“For us, there is no valid definition of socialism
other than the abolition of the exploitation of
one human being by another.” – Ernesto Che Guevara
Ernesto Che Guevara (14 June 1928 – 9 October 1967) was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.
Che was brutally murdered on 9 October 1967 by the CIA of America, the world’s most disdainful killing squad acting together in secret toward a fraudulent or illegal end with Bolivia’s dictator Batista deep inside the jungles of Bolivia.
Che’s friend Ricardo Rojo wrote a far-famed book on him titled, “My Friend Che.” Tears welled up my eyes every time whenever I read it. To me, Che is more than my friend and more than my soulful kinsman. Acclaimed around the world, he is the dashing rebel whose epic dream was to end poverty and injustice in Latin America and the developing world through armed revolution. One can trace Che’s extraordinary life, from his comfortable Argentine upbringing to the battlefields of the Cuban revolution, from the halls of power in Castro’s government to his failed campaign in the Congo and assassination in the Bolivian Jungle.
He was the Argentine Marxist and a guerrilla fighter whose famous portrait by Alberto Korda still adorns everything from t-shirts and baseball caps to hagiographic murals, MAD magazine covers, and high-end panties. He was brutally killed 53 years ago, on 9 October 1967. He had been captured with the help of disdainful CIA operatives of the USA in Bolivia, where he was attempting to spark a continent-wide revolution in the mold of the Cuban rebellion of the previous decade. Che Guevara illuminates as the mythic figure that embodied the high-water mark of revolutionary communism to establish people’s proletariats throughout the world as a force in history.
In his journal, Guevara writes of the encounter with the forces of the Batista government, “I talked all night with Fidel. And in the morning, I had become the doctor of his new expedition. To tell the truth, after my experiences across Latin America, I didn’t need much more to enlist for a revolution against a tyrant. But I was particularly impressed with Fidel. I shared his optimism. We needed to act, to struggle, to materialize our beliefs. Stop whining and fight.”
The handsome, youthful, cigar-smoking, beret-clad-looking revolutionary has become an icon of protest the world over for long. By the late 1950s, Ernesto Che Guevara began appearing in newsreels, and within less than a year after his death, the legendary freedom fighter was spawning cinematic works, depicted by famous actors in fiction films. Many books are written by many writers on this great revolutionary. He has inspired numerous documentaries and features. To remember and honor this indefatigable champion of the wretched of the Earth, there are the top ten films about him —fallen, but not forgotten.
If, as Mao Tse Tsung puts it, “the people are the sea and the guerrillas are the fish,” Che’s lack of local support doomed his final struggle. A fish out of water, Guevara was caught on October 8, 1967, by the US-trained and armed Bolivian military, with CIA participation. He was summarily executed the following day, thus avoiding a sensational trial and bringing to a devastating end Che’s tri-continental strategy.
According to the 3 June 1975 declassified document of America, “When Che Guevara was executed… one disdainful CIA (the whole CIA is a disdainful outfit) official was present – a Cuban-American operative named Félix Rodríguez… After the execution, Rodríguez took Che’s Rolex watch, often proudly showing it to reporters…” So much inhuman an act! Che Guevara wrote that we must be “guided by a great feeling of love” for the oppressed, and “strive every day so that this love of living humanity is transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force”. Nelson Mandela correctly spelled out, “Che’s life is an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom. We will always honor his memory.”
The book “My Friend Che” by Ricardo Rojo was first published in 1968 and translated into 11 languages was the first direct testimony written by Ernesto Guevara. The book sold more than half a million copies, owned facets of the guerilla leader, and helped discover the man before he was converted into a myth. Ricardo Rojo was a rare species on the Argentine political landscape: he put principles before power and profit and thus fell out with all those he started off supporting. But Rojo will be commemorated for his best-known book, “My Friend Che.”
As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed. His burgeoning desire to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the United States prompted his involvement in Guatemala’s social reforms under President Jacobo Árbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow at the behest of the United Fruit Company solidified Guevara’s political ideology.
Later in Mexico City, Guevara met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht Granma with the intention of overthrowing US-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime. The United States supplied Batista with planes, ships, and tanks, but the advantage of using the latest technology, such as napalm failed to win them victory against the guerrillas of Fidel and Che.
Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed several key roles in the new government under his friend Fidel Castro. Additionally, Guevara was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling memoir about him. In his book, Man and Socialism in Cuba, Che wrote, “Man truly achieves his full human condition when he produces without being compelled by the physical necessity of selling himself as a commodity.” With deep-chested, I remember Che Guevara, the revolutionary hero of the world’s proletariats.
