Amidst the flurry of travel disruptions, high costs and global conflict, it is hard to see any positives. Is there anything to look forward to in these bleak times?
Sincerely,
Helen.
[Sent via email]
Hi Helen,
In Marx’s materialist conception of history, particular attention is paid to the “objective conditions” of individual life and social being.1 These conditions include available technologies, resources, level of accessible material comfort and productive employment that shape our governing ideologies, happiness and culture. In the present economy we are heavily dependent on oil and gas for energy, fertilizer and plastic byproducts.
This fossil fuel dependency has transformed the resource-rich Middle East into a site of economic competition between great powers. The result is a raging boil of oil money, ethnic strife and a vast quantity of weapons propping up systems of repression, resistance and neo-colonial extraction. What is happening in Iran right now is what happens when the pot boils over, just as it has previously boiled over in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Sudan, Libya, Lebanon and Syria.
It is important for those of us in the West to appreciate just how much of our perceived progress has relied on managing the conflicts and resources of other nations. The capitalist world order was largely cemented by accident, when Old World European technologies collided with New World resources and societies. But its persistence is consciously maintained by way of corporate exploitation of capital starved countries and military containment of economic rivals. In other words, there is an intrinsic relationship between the riches of one country and the poverty of another.
Having survived the U.S. proxy war with Iraq, Iran became one of those rivals earmarked for “containment.”2 They were systematically marginalized from the global economy with sanctions and surrounded by American military bases. From the American point of view, this containment strategy was largely successful for decades and culminated with massive Iranian protests against the economic conditions of their country. The resulting crackdown only exposed the unsustainability of Iran’s trajectory.
Luckily for the IRGC, Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran allowed them to unleash the full force of their asymmetric power and they exploded out from the box that had previously contained them. Trump is now confronted with the stark reality that he won’t be able to contain them economically or militarily again. He’ll have to either destroy the country entirely or watch it become dramatically strengthened.
The bleak circumstances of war are a heavy burden to bear for this geopolitical competition over economic dominance. But if there is a silver lining to these clouds, Iran has plucked it from the sky and laid it at our feet. They have weaponized the global dependency on oil and wielded it to their great advantage; they have exacted a toll from the genocidal state of Israel; they have exposed limits to American militarism, inspiring defiance from tormented nations like Cuba.
Since the belligerent and cowardly attack on Iran, the world has turned to greener fertilizers, electric vehicles and renewable solar and wind power generation for energy needs. A helium shortage will put the brakes on a runaway tech sector and military-industrial complex. From the ashes of war, we may find the objective conditions of mankind gradually change for the better. Since a hegemonic power cannot sanction the Sun or go to war over wind, the foundation of a post-capitalist cooperative economy slowly becomes concretized.
Henri Lefebvre once said, “History puts its worst foot forward.”3 There is a duality to history, a tendency for progress to be paid up-front in coins forged by blood and fire. Iran is paying that price now in opposition to the oil-thirsty American establishment and Zionist lobby. As allies for a better world, we can always hope that Tehran is the rock where the wave of western imperialism breaks.
What is the outcome of the U.S.–Israeli attack on Iran?
Thanks!
Kora.
[Sent via Bluesky]
Hi Kora,
By many accounts Americans and Israelis approached this military attack with different objectives. For the Americans led by Trump, the objective after the decapitation strike was the quick emergence of a compliant leader that would submit to Washington’s demands on the state. Israel no doubt knew that this outcome was unrealistic but nonetheless were elated to have American assistance with their ultimate goal, which is the total destruction of Iran as a functioning country.
Alas, nothing has rationalized Iran’s notorious slogan of “Death to America! Death to Israel!” more than this joint U.S.–Israeli attack, which has already blown up children at a school in Minab and brought calamity to the entire population of Tehran. Assassinations and aerial bombardment have led Iranians to rally around the flag and this alone has frustrated American and Israeli designs. Even further, Iran has demonstrated the ability to hold the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf states hostage, while simultaneously inflicting heavy damage to Israeli infrastructure and American bases in the region.
Iran has a strong hand to play as they try to end this war on their terms: war reparations from the U.S. and Israel, along with international security guarantees against future strikes. Ultimately, this war is one of attrition between Iranian missiles and regional interceptors. Whichever side runs out first will lose.
If the United States and Israel neutralize Iranian weapons and prevail, the global status quo will remain depressingly the same. Trump will continue to mark more and more countries for imperialist expansion and Israel will solidify itself as the undisputed Middle Eastern military power without any counterweight.
But the spectre of an Iranian victory against the West’s flagship militaries should not be taken lightly. In the Middle East, perceived strength matters more than anything else. This is how Israel and the United States have managed to expand their influence over Arab politics during the past few decades, despite those countries being massively unpopular amongst the Muslim populace.
An Iranian victory replete with reparations would shatter the myth of Israeli invincibility and demonstrate U.S. military presence to be a security liability rather than an asset. The net effect would be a much smaller military footprint for the U.S. in the region as they lose control control over the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, the prestige of Iran’s theocratic government in the Islamic world would soar to new heights.
The Iranian conflict has already become a black hole for critical global energy supplies and western investment in the Gulf. This will weaken the ability of European capitals to aid Ukraine at a moment when Russia expects a windfall from its oil exports. If there is a U.S. defeat by Iran, don’t be surprised if Ukraine is the next western ally to settle a conflict on unfavourable terms.
The Europeans have been on the receiving end of continuous insults and threats from Trump regarding tariffs and territorial annexation. Having witnessed the limits of U.S. military capability overseas, the next crop of European leaders should pursue a new security regime for their continent that includes a durable peace and trading relationship with Russia.1
In Asia, the story is much the same. Their energy costs and stock markets have been hit hard by Trump’s decision to illegally attack Iran. They have also been subject to Washington’s erratic tariff policy. But luckily for Asians, they share their continent with a burgeoning superpower that has routinely demonstrated stability and restraint—and has invested in all the right places. China has weathered the oil shock with relative ease, thanks to long-term planning and allocations in green energy and battery technology. For Asia, the increasingly obvious limitations of American security only underline the benefits of deepening economic relations with Beijing.
The stakes are obviously a lot higher than Trump realized when he decided to take a ride to Tehran with the genocidal prime minister of Israel. Israel, by the way, will be lucky to survive an Iran war loss over the medium term; war-addicted and Spartan countries only function so long as they win the conflicts they start. Across the world, we can expect the Middle East to lurch toward Iran, Asia to lurch toward China and Europe to lurch toward Russia. American military prestige will take a massive hit and the oil shocks this war has caused will do immense harm to Trump’s fossil fuel-driven economic agenda.
The war is not yet over. But if the zenith of American hegemony passed over the sands of Iraq and Afghanistan, it may be Iran where the nadir is found.
Donald Trump once commissioned a ghostwriter to put his name to a book called The Art of the Deal—but he’s clearly never read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Consider a staple teaching from Master Sun: “So it is said that if you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperilled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperilled in every single battle.”1 Doubtless, the Pentagon has very capable military commanders, tacticians and a massive arsenal of weapons at their disposal. In matters of war, the balance of power heavily favours America’s legions of imperial soldiers. But with Trump as their commander-in-chief, they fly blind in terms of strategy.
In his political career, Trump has branded himself as an “America First” isolationist, allergic to “forever wars” that divert resources from the homeland. He has boasted about ending eight wars, a Nobel Peace Prize-worthy effort. When he did not receive said prize, he declared himself to be untethered from thinking about peace. After Venezuela amassed a citizens militia to deter American invasion, Trump opted to kidnap the president and threatened to kill his successor unless she complied with U.S. demands. The revolution in Venezuela is now in tactical retreat but the ink is not yet dry on the results of Trump’s acts of violence. Before even knowing what he had accomplished in Venezuela, aircraft carriers were positioned in the Middle East to set about duplicating the Venezuela operation all over again. This time it was in partnership with Israel and against the much more formidable opponent of Iran.
He Who Wishes to Fight
They began with a familiar decapitation strategy, taking the more audacious step of murdering Iran’s head of state rather than merely kidnapping him. They hit 500 targets and launched cyberattacks to encourage a domestic uprising against the government in Tehran. From interviews, Trump evidently believed that the combined external and internal pressure on Iran would bring a compliant leader to the foreground—an Iranian Delcy Rodríguez. But Trump confusingly oscillates between stated objectives in Iran, his motivations for attacking the country are unclear and he has struggled to define his relationship with war in general. In short, this is a man who does not know himself. And he does not know his enemy either.
Although the Venezuela operation was a tactical success for U.S. planners, the hardcore Chavista apparatus remains in place to live another day. Assassinating the Ayatollah Khamanei, on the other hand, galvanized grief and anger across the Shia world. It was an abrasive action that could not be interpreted as a “limited strike” by Iran’s theocratic government—much to Trump’s chagrin. The Iranians responded by setting in motion a battle plan that they had transcribed for weeks beforehand: regional conflict targeting the energy infrastructure of Gulf countries and closing the Strait of Hormuz. This plan was no secret, yet Trump astonishingly went on the record stating that the Gulf escalation was the “biggest surprise” of the conflict. Which brings us to another valuable lesson from The Art of War: “If you don’t know their strategy, you should avoid battle with them.”2
Iran’s escalation was clearly not accounted for by U.S. strategic planning. Only afterward did Trump realize he’d need a mass evacuation of American citizens, a British base for operational support, Ukrainian assistance to counter Shahed drones and more arms production to prosecute the war effort. His “big wave” aerial bombardment appears to be only an ad hoc response to the failure of a domestic rebellion to materialize and Iran’s refusal to capitulate to illegal U.S. and Israeli aggression.
Since Trump does not know his enemy, he may not be aware that Iran is fighting from “deadly ground”—a place where death is assured unless it can be fought out from. By constantly reneging on diplomatic agreements, assassinating leaders at will, surrounding their country with military bases and demanding the forfeiture of missiles, the United States has given Iran no choice but to fight in order to achieve deterrence against their enemy: “When you cannot press forward, cannot retreat backward and cannot run to the sides, you have no choice but to fight right away.”3 And so they have.
Iran is surrounded by American bases.
Opportunity in Chaos
Iran has adopted the sort of high-risk strategy to be expected from an army on deadly ground. But it is logical according to The Art of War: when outnumbered by a massive opponent “first deprive him of what he likes” and focus strikes on “what is weak.”4 The disabling of the Gulf state infrastructure and the Strait of Hormuz satisfy both criteria, as Iran is able to strangle the oil and gas supply from small countries that form the weak underbelly of the Persian Gulf. These countries are within range of Iran’s abundant store of short range range missiles, creating outsized pain for a fossil fuel-addicted world.
Iran’s strategy going forward will be to “find out where [the enemy is] sufficient and where they are lacking.”5 They will accomplish this by testing Israeli and American defences with low intensity but consistent missile and drone barrages in order to deplete interceptor inventories and conceal Iranian launch sites as much as possible. Expect Iran to refrain from ineffectual large attacks unless U.S.–Israeli defensive gaps appear. Only if missile defences are diminished will they be able to strike for a maximum psychological impact—like the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War.
Karl Marx observed that “men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”6 Iran is at an extreme disadvantage with their heavily sanctioned economy now pitted against the military might of much wealthier opponents. The only reason they are in this fight is because of the deficiencies of current U.S. leadership. Of the eight types of decadence that compromise commanders according to The Art of War, Trump suffers from no less than five of them: insatiable greed, jealousy of the wise and able, making friends with the treacherous, a liar with a cowardly heart and talking wildly without courtesy.7
Iran’s path to victory is narrow but existent. It relies on their ability to absorb cruel and punishing aerial bombardment with clever military decoys and camouflage; to achieve critical depletion of the enemy’s missile interceptors; to inflict unsustainable economic pain on the West. All three criteria will have to be met before a strategic victory and future deterrence becomes a possibility. Failing to meet these goals will either result in the destruction of Iran’s 2,600 year old civilization by civil war or the bare survival of a weakened Islamic Republic that is sure to be in conflict again soon against bloodthirsty enemies. Regardless of the outcome in Iran, The Art of War has this to say about the fate of the United States: “Even if a country is large, if it is militaristic it will eventually perish.”8
Why does Trump like gunboat diplomacy and does it work?
Thank you,
Tyler.
[Sent via Bluesky]
Hi Tyler,
The shrewd imperialist planner, Henry Kissinger, once said that “an aircraft carrier is 100,000 tons of diplomacy.” Gunboat diplomacy is to international relations what “the stickup” is to people on the street: a violent robbery at gunpoint. No sane person would hand over their wallet just to anyone who asked for it, but a gun in the face will change that equation. Since the 1800s, imperial powers had similarly learned that other countries were a lot more agreeable to lopsided treaties when a naval armada was docked along their coastline and ready to open fire.
Gunboat diplomacy was used by the British against China during the Opium Wars, against Haiti when the U.S. stole their national gold reserves, against Japan and Korea for purposes of U.S. trade, by France against Thailand for the relinquishing of modern-day Laos to French Indochina and the U.S. against Colombia for the acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone—to name just a few examples in a very long list.1
The topic has gained new relevance in the age of Trump’s bulldozer approach to international relations. He has used a mix of tariffs and annexation threats against stalwart U.S. trading partners in order to browbeat them into accepting humiliating trade agreements. Meanwhile, explicit gunboat diplomacy has become Trump’s preferred tactic against countries under sanction and immune to tariffs. The first two months of 2026 have witnessed the U.S. navy kill and kidnap Venezuelans, impose a cruel blockade on Cuba and surround Iran with devastating weapons of war.
A robber committed to the threat of violent harm does not have to exchange anything of material value in order to receive a ransom. The asymmetry of this transaction is what incentivizes his crime. Trump engages in gunboat diplomacy for the same reason he applies tariffs with zeal—he believes that asymmetrical coercion is the backstop to favourable terms. Under the narrow horizon of short-term self-interest, this approach can appear to work. But robbers do catch blowback. And with history as our guide, we see that this strategy of imperialist aggression often does as well.
Japan acquiesced to American demands in the 1800s—but this sent it down a road of aggressive industrial expansion, fascist government, the colonization of Korea and the bombing of Pearl Harbour. The British did impose harsh treaties on China—but these fomented the Boxer Rebellion that laid the foundation for Mao’s decisive civil war victory and modern China’s Marxist outlook. The French did expand their colonial holdings in Southeast Asia—but this, too, boomeranged in the form of subsequent communist revolutions.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Capitalist powers have had the tendency to underestimate the agency of those that they dominate. Every war, tariff and threat introduces a new conflict, a new dialectical friction, into the tapestry of global relations. The United States has embarked on a strategy to leverage its economic and military supremacy in order to vassalize the world and extract surplus value without trading for it. On the surface, this may seem to work. But as global trade increasingly re-routes around the U.S., expect opposition to American hegemony to stiffen until it eventually comes undone.
See Karl Marx, “The Anglo-Chinese Treaty” in Dispatches for the New York Tribune: Selected Journalism of Karl Marx (Penguin, 2007): 31-36 for details of the opium trade imposed on China and unequal treaties pursuant to it. ↩︎
When the U.S. government purchased Louisiana from France, they secured a land stretching from present-day Montana, through Oklahoma and terminating at the Gulf of Mexico. However a new dispute opened with Spain concerning the southwest boundary of the formerly French territory: Texas. The Americans felt that they had acquired the territory as part of their deal with France but Spain maintained that it was them who had control over that land. The Spanish sale of Florida to Washington was meant to settle the Texas issue and the U.S. government formally relinquished its claims as part of the transaction. But American settlers on the frontier had other ideas.
Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821 and was quickly recognized by the United States. Initially the two countries enjoyed friendly diplomatic relations, with the Treaty of Limits affirming Mexican sovereignty over Texas and other western territories, including present-day Arizona and California. Within this cordial political atmosphere, American homesteaders were invited to settle in Texas and help to stabilize a fragile Mexican economy. What they received was an unruly population with little respect for Mexican sovereignty, much less Mexican people or customs.1 Tensions came to a boil when Mexico abolished slavery in 1829. As many American settlers had brought slaves with them, they would have faced a loss of property if the Mexican law was enforced. Instead they took up arms, kicked out Mexican authorities and demanded to be annexed by the United States.
Early Aggressions
Mexico warned the U.S. that their border treaty would be nullified if they annexed Texas. The Mexicans undoubtedly misunderstood the expansionist spirit of manifest destiny, having been fooled by prior friendly relations with Washington. The resulting Mexican–American War dropped the full brutality of U.S. superiority down on Mexico like the hammer of Thor: boys were shot for sport; churches were desecrated and Catholics murdered; women and little girls were stripped naked and assaulted in unspeakable ways; entire villages were razed by fire.2 The barbarity only halted when the U.S. military occupation of Mexico City forced the surrender of 55% of Mexican territory.
The Mexican–American War was not any kind of dark chapter in the history of U.S.–Latin America relations. On the contrary—it set the mould. With the conquest of new territory stretching to the Pacific, American commercial interests began to reach down the coastline and into Central America.
The western appetite for bananas and other tropical commodities brought US capital into contact with a new swathe of Latino peoples—and it went about as well for them as it did for the Mexicans in years prior. The ravaging of Mexico proved to America, with its powerful industrial economy, that it could act with impunity toward its less-developed neighbours to the south. Their capital and guns afforded them enormous power over a region that lacked both.
Warfare is defined as an “open and declared armed hostile conflict between nations.” The Banana Wars of the early 20th century carry an unfortunate title because they were not wars—they were repeated molestations of vulnerable populations by an imperial power.
When Haiti and the Dominican Republic fell into debt, the US deployed artillery, machine guns and naval ships. They stole the national gold reserves, turned government finances over to New York banks and gave American corporations free access to land for sugar plantations run by forced labour. When a nationalist insurgency threatened foreign property in Nicaragua, marines arrived to quash the rebellion. They proceeded to take over government finances and established a military base to suppress future anti-American revolts. When Washington decided to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, they backed a secessionist movement that would pull the small, pliable country of Panama from the lands of Greater Colombia. When abhorrent working conditions on American-owned sugar plantations in Cuba sparked civil unrest, thousands of marines arrived to protect the harvest and suppress anti-American agitation.3 When plantation workers in Colombia protested payment in coupons rather than cash and demanded a six day work week, the United Fruit Company massacred the strikers. In Honduras, United Fruit kept workers’ movements at bay by paying off presidential candidates and funding right wing militias. This combination of efforts made the corporation the most powerful entity in the state.
The Dictatorships
The advent of the Cold War brought American hegemony over Latin America to new heights. With the US military in confrontation with communist forces in Asia and Europe, covert action and special operations were relied on in the Western Hemisphere. Across Latin America, torture chambers and CIA-trained death squads blossomed alongside a growing number of brutal right wing dictators aided by Washington. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela all suffered visits from oppressive regimes that consolidated power and murdered their opposition under the cynical guise of “anticommunism.” Even modestly progressive and liberal-democratic movements were snuffed out in many of these countries, as elections were overturned and American corporate interest reigned supreme.
This was the Latin America that confronted a young Che Guevara as he embarked on his notorious motorcycle journey across the continent. On his trip he witnessed the the cold and hungry conditions of mine workers in Chile and the faces of poverty in Peru, people who “go on living only because it’s a habit they cannot shake.”4
Guevara correctly understood that the division of Latin America into “unstable and illusory nationalities” made the region ripe for exploitation and US domination.5 He saw this domination first-hand in 1954 when living in Guatemala, where an elected government proposed land reform for its farmers. Soon afterward, it was overthrown by American bombers in order to install a pro-United Fruit Company dictatorship headed by Castillo Armas, a CIA asset who murdered thousands of people. This experience proved the futility of representative democracy in the face of powerful corporate interests.
Having been marked for execution by the homicidal U.S. puppet in Guatemala, Guevara fled to Mexico where he met Fidel Castro and joined the Cuban revolutionary struggle. Cuba was also ruled by a pro-US dictator at this time and he oversaw routine executions of political opponents and a Cuban economy where American corporations controlled approximately 40% of sugar production, 90% of mining concessions, 100% of cattle ranching, 80% of utilities and had a monopoly on imports. Additionally, the corruption of the Batista regime allowed the American Mafia transform Havana into a drunken cesspool of gambling and prostitution.
With striking lucidity President John F. Kennedy admitted:
I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime.
The success of the Cuban revolution saw the re-appropriation of national property and the destruction of casinos by throngs of empowered Habaneros. The revolution went on to deliver universal housing, healthcare and education, restoring dignity to a despoiled country. However, the antagonism would re-emerge in the form of a suffocating economic blockade and countless coup attempts.
The Debt Racket
The end of the Cold War brought more liberal governance to Latin America but they were saddled with debts carried over from the era of military juntas. From this situation came America’s next racket: the “Washington Consensus,” which was little more than a set of neoliberal dictates devised by western financiers for nations held in debt bondage.
Mass privatization, austerity budgets and easy American access to cheap labour and resources were the hallmarks of crisis financing in the 1980s and 1990s, pulling in countries such as Argentina, Chile, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico and Venezuela—resulting in La Década Perdida (the Lost Decade) of stagnant economies and soaring inequality. In other words, the Washington Consensus represented another hegemonic “push from the United States” for “trade agreements favourable to the United States…The free flow of capital that these trade agreements were designed to foster has only benefitted the rich nations and the wealthy classes.”6 Derivative of these neoliberal policy prescriptions is a migration crisis and the 21st century “pink tide” of elected progressive governments throughout Latin America.
From the Banana Wars era to the present day, we can see that Che Guevara was proven right: liberal democracy in exploited countries is too weak to uplift the great majority and a lack of regional solidarity has made it easy for the United States to run roughshod over Latin America. In terms of real purchasing power, the region has been economically stagnant for 50 years, with examples of worsening poverty and shrinking middle incomes over that time. The pink tide movement was driven back by “soft” coups in Brazil and Bolivia, corporate pressure and repeatedattacks from Washington on Latin American progressive heads of state. One pink tide country which resisted coup attempts and foreign subversion was Venezuela under Hugo Chavez.
In a span of 14 years Chavez was able to double school enrolment, make literacy and healthcare universal, raise access to safe drinking water from 82% to 95%, build 700,000 homes, return one million acres of land to indigenous people, reduce malnutrition from 21% to 3%, and cut unemployment and infant mortality in half. His government accomplished this through a program that forcefully eschewed liberalism in favour of participatory democracy at the neighbourhood level, worker-owned enterprises and nationalization of resources and services. For these successes, the United States delivered to Venezuela the same verdict that Cuba received decades ago: economic strangulation, with the harshest measures arriving in 2019.
What Venezuela and Cuba represent is an expression of defiance in the face of 180 years of unbroken US hegemony in Latin America. For this reason, they are admired by a great many people who “personally suffered under US-sponsored military dictatorships that dominated much of the region” for decades.7 The kidnapping of Chavez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, is an attempt to force compliance with the pillaging of Latino resources that American corporations feel entitled to. Cheering this move is fatally wrong, even for opponents of socialism: if Venezuela and Cuba are the backlash to United States interventionism, it follows that another intervention could make the situation much worse.
What the United States has done to Venezuela will perpetuate the familiar cycle of political violence and economic dependency—the breeding ground for anti-American resentment—serving nobody but the corporate lobby. The best moments in US–Latin America relations occurred when America expanded the realm of sovereignty rather than crushed it: the turnover of the Panama Canal to Panamanian authority and FDR’s short-lived Good Neighbour policy of non-interference in the region. As long as Latin American politics remains a reaction to American doctrine, the Western Hemisphere will not be free.
Thanks for reading!
Footnotes:
The irony of this development in Texas compared to present-day complaints over immigration should not be lost on anyone. ↩︎
See: Stephen Carney, The Occupation of Mexico (Government Printing Office, 2016): 20, 37, and Peter Guardino, “Gender, Soldiering, and Citizenship in the Mexican–American War of 1846-1848” in The American Historical Review, Vol. 119, No. 1: 43. ↩︎
Louis A. Perez Jr., Intervention, Revolution, and Politics in Cuba (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012): 98. ↩︎
Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey (Ocean Press, 2003): 41. ↩︎
