“The industrial and agricultural proletariat, the peasants, the small bourgeoisie, above all the intellectuals. I do not wish to encourage factionalism. Nor do I deny that some layers of the national bourgeoisie can support, in part and temporarily, certain revolutionary events. I grant that some children of the bourgeoisie can enter the ranks of the people, participate in revolutions, and even direct them, as conscious individuals, armed with a revolutionary theory (after all, even I am the son of great landowners!). Yet, I am reasoning from a class viewpoint. There is no longer anything good we can expect from the national bourgeoisie as a class. The same goes for national armies. Revolutionary and patriotic officers can be found, but professional and caste armies are like a cancer that must be uprooted from Latin America. If the armies are not destroyed, there can be no true governments of the people, and social reforms cannot be enacted. At the first smell of an even modest reform, the army intervenes and paralyzes everything. And when a corrupt government is on its way out, and a revolution is in sight, there comes the army again with a state coup and with a new government which is worse that the one that preceded it. These are the lessons of our history.”

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