What did Che Guevara believe in?
Che Guevara
Guevara's life and legacy remain contentious. The perceived contradictions of his ethos at various points in his life have created a complex character of duality, one who was "able to wield the pen and submachine gun with equal skill", while prophesying that "the most important revolutionary ambition was to see man liberated from his alienation". Guevara's paradoxical standing is further complicated by his array of seemingly diametrically opposed qualities. A secular humanist and sympathetic practitioner of medicine who did not hesitate to shoot his enemies, a celebrated internationalist leader who advocated violence to enforce a utopian philosophy of the collective good, an idealistic intellectual who loved literature but refused to allow dissent, an anti-imperialist Marxist insurgent who was radically willing to forge a poverty-less new world on the apocalyptic ashes of the old one, and finally, an outspoken anti-capitalist whose image has been commoditized. Che's history continues to be rewritten and re-imagined. Moreover, sociologist Michael Löwy contends that the many facets of Guevara's life (i.e. doctor and economist, revolutionary and banker, military theoretician and ambassador, deep thinker and political agitator) illuminated the rise of the "Che myth", allowing him to be invariably crystallized in his many metanarrative roles as a "Red Robin Hood, Don Quixote of communism, new Garibaldi, Marxist Saint Just, Cid Campeador of the Wretched of the Earth, Sir Galahad of the beggars ... and Bolshevik devil who haunts the dreams of the rich, kindling braziers of subversion all over the world".As such, various notable individuals have lauded Guevara as a great person; for example, Nelson Mandela referred to him as "an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom", while Jean-Paul Sartre described him as "not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age". Others who have expressed their admiration include authors Graham Greene, who remarked that Guevara "represented the idea of gallantry, chivalry, and adventure", and Susan Sontag, who supposed that "[Che's] goal was nothing less than the cause of humanity itself." In the Pan-African community philosopher Frantz Fanon professed Guevara to be "the world symbol of the possibilities of one man", while Black Power leader Stokely Carmichael eulogized that "Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us." Praise has been reflected throughout the political spectrum, with libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard extolling Guevara as a "heroic figure" who "more than any man of our epoch or even of our century, was the living embodiment of the principle of revolution", while journalist Christopher Hitchens reminisced that "[Che's] death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do—fought and died for his beliefs."
Bibliography of works on Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967), was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, politician, author, intellectual, physician, military theorist, and guerrilla leader. His life, legacy, and ideas have attracted a great deal of interest from historians, artists, film makers, musicians, and biographers. In reference to the abundance of material, Nobel Prize–winning author Gabriel García Márquez has declared that "it would take a thousand years and a million pages to write Che's biography."
Operation Kufire
Operation Kufire was a program that sought to identify and track all communist party members who had flocked to Guatemala during the Arbenz regime. "Via Kufire, the CIA was intent on charting their movements and monitoring or frustrating their machinations." This operation introduced the CIA to Ernesto "Che" Guevara and one member of the CIA team was unsure as to whether it was even necessary to open a file and track Guevara's movements. Ultimately, operation Kufire signified the fear that communism would spread throughout Latin American. Furthermore, it feared a domino effect, whereby if one nation in America were to fall to communism, then it was likely that others would follow. Operation Kufire was intended to safeguard against any further communist uprisings and to track the activities of known communists throughout all America.
Che Guevara
In late 1995, the retired Bolivian General Mario Vargas revealed to Jon Lee Anderson, author of "Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life", that Guevara's corpse lay near a Vallegrande airstrip. The result was a multi-national search for the remains, which lasted more than a year. In July 1997 a team of Cuban geologists and Argentine forensic anthropologists discovered the remnants of seven bodies in two mass graves, including one man with amputated hands (like Guevara). Bolivian government officials with the Ministry of Interior later identified the body as Guevara when the excavated teeth "perfectly matched" a plaster mold of Che's teeth made in Cuba prior to his Congolese expedition. The "clincher" then arrived when Argentine forensic anthropologist Alejandro Inchaurregui inspected the inside hidden pocket of a blue jacket dug up next to the handless cadaver and found a small bag of pipe tobacco. Nino de Guzman, the Bolivian helicopter pilot who had given Che a small bag of tobacco, later remarked that he "had serious doubts" at first and "thought the Cubans would just find any old bones and call it Che"; but "after hearing about the tobacco pouch, I have no doubts." On October 17, 1997, Guevara's remains, with those of six of his fellow combatants, were laid to rest with military honors in a specially built mausoleum in the Cuban city of Santa Clara, where he had commanded over the decisive military victory of the Cuban Revolution.
René Barrientos
Barrientos had ample opportunity to prove his anti-Communist credentials in 1967, when a guerrilla force was discovered to be operating in the Bolivian southeast under the leadership of the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara in the Bolivian jungle. Barrientos was very concerned with Guevara's alleged popularity among the miners in the southwestern part of the country, and clamped down in the area with some very heavy-handed measures (such as the Massacre of San Juan). Guevara felt that such an atrocity by the Bolivian Army and Air Force would be the tipping point in his favour in rallying the miners to his Communist cause, but eventually the miners signed an agreement with the government-owned mining company Siglo XX, which agreement Guevara felt undermined his reason for being there. The war between President Barrientos and Che Guevara's militia did not end there, but eventually the Bolivian Army Rangers captured Guevara and executed him in October 1967.
Che Guevara
Guevara was instrumental in creating the clandestine radio station "Radio Rebelde" (Rebel Radio) in February 1958, which broadcast news to the Cuban people with statements by the 26th of July movement, and provided radiotelephone communication between the growing number of rebel columns across the island. Guevara had apparently been inspired to create the station by observing the effectiveness of CIA supplied radio in Guatemala in ousting the government of Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán.
Legacy of Che Guevara
American, Latin American and European writers, Jon Lee Anderson, Régis Debray, Jorge G. Castañeda and others contributed to demystify the image of Guevara via articles and extensive biographies, which detailed his life and legacy in less idealistic terms; and, in the case of Octavio Paz, was accompanied by a critical indictment of the Marxism espoused by many in the Latin American left. Political writer Paul Berman went further, asserting that the "modern-day cult of Che" obscures the work of dissidents and what he believes is a "tremendous social struggle" currently taking place in Cuba. Author Christopher Hitchens, who was a socialist and a supporter of the Cuban revolution in the 1960s but later changed his views, summarised Guevara's legacy by surmising that "Che's iconic status was assured because he failed. His story was one of defeat and isolation, and that's why it is so seductive. Had he lived, the myth of Che would have long since died." Taking the opposing view, Richard Gott a Guardian journalist in Vallegrande, sent a dispatch on the day of Guevara's death stating the following:
Che Guevara
Two weeks after his Algiers speech and his return to Cuba, Guevara dropped out of public life and then vanished altogether. His whereabouts were a great mystery in Cuba, as he was generally regarded as second in power to Castro himself. His disappearance was variously attributed to the failure of the Cuban industrialization scheme he had advocated while minister of industries, to pressure exerted on Castro by Soviet officials who disapproved of Guevara's pro-Chinese Communist stance on the Sino-Soviet split, and to serious differences between Guevara and the pragmatic Castro regarding Cuba's economic development and ideological line. Pressed by international speculation regarding Guevara's fate, Castro stated on June 16, 1965, that the people would be informed when Guevara himself wished to let them know. Still, rumors spread both inside and outside Cuba concerning the missing Guevara's whereabouts.
Che Guevara
Very early on in life, Ernestito (as he was then called) developed an "affinity for the poor". Growing up in a family with leftist leanings, Guevara was introduced to a wide spectrum of political perspectives even as a boy. His father, a staunch supporter of Republicans from the Spanish Civil War, often hosted many veterans from the conflict in the Guevara home.
Political views of Christopher Hitchens
In 2006, in a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania debating the Jewish Tradition with Martin Amis, Hitchens commented on his political philosophy by stating, "I am no longer a socialist, but I still am a Marxist". In a June 2010 interview with "The New York Times", he stated that "I still think like a Marxist in many ways. I think the materialist conception of history is valid. I consider myself a very conservative Marxist". In 2009, in an article for "The Atlantic" entitled "The Revenge of Karl Marx", Hitchens frames the late-2000s recession in terms of Marx's economic analysis and notes how much Marx admired the capitalist system that he called for the end of, but says that Marx ultimately failed to grasp how revolutionary capitalist innovation was. Hitchens was an admirer of Che Guevara, yet in an essay written in 1997, he distanced himself from Che, and referred to the mythos surrounding him as a "cult". In 2004 he re-emphasized his positive view of Che, commenting that "[Che's] death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time. He was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do – fought and died for his beliefs."
Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre went to Cuba in the 1960s to meet Fidel Castro and spoke with Ernesto "Che" Guevara. After Guevara's death, Sartre would declare him to be "not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age" and the "era's most perfect man". Sartre would also compliment Guevara by professing that "he lived his words, spoke his own actions and his story and the story of the world ran parallel". However he stood against the persecution of gays by Castro's régime, which he compared to Nazi persecution of the Jews, and said: "In Cuba there are no Jews, but there are homosexuals".
Che Guevara
During Guevara's time living hidden among the poor subsistence farmers of the Sierra Maestra mountains, he discovered that there were no schools, no electricity, minimal access to healthcare, and more than 40 percent of the adults were illiterate. As the war continued, Guevara became an integral part of the rebel army and "convinced Castro with competence, diplomacy and patience". Guevara set up factories to make grenades, built ovens to bake bread, taught new recruits about tactics, and organized schools to teach illiterate campesinos to read and write. Moreover, Guevara established health clinics, workshops to teach military tactics, and a newspaper to disseminate information. The man whom "Time" dubbed three years later "Castro's brain" at this point was promoted by Fidel Castro to "Comandante" (commander) of a second army column.
People's Guerrilla Group
The group's primary leader was Arturo Gámiz García, with Pablo Gómez Ramírez as a prominent theoretician and Salomón Gaytán as a military commander. The founding members were rural teachers, students and peasants, some of them members of the Popular Socialist Party. The primary ideology was Marxism–Leninism. Some researchers have additionally claimed a strong influence from the group's more well-known Latin American contemporary Che Guevara and his 1961 book "La Guerra de Guerrillas", while others attribute the works of Mao Zedong as an at least secondary influence.
Jon Lee Anderson
"Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life" has received widespread acclaim as a "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year and many reprints. In her 1997 critique of the book, U.S. author Jane Franklin claims "Anderson never quite communicates an understanding of why Guevara remains such a powerful presence. Relying too much on secondary sources for his knowledge of Cuban history, he fails to grasp the nature of the revolution for which Guevara, Fidel Castro and so many others were willing to die." Conversely, author Peter Canby states, "Anderson does a masterly job in evoking Che's complex character, in separating the man from the myth and in describing the critical role Che played in one of the darkest periods of the cold war. Ultimately, however, the strength of his book is in its wealth of detail."
Marxism
In 1959, the Cuban Revolution led to the victory of Fidel Castro and his July 26 Movement. Although the revolution was not explicitly socialist, upon victory Castro ascended to the position of Prime Minister and adopted the Leninist model of socialist development, forging an alliance with the Soviet Union. One of the leaders of the revolution, the Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara (1928–1967), subsequently went on to aid revolutionary socialist movements in Congo-Kinshasa and Bolivia, eventually being killed by the Bolivian government, possibly on the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), though the CIA agent sent to search for Guevara, Felix Rodriguez, expressed a desire to keep him alive as a possible bargaining tool with the Cuban government. He would posthumously go on to become an internationally recognised icon.
Che Guevara
Guevara was tied up and taken to a dilapidated mud schoolhouse in the nearby village of La Higuera on the evening of October 8. For the next half day, Guevara refused to be interrogated by Bolivian officers and only spoke quietly to Bolivian soldiers. One of those Bolivian soldiers, a helicopter pilot named Jaime Nino de Guzman, describes Che as looking "dreadful". According to Guzman, Guevara was shot through the right calf, his hair was matted with dirt, his clothes were shredded, and his feet were covered in rough leather sheaths. Despite his haggard appearance, he recounts that "Che held his head high, looked everyone straight in the eyes and asked only for something to smoke." De Guzman states that he "took pity" and gave him a small bag of tobacco for his pipe, and that Guevara then smiled and thanked him. Later on the night of October 8, Guevara—despite having his hands tied—kicked a Bolivian army officer, named Captain Espinosa, against a wall after the officer entered the schoolhouse and tried to snatch Guevara's pipe from his mouth as a souvenir while he was still smoking it. In another instance of defiance, Guevara spat in the face of Bolivian Rear Admiral Ugarteche, who attempted to question Guevara a few hours before his execution.
Che Guevara
French intellectual Régis Debray, who was captured in April 1967 while with Guevara in Bolivia, gave an interview from prison in August 1968, in which he enlarged on the circumstances of Guevara's capture. Debray, who had lived with Guevara's band of guerrillas for a short time, said that in his view they were "victims of the forest" and thus "eaten by the jungle". Debray described a destitute situation where Guevara's men suffered malnutrition, lack of water, absence of shoes, and only possessed six blankets for 22 men. Debray recounts that Guevara and the others had been suffering an "illness" which caused their hands and feet to swell into "mounds of flesh" to the point where you could not discern the fingers on their hands. Debray described Guevara as "optimistic about the future of Latin America" despite the futile situation, and remarked that Guevara was "resigned to die in the knowledge that his death would be a sort of renaissance", noting that Guevara perceived death "as a promise of rebirth" and "ritual of renewal".
Che Guevara in popular culture
Hannah Charlton hypothesizes that "appropriating the aura of Che for brand building, has now given rise to a new resurgence of "Che-ness" that transcends branding in its global appeal. In the shifting complexities of intercultural values, in the search for universal images that can speak across borders and boundaries, today's global image of Che is the most successful." The Che face, more than any other icon according to Charlton, can keep accruing new application without relinquishing its essence – a generic and positive version of anti-status quo and liberation from any oppressive force, and a general, romantic, non-specific fantasy about change and revolution.Actors who have portrayed Che Guevara:Other plays featuring a Che Guevara character include:
Guerrillero Heroico
Guerrillero Heroico () is an iconic photograph of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara taken by Alberto Korda. It was captured on March 5, 1960, in Havana, Cuba, at a memorial service for victims of the "La Coubre" explosion. By the end of the 1960s, the image, in conjunction with Guevara's subsequent actions and eventual execution, helped solidify the charismatic and controversial leader as a cultural icon. Korda has said that at the moment he shot the picture, he was drawn to Guevara's facial expression, which showed "absolute implacability" as well as anger and pain. Years later, Korda would say that the photograph showed Che's firm and stoic character. Guevara was 31 years old at the time the photograph was taken.
Aleida March
She also wrote "Remembering Che: My Life with Che Guevara", published in 2012. "We had some most enjoyable times within the maelstrom of the war, and those moments brought us all closer together. They helped us get to know each other as we really were. Some of us were naive, others, very clever; we were all young and full of hope for a future victory. We took every chance to have fun. I remember Che later wrote: 'At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.'"
Che (2008 film)
Many aspects of Guevara's personality and beliefs affected the filming process. For instance, close-ups of Del Toro were avoided due to Guevara's belief in collectivism, with Soderbergh remarking, "You can't make a movie about a guy who has these hard-core sort of egalitarian socialist principles and then isolate him with close-ups." According to Edgar Ramirez, who portrays Ciro Redondo, the cast "were improvising a lot" while making "The Argentine", and he describes the project as a "very contemplative movie", shot chronologically. While filming outdoors, Soderbergh used natural light as much as possible. Del Toro, who speaks Puerto Rican Spanish, tried to speak the best Argentinean Spanish (Rioplatense Spanish) he could without sounding "stiff". Prior to shooting the film's final scenes that depict Guevara's time in Bolivia at the end of his life, Del Toro shed 35 pounds to show how ill Guevara had become. The actor shaved the top of his head rather than wear a bald cap for the scenes depicting Guevara's arrival in Bolivia in disguise.
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara (;
Che Guevara in popular culture
The laundry where Guevara's corpse was displayed to the world's press in Vallegrande is now a place of pilgrimage as well, with hundreds of personal messages transcribed and carved into the surrounding walls from admiring visitors. In large letters above the table where Che's dead body once lay, an engraving now reads "None dies as long as he is remembered."Many of the rural campesinos in the small Bolivian town of Vallegrande, where anthropologists retrieved Che's remains in 1997, firmly believe that there exists a "curse of Che". This belief exists because six of the Bolivian politicians and military officers who share responsibility for Guevara's death have since died a violent death. They were murdered, died in accidents, or in the case of Bolivian President René Barrientos were killed in a helicopter crash. In addition, General Gary Prado, who arrested Guevara, became paralyzed after a shot went off from a gun he was handling and hit his spine.There are those, both supporters and detractors that object to the mass dissemination of Che's image in popular and counter-culture. His detractors dislike the widespread pictorial dissemination of someone they deem to be a "murderer" but also delight in the contradiction and/or irony of a Marxist being utilized as a Capitalist commodity. Conversely, some Che supporters object to the commodification or diminishing of his image by its use in popular culture, and resent those entrepreneurial companies who profit from and/or exploit his legacy; viewing such marketing as an obvious conflict to Guevara's personal ideology.
Che Guevara
While in New York, Guevara appeared on the CBS Sunday news program "Face the Nation," and met with a wide range of people, from United States Senator Eugene McCarthy to associates of Malcolm X. The latter expressed his admiration, declaring Guevara "one of the most revolutionary men in this country right now" while reading a statement from him to a crowd at the Audubon Ballroom.
Che Guevara
Guevara ended the essay by declaring that "the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love" and beckoning on all revolutionaries to "strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into acts that serve as examples", thus becoming "a moving force". The genesis for Guevara's assertions relied on the fact that he believed the example of the Cuban Revolution was "something spiritual that would transcend all borders".
Che Guevara
As the war extended, Guevara led a new column of fighters dispatched westward for the final push towards Havana. Travelling by foot, Guevara embarked on a difficult 7-week march, only travelling at night to avoid ambush and often not eating for several days. In the closing days of December 1958, Guevara's task was to cut the island in half by taking Las Villas province. In a matter of days he executed a series of "brilliant tactical victories" that gave him control of all but the province's capital city of Santa Clara. Guevara then directed his "suicide squad" in the attack on Santa Clara, which became the final decisive military victory of the revolution. In the six weeks leading up to the battle there were times when his men were completely surrounded, outgunned, and overrun. Che's eventual victory despite being outnumbered 10:1 remains in the view of some observers a "remarkable tour de force in modern warfare".
Che Guevara
In mid-January 1959, Guevara went to live at a summer villa in Tarará to recover from a violent asthma attack. While there he started the Tarara Group, a group that debated and formed the new plans for Cuba's social, political, and economic development. In addition, Che began to write his book "Guerrilla Warfare" while resting at Tarara. In February, the revolutionary government proclaimed Guevara "a Cuban citizen by birth" in recognition of his role in the triumph. When Hilda Gadea arrived in Cuba in late January, Guevara told her that he was involved with another woman, and the two agreed on a divorce, which was finalized on May 22. On June 2, 1959, he married Aleida March, a Cuban-born member of the 26th of July movement with whom he had been living since late 1958. Guevara returned to the seaside village of Tarara in June for his honeymoon with Aleida. In total, Guevara had five children from his two marriages.
Hilda Gadea
Following the Cuban revolution, in which Guevara fought, Gadea came to Cuba, to be confronted with the announcement by Guevara that he had fallen in love with another woman, Aleida March, and requested a divorce. Gadea remained loyal to Guevara's political movement; she died in Havana in 1974. She wrote the memoir "My Life With Che". Gabriel San Roman, a writer for "Z Magazine", began writing a play about Gadea.
Legacy of Che Guevara
Despite the occasional controversy, Guevara's status as a popular icon has continued throughout the world, leading commentators to speak of a global "cult of Che". Well known Bohemian writers extolled him, while West German playwright Peter Weiss has even compared him to "a Christ taken down from the Cross." A photograph of Guevara taken by photographer Alberto Korda has become one of the century's most ubiquitous images, and the portrait, transformed into a monochrome graphic by Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick, is reproduced endlessly on a vast array of merchandise, such as T-shirts, posters, cigarettes, coffee mugs, and baseball caps. This fact led Argentine business analyst Martin Krauze to postulate that "the admiration for El Che no longer extends to his politics and ideology, it’s a romantic idea of one man going to battle against the windmills, he’s a Quixote."
Che Guevara
To a certain extent, this belief by Guevara of a metaphorical resurrection came true. While pictures of the dead Guevara were being circulated and the circumstances of his death were being debated, Che's legend began to spread. Demonstrations in protest against his "assassination" occurred throughout the world, and articles, tributes, and poems were written about his life and death. Rallies in support of Guevara were held from "Mexico to Santiago, Algiers to Angola, and Cairo to Calcutta". The population of Budapest and Prague lit candles to honor Guevara's passing; and the picture of a smiling Che appeared in London and Paris. When a few months later riots broke out in Berlin, France, and Chicago, and the unrest spread to the American college campuses, young men and women wore Che Guevara T-shirts and carried his pictures during their protest marches. In the view of military historian Erik Durschmied: "In those heady months of 1968, Che Guevara was not dead. He was very much alive."
Alberto Granado
Before Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to pursue revolutions abroad, he left several books with inscriptions for close friends. Included with these was one book about the sugar industry for his old friend Granado. The message, which two years later after Che's execution in Bolivia would seem prescient, read: ""My dreams shall know no bounds, at least until bullets decide otherwise. I’ll be expecting you, sedentary gypsy, when the smell of gunpowder subsides. A hug for all of you, Che.""
Legacy of Che Guevara
Guevara's extensive written legacy includes intellectual writings on radical Marxist 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 Cuban 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. As a consequence, his writings have been translated into hundreds of different languages.
Third World Socialism
Because of its close proximity and strong historical connection to the United States, Cuba served an integral role in spreading socialism to the rest of Latin America. Che Guevara described Cuba as "a guiding light" to Latin American countries caught in conflict between imperialism and socialism. In Guevara's speech "On Revolutionary Medicine", he recounts his travels through Latin America and the misery, hunger and disease he witnessed and explained how a shift to socialism could help alleviate these struggles. As part of the New Left, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara implemented leftist politics in Cuba while incorporating policies aimed at addressing social issues. Cuban officials intended for Cuba to spur similar leftist revolutions in the rest of Latin America, what he saw as a common "liberation struggle", in countries like Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua.
Che (2008 film)
"Che" was screened in Guevara's homeland of Argentina in November 2008. To mark the occasion, the streets of Buenos Aires were decorated with large posters of Del Toro in his role as the guerrilla fighter, unprecedented in the city's history. When questioned by the press on Guevara's ideas and use of violence, Del Toro stated that if he had lived during the 1960s, he would have agreed with Guevara, and that although he did not support violent revolution now, in the '60s he may "have been another person and in agreement with armed war".
Otto Guevara
Failing to see any representation for his values in Costa Rica’s traditional parties, Guevara founded the Movimiento Libertario in 1994 to challenge the conventional orthodoxy of Costa Rican politics which he saw as lurching towards greater corruption and less respect for the individual rights of his people. He believes that the principles of moderate intervention of the State and more economic freedom as the best way to improve the lives of the Costa Rican people.
Che Guevara
Guevara, who was practically the architect of the Soviet–Cuban relationship, then played a key role in bringing to Cuba the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. A few weeks after the crisis, during an interview with the British communist newspaper the "Daily Worker", Guevara was still fuming over the perceived Soviet betrayal and told correspondent Sam Russell that, if the missiles had been under Cuban control, they would have fired them off. While expounding on the incident later, Guevara reiterated that the cause of socialist liberation against global "imperialist aggression" would ultimately have been worth the possibility of "millions of atomic war victims". The missile crisis further convinced Guevara that the world's two superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union) used Cuba as a pawn in their own global strategies. Afterward, he denounced the Soviets almost as frequently as he denounced the Americans.
Che Guevara
Accompanying literacy, Guevara was also concerned with establishing universal access to higher education. To accomplish this, the new regime introduced affirmative action to the universities. While announcing this new commitment, Guevara told the gathered faculty and students at the University of Las Villas that the days when education was "a privilege of the white middle class" had ended. "The University" he said, "must paint itself black, mulatto, worker, and peasant." If it did not, he warned, the people were going to break down its doors "and paint the University the colors they like."
Che Guevara
An indignant Guevara ended his speech by reciting the "Second Declaration of Havana", decreeing Latin America a "family of 200 million brothers who suffer the same miseries". This "epic", Guevara declared, would be written by the "hungry Indian masses, peasants without land, exploited workers, and progressive masses". To Guevara the conflict was a struggle of masses and ideas, which would be carried forth by those "mistreated and scorned by imperialism" who were previously considered "a weak and submissive flock". With this "flock", Guevara now asserted, "Yankee monopoly capitalism" now terrifyingly saw their "gravediggers". It would be during this "hour of vindication", Guevara pronounced, that the "anonymous mass" would begin to write its own history "with its own blood" and reclaim those "rights that were laughed at by one and all for 500 years". Guevara closed his remarks to the General Assembly by hypothesizing that this "wave of anger" would "sweep the lands of Latin America" and that the labor masses who "turn the wheel of history" were now, for the first time, "awakening from the long, brutalizing sleep to which they had been subjected".
Chevolution
"Chevolution" commemorates when Korda snapped the photo at the massive funeral in the Plaza de Revolución for those who had died in the bombing of a boat carrying weapons from Belgium, "La Coubre", in Havana Harbor. Korda was fortunate to captured only two photos of Guevara that day and after submitting them, the newspaper chose not to use them. One of the two photos included the "Guerillero Heroico". Living in communist Cuba, copyright laws were non-existent so Korda initially obtained no rights to the portrait.
Che Guevara in popular culture
Mexican author Rogelio Villareal has noted how "the famous image is not venerated by all ... it has also been aged, laughed about, parodied, insulted, and distorted around the world." Conservative Mark Falcoff has remarked that Guevara is "a cultural icon" not because of "his example for poor countries" but as a result of "his capacity to provoke empathy among the spoiled youth of the affluent West." Historian Robert Conquest, of the Hoover Institution, has referred to such "empathy" and adulation among the young, as the "unfortunate affliction" of "adolescent revolutionary romanticism." Sean O'Hagan of "The Observer" contends that the appeal to such empathy is one of superficiality, remarking that "if Che hadn't been born so good-looking, he wouldn't be a mythical revolutionary." In the view of Ana Menéndez, author of the novel "Loving Che", the fascination with Che is not with the man, but the photograph. While herself acknowledging him as a "great idealist", Menéndez believes there is a "fallibility of memory", which leads many to "gloss over the fact that he was also a brutal man, the head of a firing squad in the opening days of the revolution." Menéndez theorizes that such unsavory aspects are glossed over in the way one glosses over someone's flaws when in love. Jazz musician Paquito D'Rivera, himself a Cuban exile who fled the island after a run-in with Guevara, has criticized the positive portrayal of Che by musicians such as Santana, by noting the strict censorship of music at the time deemed "immoral" and "imperialist" by the Cuban government. In deference to such contradictions, Patrick Symmes, author of "Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend", has hypothesized that "the more time goes by, the chicer and chicer Che gets because the less he stands for anything." Barcelona museum director Ivan de la Nuez, in the 2008 documentary ""Chevolution"" describes the overall phenomena by observing that "Capitalism devours everything – even its worst enemies."
Che Guevara
On October 7, 1967, an informant apprised the Bolivian Special Forces of the location of Guevara's guerrilla encampment in the Yuro ravine. On the morning of October 8, they encircled the area with two battalions numbering 1,800 soldiers and advanced into the ravine triggering a battle where Guevara was wounded and taken prisoner while leading a detachment with Simeón Cuba Sarabia. Che biographer Jon Lee Anderson reports Bolivian Sergeant Bernardino Huanca's account: that as the Bolivian Rangers approached, a twice-wounded Guevara, his gun rendered useless, threw up his arms in surrender and shouted to the soldiers: "Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and I am worth more to you alive than dead."
Legacy of Che Guevara
The legacy of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967) is constantly evolving in the collective imagination. As a ubiquitous symbol of counterculture worldwide, Guevara is one of the most recognizable and influential revolutionary figures of the twentieth century. However, during his life, and even more since his death, Che has elicited controversy and wildly divergent opinions as to who he was and what he represented. Mostly revered and occasionally reviled, he is passionately characterized along the entire continuum as everything from a heroic defender of the poor, to a cold-hearted executioner. Admired, sanctified, romanticized and derided, his crystallized status as either a brilliant intellectual or a violent ideologue is usually dependent on where one falls along the left and right of the political spectrum. The debate around his legacy is further complicated by the fact that Guevara exists simultaneously as several different entities, both literal man and global emblem, leading to disputes between what people contend he did and what he now represents.
Che (2008 film)
Soderbergh wanted to incorporate Guevara's experiences in Cuba and at the United Nations in 1964. Buchman helped with the script's structure, which he gave three storylines: Guevara's life and the Cuban Revolution; his demise in Bolivia; and his trip to New York to speak at the U.N. Buchman found that the problem with containing all of these stories in one film was that he had to condense time and this distorted history. Soderbergh found the draft Buchman submitted to him "unreadable" and after two weeks decided to split the script into two separate films. Buchman went back and with Del Toro expanded the Cuban story for "The Argentine". Additional research included reading Guevara's diaries and declassified documents from the U.S. State Department about his trip to New York and memos from his time in Bolivia.
Che Guevara
On October 3, 1965, Castro publicly revealed an undated letter purportedly written to him by Guevara around seven months earlier which was later titled Che Guevara's "farewell letter". In the letter, Guevara reaffirmed his enduring solidarity with the Cuban Revolution but declared his intention to leave Cuba to fight for the revolutionary cause abroad. Additionally, he resigned from all his positions in the Cuban government and communist party, and renounced his honorary Cuban citizenship.
Roberto Vargas (poet)
Vargas and other poets, Alejandro Murguia, joined force with the Pocho-Che Collective and published local poets within the Latino Community. Many of these poems were related to the famous communist icon, Che Guevara. For these future famous poets, Che was an important connection to the Third World countries and the barrios in the United States.
Che Guevara
Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, instituting agrarian land reform as minister of industries, helping spearhead a successful nationwide literacy campaign, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for Cuba's armed forces, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism. Such positions also allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces who repelled the Bay of Pigs Invasion, and bringing Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to Cuba, which precipitated the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Additionally, Guevara was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling memoir about his youthful continental motorcycle journey. His experiences and studying of Marxism–Leninism led him to posit that the Third World's underdevelopment and dependence was an intrinsic result of imperialism, neocolonialism and monopoly capitalism, with the only remedy being proletarian internationalism and world revolution. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to foment revolution abroad, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and summarily executed.
Che Guevara
In December 1964, Che Guevara had emerged as a "revolutionary statesman of world stature" and thus traveled to New York City as head of the Cuban delegation to speak at the United Nations. On December 11, 1964, during Guevara's hour-long, impassioned address at the UN, he criticized the United Nations' inability to confront the "brutal policy of apartheid" in South Africa, asking "Can the United Nations do nothing to stop this?" Guevara then denounced the United States policy towards their black population, stating:
Che Guevara
Although he maintained a demanding and harsh disposition, Guevara also viewed his role of commander as one of a teacher, entertaining his men during breaks between engagements with readings from the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson, Cervantes, and Spanish lyric poets. Together with this role, and inspired by José Martí's principle of "literacy without borders", Guevara further ensured that his rebel fighters made daily time to teach the uneducated campesinos with whom they lived and fought to read and write, in what Guevara termed the "battle against ignorance". Tomás Alba, who fought under Guevara's command, later stated that "Che was loved, in spite of being stern and demanding. We would (have) given our life for him."
David Orton (deep ecology)
Che Guevara was no coffee-house revolutionary. He could not be classified as an academic Marxist. Many of these gentlemen—who may be spotted on university campuses in America and Canada, well salaried, well fed and well clothed—make absolute distinctions between revolutionary theory and revolutionary action...Che had an interest in revolutionary theory but he also believed in praxis. His message was brutally simple, yet profound: The revolution will be made by those who act, not by those who endlessly talk and contribute to left-wing journals, regarding strategy, tactics, objective versus subjective conditions, etc, etc.
Che Guevara
On October 15 in Havana, Fidel Castro publicly acknowledged that Guevara was dead and proclaimed three days of public mourning throughout Cuba. On October 18, Castro addressed a crowd of one million mourners in Havana's Plaza de la Revolución and spoke about Guevara's character as a revolutionary. Fidel Castro closed his impassioned eulogy thus:
Che (2008 film)
In a final flashback scene, Guevara is aboard the "Granma" in 1956, looking out over the ocean, as the Cuban Revolution is about to begin. He sees the Castro brothers alone at the bow of the ship; Fidel is talking and Raúl is taking notes. Guevara hands a peeled orange to one of his comrades and returns his gaze to the lone brothers before the scene fades to black.Originally, "Che" was intended to be a much more traditional film based on Jon Lee Anderson's 1997 biography "Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life". Actor Benicio del Toro and producer Laura Bickford optioned the film rights to Anderson's book. However, after two years they had not found a suitable writer and the rights expired. During this time, Del Toro and Bickford researched the events depicted in "Guerrilla" with the idea of exploring Guevara's attempts to start a revolution in Bolivia. Del Toro has said that he previously only thought of Guevara as a "bad guy". For his role, Del Toro spent seven years "obsessively researching" Guevara's life, which made him feel like he "earned his stripes" to interpret the character. Preparation included looking at Guevara's photographs and reading his personal writings. Del Toro read "Don Quixote", one of Guevara's favorites, and the first book published and given out free after the Cuban Revolution. Del Toro then personally met with people from different stages of Guevara's life, including Guevara's younger brother and childhood friends, traveling to Cuba where Del Toro met Guevara's widow, family, and "tons of people that loved this man". The visit included a five-minute encounter at a book fair with Fidel Castro, who expressed that he was happy for the "serious" research being undertaken. Such research included collaborating with the three surviving guerrillas from Guevara's ill-fated Bolivian campaign, and with several guerrillas who fought alongside him in Cuba. While researching for both films, Soderbergh made a documentary of his interviews with many of the people who had fought alongside Guevara. In his encounters with people ranging from fellow guerrillas to Guevara's driver, Del Toro described the reaction as "always the same", stating that he was "blown away" by the "bucketful of love" they still harbored for Guevara. In an interview, Del Toro described Guevara as "a weird combination of an intellectual and an action figure, Gregory Peck and Steve McQueen, wrapped in one". After the film's production concluded, Del Toro professed that "when you tell the story of Che, you're telling a story of the history of a country, so you have to be very careful".
Che Guevara Mausoleum
A number of elements of the memorial contain a symbolic meaning. For instance, the monument is orientated 190 degrees pointing Che's figure directly towards South America, reflecting his focus and outlook for one united Latin America. Additionally, the 22 foot bronze statue of Che has him carrying his gun rather than aiming, symbolizing that he is "continuing onward". The sling which Guevara wore during the battle, the result of an earlier broken arm, is also etched into the statue but he's not wearing the sling to symbolize "a part of his personality, a man rebelling even against himself." At the base of the memorial is Guevara's motto, ""Hasta la Victorianjy6 Siempre"" (Until the Eternal Victory).
Legacy of Che Guevara
In Latin America, the perceived failures of the liberal reforms of the 1990s intensified ideological antagonism towards the United States, leading to a resurgence in support for many of Guevara’s political beliefs: including Pan-Americanism, support for popular movements in the region, the nationalization of key industries and centralization of government. In nearly every upsurge of revolutionary movements in Latin America over the last forty years, from Argentina to Chile, from Nicaragua to El Salvador, from Guatemala to Mexico and Chiapas, there are traces of "Guevarismo" – sometimes clear, sometimes faint. In the view of the indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchú, "In these present times, when for many, ethics and other profound moral values are seen to be so easily bought and sold, the example of Che Guevara takes on an even greater dimension."
Hugo Chávez
Chávez was a Catholic. He intended at one time to become a priest. He saw his socialist policies as having roots in the teachings of Jesus Christ (liberation theology), and he publicly used the slogan of "Christ is with the Revolution!" Although he traditionally kept his own faith a private matter, Chávez over the course of his presidency became increasingly open to discussing his religious views, stating that he interpreted Jesus as a Communist. He was, in general, a liberal Catholic, some of whose declarations were disturbing to the religious community of his country. In 2008 he expressed his skepticism of an afterlife, saying that such an idea was false. He also would declare his belief in Darwin's theory of evolution, stating that "it is a lie that God created man from the ground." Among other things, he cursed the state of Israel, and he had some disputes with both the Venezuelan Catholic clergy and Protestant groups like the New Tribes Mission, whose evangelical leader he "condemned to hell". In addition, he showed syncretistic practices such as the worship of the Venezuelan goddess María Lionza. In his last years, after he discovered he had cancer, Chávez became more attached to the Catholic Church.
Che Guevara in popular culture
As the 40th anniversary of Che's execution approached in 2007, journalists returned to discover that in Bolivia, images of Che now hung next to images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and Pope John Paul II. Additionally, columnist Christopher Roper observed that "in Bolivia, Che's murdered body was now compared to John the Baptist, while Reuters reported that in many homes, Che's face competed for wall space with a host of saints of the Catholic Church. A new legend also became known, when the "Los Angeles Times" reported that some rural campesinos now believed that if you whisper Che Guevara's name to the sky or light a candle to his memory, you will find your lost goat or cow.
Che Guevara
In Algiers, Algeria, on February 24, 1965, Guevara made what turned out to be his last public appearance on the international stage when he delivered a speech at an economic seminar on Afro-Asian solidarity. He specified the moral duty of the socialist countries, accusing them of tacit complicity with the exploiting Western countries. He proceeded to outline a number of measures which he said the communist-bloc countries must implement in order to accomplish the defeat of imperialism. Having criticized the Soviet Union (the primary financial backer of Cuba) in such a public manner, he returned to Cuba on March 14 to a solemn reception by Fidel and Raúl Castro, Osvaldo Dorticós and Carlos Rafael Rodríguez at the Havana airport.
Tarará
After the Cuban Revolution, in January 1959, Che Guevara went to live at a summer villa in Tarara to recover from a violent asthma attack. While there he started the Tarara Group, a group that debated and formed the new plans for Cuba's social, political, and economic development. In addition, Che began to write his book Guerrilla Warfare while resting at Tarara. Che returned to Tarara in June 1959 for his honeymoon after his marriage to his second wife Aleida March.
Che Guevara in popular culture
Appearances of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara (1928–1967) in popular culture are common throughout the world. Although during his lifetime he was a highly politicized and controversial figure, in death his stylized image has been transformed into a worldwide emblem for an array of causes, representing a complex mesh of sometimes conflicting narratives. Che Guevara's image is viewed as everything from an inspirational icon of revolution, to a retro and vintage logo. Most commonly he is represented by a facial caricature originally by Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick and based on Alberto Korda's famous 1960 photograph titled "Guerrillero Heroico". The evocative simulacra abbreviation of the photographic portrait allowed for easy reproduction and instant recognizability across various uses. For many around the world, Che has become a generic symbol of the underdog, the idealist, the iconoclast, or the martyr. He has become, as author Michael Casey notes in "Che's Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image", "the quintessential postmodern icon signifying anything to anyone and everything to everyone."
Che Guevara
Films:
Legacy of Che Guevara
Many Cuban exiles have spoken of Guevara in unfavorable terms, and he is remembered by some with the epithet "The Butcher of la Cabaña", a reference to Guevara’s post-revolutionary role as "supreme prosecutor" over the revolutionary tribunals at the fortress. Similar disapproval has been shared by Cuban-American actor and director Andy García, who alleged in 2004 that "Che has been romanticized over the years, but there is a darker side to his story. He looks like a rock star, but he executed a lot of people without trial or defense." Garcia's 2005 film "The Lost City", portrays what could be perceived by some, as the brutality of pre and post revolution Cuba, including Che. In reference to such polarization, Cuban-American academic Uva de Aragon has hypothesized that "we'll still have to wait many years for history to deliver a definite judgement on Che, when the passions of both sides have passed."
Che Guevara
As he grew older, he developed an interest in the Latin American writers Horacio Quiroga, Ciro Alegría, Jorge Icaza, Rubén Darío and Miguel Asturias. Many of these authors' ideas he cataloged in his own handwritten notebooks of concepts, definitions, and philosophies of influential intellectuals. These included composing analytical sketches of Buddha and Aristotle, along with examining Bertrand Russell on love and patriotism, Jack London on society and Nietzsche on the idea of death. Sigmund Freud's ideas fascinated him as he quoted him on a variety of topics from dreams and libido to narcissism and the Oedipus complex. His favorite subjects in school included philosophy, mathematics, engineering, political science, sociology, history and archaeology.
Legacy of Che Guevara
Despite the formal adulation, Guevara's legacy is less pronounced on a national policy front. In Cuba, Guevara's death precipitated the abandonment of guerrilla warfare as an instrument of foreign policy, ushering in a "rapprochement" with the Soviet Union, and the reformation of the government along Soviet lines. When Cuban troops returned to Africa in the 1970s, it was as part of a large-scale military expedition, and support for insurrection movements in Latin America and the Caribbean became logistical and organizational rather than overt. Cuba also abandoned Guevara's plans for economic diversification and rapid industrialization which had ultimately proved to be impracticable in view of the country's incorporation into the COMECON system. As early as 1965, the Yugoslav communist journal Borba observed the many half-completed or empty factories in Cuba, a legacy of Guevara's short tenure as Minister of Industries, "standing like sad memories of the conflict between pretension and reality".
The Motorcycle Diaries (film)
The Motorcycle Diaries () is a 2004 biopic about the journey and written memoir of the 23-year-old Ernesto Guevara, who would several years later become internationally known as the iconic Marxist guerrilla commander and revolutionary Che Guevara. The film recounts the 1952 expedition, initially by motorcycle, across South America by Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado. As well as being a road movie, the film is a coming-of-age film; as the adventure, initially centered on youthful hedonism, unfolds, Guevara discovers himself transformed by his observations on the life of the impoverished indigenous peasantry. Through the characters they encounter on their continental trek, Guevara and Granado witness first hand the injustices that the destitute face and are exposed to people and social classes they would have never encountered otherwise. To their surprise, the road presents to them both a genuine and captivating picture of Latin American identity. As a result, the trip also plants the initial seed of cognitive dissonance and radicalization within Guevara, who ostensibly would later view armed revolution as a way to challenge the continent's endemic economic inequalities and political repression.
Che Guevara
Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs and films. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by moral rather than material incentives, Guevara has evolved into a quintessential icon of various leftist movements. "Time" magazine named him one of the people of the 20th century, while an Alberto Korda photograph of him, titled "Guerrillero Heroico" (shown), was cited by the Maryland Institute College of Art as "the most famous photograph in the world".
Guerrilla Warfare (book)
"Guerrilla Warfare" is a manual for the left-wing insurgency that draws on Guevara's experience as a participant in the Cuban revolution. It elaborates the foco theory ("foquismo"), for which the guerrilla operates as a vanguard even before the development of the "objective" conditions for a popular uprising. While many draw parallels with Mao Zedong's "On Guerrilla Warfare", Guevara claimed he had not read Mao's book. Instead it draws on the lessons of fighting during the Cuban Revolutionary War, which in turn were informed by two books from the Spanish Civil War, "Nuevas guerras" and "Medicina contra invasión", stressing the need for an underpinning political motivation to guerrilla methods, organisation and supply. Guevara emphasizes that guerrilla warfare is a favorable method only against totalitarian regimes, (such as the revolutionary war against the Batista dictatorship in Cuba), where political opposition and legal civil struggle is impossible to conduct. South African revolutionaries read the work in the early 1960s; former Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils notes that the Apartheid regime's police questioned his late wife about an order of "Che Guevara's book on guerrilla warfare."
Che Guevara
About 30 minutes before Guevara was killed, Félix Rodríguez attempted to question him about the whereabouts of other guerrilla fighters who were currently at large, but Guevara continued to remain silent. Rodríguez, assisted by a few Bolivian soldiers, helped Guevara to his feet and took him outside the hut to parade him before other Bolivian soldiers where he posed with Guevara for a photo opportunity where one soldier took a photograph of Rodríguez and other soldiers standing alongside Guevara. Afterwards, Rodríguez told Guevara that he was going to be executed. A little later, Guevara was asked by one of the Bolivian soldiers guarding him if he was thinking about his own immortality. "No," he replied, "I'm thinking about the immortality of the revolution." A few minutes later, Sergeant Terán entered the hut to shoot him, whereupon Guevara reportedly stood up and spoke to Terán what were his last words: "I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward! You are only going to kill a man!" Terán hesitated, then pointed his self-loading M2 carbine at Guevara and opened fire, hitting him in the arms and legs. Then, as Guevara writhed on the ground, apparently biting one of his wrists to avoid crying out, Terán fired another burst, fatally wounding him in the chest. Guevara was pronounced dead at 1:10 pm local time according to Rodríguez. In all, Guevara was shot nine times by Terán. This included five times in his legs, once in the right shoulder and arm, and once in the chest and throat.
Legacy of Che Guevara
British journalist Sean O’Hagan has described Che as "more (John) Lennon than (Vladimir) Lenin." Taking the opposite hypothesis, Mexican commentator and Che Biographer Jorge Castañeda Gutman has proclaimed that: "Che can be found just where he belongs in the niches reserved for cultural icons, for symbols of social uprisings that filter down deep into the soil of society." Castañeda has further stated that "Che still possesses an extraordinary relevance as a symbol of a time when people died heroically for what they believed in", adding that in his view "people don't do that anymore." The saying "Viva la revolucion!" has also become very popular and synonymous with Guevara. In North America, Western Europe and many regions outside Latin America, the image has been likened to a global brand, long since shedding its ideological or political connotations. Conversely, the obsession with Guevara has also been dismissed by critics as merely "adolescent revolutionary romanticism."
Marta Abreu
Nowadays Marta's reputation has been eclipsed by that of another important revolutionary iconic figure: Ernesto Che Guevara. Santa Clara once literally known as “the city of Marta” was changed to “the city of Che” when in the 1990s the arrival of the remains of Che and his companions were discovered in Bolivia and brought back to Cuba. Che and his rebel mates were on display inside the public library of the city “Biblioteca Marti” ironically Marta Abreu’s former house and one of her many donations to the city. Once the remains found definitive place on the famous Che Monument local authorities decided to change the motto of the city. Soon after this became a point of discussion with the locals, who aren't against honoring Che but are also loyal to the history of Marta and her city.
Che Guevara
A further integral part of fostering a sense of "unity between the individual and the mass", Guevara believed, was volunteer work and will. To display this, Guevara "led by example", working "endlessly at his ministry job, in construction, and even cutting sugar cane" on his day off. He was known for working 36 hours at a stretch, calling meetings after midnight, and eating on the run. Such behavior was emblematic of Guevara's new program of moral incentives, where each worker was now required to meet a quota and produce a certain quantity of goods. As a replacement for the pay increases abolished by Guevara, workers who exceeded their quota now only received a certificate of commendation, while workers who failed to meet their quotas were given a pay cut. Guevara unapologetically defended his personal philosophy towards motivation and work, stating:
Legacy of Che Guevara
The U.S. State Department was advised that his death would come as a relief to non-leftist Latin Americans, who had feared possible insurgencies in their own countries. Subsequent critical analysts have also shed light on aspects of cruelty in Guevara’s methods, and analysed what Fidel Castro described as Guevara’s "excessively aggressive quality." Studies addressing problematic characteristics of Guevara's life have cited his unsympathetic treatment of his fellow fighters during various guerrilla campaigns, and his frequent humiliations of those deemed his intellectual inferiors. Though much opposition to Guevara's methods has come from the political right, critical evaluation has also come from groups such as anarchists, Trotskyists, and civil libertarians, who consider Guevara an anti-working-class Stalinist, whose legacy was the creation of a more bureaucratic, authoritarian regime. Johann Hari, for example, has stated that "Che Guevara is not a free-floating icon of rebellion. He was an actual person who supported an actual system of tyranny, one that murdered millions more actual people." Detractors have also theorized that in much of Latin America, Che-inspired revolutions had the practical result of reinforcing brutal militarism for many years.
Che Guevara in popular culture
Enter Che: the 1960s symbol of student revolution, the all-pervasive ascetic gaze used to add allure and mystique to a product, because either a sophisticated audience is savvy enough to distinguish between revolution and commerce while enjoying the irony, or oblivious of who he is or what he represents. This began the metamorphosis from Che the martyred resistance fighter beloved by many, and Che the violent Marxist revolutionary despised by others, to his dual paradoxical position in the global corporate capitalist culture. The commodification of the image has been ongoing since his death, and since the late 1990s has seen a resurgence. UCLA art historian David Kunzle, has described the phenomenon by noting "if you go to Havana today, you will not see Che with a gun, you will see him with a rose or a dove. He's become the Gandhi of Cuba."
Humberto Fontova
Travel author Rolf Potts, in a review of "Exposing the Real Che Guevara" for World Hum, noted that "taken in selective doses", the book puts "some well-placed holes in Che’s presumed humanism and military competence." However, Potts said that what "is meant to be a polemic against Guevara’s t-shirt-certified mythology" actually ends up showing "how Che’s reputation benefits from the myopic fury and misguided political influence of those who hate him the most." Potts said that the book's "slightly schizophrenic tone" meanders off into subject matter that has little to do with the book’s premise, that the book seems "less an indictment of Guevara than the "New York Times" or John F. Kennedy. Ultimately, Potts states, the book is "less about Che Guevara than the King Lear-style resentments of the Cuban-Americans who hate him — and the effectiveness of its argument suffers as a result."
Foco
Like other theorists of his era (such as Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Amílcar Cabral), Che Guevara believed that people living in countries still ruled by colonial powers, or living in countries subject to newer forms of economic exploitation, could best defeat colonial powers by taking up arms. Guevara also believed in fostering armed resistance not by concentrating one's forces in urban centers, but rather through the accumulation of strength in mountainous and rural regions where the enemy had less presence.
Sandinista ideology
Carlos Fonseca adopted many of the Sandinista military goals from the Cuban Revolutionary experience led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in 1959. Just as Guevara had implemented his Guerrilla foco in the Sierra Maestra mountains of the Oriente province, Fonseca believed Nicaragua's Revolution would begin with mass insurgence in the countryside. However, Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Fidel Castro had themselves studied Sandino's war against the American Marines in Nicaragua during the late 1950s.
Chevolution
"Chevolution" also discusses the interpretation of Che's death and the images that showed him lying dead on a piece of cement in Bolivia. The interpretation was the comparison of Che with Jesus Christ. As dramatic as it is,the documentary discusses how this comparison happened immediately after images of a lifeless Che were released. Che repeatedly claimed his solidarity with the people's struggle and believed in victory by any means possible. The documentary also compares the cause of Jesus' death and comments on the idea of collective guilt felt amongst many as Che died for people's freedom. Chevolution talks about Che's image as a sacred icon in Bolivia and how Bolivians revere him as a saint. The documentary highlights the significance in recognizing the interpretation of Che in Vallagrande, Bolivia. In Bolivia people refer and pray to Saint Ernesto de la Higuera, although the Catholic Church does not recognize Ernesto Che Guevara as a Saint. Che has also been seen as a representation of Christ. Che's beret is interpreted as his crown of thorns,which becomes Che's crown of thoughts. The documentary shows Armando Krieger, an Argentine composer who plays a piano piece meanwhile there is a female singing in an angelical voice in words that praise Che. This religious aspect of society reflects the power of Che, his ideals, image, and the hope he provided the poor and less fortunate.
Legacy of Che Guevara
In addition, more radical left wing activists responded to Guevara's apparent indifference to rewards and glory, and concurred with Guevara's sanctioning of violence as a necessity to instill socialist ideals. Even in the United States, the government which Guevara so vigorously denounced, students began to emulate his style of dress, donning military fatigues, berets, and growing their hair and beards to show that they too were opponents of U.S. foreign policy. For instance, the Black Panthers began to style themselves "Che-type" while adopting his trademark black beret, while Arab guerrillas began to name combat operations in his honor. Addressing the wide-ranging flexibility of his legacy, Trisha Ziff, director of the 2008 documentary "Chevolution", has remarked that "Che Guevara's significance in modern times is less about the man and his specific history, and more about the ideals of creating a better society." In a similar vein, the Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman has suggested Guevara's enduring appeal might be because "to those who will never follow in his footsteps, submerged as they are in a world of cynicism, self-interest and frantic consumption, nothing could be more vicariously gratifying than Che's disdain for material comfort and everyday desires."
Che Guevara in popular culture
Regardless of the varying sentiments, Jonathan Green director of the UCR/Museum of Photography believes that there is no escaping the influence of Che's symbolism, remarking that "we cannot get away from the context of Che Guevara, whether we like him or hate him, whether we called him a revolutionary or a butcher. The fact that he lived and died for the ideas in which he believed, penetrates constantly in the image."
Che Guevara
These perceived threats prompted Castro to further eliminate "counter-revolutionaries", and to utilize Guevara to drastically increase the speed of land reform. To implement this plan, a new government agency, the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA), was established to administer the new Agrarian Reform law. INRA quickly became the most important governing body in the nation, with Guevara serving as its head in his capacity as minister of industries. Under Guevara's command, INRA established its own 100,000 person militia, used first to help the government seize control of the expropriated land and supervise its distribution, and later to set up cooperative farms. The land confiscated included owned by United States corporations. Months later, as retaliation, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower sharply reduced United States imports of Cuban sugar (Cuba's main cash crop), thus leading Guevara on July 10, 1960, to address over 100,000 workers in front of the Presidential Palace at a rally called to denounce United States "economic aggression". "Time magazine" reporters who met with Guevara around this time described him as "guid(ing) Cuba with icy calculation, vast competence, high intelligence, and a perceptive sense of humor."
Che Guevara
In August 1961, during an economic conference of the Organization of American States in Punta del Este, Uruguay, Che Guevara sent a note of "gratitude" to United States President John F. Kennedy through Richard N. Goodwin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. It read "Thanks for Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs). Before the invasion, the revolution was shaky. Now it's stronger than ever." In response to United States Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon presenting the Alliance for Progress for ratification by the meeting, Guevara antagonistically attacked the United States claim of being a "democracy", stating that such a system was not compatible with "financial oligarchy, discrimination against blacks, and outrages by the Ku Klux Klan". Guevara continued, speaking out against the "persecution" that in his view "drove scientists like Oppenheimer from their posts, deprived the world for years of the marvelous voice of Paul Robeson, and sent the Rosenbergs to their deaths against the protests of a shocked world." Guevara ended his remarks by insinuating that the United States was not interested in real reforms, sardonically quipping that "U.S. experts never talk about agrarian reform; they prefer a safe subject, like a better water supply. In short, they seem to prepare the revolution of the toilets." Nevertheless, Goodwin stated in his memo to President Kennedy following the meeting that Guevara viewed him as someone of the "newer generation" and that Guevara, whom Goodwin alleged sent a message to him the day after the meeting through one of the meeting's Argentine participants whom he described as "Darretta," also viewed the conversation which the two had as "quite profitable."
Chevolution
Chevolution is a 2008 documentary film which examines the history and legacy of the photo "Guerrillero Heroico" taken by famous Cuban photographer Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez. This image has thrived for the decades since Che Guevara's death and has evolved into an iconic image, which represents a multitude of ideals. The documentary explores the story of how the photo came to be, its adoption of multiple interpretations and meanings, as well as the commercialization of the image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Loving Che
The possible connection between the protagonist and Guevara is important to the novel because of his mythical status throughout the world, especially Cuban culture. Guevara played a significant part in helping Castro seize control of Cuba, and his desire to help the poor and oppressed throughout the world work together to overthrow imperialist governments in order to live free of capitalistic ideals, further built his legendary status. Realizing that being an illegitimate daughter of such an idealized person could have wide-ranging implications for the protagonist prompts her to uncover more details about her past.
Che (2008 film)
On October 15, 1958, the guerrillas approach the town of Las Villas. The Battle of Santa Clara is depicted with Guevara demonstrating his tactical skill as the guerrillas engage in street-to-street fighting and derail a train carrying Cuban soldiers and armaments. Near the film's end, they are victorious. With the Cuban Revolution now over, Guevara heads to Havana, remarking "we won the war, the revolution starts now."
Che Guevara
During this time he renewed his friendship with Ñico López and the other Cuban exiles whom he had met in Guatemala. In June 1955, López introduced him to Raúl Castro, who subsequently introduced him to his older brother, Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader who had formed the 26th of July Movement and was now plotting to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. During a long conversation with Fidel on the night of their first meeting, Guevara concluded that the Cuban's cause was the one for which he had been searching and before daybreak he had signed up as a member of the July 26 Movement. Despite their "contrasting personalities", from this point on Che and Fidel began to foster what dual biographer Simon Reid-Henry deemed a "revolutionary friendship that would change the world", as a result of their coinciding commitment to anti-imperialism.
Pablo Neruda
After the death of Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967, Neruda wrote several articles regretting the loss of a "great hero". At the same time, he told his friend Aida Figueroa not to cry for Che, but for Luis Emilio Recabarren, the father of the Chilean communist movement, who preached a pacifist revolution over Che's violent ways.
Legacy of Che Guevara
In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas, a group with ideological roots in Guevarism were re-elected to government after 16 years. Supporters wore Guevara T-shirts during the 2006 victory celebrations. Bolivian president Evo Morales has paid many tributes to Guevara including visiting his initial burial site in Bolivia to declare "Che Lives", and installing a portrait of the Argentine made from local coca leaves in his presidential suite. In 2006, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez who has referred to Guevara as an "infinite revolutionary" and who has been known to address audiences in a Che Guevara T-shirt, accompanied Fidel Castro on a tour of Guevara’s boyhood home in Córdoba Argentina, describing the experience as "a real honor." Awaiting crowds of thousands responded with calls of "We feel it! Guevara is right with us!" Guevara’s daughter Aleida also transcribed an extensive interview with Chávez where he outlined his plans for "The New Latin America", releasing the interview in book form. Guevara also remains a key inspirational figure to the Colombian guerrilla movement, the FARC, and the Mexican Zapatistas led by Subcomandante Marcos. In addition, the various "expressions of the popular will" that Che favored over ballot-box democracy – neighborhood courts and the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution – have found new expression in Venezuela and Bolivia.
Aleida Guevara
Although Aleida was only four and a half when her father left Cuba to foment revolution in the Congo, and almost 7 years old when he was executed in Bolivia, she still has fond memories of him. One such story that she has shared publicly is that her father (Che) would make up animal stories for his faraway children, stating:
Che Guevara
Guevara later learned there had been two failed attempts on his life by Cuban exiles during his stop at the UN complex. The first from Molly Gonzales, who tried to break through barricades upon his arrival with a seven-inch hunting knife, and later during his address by Guillermo Novo, who fired a timer-initiated bazooka from a boat in the East River at the United Nations Headquarters, but missed and was off target. Afterwards Guevara commented on both incidents, stating that "it is better to be killed by a woman with a knife than by a man with a gun", while adding with a languid wave of his cigar that the explosion had "given the whole thing more flavor".
The Motorcycle Diaries (book)
The Motorcycle Diaries () is a memoir that traces the early travels of Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, then a 23-year-old medical student, and his friend Alberto Granado, a 29-year-old biochemist. Leaving Buenos Aires, Argentina, in January 1952 on the back of a sputtering single cylinder 1939 Norton 500cc dubbed "La Poderosa" ("The Mighty One"), they desired to explore the South America they only knew from books. During the formative odyssey Guevara is transformed by witnessing the social injustices of exploited mine workers, persecuted communists, ostracized lepers, and the tattered descendants of a once-great Inca civilization. By journey's end, they had travelled for a symbolic nine months by motorcycle, steamship, raft, horse, bus, and hitchhiking, covering more than across places such as the Andes, Atacama Desert, and the Amazon River Basin. The diary ends with a declaration by Guevara, born into an upper-middle-class family, displaying his willingness to fight and die for the cause of the poor, and his dream of seeing a united Latin America.
Che Guevara in popular culture
Duke Latin American studies professor Ariel Dorfman hypothesizes that Che's been "comfortably transmogrified into a symbol of rebellion" precisely because those in power no longer believe him to be dangerous. Dorfman suspects the attempt to subvert Che could backfire, positing that 3 billion people now live on less than $2 a day and thus "the powerful of the earth should take heed: deep inside that T shirt where we have tried to trap him, the eyes of Che Guevara are still burning with impatience." Expressing a similar sentiment, director Jonathan Green acknowledges that "Che is turning over in his grave" because of the commercialization; in Green's view, Che's visage also has the potential to be a "Trojan horse" of capitalist marketing, by embedding itself into pop iconography. In his example, corporations in their desperate drive to sell goods, create the opportunity for observers to see the "logo" and ask "who was that guy?" Trisha Ziff, curator of "Che! Revolution and Commerce" believes that regardless of the "postmodern" diffusion, you can't disassociate Che from "radical ideas and change", nor can one control it. In Ziff's view, despite the endless array of merchandising, the symbol of Che will continue to be worn and have resonance. Critical pedagogical theorist Peter McLaren theorizes that American capitalism is responsible for the Che phenomenon, stating that "the United States has a seductive way of incorporating anything that it can't defeat and transforming that 'thing' into a weaker version of itself, much like the process of diluting the strength and efficacy of a virus through the creation of a vaccine." Neo-Marxist and critical theorist Herbert Marcuse argued that in the contemporary capitalist world there is no escaping such co-optation, theorizing that we are made "one-dimensional" by capitalism's single-minded orientation toward greed and growth. Author Susan Sontag spoke of the potential positive ramifications of utilizing Che as a symbol, positing:
Che Guevara
During this voyage, he wrote a letter to Carlos Quijano, editor of a Uruguayan weekly, which was later retitled "Socialism and Man in Cuba". Outlined in the treatise was Guevara's summons for the creation of a new consciousness, a new status of work, and a new role of the individual. He also laid out the reasoning behind his anti-capitalist sentiments, stating:
Che Guevara
Radio Rebelde broadcast the first reports that Guevara's column had taken Santa Clara on New Year's Eve 1958. This contradicted reports by the heavily controlled national news media, which had at one stage reported Guevara's death during the fighting. At 3 am on January 1, 1959, upon learning that his generals were negotiating a separate peace with Guevara, Fulgencio Batista boarded a plane in Havana and fled for the Dominican Republic, along with an amassed "fortune of more than $300,000,000 through graft and payoffs". The following day on January 2, Guevara entered Havana to take final control of the capital. Fidel Castro took six more days to arrive, as he stopped to rally support in several large cities on his way to rolling victoriously into Havana on January 8, 1959. The final death toll from the two years of revolutionary fighting was 2,000 people.
The Marxism of Che Guevara
The Marxism of Che Guevara: Philosophy, Economics, and Revolutionary Warfare () is a 1970 book by Michael Löwy. It is a short work addressing the political, ethical and economic components of Ernesto Guevara's thinking.
Che Guevara
At this stage, Guevara acquired the additional position of Finance Minister, as well as President of the National Bank. These appointments, combined with his existing position as Minister of Industries, placed Guevara at the zenith of his power, as the "virtual czar" of the Cuban economy. As a consequence of his position at the head of the central bank, it became Guevara's duty to sign the Cuban currency, which per custom bore his signature. Instead of using his full name, he signed the bills solely ""Che"". It was through this symbolic act, which horrified many in the Cuban financial sector, that Guevara signaled his distaste for money and the class distinctions it brought about. Guevara's long time friend Ricardo Rojo later remarked that "the day he signed "Che" on the bills, (he) literally knocked the props from under the widespread belief that money was sacred."
Alberto Korda
Korda was a photographer for the Cuban newspaper "Revolución" when he produced on March 5, 1960, the iconic image of Che Guevara that became a worldwide symbol of revolution and rebellion. He never received any royalties for the image, because Castro did not recognize the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. In 2000, he sued Smirnoff (Lowe Lintas) over the use of the image in advertisement. Commenting on the illicit use of his photograph, the artist said, "As a supporter of the ideals for which Che Guevara died, I am not averse to its reproduction by those who wish to propagate his memory and the cause of social justice throughout the world, but I am categorically against the exploitation of Che's image for the promotion of products such as alcohol, or for any purpose that denigrates the reputation of Che". His out-of-court settlement of US $50,000 was donated to the Cuban healthcare system. He said, "If Che were still alive, he would have done the same". However, he told a BBC World Service reporter that he did approve of the 1999 Che Jesus adaptation of the image used by the Churches Advertising Network to promote church attendance in the UK. The truth is that Korda gave the picture for free to Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, an Italian publisher who had published "Doctor Zhivago" and went on to publish Castro's diaries.
Ñancahuazú Guerrilla
At a meeting in Madrid, Juan Perón, who was sympathetic to Guevara but disapproved of Guevara's choice of guerrilla warfare as antiquated, warned Guevara about starting operations in Bolivia.
Che Guevara entered Bolivia with the pseudonym "Adolfo Mena González" on November 3, 1966. Three days later, he left the capital city of La Paz for the countryside. He planned to organize a foco with Bolivia as his target. Planning to start a guerrilla campaign against the military government of President René Barrientos, he assembled a band of 29 Bolivians, 25 Cubans, and a few foreigners which included Guevara himself, one woman from East Germany named Tamara Bunke, and three Peruvians. This small but well-armed group carried out two successful ambushes against two army patrols in the spring of 1967, but failed to gain significant support from fellow opposition groups in Bolivia's cities or from local civilians, some of whom willingly informed the authorities of the guerrilla's movements. By mid 1967, Guevara's men soon became fugitives, hunted down by Bolivian special forces and their American advisers. In the last few months of the venture, Guevara wrote in his diary that: "Talking to these peasants is like talking to statues. They do not give us any help. Worse still, many of them are turning into informants." On August 31, 1967, a small group of Guevara's soldiers, totaling eight men as well as Tamara Bunke, were ambushed and killed by Bolivian soldiers while they were attempting to cross the Rio Grande in Bolivia. On October 8, 1967, most of Guevara's surviving soldiers were surrounded and destroyed as a fighting force. Still, some were still active across Bolivia during the rest of October and November 1967. Barrientos was very concerned with Guevara's rising insurgency there, and clamped down in the area with some very heavy-handed measures (such as the Massacre of San Juan). Guevara felt that such an atrocity by the Bolivian Army and Air Force would be the tipping point in his favour in rallying the miners to his Communist cause, but eventually the miners signed with government-owned mining company, COMIBOL, an agreement which Guevara felt undermined his reason for being there.
Neocolonialism
In 1961, regarding the economic mechanism of neocolonial control, in the speech "Cuba: Historical Exception or Vanguard in the Anti-colonial Struggle?", Argentine revolutionary Ché Guevara said:
Che Guevara
In Chile, Guevara found himself enraged by the working conditions of the miners in Anaconda's Chuquicamata copper mine and moved by his overnight encounter in the Atacama Desert with a persecuted communist couple who did not even own a blanket, describing them as "the shivering flesh-and-blood victims of capitalist exploitation". Additionally, on the way to Machu Picchu high in the Andes, he was struck by the crushing poverty of the remote rural areas, where peasant farmers worked small plots of land owned by wealthy landlords. Later on his journey, Guevara was especially impressed by the camaraderie among those living in a leper colony, stating, "The highest forms of human solidarity and loyalty arise among such lonely and desperate people." Guevara used notes taken during this trip to write an account, titled "The Motorcycle Diaries", which later became a "New York Times" best-seller, and was adapted into a 2004 award-winning film of the same name.
Che Guevara
Guevara's aim was to export the revolution by instructing local anti-Mobutu Simba fighters in Marxist ideology and foco theory strategies of guerrilla warfare. In his "Congo Diary" book, he cites the incompetence, intransigence and infighting among the Congolese rebels as key reasons for the revolt's failure. Later that year, on November 20, 1965, suffering from dysentery and acute asthma, and disheartened after seven months of defeats, Guevara left Congo with the six Cuban survivors of his 12-man column. Guevara stated that he had planned to send the wounded back to Cuba and fight in Congo alone until his death, as a revolutionary example. But after being urged by his comrades, and two emissaries sent by Castro, at the last moment he reluctantly agreed to leave Africa. During that day and night, Guevara's forces quietly took down their base camp, burned their huts, and destroyed or threw weapons into Lake Tanganyika that they could not take with them, before crossing the border into Tanzania at night and traveling by land to Dar es Salaam. In speaking about his experience in Congo months later, Guevara concluded that he left rather than fight to the death because: "The human element failed. There is no will to fight. The [rebel] leaders are corrupt. In a word ... there was nothing to do." Guevara also declared that "we can't liberate by ourselves a country that does not want to fight." A few weeks later, he wrote the preface to the diary he kept during the Congo venture, that began: "This is the story of a failure."
La Higuera
On October 8, 1967, the Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara was captured by the CIA-assisted Bolivian Army in the nearby ravine "Quebrada del Churo", ending his campaign to create a continental revolution in South America. Che Guevara was held in the schoolhouse, where he was killed the next day. The body was then brought to Vallegrande, where it was placed on display and afterwards secretly buried under an airstrip.
Osvaldo Peredo
Peredo was born and grew up in Trinidad in Beni Department in northern Bolivia, and was strongly influenced by his older brothers who helped found the Bolivian Communist Party and were leaders in guerrilla movements. After receiving his initial medical training Peredo left the profession and joined the Ñancahuazú Guerrilla movement of Che Guevara, known as the National Liberation Army (ELN). However, because of the need for medical services, Peredo left to attend Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow where he received advanced medical training as well as idelological training. Upon his return to Bolivia he became one of the leaders of the movement. After Che Guevara was killed, Peredo was among those few who managed to escape to Chile. In November 1970, Salvador Allende, after he assumed the presidency of Chile, pardoned Peredo, Mario Suarez and the other survivors.
Legacy of Che Guevara
Although to some Che is known as a hero — Nelson Mandela referred to him as: "An inspiration for every human being who loves freedom" — others view him as the spokesman of a failing ideology and a ruthless executioner who did not afford others a proper legal process. Critics point out that Che justified murdering people without knowing if they are fully guilty. They point out that in a May 18, 1962 speech Che said: "We executed many people by firing squad without knowing if they were fully guilty. At times, the Revolution cannot stop to conduct much investigation; it has the obligation to triumph."