Only at the insistence of the camp medic, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, did Fidel Castro finally concede a taped interview to St. George. He quickly convinced Fidel Castro of the value of addressing the English-speaking world directly. Castro subsequently wrote “Why We Fight”, the only single-authored manifesto of his entire time in the Sierra Maestra (December 1956-December 1958), which St. George then published in Coronet and helped the 26th of July Movement translate and distribute world-wide. In this text, Fidel Castro declared that he had “no plans for the expropriation or nationalization of foreign investments here”. He argued instead for the radical amelioration of the poverty generated by Cuba’s massive, foreign, and domestically-owned sugar estates. This “economic sickness” had to be “cured without delay, lest it fester and become a breeding ground for Communism,” said Fidel Castro.
