"The Final Triumph of Saint Che"

[Guerrilla Manila]

http://a.abcnews.com/images/International/5043f684-720b-4aaf-89b1-bda28a10a336_ms.jpeg


The Final Triumph of Saint Che
Andres Schipani in La Higuera, Bolivia
The Observer
September 23 2007




By 8pm in the main square of the dusty town of Vallegrande, the only sound is the buzz of prayer coming from the church. Inside, devoted Catholics sit and stand around the image of Our Lord of Malta - the only black Christ in Latin America, brought to this Bolivian town during the Spanish conquest.


But this is not the only foreign element of devotion. Father Agustin, the Polish priest, reads out prayers written down by local people: 'For my mother who is sick, I pray to the Lord and ...', hesitantly, 'to Saint Ernesto, to the soul of Che Guevara.' 'Saint Ernesto,' the parishioners murmur in response.


It was here in Vallegrande, 40 years ago, that the corpse of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara lay on display, eyes open, in the hospital laundry. And it is here that his unofficial sainthood is becoming firmly established. 'For them, he is just like any other saint,' Father Agustin says ruefully. 'He is just like any other soul they are praying to. One can do nothing.'


On a bench in the square, Freddy Vallejos, 27, says: 'We have a faith, a confidence in Che. When I go to bed and when I wake up, I first pray to God and then I pray to Che - and then, everything is all right.' Freddy wears a cap bearing Alberto Korda's iconic image of Guevara. 'Che's presence here is a positive force. I feel it in my skin, I have faith that always, at all times, he has an eye on us.'


Guevara, born in Argentina to an impoverished aristocratic family, was caught on 8 October, 1967, by US-trained Bolivian rangers as he was trying to open up a new front in his revolution. Guevara was executed the following day in a little adobe school in La Higuera, and his body brought the 70 miles to Vallegrande.


Forensic experts found his skeleton 10 years ago and it now rests in a mausoleum in Cuba, where he achieved his most impressive victory in 1959. Standing at the site of his first grave, the president of the Che Guevara Foundation, Osvaldo 'Chato' Peredo, said: 'Why do we say Che is alive? Because of his grandeur, his transcendence. For us, Che is here, very much alive, in everything we say.'


Eight-year-old Juan Ernesto (named after Che), who lives amid Vallegrande's eucalyptus trees, says: 'I feel good that he is right there, close to me.'


In his 1967 dispatch to the Guardian, journalist Richard Gott, in Vallegrande on the day of Guevara's death, wrote: 'It was difficult to recall that this man had once been one of the great figures of Latin America. It was not just that he was a great guerrilla leader; he had been a friend of Presidents as well as revolutionaries. His voice had been heard and appreciated in inter-American councils as well as in the jungle. He was a doctor, an amateur economist, once Minister of Industries in revolutionary Cuba, and Castro's right-hand man. He may well go down in history as the greatest continental figure since Bolivar. Legends will be created around his name.'


Gott was right. Susana Osinaga, a nurse who cleaned Guevara's body back then, recalls: 'He was just like a Christ, with his strong eyes, his beard, his long hair.' Today the laundry where Guevara's corpse was laid is a place of pilgrimage. On the wall above Osinaga, an engraving reads: 'None dies as long as he is remembered.' Osinaga has an altar to Guevara in her home. 'He is very miraculous.'


Gott's companion that day, Christopher Roper, compared Che to a medieval painting of John the Baptist, 'who then became the iconic figure in death for millions who had paid little or no attention to him while he was alive'. Osinaga admits she had no idea who Che was until his death.


In this region, images of Che hang next to images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Pope John Paul II and Bolivia's President Evo Morales. Stories of miracles have mushroomed. The winding road that connects Vallegrande to La Higuera leads to a cluster of humble houses, walls plastered with Che's images and graffiti. In the middle of the village is a cobbled star-shaped square with a small bust of Che; next to it is a large altar with a cross and a big grey sculpture of Guevara. Melanio Moscoso, 37, sits against a wall next to a Guevara poster. 'We pray to him, we are so proud he had died here, in La Higuera, fighting for us. We feel him so close,' he says. His neighbour, Primitiva Rojas, professes devotion: 'I have lots of faith in him. Because he stopped existing does not mean he is not here with us.' A few days ago, when feeling sick, she prayed to him and soon felt better. 'That same night I dreamt of a man with a black beard and tender eyes, who was telling me: "I was the one who cured you".'


According to his executioner, Mario Teran, Guevara's last words were: 'Calm down and point well; you are about to kill a man.' What came after the shots, according to inhabitants of La Higuera like Manuel Cortes, was that 'Saint Ernesto was born in La Higuera'.


In Pucara, Remi Calzadilla wears a beige cap that says 'Che'. He prays to him every day. 'And he helped me; a few years ago I couldn't walk at all', he says, describing how every time he 'speaks' to Che he feels 'a strong force inside of him'.


'I am devoted to him as if he were a saint,' Remi's grandfather, Conrado Calzadilla, 83, adds, jutting a proud chin in the direction of one of the images of Che plastered on the wall of his home. 'Still, 40 years after his death?', I asked. 'Always', he replies. 'Always.'


With local sainthood and worldwide immortality, history has not proved true the claim that Guevara made on the day he was captured. 'Halt, do not shoot, I am Che Guevara and I am worth more alive than dead,' he said, as he lay wounded on a rock. In that same stone today, a shiny white inscription reads: 'Che is alive.'



http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/sep/23/theobserver.worldnews

[Guerrilla Manila]

In Bolivia where he was executed, Che is now referred to as a "saint" by locals who have come to refer to him as "San Ernesto de La Higuera", whom they ask for favors. Others claim his ghost walks the area.

http://ssdc.ucsd.edu/news/notisur/h97/notisur.19971017.html

[Guerrilla Manila]

In Bolivia, Push for Che Tourism Follows Locals' Reverence
by Kevin Hall


LA HIGUERA, Bolivia - Revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, an atheist, has been reborn a saint in the desolate Bolivian village where he was captured and executed nearly 37 years ago. Like many a saint, he's also a tourist draw.



http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/images/0817-02.jpg
Che Guevara's mug appears on shop walls and in market stalls in remote La Higuera, Bolivia, where he died.


It's an odd fate for Guevara - Fidel Castro's revolutionary sidekick in the seizure of Cuba - who sought the violent overthrow of Latin America's political and economic structure. He was the Osama bin Laden of his day during the Cold War, Washington's archenemy.

Today his handsome mug appears on the walls of homes and in market stalls in remote La Higuera, where he died, and in Vallegrande, where he was secretly buried. In many homes, his face competes for wall space with Jesus, the Virgin Mary and a host of Roman Catholic saints.

"They say he brings miracles," said Susana Osinaga, 70, who was a young nurse on Oct. 9, 1967, when she washed the blood off Guevara's corpse in Vallegrande's small hospital.

A grocery owner now, Osinaga frowns on curious tourists and journalists who seek her out. But like other locals she keeps a photo of Guevara, known throughout Latin America by his nickname, Che, on her grocery's wall.

Osinaga may soon get more unwanted visits. The international relief agency CARE is administering $300,000 in British government and private aid to promote what CARE calls Che Tourism. The project includes hostels for backpackers, road construction and infrastructure improvements to promote tourism in rural southeastern Bolivia. The hope is that Che will mean money.

"For the country, it is kind of a product, or a comparative advantage for them to use and improve their own livelihoods," Marwa El-Ansary, CARE's project director, said in an interview in Vallegrande.

There isn't much progress evident in La Higuera. Its population - 100 families when Guevara was summarily executed 11 months after arriving in Bolivia - has dwindled to about 40 families. There still is no electricity. What power there is, is, well, Che.

"It's like he is alive and with us, like a friend. He is kind of like a Virgin (Mary) for us. We say, `Che, help us with our work or with this planting,' and it always goes well," explained Manuel Cortez, a poor La Higuera farmer who lived next door to the schoolhouse where Guevara was executed. "He suffered almost like Our Father, in flesh and bone."

Cortez met Guevara twice in weeks leading to the guerrilla leader's capture and death, and was, he said, one of the last to see him alive. Decades later, Cortez still raises cows and other farm animals. When he can he guides foreigners down a steep, rocky path to the "Quebrada del Churo," the ravine where Guevara was hunted down and captured by U.S.-trained Bolivian soldiers after a fierce gun battle on Oct. 8, 1967.
Johanna Kivimaki, 24, a sociology student from Finland, hiked an hour downhill with Cortez. "It's more than I expected," she said, surprised to be "feeling" history.

At the unmarked site, a stream trickles. Purple flowers bloom and songbirds chirp. Over there, Cortez says, pointing to a boulder, is where Guevara took shelter as soldiers fired downhill at him, striking him in the leg. And over there, he points, is where Guevara surrendered after reportedly saying, "I am Che Guevara and I am worth more to you alive than dead."

He was wrong.


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/images/0817-03.jpg
The Che Guevara Memorial in La Higuera, where the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary was slain in 1967.


At Vallegrande's only art cafe, paintings of Guevara on horseback stare out at patrons. Hamburgers are served beneath a painting depicting his eerie death stare and shirtless corpse.

At the Black Forest food stall in the town's bustling market, a likeness of Guevara presides over the poor who come to eat there.

Erich Blossl, 75, was a German aid worker in 1967 when Bolivian military officers asked him to photograph Guevara's corpse. His photo of Guevara stretched across a freestanding hospital wash basin the size of an altar circled the globe and remains a haunting image to this day.

"His eyes were not the eyes of a dead man. Wherever you went, his eyes followed you," Blossl recalled recently.

He said he was uncomfortable with Che Tourism. "Tourism is one thing, Che is another," he said.

Vallegrande and La Higuera get roughly 40 registered tourists per month. Many more go unregistered. The cement hospital wash basin where Blossl photographed Guevara is now a graffiti-scratched shrine.

"Your presence is alive," reads one message in Spanish. "Che, you opened my eyes," another says. And there was this odd scribble in English: "You babe, you hero."

Che Tourism draws mostly history buffs, romantics and what locals call Che-Maniacs, and some don't like it.

"The past must be stepped on," grumbled Walter Romero, a retired schoolteacher who's unhappy with Che's persistence. He holds a grudge: Guevara called him a "peasant fox" in the diary he kept in Bolivia.

Emily George, 26, of Charlotte, N.C., visited Vallegrande in July after finishing a Peace Corps stint in Bolivia.

"Che embodied a lot of what my generation is lacking," George said, citing his idealism and concern for social justice in Latin America. Sociologist Humberto Vasquez, 67, agreed. He headed Guevara's clandestine cell in the capital of La Paz. His brother Jorge fought alongside Guevara and was captured and killed with him. "I don't regret what we did," Vasquez said. "One hoped we could have done better."


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0817-07.htm

[Guerrilla Manila]

On a tourist trail in Bolivia's hills, Che's fame lives on
By Hector Tobar
Los Angeles Times
October 17, 2004



LA HIGUERA, Bolivia -- The people here pray to a man who once limped through their village in tattered clothes, a legendary guerrilla who fought his last battle on their dusty, unpaved streets, and who was executed in their schoolhouse.

The peasants say that if you whisper Ernesto "Che" Guevara's name to the sky or light a candle to his memory, you will find your lost goat or cow. "If you really have faith, he never fails," Juan Pablo Escobar says.

Guevara was killed in this isolated hamlet 37 years ago, after his two dozen fighters were surrounded by the Bolivian Army.

Now the peasants are hoping the memory of El Che can help rain a little money on their drought-stricken village. La Higuera is the last stop on The Che Trail, (La Ruta Che), a plan to cash in on Guevara's enduring fame by luring tourists to the landmarks of his quixotic final campaign.

"We have big hopes," said Roberto Aramayo Cruz, a leader of the Guarani Indian community in Lagunillas, near the farm where Guevara established his first base camp, 80 miles south of La Higuera. "We get a few tourists now, but when the route is well prepared, more will come."

When Guevara died at the age of 39 in October 1967, he became a revolutionary icon. The portrait of him with the beret and flowing hair went up on countless college dorm rooms.

In Bolivia, the Guevara legend has come full circle. After growing restless in a series of administrative jobs, Guevara left Cuba in 1965 and went underground in a bid to launch revolutions. After a failed stint in the Congo, he came to this South American country, where the government branded him a dangerous Marxist and vowed to crush his movement. This week, however, the government's minister of tourism will come to the region to mark the opening of the Che Trail.

"For a long time people here did not want to accept the idea that our town was identified with Che's name," said Carlos Sosa, director of the House of Culture museum in Vallegrande, the city in which Guevara was buried. "His name frightened some people. But now we see the benefits."

Hoping that the spread of Che enthusiasm will bring more than the current trickle of tourists to Vallegrande, Lagunillas, La Higuera, and other towns in the mountains of central Bolivia, the international humanitarian group CARE has helped coordinate a $600,000 program to improve tourist infrastructure and assist tourist-related businesses.

"Tourism is fundamental to the economic development of this area," said Jaqueline Pena y Lillo, project director for CARE in Bolivia. "These are towns where even a small amount of tourists will make a big difference in the quality of life."

A poster in the office of Pena y Lillo proclaims "La Ruta Che," three words that begin with the letters that spell his name: "Culture. History. Ecotourism."

Next year, in a bid to generate some buzz for The Che Trail, CARE will sponsor a Che Eco-Challenge, Pena y Lillo said. Participants will follow the trail through the jungle and scrub land that Guevara and his guerrillas traversed, fording rivers and scaling mountains.

The same rough terrain helped do in Guevara and his troops. One of his fighters drowned while crossing a river. The heat sapped the malnourished guerrillas' strength; they ended up eating their horses. And the humidity aggravated Guevara's asthma.

When Guevara was alive and marching through these mountains, the local peasants didn't lend him much support. In his famous "Bolivian Diary," Guevara laments not recruiting a single peasant to his rebel army.


http://www.boston.com/travel/articles/2004/10/17/on_a_tourist_trail_in_bolivias_hills_ches_fame_liv es_on/

[Guerrilla Manila]

THE ECONOMIST: "A second picture, that of the bedraggled guerrilla's corpse, staring wide-eyed at the camera, provides another clue. It resembles Andrea Mantegna's portrait of the dead Christ."





http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3e/Mantegna_Andrea_Dead_Christ.jpg/300px-Mantegna_Andrea_Dead_Christ.jpg
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j318/Tredcrow/Guerrilla/dead7.jpg

[Forward Union]

You're obsessed!

[Guerrilla Manila]

You're obsessed!
Thanks for the valuable and relative input on the topic at hand :rolleyes:... I only wish I could have witnessed the 4,800 posts of yours which I am sure contain the same amount of ground breaking and provocative discourse.


Also I am writing a book on Che Guevara and thus have a plethora of materials that I don't mind passing on to others. Does that make me obsessed? Possibly ... but anyone who has ever devoted hundreds of pages to a person can tell you that you acquire large masses of information on the person and anyhow ... it’s my own prerogative to “obsess” over whoever the hell I damn well please ... why the fuck do you care?

[LiberaCHE]

Once you understand how deeply rooted Catholic "martyrdom" is in Latin America, it's fairly easy to understand the "correlation" ...




"The resemblance to aspects of Christ’s life on earth can be easily traced in the life of Che. Both were doctors – Christ as miracle healer, Che as the trained physician, and were active as such, even or especially so when they were fighting, doctoring when others were resting or escaping. Both men were particularly concerned with leprosy, the disease of the downtrodden and outcast, as The Motorcycle Diaries (books and film) have reminded us in the case of Che. Like Che, Jesus was an egalitarian, a communist in terms of owning little and sharing all, and his disciples were bidden to hold all in common. Both were strict disciplinarians, who insisted on individuals leaving families, friends and privileges behind to join them, sacrificing comforts and, if need be, their own lives.”

~ David Kunzle, author of Che Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message