Revolution in the Revolution? [antikvár]

FOREWORDThe circumstances under which this work was written and the identity of its author are explained in the Introduction written for the original Spanish edition by Roberto Fernández Retamar and included in this English translation. It remains for us only to add information, useful to the reader, on developments since publication in Havana in January 1967.To begin with, the size of the first printing (200,000 copies) and the evident eagerness of representatives of the Cuban regime to secure the widest distribution of the work both inside and outside Cuba leave no doubt that Régis Debray, though writing only in his capacity as a private student of revolutionary theory and practice, has succeeded in presenting to the world an accurate and profound account of the thinking of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution on these subjects. It is not to depreciate Debray's contribution to say that we have here for the first time a comprehensive and authoritative presentation of the revolutionary thought of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.That alone would be sufficient to mark the work as one of first importance. But there is an added reason. As the very title implies, we have to do not only with a work on revolutionary thought but one which aims to revolutionize revolutionary thought. As far as Latin America is concerned, Debray and the Cuban leaders believe, the revolution will not and cannot follow one or another of the patterns traced out by the two great revolutionary upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century. The Latin American revolution is taking a third way, the first stages of which have already been revealed in the Cuban experience. Hence the need amounting to a necessity for Latin American revolutionaries to study the