Che Guevara

----

Che Guevara was a Latin American revolutionary leader who rejected both
capitalism and orthodox Soviet communism. Like T.E. Lawrence, Guevara
lived an adventurous life. His tragic early death in Bolivia when he
was 39 created a legend that still lives. He once said that "the true
revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love," but he also wrote
influential works on guerrilla warfare:

"The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the
people. It draws its great force from the mass of the people
themselves. The guerrilla band is not to be considered inferior to the
army against which it fights simply because it is inferior in fire
power. Guerrilla warfare is used by the side which is supported by a
majority but which possesses a much smaller number of arms for use in
defense against oppression." (from "Guerrilla Warfare," 1960)

In the brief period of 8 years between the 1959 revolutionary victory in
Cuba and his assassination in 1967, the scope of Che's accomplishments
is truly astonishing. His legacy includes intellectual writings on
radical politics and social theory, military/guerrilla warfare strategy
and tactics, diplomatic memos, books, speeches, magazine articles,
letters, poetry and diaries, as well as official documents preserved in
government archives. Che's practical and theoretical work had a
profound political impact around the globe during the second half of
the 20th century, especially in the developing world, where
revolutionary organizing and anti-colonial struggles were inspired by
his thought and example. His writings have been translated into hundreds
of languages; in English much is available from the Australian
publishing house Ocean Press (see Sources).

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born on June 14, 1928 in Rosario,
Argentina into a middle-class family of Spanish-Irish descent. Celia de
la Serna y Llosa, his mother, had lost her parents while she was still
a child. Celia was raised by her religious aunt and her older sister,
Carmen de la Serna, who married in 1928 the Communist poet Cayetano
Córdova Itúrburu. Guevara's family was liberal, anti-Nazi and
anti-Peronist, and not very religious. With Celia's fortune (modest by
today's standards of wealth), the family lived comfortably, although
Ernesto Guevara Lynch, Ernesto's father, managed to spend much of it in
his unlucky business ventures. In his youth Guevara read widely and
among his reading list in the 1940s were Sartre, Pablo Neruda, Ciro
Alegría, and Karl Marx's Das Kapital. He also kept a philosophical
diary and in Africa during his 1965 Congo campaign, Guevara planned to
write a biography of Marx.

In 1953 Guevara graduated from the University of Buenos Aires, where he
was trained as a doctor. During these years Guevara read Stalin and
Mussolini but did not join radical student organizations. He made long
travels in Argentina and in other Latin America countries. At the same
time his critical views about the expanding economic influence of the
United States deepened. In 1952 he made a journey on his motor bike,
an old Norton 500 single, around South America. The journey opened his
eyes about the situation of the indigenous people and was crucial for
the awakening of his social conscience. Like Jack Kerouac later in his
book On the Road (1957), Guevara recorded his impressions in The
Motorcycle Diaries. "The person who wrote these notes died the day he
stepped back on Argentine soil," Guevara wrote in his diary. "Wandering
around our 'America with a capital A' has changed me more than I
thought."

After witnessing first hand American intervention during the 1954
CIA-instigated coup in Guatemala, Guevara was radicalized and became
convinced that the only way to bring about change was by violent
revolution. He wrote in a letter home: "Along the way, I had the
opportunity to pass through the dominions of the United Fruit Cpmpany,
convincing me once again of just how terrible these capitalist
octopuses are. I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned
comrade Stalin that I won’t rest until I see these capitalist octopuses
annihilated." In Guatemala Guevara met Hilda Gadea. They married in 1955
and had one child. Guevara was arrested with Fidel Castro in Mexico for
a short time. He had joined Castro's revolutionaries to overthrow the
US-supported Batista dictatorship in Cuba. In 1956 they loaded the
38-foot motor yacht Granma full of guerrillas and weapons and sailed to
Cuba, landing near Cabo Cruz on December 2.

The rebels made their base in the mountains of Sierra Maestra, attacking
garrisons and recruiting peasants to the revolutionary army. In the
areas controlled by the guerrillas, Guevara started land reform and
socialist organizing and education. In spite of his chronic asthma,
Guevara enjoyed the hard conditions and war.

His nickname "Che" derived from Guevara's habit of punctuating his
speech with the interjection "che," a common Argentine expression for
"friend."

Land reform became the slogan, the "banner and primary spearhead of our
movement," as Guevara described it in an interview, that eventually won
the peasants over to participate in the armed struggle. Guevara was
respected by his men, although considered violent -- he shot Eutimio
Guerra who had cooperated with dictator Fulgencio Batista's army.

In the mountains Guevara met Aleida March in 1958, a 24-year-old
revolutionary fighter, and she became Guevara's second wife in 1959. He
continued to write his diary and also composed articles for El Cubano
Libre. A selection of Gurvara's articles, which he wrote between 1959
and 1964, was published in 1963 [sic] as PASAJES DE LA GUERRA
REVOLUCIONARIA. For the world media, Cuba was a hot subject - The New
York Times, Paris Match and Latin American papers sent reporters to the
mountains to write stories of the revolutionaries. At the same time
Guevara was in the mountains, his uncle was serving as Argentina's
Ambassador to Cuba.

Guevara rose to the rank of major and led one of the forces that
invaded central Cuba in late 1958, liberating the city of Santa Clara.
After the Revolutionary victory in January 1959 Guevara gained fame as
a leading figure in Castro's government. He attracted much attention
with his speeches against imperialism and US policy in the Third World.
He argued strongly for centralized planning, and emphasized creation of
the 'new socialist man.' In his famous article, 'Notes on Man and
Socialism,' he argued that "to build communism, you must build new men
as well as the new economic base." The basis of revolutionary struggle
is "the happiness of people," the goal of socialism is the creation
of more complete and more devoped human beings.

In a discussion on September 14, 1961 Guevara opposed the right of
dissidents to make their views known even within the Communist Party
itself. However, privately Guevara was critical of the Soviet bloc, but
so was also Nikita Khruschev. When the executions of war criminals
started Guevara acted as the highest prosecuting authority. The
condemned were soldiers found guilty of murder, torture and other
serious crimes. Because Guevara was a doctor, one of his friends once
asked how he could work in such a position. Guevara's answer was like
something from Western movies: "Look, in this thing you have to kill
before they kill you." In 1959 Guevara formally adopted the nickname
Che and was granted honorary Cuban citizenship. He was visited by such
intellectuals as Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre, who saw in him
the "most complete human being of our age."

The most famous picture of Guevara was taken by Alberto Diaz Gutiérrez,
known professionally as Korda, at a memorial rally held for more than
100 Cubans killed when the French ship La Coubre exploded as it was
being unloaded in Havana Harbor -- it is generally agreed as the result
of counterrevolutionary sabotage against the ship, which carried
munitions as part of its cargo. Korda declined to demand royalty
payments when the picture became a worldwide icon. But when a British
advertising agency appropriated the image for a vodka ad, Korda was
incensed and went to court to stop this commercial use of his famous
photo. "[Che] never drank himself," said the photographer, "and drink
should not be associated with his immortal memory."

From 1961 to 1965 Guevara was minister for industries, and director of
the national bank, signing the bank notes simply 'Che.' He traveled
widely, representing Cuba at the Organization of American States and
speaking at the United Nations, as well as making extended trips to
the USSR, India and Africa, meeting the leading figures of the world,
among others Jawaharel Nehru and Nikita Khruschev. Guevara was also the
architect of the close relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union.
Although good a relationship with Moscow became the cornerstone of
Castro's foreign policy, Guevara followed with interest the development
of the Maoist model in China. In 1965 Guevara made public his
disappointments in Algieria and described the Kremlin as "an accomplice
of imperialism."

Guevara's departure from the Cuban government followed his return from
Algiers. To test his revolutionary theories he resigned from his
official government posts. He had published the highly influential
manuals "Guerrilla Warfare" (1960) and "Guerrilla Warfare: A
Method" (1963), which were based on his own experiences and partly on
chairman Mao Zedong's writings. President John F. Kennedy had
"Guerrilla Warfare" rapidly translated for him by the CIA. Guevara
stated that revolution in Latin America must come through insurgent
forces developed in rural areas with peasant support. There is no need
for the right preconditions for revolution, he wrote; guerrilla warfare
can begin the activities. In his last article, "Vietnam and World
Struggle," Guevara outlined his global perspective for revolutionary
struggle, and stressed the dual role of hate and love.

"And he did have a saving element of humor. I possess a tape of his
appearance on an early episode of 'Meet the Press' in December 1964,
where he confronts a solemn panel of network pundits. When they address
him about the 'conditions' that Cuba must meet in order to be permitted
the sunshine of American approval, he smiles as he proposes that there
need be no preconditions: 'After all, we do not demand that you abolish
racial discrimination....' A person as professionally skeptical as I.F.
Stone so far forgot himself as to write: 'He was the first man I ever
met who I thought not just handsome but beautiful. With his curly
reddish beard, he looked like a cross between a faun and a
Sunday-school print of Jesus.... He spoke with that utter sobriety which
sometimes masks immense apocalyptic visions." (Christopher Hitchens in
New York Review of Books, July 17, 1997).

During his disappearance from public life Guevara spent some time in
Africa organizing the Lumumba Battalion which took part in the Congo
civil war. He was not happy with the way Laurent Kabila fought against
Joseph Mobutu, although his first impression of Kabila was positive.
"Africa has a long way to go before it reaches real revolutionary
maturity," Guevara concluded in his diary.

In 1966 Guevara turned up incognito in Bolivia, where he trained and led
a guerrilla force in the Santa Cruz region. In his manual "Guerrilla
Warfare," Guevara had stressed that the guerrilla fighter needs full
support of the people of the area as an indispensable condition, but
Guevara failed to win the support of the peasants, and his group was
surrounded near Vallegrande by American-trained Bolivian troops. "The
decisive moment in a man's life is when he decides to confront death,"
Guevara once said. "If he confronts it, he will be a hero whether he
succeeds or not. He can be a good or a bad politician, but if he does
not confront death he will never be more than a politician."

After Guevara was captured, Captain Gary Prado Salmón assigned a
security detail around him to be sure that nothing happened. Guevara
told him, "Don't worry, Captain, don't worry. This is the end. It's
finished" (according to the documentary film 'Red Chapters,' 1999).
Guevara was assassinated in a schoolhouse in La Higuera on October 9,
1967, by Warrant Officer Mario Terán of the Bolivian Rangers, under the
command of Colonel Zenteno. Terán was half-drunk, celebrating his
birthday. Guevara's last words were, according to some sources: "Shoot,
coward, you are only going to kill a man."

Che was actually shot with the connivance of the CIA's the mercenary
Cuban counterrevolutionaries who were deployed with the
US-trained Bolivian military. One of these, Felix Rodriguez, later
living in Miami, bragged for years afterward that he had taken Che's
wristwatch and would eagerly display it to any reporter who seemed
interested.

In order to make a positive fingerprint comparison with records
in Argentina, Guevara's hands were amputated and put into a flask of
formaldehyde. They were later returned to Cuba. Guevara's corpse was
buried in a ditch at the end of the runway site of Vallegrande's new
airport. "Che considered himself a soldier of this revolution, with
absolutely no concern about surviving it," said Fidel Castro later in
"Che: A Memoir."

In the fall of 1997, a team of Cuban and international forensic
archeologists finally located the hidden unmarked graves of Che and his
companer@s in Bolivia. Their remains were exhumed and returned to Cuba,
where they are interred in a mausoleum and memorial museum in the
central city of Santa Clara, which Che liberated during the 1959
revolution. October 9, 2007 marks the 40th anniversary of Che's death.

Guevara's life inspired the film Che! (1969), directed by Richard
Fleischer and starring Omar Sharif (Guevara) and Jack Palance (Castro).
The fictionalized biography was criticized by James Baldwin in "The
Devil Finds Work" (1976): "The intention of Ché! was to make both the
man, and his Bolivian adventure, irrelevant and ridiculous; and to do
this, furthermore, with such a syrup of sympathy that any incipient of
Ché would think twice before leaving Mama, and the ever-ready friend at
the bank."