This ideal of revolutionary self-sacrifice is tremendously powerful for many young Latin Americans. Shortly before his death in 1967, the young Guatemalan poet-guerrilla Otto Rene Castillo wrote:

My country, let us walk together, you and I.

I will descend into the abysses where you send me,

I will drink your bitter cup.

I will be blind so you may have eyes.

I will be voiceless so you may sing.

I have to die so you may live.

But, terrible as this choice to die for people and country is-the real choice is even worse. For most of the people are still a long way from picking up the gun. Maybe someday, after a revolutionary clerics' movement gains momentum, or after a reform clerics' movement is crushed. But not now. When the guerrillas come to a village, the people are likely to be terrified not of the guerrillas, but of the interrogations, arrests, and even the destruction of their village which could follow. So they may beg the guerrillas to leave.

Che hoped for many Vietnams, and all who wish to see America's empire broken might wish the same. But when I look at the beautiful highlands-the canyons, ferns, pine trees, volcanoes and mineral springs and consider the hell of Vietnam today-I cannot wish that on Guatemala. She may yet take it on herself. But before anything like a majority of the people have actually decided to support the revolution, Guatemala will be committed to a long season in a hell much fiercer than the grinding misery she now knows.

The guerrillas realize that the Guatemalan Army is only a first obstacle, and that before it sees its puppets destroyed, the United States will intervene massively. We already have some 1000 military "advisors" in Guatemala, according to Miami Herald reporter Georgie Anne Geyer (Dec. 24, 1966). Less than 500 guerrillas now. A few thousand more and it is decided.

At first it was very discouraging for me to realize how "unmajoritarian" this all is. I had come to Guatemala in hopes of seeing a popular revolution, and partly to get away from this country, where the majority's in difference to its government's war crimes daily invited a revolutionary to go crazy.

It is different in Guatemala. Most of the people are sympathetic to the guerrillas, but are very threatened by the aura of death. Which invites Latin American revolutionaries to make the most terrible choice-to presume to wage war on a genocidal enemy. The latest Tupamaro (urban guerrillas of Uruguay) watchword lays it out-"If there isn't a homeland for all, there won't be a homeland for anybody." ( Granma, Havana, Oct. 18, 1970, "Tupamaros Interview" reprinted in NUC (New University Conference) Papers ?? t, Chicago, 1970)

Che's choice of "Patria o Muerte" (Country or Death), means more than the death of individual fighters. Guatemala will be its own country, or it will die.

And I learned that it is no easier in Guatemala to be a revolutionary, and no more important. The third world will not make our revolution for us. And we will not help the third world by treating the people of America as our enemy, an error the Vietnamese have never made. With the repressive power of the United States so great, it may well be that much of the third world will not be able to free itself until we stop the rulers of our country from making war on the people of the world.