Che Guevara
From Metapedia
Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna (June 14, 1928 - October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara, was an Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary and Cuban guerrilla leader.
Guevara was a member of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement, which seized power in Cuba in 1959. After the revolution Guevara became second only to Fidel Castro in the new government of Cuba. After brief stints as president of the National Bank and Minister of Industries, Guevara did not settle in as part of the new Cuban government, and tried without success to stage revolutions through guerilla warfare in various countries, notably the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bolivia, where he was captured by a unit of the Bolivian Ranger Battalion advised by United States Green Berets on October 8, 1967, and executed the following day.
Contents |
[edit] Youth
The eldest of five children in an upper middle class family of Spanish-Irish decent with leftist leanings, Ernesto was known for his dynamic and radical views even as a boy. Though suffering from the crippling bouts of asthma that were to handicap him throughout his life, he excelled as an athlete. In 1948, he entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. There he also excelled as a scholar; he completed his medical studies in record time in March 1953.
He spent many of his holidays traveling in various countries of Latin America. In 1951, Ernesto's older friend, Alberto Grandos, a physician and a political radical, suggested that they take a year off their medical school studies to traverse South America on an old Norton 500 single. In 1951, aged 23, Ernesto set off from his hometown of Córdoba, Argentina. Guevara narrated this journey in his recently translated The Motorcycle Diaries. Through his first-hand observations of the poverty and powerlessness of the masses, he became convinced that the only remedy for Latin America's social inequities lay in revolution. His travels also taught him to look up upon Latin America not as a collection of separate nations but as a cultural and economic entity, the liberation of which would require an intercontinental strategy. Upon his return to Argentina, he completed his medical studies and while intensifying his study of Marxism.
[edit] Guatemala
Following his graduation from the University of Buenos Aires medical school in 1953, Guevara went to Guatemala, where President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán headed a populist government that, through various reforms, especially land reform, was attempting to bring about a social revolution. Around this time Guevara also acquired his famous nickname, "Che," from a verbal mannerism of Argentines who punctuate their speech with the interjection che.
The overthrow of the Arbenz government by a United Stated CIA-backed coup in 1954 persuaded Che that the United States would always oppose governments that attempted to address the the dire social inequities in Latin America and in other developing countries of the world. This conviction, which he later expressed in many of his speeches and writings, became the cornerstone of his dreams to bring about socialism through a world revolution. Following the coup, Ernesto volunteered to fight, but Arbenz told his supporters to leave the country. Guevara briefly took refuge in the Argentine consulate.
[edit] Cuban revolutionary association
Ernesto met the Cuban brothers, Fidel and Raúl Castro when the two arrived in the Mexican capital after being exiled from Cuba. The Castro brothers were preparing to return to Cuba with an expeditionary force (26th of July Movement) in an attempt to overthrow the regime of Fulgencio Batista. Che joined the 26th of July Movement and set out to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Castro, Che and 80 other guerrillas departed from Tuxpan, Mexico aboard the cabin cruiser "Granma" in November 1956 and set out for Cuba. The boat had been owned by an American, so the name most likely meant Grandma, as a tribute to the grandmother of the previous owner.
Shortly after disembarking in a swampy area near Niquero in Southeast Cuba, the expeditionary unit was attacked by Batista's forces. Only 12 rebels survived. Che, the group's physician, laid down his knapsack containing medical supplies in order to pick up a box of ammunition dropped by a fleeing comrade, a moment which he later recalled as marking his transition from doctor to combatant [1].
The rebels slowly gained in strength, seizing weapons from the enemy, winning support and new recruits from the local peasantry and the intellectuals and workers in the cities. Che exhibited great courage, skill in combat, and ruthlessness and soon became one of Castro's ablest and most trusted aides. Che executed informers, insubordinates, deserters and spies in the revolutionary army. He personally executed Eutimio Guerra, a suspected Batista informant, with one shot from his .32 pistol.
Within months he rose to the highest rank, Comandante (Major), in the revolutionary army. His march on Santa Clara, Cuba in late 1958, where his column derailed an armored train filled with Batista's troops and took over the city, was the final straw that forced Batista to flee the country. Che recorded the two years spent in overthrowing Batista's regime in a detailed account entitled Pasajes de la Guerra revolucionaria (English translation, Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1968), first published in 1963.
[edit] Revolutionary government
After Castro's victorious troops entered Havana on January 2, 1959, and established a socialist government, Che became a Cuban citizen, divorced his Peruvian wife, Hilda Gedea, by whom he had on daughter, and married a member of Fidel's army, Aleida March, by whom he had four children.
He became as prominent in the new government as he had been in the revolutionary army, representing Cuba on many commercial missions and delegations to African, Asian, and socialist countries.
Che helped guide the Castro regime on its leftward and pro-Communist path. He became known in the West for his outspoken opposition to all forms of imperialism and neocolonialism and for his fiery attacks on U.S. foreign policy in Africa, Asia, and especially Latin America. An active participant in the economic and social reforms brought about by Castro's government, he occupied such important posts in his adopted country as chief of the Industrial Department of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, president of the National Bank of Cuba and minister of industry.
During the period, he defined Cuba's policies and his own views in many speeches, articles, letters, and essays, the most important of which are two books on guerrilla warfare. El socialismo y el hombre en Cub (1965; Man and Socialism in Cuba, 1967) is an examination of Cuba's new brand of socialism and Communist ideology. His highly influential manual on guerrilla strategy and tactics (English translation, Guerrilla Warfare, 1961) advocated peasant-based revolutionary movements in the developing countries.
Che's book, Guerrilla Warfare, was seen for a time as the definitive philosophy for fighting irregular wars. However, with his death in Bolivia his "Cuban Style" of revolution outlined in the book was thought by some to be ineffective. Guevara believed that a small group (foco) of guerrillas, by violently targeting the government, could actively ferment revolutionary feelings among the general populace, so that it was not necessary to build broad organizations and advance the revolutionary struggle in measured steps before launching armed insurrection.
[edit] Congo
He persuaded Castro to back him in the first, covert Cuban involvement in Africa. Guevara desired to first work with the Lumumbaist Simba movement in the former Belgian Congo (later Zaire and currently the Democratic Republic of the Congo).
Che Guevara assisted for a time in 1964 by guerrilla leader Laurent Kabila in the former Belgian Congo, who helped Lumumba supporters lead a revolt that was eventually suppressed in 1965 by the Congolese army. (In 1960 Kabila became a youth leader in a political party allied to Congo's first post-independence prime minister, Marxist-Maoist Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba was deposed in 1961 by and later killed.) Che Guevara dismissed him as a serious force. "Nothing leads me to believe he is the man of the hour," Che Guevara wrote. [2]
Che was only 35 at that time and had never any military training (his asthma prevented him from going to military service in Argentina, and he was proud of it). He had only his few experiences in the Cuban revolution and what he had read in books. As a consequence, every military operation planned by him failed. U.S. Army Special Forces advisors working with the Congolese army were able to monitor Che's communications, arrange to ambush the rebels and the Cubans whenever they attempted to attack, and interdict Guevara's supply lines. Guevara proved unable to supplant the native Simba leadership, and in fact was forced to place his troops under Simba command. Late that same year, ill, humiliated and with only a few survivors of the force he had brought into the country, Guevara left the Congo.
[edit] Disappearance from Cuba
After April 1965 Che dropped out of public life and then vanished altogether. Guevara was not seen in public after his return to Havana on March 14 from a three-month tour of the People's Republic of China, the United Arab Republic (Egypt), Algeria, Ghana, and the Congo-Brazzaville. The whereabouts of the Argentine-born Marxist who was regarded as second in power to Castro himself, was the great mystery of 1965 in Cuba.
His disappearance was variously attributed to the relative failure of the industrialization scheme he had advocated while minister of industry, to pressures exerted on Castro by Soviet official disapproving of Che's pro-Chinese Communist outlook as the Sino-Soviet Split grew more pronounced, and to serious differences between Che and the Cuban leadership regarding Cuba's economic development and ideological line.
Che's pro-Chinese orientation was increasingly problematic for Cuba as the Cuban economy became more and more dependent on the Soviet Union. Since the early days of the Cuban revolution Guevara had been considered an advocate of Chinese strategy in Latin America and the originator of a plan for swift industrialization of Cuba. According to Western observers of the Cuban situation, the fact that Guevara's views were opposed to Soviet recommendations apparently accepted by Castro in order to improve his relations with Moscow might have been the reason for his disappearance.
Later in life Che grew more skeptical of the Soviet Union. He saw the Northern hemisphere of the world, led by both the Soviet Union and the United States, as the exploiter of the the Southern hemisphere. But he strongly supported the Vietnamese Revolution, although North Vietnam maintained a pro-Soviet posture, and urged his comrades in South America to create "many Vietnams."
Pressed by international speculations on Guevara's fate, Castro said on June 16 that the people would be informed about Guevara when Guevara himself wished to let them know. Numerous and dissimilar rumors about his disappearance spread both inside and outside Cuba.
On October 3 of that year, Castro revealed an undated letter purportedly written to him by Guevara some months earlier in which Guevara reaffirmed his enduring solidarity with the Cuban Revolution but stated his intention to leave Cuba to fight abroad for the cause of the revolution. He explained that "other nations are calling for the help of my modest efforts" and that, having "always identified with the world outcome of our Revolution," he had decided to go and fight as a guerrilla in other liberation struggled being waged in different parts of the world. In the letter Guevara announced his resignation from all his positions in the government, in the party, and in the Army, and renounced his Cuban citizenship, which had been granted to him in 1959 in recognition of his efforts on behalf of the revolution.
During an interview with four foreign correspondents on November 1, Castro remarked that he knew where Guevara was but that he would not disclose the place, and added, denying reports that his former comrade-in-arms was dead, that "he is in the best of health." Despite Castro's assurances the fate of Guevara remained a mystery at the end of 1965. Che's movements and whereabouts remained a secret for the next two years.
[edit] Bolivia
Speculation continued during the year as to the whereabouts of the former minister of industry and director of the National Bank. In a speech at the May Day rally in Havana, the acting minister of the armed forces, Maj. Juan Almeida, announced that Guevara was "serving the revolution somewhere in Latin America." The persistent reports that he was assisting the guerrillas in Bolivia were ultimately proved true.
A parcel of jungle land in Nancahazu was purchased by native Bolivian Communists and turned over to him for use as a training area. The evidence suggests that this training was more hazardous than combat to Guevara and the Cubans accompanying him. Little was accomplished in the way of building a guerrilla army. On learning of his presence in Bolivia, President Rene Barrientos is alleged to have expressed the desire to see Che's head displayed on a pike in downtown La Paz. He ordered the Bolivian Army to hunt Guevara and his followers down.
Che's guerrillas, numbering about 120, were well equipped and scored a number of early successes in difficult terrain in the mountainous Camiri region of the country against Bolivian regulars. In September, however, the Army managed to eliminate two guerrilla groups, reportedly killing one of the leaders.
Guevara's hope of fomenting revolution in Bolivia appear to have been predicated upon a number of misconceptions. He had expected to deal only with an oppressive national government. However, there was a U.S. presence in Bolivia. After the U.S. government learned of his location, CIA operatives were sent into Bolivia to aid the anti-insurrection effort. He had expected to deal with a poorly trained and equipped national army. Instead, the Bolivian Army was being trained by U.S. Army Special Forces advisors, including a recently organized elite battalion of Rangers trained in jungle warfare. Che had expected assistance and cooperation from the local dissidents when he undertook his journey. Moreover, the Bolivia's Moscow-oriented Communist Party did not aid him in the insurrection.
Che and his associates found themselves hamstrung in Bolivia by the American aid and military trainers to the Bolivian government and a lack of assistance from his allies. In addition, the CIA also helped anti-Castro Cuban exiles to set up interrogation houses for those Bolivians thought to be assisting Che Guevara and/or his guerillas, which were often used for torture of these individuals.
The Bolivians were notified of the location of Guevara's guerilla encampment by a deserter. On October 8, the encampment was encircled and Che was captured while leading a patrol in the vicinity of La Higuera, Bolivia. His surrender was offered after being wounded in the legs and having his rifle destroyed by a bullet. According to soldiers present at the capture, during the skirmish as soldiers approached Guevara he shouted, "Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and worth more to you alive than dead." Barrientos ordered his execution immediately upon being informed of Guevara's capture. Guevara was executed; he was taken to an old schoolhouse and bound by his hands to a board. Supposedly, Che Guevara did have some last words before his death; he allegedly said to his executioner, "Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man" after which he was shot in the heart.
A side issue connected with the guerrillas was the arrest and trial of Jules Régis Debray. In the summer government forces captured Debray, a young French Marxist theoretician and writer, and accused him of collaborating with the guerrillas. Debray claimed that he had merely been acting as a reporter, and that Che, who had mysteriously disappeared several years earlier, was leading the guerrillas.
As Debray's trial—which had become an international cause célèbre—was beginning in early October, Bolivian authorities on October 11 reported that Guevara had been shot and killed in an engagement with government forces on October 9. The former Cuban leader's body was publicly displayed and photographed, and fingerprints were offered as proof of identification.
On October 15 Castro admitted that the death had occurred and proclaimed three days of public mourning throughout Cuba. The death of Guevara was regarded as a severe blow to the socialist revolutionary movements throughout Latin America.
In 1999, the skeletal remains of Guevara's body were exhumed, positively identified by DNA matching and returned to Cuba, where he is revered as a heroic revolutionary leader.
[edit] The Bolivian Diary
Also removed was Guevara's diary, which outlined the guerrilla war being fought in Bolivia. It tells of the group being forced to begin operations due to discovery by the Bolivian Army, the eventual split of the group, and the general failure of the guerrillas. It shows the split between Guevara and the Bolivian Communist Party that resulted in Guevara having significantly fewer soldiers than originally anticipated. It shows that Guevara had a great deal of difficulty recruiting from the local populace, due mainly to the fact that the guerrilla group had learned Quechua and not the local language. As the campaign drew to an unexpected close, Guevara became increasingly ill. He suffered from asthma, and most of his last offensives were carried out to obtain medicine.
The Bolivian Diary was quickly and crudely translated by Ramparts magazine and circulated around the world. Fidel Castro has denied involvement with this.
[edit] Hero cult
While pictures of the dead Che 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.
Even liberal elements that felt little sympathy with Che's Communist ideals during his lifetime expressed admiration for spirit of self-sacrifice. He is singled out from other revolutionaries by many young people in the West because he rejected a comfortable bourgeois background to fight for those who were deprived of political power and economic stability. And when he gained power in Cuba, he gave up all the trappings of privilege and power in Cuba in order to return to the revolutionary battlefield and ultimately, to die.
In the late 1960s, he became a popular icon for revolution and youthful political ideals in Western culture. A dramatic photograph of Che taken by photographer Alberto Korda [3] in 1961 (see Che Guevara (photo)) soon became one of the century's most recognizable images, and the portrait was simplified and reproduced on a vast array of merchandise, such as T-shirts, posters, and baseball caps.
