Why Did The Cuban Revolution Use Propaganda

Amongst the many tactics that Che discussed in his book was about how the revolution should use propaganda. The spread of the revolution’s ideals was instrumental to the success of the revolution because the spread of information would inspire others to support the cause and allow the guerilla fighters to dictate what they want the people to know rather than allow the government they were fighting against spread information. Of course when Che was writing in 1961, radio was a much bigger form of communication than it is today which is why he put a special emphasis on the need for propaganda spread through the radio. The need for a guerilla movement, or any type of social movement, to use propaganda is important as it “...explains, teaches,

In the 1970s things began to change as the politics of the time, however, negatively affected this theory and put an end to the mass amount of guerrilla-style fighting that Latin America was seeing in the 1960s. A main cause for this end was the divide between the Soviet parties and these guerilla fighters (Wickham-Crowley 223). The other problem that Che’s theory faced was that the Cuban Revolution was not the only influential revolution that took place in those times. The Chinese Communist Revolution took place in 1949, but Mao Zedong’s writings and influence was still predominant throughout much of the world. More relevant to the time period that Che and Fidel were writing in, there was the ongoing situation in Vietnam. For example the Viet Cong were an influential group much like the Cuban Revolution because they were a guerrilla group who fought against North Vietnamese Army, and more importantly the United States (”Viet Cong (VC)”). The late 1950s and 1960s as a whole was a time for social upheaval around the world as there were many social movements taking place. Popular movements such as these led to other approaches to revolutions being exchanged instead of solely following the foco theory

One of the pieces he published was titled, The Cadre, Backbone of the Revolution (Gerassel 204). A cadre here means, “a cell of indoctrinated leaders active in promoting interests of a revolutionary party” (Merriam-Webster). This was written in 1962, three years after the revolution had taken place and the reality of the aftermath of the revolution was slowly setting into the new regime. The core problem that Che outlined was that they had lost contact with the masses and were out of touch with the people. He wrote about an idea to have a “selective principle” that would demonstrate who the most capable people were of the revolution (Guevara 206). Those people would be promoted to being leaders of the revolution. This idea of a ‘selective principle’ is important because it is the unifying cause for the revolutionaries to rally around. Even though Castro and Che succeeded in having a revolution in Cuba, Che still saw reason to have something to inspire the people to serve. However, he never says what exactly this principle would be besides that it would presumably be the goals of the revolution. It still fits in much of social movement theory that states that there should be a common cause to merit the movement. For all of his writing on the cadre as being a dedicated leader to the cause, Che writes that there does not need to be