On This Day, 1967: Che Guevara 'shot dead'

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

"Marxist revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara has reportedly been killed during a battle between army troops and guerillas in the Bolivian jungle.

A statement issued by the commander of the Eighth Bolivian Army Division, Colonel Joaquin Zenteno Anaya, said the 39-year-old guerrilla leader was shot dead near the jungle village of Higueras, in the south-east of the country.
Guevara, former right-hand man to Cuban prime minister, Fidel Castro, disappeared from the political scene in April 1965 and his whereabouts have been much debated since.
His death has been reported several times during the past two-and-a-half years, in the Congo and in the Dominican Republic, but has never been proven.
In his statement, Colonel Anaya said Guevara was one of six guerrillas killed in today's battle. It is understood five Bolivian soldiers were also killed in the clash. "

In Context
A post mortem examination on Che Guevara's body, carried out two days after his death, suggested he had not in fact been killed in battle but had been captured and executed a day later. His body was buried in an unmarked grave near Valle Grande and his remains were not found until June 1997, when they were returned to Cuba.



Full Article on BBC History (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/9/newsid_3930000/3930193.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/9/newsid_3930000/3930193.stm))

[Comrades Unite!]

Truly one of the greatest revolutionaries that ever lived, We should all take study of his book Guerrilla Warfare which is one of my favorite works on revolution.

[leftistman]

Hasta Siempre, Commandante Che Guevara!

[Ostrinski]

Truly one of the greatest revolutionaries that ever lived, We should all take study of his book Guerrilla Warfare which is one of my favorite works on revolution.zzzz! Che's pamphlet on guerrilla warfare is as boring as it is completely outdated and useless to us. I'm sure you can find more updated and modernized works on guerrilla tactics.

Also, I'm not sure if Che Guevara is someone we really need to be upholding as socialists.

[Comrades Unite!]

zzzz! Che's pamphlet on guerrilla warfare is as boring as it is completely outdated and useless to us. I'm sure you can find more updated and modernized works on guerrilla tactics.

Also, I'm not sure if Che Guevara is someone we really need to be upholding as socialists.

Why should we not uphold him?

[mykittyhasaboner]

zzzz! Che's pamphlet on guerrilla warfare is as boring as it is completely outdated and useless to us.
Not if your in conditions which make guerilla warfare worthwhile. Besides, even it was outdated, its still a piece that has some historical signifigance.


I'm sure you can find more updated and modernized works on guerrilla tacticsi'm sure we can find modern analysis of capitalism but that doesn't mean Marx is obsolete or of no use at all.


Also, I'm not sure if Che Guevara is someone we really need to be upholding as socialists."We" don't need to be upholding anybody. People respect Che for good reason, and its not just because hes become popularized by companies selling commodities featuring his picture. Guevara was an instrumental figure in Cuba and was a part of quite a few different scenarios which involved him fighting for the right for you and me and all poor, working people to have a better life. Thats a pretty good reason to "uphold" him if you ask me.

[Sea]

Also, I'm not sure if Che Guevara is someone we really need to be upholding as socialists.We shouldn't uphold Che as a personality, we should uphold those actions of his which are admirable. His role in toppling a certain American puppet regime, for instance.

[Geiseric]

Che Guevara definately had a socialist vision of Latin America, that he saw would be the continent's working class and poor peasantry banding togather against American and all other imperialist powers. His views on Focoism may of been wrong, but he still gave his life for what he and many other people believe in. He was probably the reason that Fidel turned into a social democrat, instead of aiding the various petit bourgeois capitalists that Fidel and most of the other Guerillas originated from. Nationalization wouldn't of happened without Guevara as the economic minister, i'm not sure a hundred percent but that's the view i've gathered from reading a few books.

[Prometeo liberado]

Never forget who gave the orders to have him executed. I wouldn't call it murder, but had the tables been turned I'm quite sure the U.S. would brand it an act of terrorism. Pretty sure.

[Ostrinski]

Why should we not uphold him?I dunno, his image and what it represents certainly have been put to good use by socialists I think, despite the whole commodification phenomenon (as if anything isn't commodified under capitalism). But that's just it. He's important for what he represents, not for what or who he was, in any meaningful sense.

[Ostrinski]

We shouldn't uphold Che as a personality, we should uphold those actions of his which are admirable. His role in toppling a certain American puppet regime, for instance.A lot of people do things that are admirable. Charities, churches, etc. I guess the fact that he helped topple Batista's regime is pretty cool, that kind of thing is every high school kids' dream.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Che Guevara was a great revolutionary of his era, and he bravely fought and died for the revolution. OTOH the "focoism" theory has been a proven failure, proven in part by the disastrous failure of Che's Bolivian mission. We ought to celebrate Che as a great revolutionary activist, but I am doubtful with respect to lasting theoretical contributions.

[Ostrinski]

Not if your in conditions which make guerilla warfare worthwhile. Besides, even it was outdated, its still a piece that has some historical signifigance.Or if you're considering conducting a coup in the company of a couple friends by means of military struggle that creates a political vaccuum.


i'm sure we can find modern analysis of capitalism but that doesn't mean Marx is obsolete or of no use at all.Marx isn't obsolete. False equivalence.


"We" don't need to be upholding anybody. People respect Che for good reason, and its not just because hes become popularized by companies selling commodities featuring his picture. Guevara was an instrumental figure in Cuba and was a part of quite a few different scenarios which involved him fighting for the right for you and me and all poor, working people to have a better life. Thats a pretty good reason to "uphold" him if you ask me.Yeah I respect him and everything as a human, in the sense that I respect delusional romantics for being ballsy dare devils. No doubt he was a progressive guy and everything.

[Grenzer]

Ché is so passé.

I guess he was kind of a cool guy, just not so interesting or valuable from a communist perspective.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Che was a terribly romantic figure.
I agree with Ostriniki that he isn't of much use to us now.

[Let's Get Free]

I'd say Che Guevara was a Latin American nationalist in the tradition of Augusto Sandino, Simon Bolivar and José de San Martín.

[Geiseric]

Nobody's saying that his theories are of much use, but he is a martyr for socialism. He went further than most people would go.

[Aussie Trotskyist]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xaa7NrcHyD0&feature=related

My solemn tribute to comrade Che.

[Ismail]

Hoxha gave a good analysis of Che's work in 1968 (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/1968/10/21.htm):

Che Guevara was killed. Such a thing is liable to happen, because a revolutionary may get killed. Che Guevara, however, was a victim of his own non-Marxist-Leninist views. Who was Che Guevara? When we speak of Che Guevara, we also mean somebody else who poses as a Marxist, in comparison to whom, in our opinion, Che Guevara was a man of fewer words. He was a rebel, a revolutionary, but not a Marxist-Leninist as they try to present him. I may be mistaken—you Latin-Americans are better acquainted with Che Guevara, but I think that he was a leftist fighter. His is a bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leftism, combined with some ideas that were progressive, but also anarchist which, in the final analysis, lead to adventurism.

The views of Che Guevara and anyone else who poses as a Marxist and claims "paternity" of these ideas have never been or had anything to do with Marxism-Leninism. Che Guevara also had some "exclairicies" in his adoption of certain Marxist-Leninist principles, but they still did not become a full philosophical world-outlook which could impel him to genuinely revolutionary actions.

We cannot say that Che Guevara and his comrades were cowards. No, by no means! On the contrary, they were brave people. There are also bourgeois who are brave men. But the only truly great heroes and really brave proletarian revolutionaries are those who proceed from the Marxist-Leninist philosophical principles and put all their physical and mental energies at the service of the world proletariat for the liberation of the peoples from the yolk of the imperialists, feudal lords and others.

We have defended the Cuban revolution because it was against US imperialism. As Marxist-Leninists let us study it a bit and the ideas which guided it in this struggle. The Cuban revolution did not begin on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and was not carried out on the basis of the laws of the proletarian revolution of a Marxist-Leninist party. After the liberation of the country, Castro did not set out on the Marxist-Leninist course, either, but on the contrary, continued on the course of his liberal ideas. It is a fact, which nobody can deny, that the participants in this revolution took up arms and went to the mountains, but it is an undeniable fact also that they did not fight as Marxist-Leninists. They were liberation fighters against the Battista clique and triumphed over it precisely because that clique was a weak link of capitalism. Battista was an obedient flunky of imperialism, who rode roughshod over the Cuban people. The Cuban people, however, fought and triumphed over this clique and over American imperialism at the same time...

In our opinion, the theory that the revolution is carried out by a few "heroes" constitutes a danger to Marxism-Leninism, especially in the Latin-American countries. Your South-American continent has great revolutionary traditions, but, as we said above, it also has some other traditions which may seem revolutionary but which, in fact, are not genuinely on the road of the revolution. Any putsch carried out there is called a revolution! But a putsch can never be a revolution, because one overthrown clique is replaced by another, in a word, things remain as they were. In addition to all the nuclei of anti-Marxist trends which still exist in the ranks of the old parties that have placed themselves in the service of the counterrevolution, there is now another trend which we call left adventurism.

This trend, and that other offspring of the bourgeoisie, modern revisionism, constitute great dangers to the people, including those of the Latin-American countries. Carefully disguised, modern revisionism is a great deceiver of the peoples and revolutionaries. In different countries it puts on different disguises. In Latin America, Castroism, disguised as Marxism-Leninism, is leading people, even revolutionaries, into left adventurism. This trend appears to be in contradiction with modern revisionism. Those who are ideologically immature think thus, but it is not so. The Castroites are not opposed to the modern revisionists. On the contrary, they are in their service. The separate courses each of them follows lead them to the same point.

The question whenever the Soviet revisionists fail to prevent the masses of the working class and the people from carrying out the revolution, this trend steps in and, by means of a putsch, destroys what the revisionists are unable to destroy by means of evolution. The Soviet revisionists and all the traitor cliques which led the revisionist parties preach evolution, coexistence and all those other anti-Marxist theories we know. From the terms it employs, left adventurism seems more revolutionary, because it advocates armed struggle! But what does it mean by armed struggle? Clearly—putsches. Marxism-Leninism teaches us that only by proceeding with prudent and sure steps, only by basing ourselves firmly on the principles of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, only by making the masses conscious can victory be ensured in the preparation and launching of the armed uprising, and only in this way will we never fall into adventurism.

The authors of the theory that the "starter motor" sets the "big motor" in motion pose as if they are for the armed struggle, but in fact they are opposed to it and work to discredit it. The example and tragic end of Che Guevara, the following and prorogation of this theory also by other self-styled Marxists, who are opposed to the great struggles by the masses of people, are publicly known facts which refute their claims: We must guard against the people lest they betray us, lest they hand us over to the police; we must set up "wild" isolated detachments, so that the enemy does not get wind of them and does not retaliate with terror against the population! They publicize these and many other confusing theories, which you know only too well. What sort of Marxism-Leninism is this which advocates attacking the enemy, fighting it with these "wild" detachments, etc. without having a Marxist-Leninist party to lead the fight? There is nothing Marxist-Leninist about it. Such anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist theories can bring nothing but defeat for Marxism-Leninism and the revolution, as Che Guevara's undertaking in Bolivia did.

This trend brings the theses of the armed uprising into disrepute. What great damage it causes the revolution! With the killing of Guevara, the masses of common people, contaminated by the influences of these anarchist views, will think: "Now there is no one else to lead us, to liberate us!" Or perhaps a group of people with another Guevara will be set up again to take to the mountains to make the "revolution," and the masses, who expect a great deal from these individuals and are burning to fight the bourgeoisie, may be deceived into following them. And what will happen? Something that is clear to us. Since these people are not the vanguard of the working class, since they are not guided by the enlightening principles of Marxism-Leninism, they will encounter misunderstanding among the broad masses and sooner or later they will fail, but at the same time the genuine struggle will be discredited, because the masses will regard armed struggle with distrust. We must prepare the masses politically and ideologically, and convince them through their own practical experience. That is why we say that this inhibiting, reactionary theory about the revolution that is being spread in Latin America is the offspring of modern revisionism and must be unmasked by the Marxist-Leninists.

[Ostrinski]

I agree with Hoxha's analysis though with a more general "socialist" in the place of "Marxist-Leninist"

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

R.I.P. Che.