Around the world, the story about a hero who embarks on a journey of enlightenment and returns to the world of his birth with the gift of immortality is a common theme of mythologies and legend. Even America, the land of the West, was described in mythological terms as a land of endless resources and riches; such examples include the fictional city of gold, El Dorado. A more recent American story mired in myth and legend is the story of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna; the man known to generations after his death as ‘Che’. The son of Celia de la Serna and Ernesto Guevara Lynch forged a path through the turbulent history of mid-century South America that is remembered by many, but truly known by a selected few today. The facts of his life are clouded in the fable, propaganda, and beliefs of the fifties and sixties. In brief, Ernesto Guevara is a symbol of both philosophical idealism and cynical antagonism that is common among the youth of today and during the 1960’s, an era that starred the man they call ‘El Che’.
Born to a middle class Argentine family in Rosario, Argentina on June 14, 1928, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was an asthmatic child with an affinity for rugby, football, and classical literature. Despite and perhaps due to his favored pastime of reading, Ernesto was an idealistic but average student. He did not dance, but “was a wizard in the use of his time” . Although well read in the works of Karl Marx as well as Sigmund Freud before the twilight of his high school years, he was very apolitical, with indifference towards the Peron regime. The subject of politics “seemed to be a matter of indifference to him” . Like many youth, his politicization occurred during his collegiate years while he studied medicine and embarked on the journey made famous by his account published as Los Diarios de Motocicleta.
The origins of Ernesto’s philosophies about revolutionary Marxism are deeply founded in his diary of this journey. Although Che was well exposed to people of all socioeconomic classes, his experiences that he and friend Alberto Granada encountered on the expedition expanded the social consciousness of the two young doctors. First hand encounters with the harsh reality of global capitalism and its hunger for South American resources caused the young Guevara to quickly evaluate the history of South America throughout the trip, which covered the most storied places on the continent, most notably the city of Cuzco or “the navel of the world” as Guevara describes it, and the Incan enclave of Machu Picchu. Describing the thirst for riches that characterized the imperial age, the emerging Che Guevara states that the “bestial rage of the uncouth conquerors” suffocated “even the possibility of a proud past” . He uses similar rhetoric twelve years and a revolution later, as he reflects his seething hatred and cynicism for imperialism and economic dependence on the United States as well as American challenges to South American sovereignty. During a speech addressing the United Nations general assembly in 1964, he described the use of Puerto Rican “cannon fodder” in the Korean conflict as “one of the most recent diabolical acts carried out by Yankee imperialism” . Needless to say, Che Guevara valued the concept of economic freedom of the American people, a diverse people with a common and continuing history of colonial and imperial rule and like Simon Bolivar, Che had a belief in ‘supra-nationalism’ or ‘Pan Americanism’ of that diverse people connected by their turbulent history. The renunciation of imperialism throughout history by young Ernesto is only half of his transformation into the figure known as El Che.
“A revolution without guns? That’s impossible” states actor Gael Garcia Bernal, depicting the young Ernesto in the motion picture The Motorcycle Diaries. Although probably inaccurate, this episode asserts that Guevara’s fervor for revolutionary Marxism was also born during the 1951-52 adventure. The seemingly innocent Guevara depicted in the movie states that revolution can only come with the energy of gunpowder. This assessment of Guevara’s thought is accurate and he would develop these ideas in his composition Guerrilla Warfare. The ideas expressed by Che in this work still impact Latin America today. A large part of Guevara’s philosophy of armed guerilla conflict and revolution in the hills and exotic geography of South America is based upon the theory that an armed insurrection that takes solace in the countryside can perform a successful revolution backed by the people and peasants, similar to the Maoist revolution in China, which he refers to at numerous times during his life. He refers to the guerilla fighter as a “vanguard” of a revolutionary society, who sacrifices his life for valor and social reform, not for personal gain. The guerrilla, willing to sacrifice his life, becomes a role model for the people after the armed conflict is over. “The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people. It draws its great force from the mass of people themselves” . The vanguard ‘class’ of guerillas fills the function of the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, the second step of the communist revolution as outlined by Karl Marx.
Only a selected few guerrilla movements succeeded to gain popular support and effective movement into the cities. Outside the Cuban revolution, the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, and the reformist guerrillas of El Salvador, the strategies of Guerrilla Warfare used by groups influenced by Guevara, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), and the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), did not achieve goals other than to prolong violence in Peru, Columbia, and other areas of South America. Neither movement could create the political unity and credibility in urban and suburban areas that the Fidelistas, Sandinistas, and the FMLN in El Salvador succeeded in doing. Planning on spreading the Cuban revolution across Latin American and the world, Che and Fidel supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua as well as revolts in Haiti, Venezuela and other Latin American countries.
Although already showing defiance on the doorstep of the U.S., it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis that Che became infamous in the eyes of many on both sides of the Atlantic. Cuba’s insistence on protection from American intervention led Che and Fidel to demand unrelenting support from Soviet Russia and this led to the shipment of ballistic missiles to Cuba. After the Soviet’s withdrawal of the missiles Che’s cynicism of ambivalent politics revealed itself. He openly declared that if attacked, Cuba would “fight to the end” without the rockets which would have been fired off in such an event. They would strike at “the very heart of the United States, including New York” states Guevara in 1962. Che rejected the ambivalence of the U.S.S.R. and favored China in subsequent conflicts within the Soviet bloc.
Although successful in making enemies on both sides of the Atlantic, Che himself was not able to establish a “revolutionary foco” powerful enough to produce a following in the Congo or Bolivia, the eventual place of his capture and execution. Although more specific than Che believed them to be, his concepts of guerrilla war were successful in two places outside the Sierra Maestra campaign; in El Salvador and Nicaragua where guerrilla fighters gained popular support in the cities and a rightful place in government. Although their politics may have differed from the Marxist hardliner that Guevara was, they nevertheless challenged the status quo and produced change in a direction Che would have favored.
The status of Che Guevara as a legend in the eyes of Latin Americans may be difficult to understand. A man who takes up arms against a government is at all times controversial. Some say that Che Guevara is only an image on a T-shirt, an image to be bought and sold as a commodity (something Che would have loathed). To appreciate Guevara as a legend to many people, including youth here in the United States, one must understand his self-assured cynicism and idealism. This cynicism was purely characteristic of the turbulent sixties, a decade of rebellion against not only imperialist governments, but the social norms that defined the previous decades. Alberto Korda’s portrait of Che’s cold stare reflected the personal rebellion of protestors across the globe and on the malls of Washington D.C., where opposition to the war in Vietnam was as relentless as the eyes in Korda’s print. In the eyes of many, Guevara’s rebellion against the status quo was more than a rebellion against imperialism and capitalism but a “supreme emblem of that cultural revolt”.
Guevara’s idealism is reflected passionately in his speeches, writings, actions, and eventually his death. His 1965 essay Man and Socialism in Cuba outlines the process of legitimation, education, and cultural maturation needed for any socialist state to succeed. In short, it is Guevara’s idealistic dream of a “New Man” who acts on moral, not material incentives. Guevara’s romanticism is also reflected in the way in which he conducted his life. The man called Che was a traveler with a “fascination with anything that was different”. Some even state that Guevara’s chronic asthma was worsened when he was held stagnant, lacking action or travel. Biographer Jorge Castaneda states that action “devoid of ambivalence – such as combat, for instance – produces an endogenous discharge of adrenaline and thus can deter asthma attacks”. This contributed to Che’s restlessness, unrelenting nature, intense leadership, and unrivaled will. It must also remind us of Che’s humanity that is sometimes lost in the fairy tale of his life. In truth, Che’s life can be said to be a parable about an idealistic crusade that engulfed a man’s existence and led him to death in Vallegrande, Bolivia in 1968.
Ernesto Guevara’s death in 1968 is shrouded in myth and legend. There are accounts that the man assigned to execute him hesitated and could not have fired without drinking two shots of liquor. Others state that Guevara had foreseen the circumstances of his death sixteen years previous. He writes in Los Diarios de Motocicleta about a man he met during his journey with Granada who surmises that a man like young Ernesto does not apprehend the value of his eventual contribution “to the society that sacrifices you”. In my opinion, Ernesto Che Guevara was indeed sacrificed to the society of the 1960’s, and it is that sacrifice that completes the Che Guevara legend. He did not symbolize only the political revolts of the sixties, but he represented the culture of the sixties, and through his icon as the ‘Heroic Guerrilla’, the sixties themselves remain in our social consciousness. Castaneda frames the life and death of Che Guevara like this: “Comandante Ernesto Guevara was not allowed to write the epitaph he desired. He was only destined, like so few others in his time, to die the death he wished, and to live the life he dreamed”. It is a life that is remembered as many would like their own to be remembered. A life with a cause, however unrealistic, that is archetypal and universally understood. Was Che Guevara a great revolutionary? Revolutions themselves are only episodes in the theater that is history, and El Che, played by Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, was the star of his episode, of his era, and of a fight that will continue “Hasta la Victoria Siempre!”
"Celia de la Serna's son might not necessarily have recognized these traits as those he fought and perished for, but then even Comandante Ernesto Guevara was not allowed to write the epitaph he desired. He was only destined, like so few others in his time, to die the death he wished, and to live the life he dreamed." -Jorge Casteneda; Companero
"Stop living the life you've planned and live the life that is planned for you." -Joseph Campbell
