A New Old Che Guevara Interview

EARLY in 1959 Ernesto " Che" Guevara, like most of the other leaders of the Castro revolution, willingly talked with many persons who expressed an interest in what had happened and was happening in Cuba. Some of the resulting interviews were subsequently published in sources not easily accessible to those studying Latin American affairs and thus have not been consulted by students of the revolution. One of these neglected interviews was given by Guevara to two Chinese Communist journalists in April 1959, was published in a Chinese journal several months later, and is here available for the first time in a complete English translation.' Although the official Chinese Communist New China News Agency did not formally open its office in Havana until June 1959, the two reporters, K'ung Mai and Ping An arrived in Cuba sometime in midApril.2 The first report sent directly from Havana to Peking was on April 16, 1959.3 According to the journalists' introduction in World Knowledge, this interview with Guevara was held for two hours on "the 108th evening after the victory of the revolution," that is to say