Fertile Ground: Che Guevara and Bolivia: A Firsthand Account by Rodolfo Saldaña

Did the capture and execution of Che Guevarra prove that the military actions he led in Bolivia in 1966-67 were doomed to failure?This interview with Bolivian participant Rodolfo Saldaña reveals the opposite. His captivating description of how fertile the ground was in Bolivia and throughout South America for revolution includes the mass support and financial aid given to the guerrillas by tin miners, peasants, and students. He explains how the U.S. backed the military junta, and the real reasons for the defeat.

In this firsthand account, Bolivian tin miner and revolutionary militant Rodolfo Saldan~a explains how the guerilla lead by Che Guevara - which Saldan~a helped lead the support network for --was rooted in the revolutionary upsurge of workers' , students' and farmers' struggles in the mid-late '60s in Bolivia and the mass movements against dictatorship and Yanqui Imperial domination in the neighboring countries of Peru and Argentina . As he explains from first-hand experience, Che's efforts were not isolated, driven by desire for martyrdom, or sabotaged by Fidel Castro, as so many of Che's ' biographers' have claimed. Excellent preface and introduction by Cuban General Harry Villegas and Pathfinder Press' Mary-Alice Waters place the lessons of Che's final efforts in the context of the struggles of workers, farmers and youth of today against capitalism and the Yanqui Empire.

Saldana's fits Che Guevara guerrilla struggle in Bolivia oin 1966 and 1967 into the context of workers struggles that had been shaking that country since the 1940s. He shows how Bolivian revolutionists, workers, students, and peasants welcomed Che's struggle and how the class struggle in that country advanced by Che's struggle. At the country's biggest tin mines, entire unions pledged one day's salary to support Che. Saldana, a founder and leader of the Bolivian Communist Party until he broke with them to work with Che's guerrilla, shows how the Bolivian CP sabotaged Che's struggle. With economic and social conditions in Bolivia and other parts of Latin America much worse than they were in the 1960s, this book should be read as a manual for future upsurges of struggle by workers and peasants in Bolivia and throughout the Americas.

Kudos to the Pathfinder editors for finding Saldaña and recording his story before he died. Saldaña describes the day-to-day life of revolutionary organizers among workers and peasants in Bolivia in the early 1960s. The book gave me a deeper appreciation for the revolutionary possibilities that existed in Bolivia, which in turn led to Che opening the guerrilla front there in 1966.