With this booklet, also available in English and in the original French, Pathfinder gives Spanish-speaking readers an entry into the political legacy of this outstanding internationalist leader.
But Sankara did not portray Africans simply as suffering victims. He repeatedly explained that ordinary men and women of Burkina were capable of becoming conscious actors on the world stage, fighting “to take charge of their own history.”
In the October 1983 speech that opens this collection, Sankara outlines the character and goals of the popular revolutionary government that had risen to power two months earlier in what was then Upper Volta.
“The revolution has as its primary objective the transfer of power from the hands of the Voltaic bourgeoisie allied with imperialism into the hands of the alliance of popular classes that make up the people,” he stated. “This democratic and popular power will be the foundation, the solid base, of revolutionary power.”
In a speech to a February 1986 international conference on the environment, Sankara pointed to the causes of the wanton destruction of the environment throughout the world, particularly in the Third World: “This struggle to defend the trees and the forest is above all a struggle against imperialism. Imperialism is the arsonist setting fire to our forests and savannah….
“Our struggle to defend the trees and the forest is first and foremost a democratic struggle that must be waged by the people,” he said. “The sterile and expensive excitement of a handful of engineers and forestry experts will accomplish nothing!”
In October 1987 a counterrevolutionary military coup put an end to the popular revolutionary government in Burkina Faso, and Sankara was assassinated. One week before the overthrow of the revolution, Sankara had paid tribute to Ernesto Che Guevara, one of the central leaders of the Cuban Revolution. This is the concluding speech of the pamphlet.
“Fearless youth—a youth thirsty for dignity, thirsty for courage, thirsty for ideas and for the vitality that he symbolizes in Africa—sought out Che Guevara to drink from the source, the life-giving source that Che’s revolutionary heritage representted to the world.” He continued, “You cannot kill ideas; ideas do not die. That is why Che Guevara—an embodiment of revolutionary ideas, of self-sacrifice—is not dead.”
Those words ring true today about Sankara as well, and point to the invaluable legacy contained in these speeches.
The pamphlet is available for $7 and can be ordered through www.pathfinderpress.com. (See Supersaver ad link below.)