"The epic that lies before us will be written by the hungry masses of Indians, of landless peasants, of exploited workers, and students; it will be written by the progressive masses, by the honest and brilliant intellectuals who so abound in our suffering lands of Latin America ." The Declaration adds that the exploited and villified masses of the continent "have resolved to undertake the writing of their own history, once and for all."

Inspired in the lofty principles of the struggle for the true and definitive independence of Latin America expressed in the Second Declaration of Havana, the peoples of Latin America will hold the First Conference of Solidarity of the Peoples of Latin America, in Havana next July.

The peoples of our continent will tighten their combative and militant bonds of solidarity still more in this assembly, and will establish a common strategy to be employed against the common enemy, U.S. imperialism, in behalf of the liberation and progress of all our nations, in the conviction that the duty of all revolutionaries is to make revolution.

Organizing Committee of the Latin American for Solidarity Organization

(OLAS)

APPENDIX IX

[From Granma, Jan. 15, 1967]

LATIN AMERICAN INTELLECTUALS SPEAK OUT IN DEFENSE OF PEOPLES FACING POVERTY AND ILLITERACY

The Editorial Council of the Casa de las Americas magazine, meeting in Havana from the 5th to the 8th of January to discuss the policies of the magazine, agreed to release the following declaration:

Every responsible Latin American writer is aware today that he is facing a new situation. One aspect of this new reality is the realignment of forces in the socialist as well as in the capitalist world, but above all stands the recent U.S. offensive in the field of culture, which is specifically designed to neutralize and divide our intellectuals or win them over to the U.S. cause. This offensive has revealed itself through such programs as the Camelot, Simpatico and Numismatico Plans; the financing of sociological research through the CIA; the commissioning of academic studies by the U.S. Defense Department through foundations and universities; the purchase of publishing houses and magazines in Latin America; the activities of the Peace Corps..

This new situation and, above all, the newness of the tactics employed, necessarily provoked a certain confusion in regard to the attitudes to be assumed and defended by us. Therefore, and in spite of the legitimate differences of opinion that may exist among our writers of the left, we are convinced that all feel the need for open discussion on the broadest possible basis with the aim of agreeing upon the principles that will enable us to face this new threat and establish a common denominator of action.

It is obvious that Latin America, like the Third World as a whole, is in need of an urgent transformation of its socioeconomic structures that, by favoring a full development of all its potentialities, will bring about that liberty in the sphere of creative activity without which no intellectual can fulfill his role. It falls to the peoples of our continent to carry out this revolution according to their traditions, their social concepts and their specific historic circumstances, even to exercising the legitimate right to armed insurrection as Cuba has done and other peoples are doing.

Militarism, with its habitual methods, and the Alliance for Progress, with far greater subtlety, are attempting to frustrate this revolution or turn it to their own purposes. In the field of culture the Alliance, like the OAS, both instruments of the new U.S. policy, have been attempting for some time now to place our intellectuals at a crossroads, by tempting them with possibilities and perspectives concerning whose true nature it behooves us to alert all writers and artists.

If the intellectual is, under any circumstances, bound to the deep aspirations of his community, and these are expressed, directly or indirectly, in his work, this tie is much more binding in underdeveloped countries like our own, subjected to the actions of U.S. imperialism, native oligarchies and the economic extortions of the highly industrialized countries. This exploitation results in misery and illiteracy for the great masses of our population, making it the responsibility of our writers to become the voice, in the field of culture, of these dispossessed. It can therefore surprise no one if, under the existing circumstances, many of our intellectuals have awakened to a responsibility that they frequently avoided in the past, while others have assumed increasingly more militant attitudes, even to the extent of entering combat, undergoing incarceration and exile, or being silenced in their own countries, at the same time that attempts are made to isolate our countries one from another by means of open or veiled cultural blockades. No one ignores that the population of Latin America is being submitted to a daily campaign that distorts truth, deforms values and muddles conscience, through the mass media of certain films, television and radio programs and publications that are tragically efficacious and, at the same time, destroy or adulterate authentically original work and sink our people into moral apathy, triviality or tacit consent.

It is our duty to fight this degraded art because it is this, and no authentic art or literature, that separates our people from the deepest sources of their existence and makes them vulnerable to that cultural penetration that precedes the measures that will attempt to put an end to their freedom and sovereignty.

Now, more than ever, is the moment to affirm how convinced we are that the most absolute and irrestricted creative freedom is an essential attribute of the revolution to which we aspire, and, for that reason, we will never reject any technique, method or form of approaching and expressing the different areas of reality. We believe that the most difficult and the most extreme quality of intellectual and artistic endeavor are always revolutionary because they constitute the nourishment of our future and give the cause of man its rigorous beauty. All genuine art serves this cause and must be stimulated and defended, often independently of the intentions of its author. But at the same time we postulate the equally imperious need for our intellectuals to assume their social responsibilities and participate, with their work or with whatever activity circumstances demand, in the fight for the liberation of the peoples of Latin America.

This is a struggle that our writers can fight on many fronts, and one of these is the indispensable exchange among the diverse cultures of Latin America or of other regions of the world and, as an immediate step, through direct contact by means of translations, meetings and other forms of cultural reciprocity and liaison. But this dialogue which, as such presupposes the recognition and expression of different and even contradictory conceptions can only develop under very precise conditions, particularly when the forces are very unequal. No dialogue is possible with those who try to use our writers in favor of unacceptable interests, neutralizing our freedom and our full solidarity with the struggle of the peoples of our Continent. Only within a situation of true equality and respect can this cultural exchange take place.

For these reasons, we consider that the unity of all Latin American writers of the left is necessary today more than ever before. Now when the danger of armed intervention of the kind carried out in Santo Domingo hangs over our heads, when Viet Nam is being savagely bombed every day, it has become more urgent to coordinate our struggle against the common enemy of our America. The situation demands an exchange of experiences among Latin American writers in a great assembly. We also believe that writers from Africa and Asia should meet with us as well because, above the differences of language and culture, we all face today a very similar predicament. For this reason, we make this call to all intellectuals in underdeveloped countries to participate in a debate concerning our mutual problems of this hour, which is the hour of our America, and of the entire Third World.

HAVANA, January 8th, 1967.

EMMANUEL CARBALLO (Mexico), JULIO CORTAZAR (Argentina), ROQUE Dalton (El Salvador), RENÉ DEPESTRE (Haiti), EDMUNDO DESNOE (Cuba), ROBERTO FERNÁNDEZ RETAMAR (Cuba), AMBROSIO FORNET (Cuba), MANUEL GALICH (Guatemala), LISANDRO OTERO (Cuba), GRAZIELLA POGOLOTTI (Cuba). ANGEL RAMA (Uruguay), MARIO VARGAS LLOSA (Peru), DAVID VIÑAS (Argentina).

JORGE ZALAMEA (Colombia), his signature does not yet appear in this document as he is en route to Cuba.

APPENDIX X

[From the Miami Herald, Apr. 20, 1967]

HAVANA TOUTS PARIS 'EXPERT' ON REVOLUTION

(By Don Bohning, Herald Latin America editor)

A young French Communist, headquartered in Cuba and captured in Bolivia, has been getting top billing from Havana in recent months as a leading revolutionary theoretician.

Jules Regis Debray, a 26-year-old, Paris-born revolutionary activist, was captured by Bolivian government forces in an encounter with guerrillas April 20. Debray's role with the guerrillas remains hazy although he ostensibly was there as a journalist.

Less uncertain are his activities in Havana and his close association with Cuban Premier Fidel Castro.

Castro, apparently, was smitten by Debray's theories on revolution in much the same fashion he was attracted by the unorthodox agricultural theories of another Frenchman, Andres Voisin.

Voisin died in Cuba of a heart attack two years ago but his untested agricultural concepts are still being applied.

Debray first visited Cuba in 1961 to study the Castro regime's literacy campaign. He returned to make Havana his permanent residence in December, 1965, a month before the Tri-Continental Conference of Asian, African and Latin American Revolutionaries was held in the Cuban capital.

Debray was given a professorship at the University of Havana, apparently as a revolutionary theoretician.

He published, in 1965, two works on Cuba and Latin America-one in Spanish and one in French-but it was his book "Revolution Within the Revolution?" appearing in January of this year which attracted the most attention.

The book was first published in Havana by the Casa de las Americas, the Cuban cultural and intellectual center, and has since been published in France. Castro is reported to have read proofs for the Spanish edition.

The book was widely circulated by the Cubans and in early February was reprinted in Mexico by Politica, a leftist periodical. Extensive summaries in Creole directed at Haiti have been broadcast by Cuban radio.

Central theme of the book is that repeated by Castro so frequently of latethe duty of all revolutionaries is to make revolution. And the only way to do it is by_armed struggle, i.e., guerrilla warfare.

It reflects again the divergence of opinion between Havana and Moscow on how the revolution should be carried out.

"Today, in Latin America," Debray writes, "any political line which cannot be expressed in terms of results, in terms of a clear and precise military line, cannot be considered as revolutionary."

"If one wants to conquer," says Debray, "it is necessary to accept as a principle the fact that life is not the most important thing to the revolutionary."

A basic Debray concept is that guerrilla warfare should never be subordinated to the urban revolutionary political leadership. A single military and political command must be maintained, says Debray, and it should rest with the guerrillas. He speaks with contempt of the urban based revolutionary political parties who attempt to maintain control over, but instead obstruct, the rural guerrilla movement.

Debray, by his writings, would appear to be a revolutionary first and a Communist incidentally.

He quotes Castro as asking "Who will bring about the revolution in Latin America? Who?" and answering, "The people, the revolutionaries, with or without the party."

Debray draws heavily upon the Cuban experience in supporting his thesis that the revolution begins with guerrilla warfare.

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Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Cuban poet and director of the Casa de las Americas, notes in an introduction to Debray's book that the author "talked with many persons directly involved in our revolutionary exploits among them the conceiver and leader of the struggle, Fidel Castro with whom he spent much time."

Debray, says Fernandez, "had access to numerous unpublished documents" from Castro's anti-Batista guerrilla campaign. "No other person who has written about the Cuban Revolution has had such a wealth of facts and figures for historic investigation."

Fernandez also notes that Debray "toured various Latin American countries" and was "in close contact with revolutionaries, sharing on occasion guerrilla life.” He was sharing it again when captured in Bolivia.

OAS COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE LASO NOT NEEDED

Havana in Spanish to the Americas 1340 GMT 12 July 1967-E (Feature: "Our America")

Another OAS commission, or special committee, as the Yankees call it, has just been formed in Washington. This committee, which is sponsored by the U.S. ministry of colonies, in other words, the OAS, will have among its functions that of reporting on the activities on the Latin American Solidarity Organization (LASO). According to international news agency reports, this machine of continental reaction will investigate what the OAS and the U.S. Government describe as LASO's subversive activities in the hemisphere since October of last year.

So what is this new OAS committee going to investigate concerning LASO? Have the sponsors of this revolutionary organization concealed anything about why it was created? LASO speaks a firm language, without equivocations of any kind, a revolutionary language with a single intention: to make revolution. The OAS has no need to investigate the activities and objectives of LASO. They are well known. That the peoples should subvert the order established by imperialism is a historic necessity for our continent. This conviction is one of the premises of LASO.

Therefore, the LASO conference proclaims that the duty of all revolutionaries is to make revolution. Under this fervent slogan it will debate in Havana from 28 July to 5 August the most urgent problems of the hemisphere, but mainly the drawing up of a global combat strategy against Yankee imperialism on this continent.