was accomplished, while they were still fighting the Revolutionary War (Guevara, 102).

Che's agrarian program was simple. It was the Zapatista line of "Land for those who work it." This seemed simple to him and was justified by the reality of the countryside, where those who worked the land had nothing and it caused all sorts of problems. This line was subverted by leaders of the national movement which was supposedly coordinating activities with revolutionary aims throughout the country. In reality there were several factions within the national movement that were decidedly against each other, and in fact fought with each other and stole from each other, and there was, as was revealed after the Revolution ended indeed no harmony between those who had different agendas. By November 1958, Che's version of Agrarian Reform was being put into place in the "liberated zone" (the zone controlled by the Rebel Army), which included confiscation of land owned by those who sympathized with Batista, and a granting of land to all those who had worked it or paid rent on it for 2 years or more. This caused all sorts of problems among the revolution's "allies", who turned out to be opportunists and tried to block the reform where they could not gain some advantage. Among those whose agenda ran counter to the Revolutionary program was a group called Front II who operated in the Sierra Escambray Mountains, near the town of Sancti-Spiritu and insisted on collecting dues on the agrarian programs instituted by the Revolutionary J-26 Movement (Taibo, 211). Earlier in the struggle, a provisional government created by the revolution's "allies" in Miami, Florida, was condemned for their opportunistic tendencies by Fiedel Castro. This group of Cuban "Revolutionary" leaders (which included some in the city component of the Revolutionary J-26 Movement) decided, without including representation, or even consultation with those who were actually conducting the Revolution in the Sierra Maestra, that the government would be a coalition government of all the "revolutionary" movements throughout Cuba (Guevara, 211-227). These and several other things, (including banditry in the name of the Revolution and the desire among several other "revolutionary" elements for a military junta in Havana) led to early controversy in the Revolutionary movement of Cuba.

After the Revolution, the conflict came to a head. Che leading the Rebel Army, felt that the Rebel Army should be the guarenteeors of the agrarian reform, since the army was made of those who were peasants and those peasants were fighting not only for the Revolution, but indeed that they were fighting for a better way for the peasants of Cuba. Before the agrarian question was settled, the Cuban government in March nationalized the telephone company, and the public transportation system, and then ordered rents cut in half and lowering of the price of medicine. This was certainly the flavor of the Cuban government to come. The Agrarian Reform Law was signed into effect in May of 1959. It confiscated plantations over 1000 acres and then paid for the expropriation with bonds maturing in 29 years. Then these lands would be turned into farm co-ops run by the government or split up among the peasants who lived on them. Che rejected the act's moderation, calling it a "timid law, which did not take on so basic a task as suppressing the plantation owners" (Taibo, 277).

The Cuban Government took heat for this act from both sides. From the left, Castro was accused of mollifying large landowners and from the right he was accused of betraying the revolution by changing the aims of the movement from eliminating the dictatorship to agrarian reform. But as it happened, this was the agrarian reform that was presented in Cuba after the revolution, and from it Che moved on to other things.

On October 7, 1959, Che became the director of the Industrialization program of the National Agrarian Reform Institute (INRA) (Taibo,