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.29For those who became protagonists of their own revolution in thestreets of Paris in May 1968, Guevara had a presence,in his famous postersof that time and in the slogan shouted during student demonstrations: Che,Che, Guevara! and Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh (Ali and Watkins, 1998: 48).But perhaps the greatest expression of cross-fertilization between the FrenchNew Left and the Cuban Revolution was embodied in the figures of Debrayand Guevara.Both men were heralded in Cuba as the quintessential embod-iments of the total intellectual who could equally combine thought andaction, providing the basis for a new form of intellectual commitment.30The 1968 Cultural Congress was the heyday of collaboration, sympa-thy, and reciprocal interest between West European intellectuals and theCuban Revolution.With more than 500 intellectuals from more thanseventy countries, the Cuban Revolution announced that it was far fromthe closed, dogmatic, and ideologically inflexible revolution that theSoviet Union was accused of.Drawing on a religious analogy, Castro usedthe closing speech at the Congress to criticize orthodoxy and legitimizeCuba s own developmental path, pouring scorn on those Marxists whohad, in his eyes, become a pseudo-revolutionary church (Karol, 1971:403).Gorz quickly pointed out the political significance of such an event,arguing that, for the first time in the history of socialism, a socialist coun-try in its tenth year of revolution was accepted by intellectuals the worldover, including Western Europeans who made up one-third of the partic-ipants (Gorz, 1968a: 20).Yet, the contradictions between the role thatthe Cuban Revolution wanted to impose on this European revolutionaryavant-garde and the one European intellectuals including studentssaw themselves performing, soon became obvious.The separation between the French New Leftand the Cuban RevolutionNot every assessment of the Cuban Revolution by European intellectualswas as positive as some authors argue (Verdes-Leroux, 1989).Even whenintellectuals saw themselves as part of the New Left movement, their French Intellectuals and Cuba 121comments often expressed independent thinking and measured criticism.Daniel Gurin, for example, made references to the excessive puritanviews of a revolution in which homosexuality was persecuted and thedegree to which school and work had been militarized, arguing that theparadise described by some French intellectuals after their short stay inHavana did not correspond entirely with reality (Gurin, 1968).Theseinsights demonstrate that an honest understanding between theRevolution and the West European intellectual was never entirelyreached.In hindsight, this view is easily tested by any serious assessmentof Guevara s writings, which often differed from French students percep-tions of him (Minogue (1970).A general vision of the uncomfortable match between the CubanRevolution of the late 1960s and the spirit of May 1968 in Francewas expressed by some of the participants at the first solidarity expedi-tion from Europe, the Campamento cinco de mayo, in the summerof 1968.Originally proposed by Jacques Villier during the CulturalCongress of January 1968, the camp was organized by theOrganización Continental Latinoamericana de Estudiantes (OCLAE)(Latin American Organization of Students), and gathered hundredsof activists in Pinar del Rio during July and August that year.31Some French participants recalled the strangeness with which theyreceived orders and had to function according to what in the Cuba ofthe day was a rigid military discipline.Stranger still (for some of theanarchist participants in the camp) was what Villier referred to as thewidely practiced cult of Che Guevara by organizers and participantsalike.32But the signs of discord between the Cuban Revolution and theFrench New Left had already appeared by then.Karol recalls how theMay 1968 events, born unexpectedly through great doses of voluntarismand unorthodoxy, went largely unreported in Cuba even though many ofthe student leaders in France were openly pro-Cuban in their views.33When the revolutionary wave engulfing the world in 1968 made its wayto Mexico and when Cuba remained silent about the massacre ofhundreds of students and even sent a delegation to the Olympic Gamesthat year, it was clear that both ideology and reasons of state forbade Cubafrom speaking out (Karol, 1971).But the real catalyst in the clear distanc-ing process that began that year took place when the Cuban leadershipdid not condemn outright the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia inAugust 1968.Instead, the Cuban position was fudged with accusationsabout the illegality of the Soviet action while condemning the so-called counter-revolutionary path Czechoslovakia was taking and which, ineffect, justified the invasion.Western intellectuals were outraged by the 122 Cuba and Western Intellectuals since 1959Soviet invasion and it was at this time, predictably, that the first criticismswere directed at the Cuban position, notably through Le NouvelObservateur (Daniel, 1968).Surprisingly, Partisans, the most third-worldist of publications of thetime, did not mention Cuba s position on the Czechoslovakian affair,nor did it eventually reflect on the Padilla Affair.In fact, its coveragedemonstrated an increasing lack of touch with the subject matter ofthe journal, the Third World, which became more concerned aboutstudent politics in France and throughout Europe
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