CHE with an AK
2nd April 2010, 03:54
To me Che Guevara is one of the most heroic figures in world history who is a stoic example of what all those who speak of revolution should espouse to be.
This was a man who left a bourgeoisie comfortable life of the upper class, a potential well compensated career as a medical doctor, and a high regarded governmental position --- each time to slog through the jungle and fight guerrilla wars against impenetrable odds = for a better and more equitable society.
I endorse Jean Paul Sartres declaration that Guevara was the most complete man of our time and find his life not only fascinating but deeply inspiring.
Guevara despite his crippling and acute asthma which would debilitate him almost daily to inches from death, directed suicide squads in the battle against the U.S. armed and backed Dictator Batista where with less than 300 men; he literally took on 10,000 Batista soldiers armed with tanks, jets, and U.S. weaponry, and came out victorious at and leading up to the victory at Santa Clara.
In Bolivia, Guevara spent almost over 1 hellish year in the festering jungle battling a disease which left his hands as mounds of swollen flesh, the fact that his allergic reaction to mosquito bites would leave walnut sized welts all over his body, kept fighting even when he was without food for nearly a month, went shoeless, without blankets, and STILL with less than 30 men took on a force of 1,800 Bolivian U.S. armed rangers with an air force, green beret advisors, and CIA technology. Despite these odds Guevaras men killed 30 Bolivian troops before they even lost their first Guerrilla. Moreover, displaying his character, despite all these hardships, when Guevara could have simply taken the food of Bolivian campesinos to eat, he insisted on paying for everything.
Throughout his life Che tended to thousands of sick campesinos, helped construct dozens of schools throughout Cuba, worked in a Leper colony to helped those afflicted, and even when he was literally tied up in a small mud school house awaiting his own execution ! , still complained to the local teacher that in a nation where the leaders drove Mercedes it was a travesty that the peasants were taught in a dilapidated place like he was in.
Although I dont believe in religious dogma (neither did Che), and view myself as an atheist, I do find it telling that the person Che was so often compared to by those who knew him was Jesus Christ. Because of his implacable character, unbending morals, and innate desire to fight in favor of the afflicted, I think that those who knew him were left with no other figure to compare him to.
Was he perfect? Of course not. No human is. But in mind he was awfully close considering the circumstances and cards he was dealt. I also find it telling that the best canard his detractors and those propagandists of monopoly capitalism can come up with - was his short stint at La Cabana prison. Where Che simply reviewed the cases and convictions of war criminals convicted by revolutionary tribunal (modeled after Nuremburg). The same secret police and Batista backed torturers that killed 20,000 people and tortured tens of thousands more. At a time when Fidel and Che would release military captives in the Sierra after tending to them medically, Batista would gouge the eyes out of captives until they gave away rebel positions. The fact that Che saw to it that justice was delivered cold to the Cuban people to me only makes him more heroic. He knew that a pedagogy of the wall was the only thing that could cleanse a society from the thousands of goons who raped and terrorized it with impunity.
Yet I'm amazed how people apply some sort of perfectionist fallacy to Guevara or more foolishly overlook his heroism on the basis of the fact that Capitalists profit from his defiant image. This is exactly what the capitalist vampires want. They will take every hero of the toilers and the left and revise them into terrorists they will take every noble guerrilla who fought against imperialism and craft them into mad men so as to make you think that heroism and socialism/Marxism etc are antithetical concepts. If this doesnt work the Capitalist/Imperialists will try to make real heroes into caricatures, or de-fanged banal symbols of popular culture so as to devalue their serious and conceptual analysis on behalf of the working class. Thus Che dawns a bikini, Mao dawns a purse, and Lenin dawns your Zippo lighter.
I would implore those who give credence to the idea of a "revolution" to give much deserved recognition to one of the few men in the past century who literally threw aside the arm chair and went out to (imperfectly) create it.
If the world had 100 Ches or hell even 10 we would be in much better shape.
Hasta la Victoria Siempre !
This was a man who left a bourgeoisie comfortable life of the upper class, a potential well compensated career as a medical doctor, and a high regarded governmental position --- each time to slog through the jungle and fight guerrilla wars against impenetrable odds = for a better and more equitable society.
I endorse Jean Paul Sartres declaration that Guevara was the most complete man of our time and find his life not only fascinating but deeply inspiring.
Guevara despite his crippling and acute asthma which would debilitate him almost daily to inches from death, directed suicide squads in the battle against the U.S. armed and backed Dictator Batista where with less than 300 men; he literally took on 10,000 Batista soldiers armed with tanks, jets, and U.S. weaponry, and came out victorious at and leading up to the victory at Santa Clara.
In Bolivia, Guevara spent almost over 1 hellish year in the festering jungle battling a disease which left his hands as mounds of swollen flesh, the fact that his allergic reaction to mosquito bites would leave walnut sized welts all over his body, kept fighting even when he was without food for nearly a month, went shoeless, without blankets, and STILL with less than 30 men took on a force of 1,800 Bolivian U.S. armed rangers with an air force, green beret advisors, and CIA technology. Despite these odds Guevaras men killed 30 Bolivian troops before they even lost their first Guerrilla. Moreover, displaying his character, despite all these hardships, when Guevara could have simply taken the food of Bolivian campesinos to eat, he insisted on paying for everything.
Throughout his life Che tended to thousands of sick campesinos, helped construct dozens of schools throughout Cuba, worked in a Leper colony to helped those afflicted, and even when he was literally tied up in a small mud school house awaiting his own execution ! , still complained to the local teacher that in a nation where the leaders drove Mercedes it was a travesty that the peasants were taught in a dilapidated place like he was in.
Although I dont believe in religious dogma (neither did Che), and view myself as an atheist, I do find it telling that the person Che was so often compared to by those who knew him was Jesus Christ. Because of his implacable character, unbending morals, and innate desire to fight in favor of the afflicted, I think that those who knew him were left with no other figure to compare him to.
Was he perfect? Of course not. No human is. But in mind he was awfully close considering the circumstances and cards he was dealt. I also find it telling that the best canard his detractors and those propagandists of monopoly capitalism can come up with - was his short stint at La Cabana prison. Where Che simply reviewed the cases and convictions of war criminals convicted by revolutionary tribunal (modeled after Nuremburg). The same secret police and Batista backed torturers that killed 20,000 people and tortured tens of thousands more. At a time when Fidel and Che would release military captives in the Sierra after tending to them medically, Batista would gouge the eyes out of captives until they gave away rebel positions. The fact that Che saw to it that justice was delivered cold to the Cuban people to me only makes him more heroic. He knew that a pedagogy of the wall was the only thing that could cleanse a society from the thousands of goons who raped and terrorized it with impunity.
Yet I'm amazed how people apply some sort of perfectionist fallacy to Guevara or more foolishly overlook his heroism on the basis of the fact that Capitalists profit from his defiant image. This is exactly what the capitalist vampires want. They will take every hero of the toilers and the left and revise them into terrorists they will take every noble guerrilla who fought against imperialism and craft them into mad men so as to make you think that heroism and socialism/Marxism etc are antithetical concepts. If this doesnt work the Capitalist/Imperialists will try to make real heroes into caricatures, or de-fanged banal symbols of popular culture so as to devalue their serious and conceptual analysis on behalf of the working class. Thus Che dawns a bikini, Mao dawns a purse, and Lenin dawns your Zippo lighter.
I would implore those who give credence to the idea of a "revolution" to give much deserved recognition to one of the few men in the past century who literally threw aside the arm chair and went out to (imperfectly) create it.
If the world had 100 Ches or hell even 10 we would be in much better shape.
Hasta la Victoria Siempre !