Che it Ain't So
There is a character in Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de Souffle who speaks of the path to everlasting fame. "First you become immortal," he instructs, "then you die."
A prime exemplar of the "create a legend/resurrection" method of eternal iconography would be Ernesto (Che) Guevara, the Argentine-born revolutionary who was executed forty years ago today in Bolivia. Death transmogrified him into a symbol of revolution itself. Time has turned him into an empty Warholized emblem that adorns everything from T-shirts to fanny packs to bumper stickers and apparently even a soap with the slogan "Che washes whiter."
In death Guevara has certainly managed to whitewash his image. A cleansing aided by such personality cultisms as the film The Motorcycle Diaries, which portrays Guevara as a young, wide-eyed do-gooder who travels South America looking to right social wrongs. Romanticized and corporate pimped, for most who even know who Guevara was they have no idea what he stood for. They merely accept that he was the South American Martin Luther King.
He was not.
Guevara was a brutal, egotistical killer without the smarts to enact lasting economic reform nor the guile to achieve true insurgent victory. His most significant military achievement -- the taking of Santa Clara during Castro's Cuban revolution -- might have been more a matter of financial bribery than military strategy.
What is in little dispute is the savagery of his tenure as the commander of the La Cabaña Fortress prison. Think of it as Cuba's Abu Ghraib. In a mere five months Guevara oversaw and personally signed off on the execution of as many as 500 people. Men, women, children. Not all merely loyalists to overthrown Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Also executed were political prisoners, dissidents, artist, intellectuals and homosexuals. A representative number of the left the revolution was supposed to be lifting up.
His bloody handiwork should come as no surprise. Before Guvera was a soap pitchman from beyond the grave, he was the "The Butcher of la Cabaña" who preached: "hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine."
I'm sure Gandhi would have been proud.
As head of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, and President of the National Bank of Cuba, Guevara would institute popular reforms that would eventually lead to economic disaster. From the middle 1960s until the Soviet collapse Cuba was subsistent on their largess to a tune of $65 billion to $100 billion annually.
As a military leader Guevara was hardly more impressive. In the Congo he hooked up with a couple of bloody rebels, failed to inspire the people and accomplished little more than putting his own men through a shredder. It was a misadventure Guevara himself described as a "history of failure."
An expedition into Bolivia proved disastrous. Guevara completely misread the situation on the ground, could not incite a popular uprising, was completely abandoned by the Bolivian communists, their Soviet backers and even the Cubans.
Bolivian Rangers took him prisoner on the 8th of October, 1967. He whimpered as they came: "Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and worth more to you alive than dead."
The Bolivian's figured otherwise. The next day Guevara was executed.
And thus began his ascendancy from abject failure to high icon. A populist, a revolutionary. A man who turned his back on material gains to give instead to the people.
And if you believe that, consider this: when Guevara was captured in Bolivia he was wearing a Rolex watch on his wrist.
Long live the revolution.
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"Guevara was a brutal, egotistical killer without the smarts to enact lasting economic reform nor the guile to achieve true insurgent victory."
I am so glad to see that one of the bloggers on the Huffington Post finally got it right!!
Good post. I didn't know much about Che. I do know most Peruvians can't stand him as anything Marxist they associate with Sendero Luminoso whose real goal was to replicate Cambodia's Killing Fields.
Interesting how all these zealots, on the left and the right, are so willing to kill in the name of their cause.
Again, thanks for the insight.
FYI, Rober59
a) Sendero Luminoso is MAOIST not MARXIST ( a little difference, don't you think?)
b) I don't know how you know that the Peruvians can't stand him. [I know many Peruvians and never heard such a thing... Are you aware that Peru and Bolivia are different countries?]
c) I don't understand your association between Marxism and the Cambodian Killing Fields. Explain, si'l vous plait!
Yes, I'm aware Bolivia and Peru are two different countries. I lived in Peru for four months and my mother lived there for six years. What took me there was work.
And you're right. Sendero Luminoso is Maoist, but I see little difference between the two. Where do you think Chairman Mao got his ideas from? Marx Engels Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky.
What's the relationship between Sendero Luminoso and the Cambodian Killing Fields? Its founder had as a goal to rid the country of all things western and all things intellectual. Even though he was a university professor he hated intellectuals. Most Peruvians felt he wanted to replicate what Pol Pot had done.
And did you know French is not a language of either Bolivia or Peru?
Satisfecha?
Thank you John for rewriting history for our young people. I am old enough to remember when he was alive. Your history is right wing Miami Cuban fantasy!
I suppose you think your version of reality is somehow more poignant than the reality created by the myth. Carry on, Don Quixote.
LOL! Good one. Mr. Ridley seems to believe that those who share his view are inherently realistic, while those who disagree are wallowing in a false "version" of reality. What bullshit. Don Quixote, indeed.
Is it possible/okay for people who don't know the real Che to embrace the ideas/principles of an idealized Che?
ridley, you disappoint me. i am a fan but this one is weak. your sources are biased as hell. you have to understand that right wing cubans are well heeled and have memories excellente. the anti-cuban movement in the us is active and vocal. most are people who suffered with families from revolution. you have a point on his military prowess. but ask why cuban has any health system at all much less a well-repsected one in latin america. the diaries were a depiction of the young unexperienced idealist. post cuban revolution,che was disillusioned by castro's ideas. he left. economic troubles in latin america are not news; especially when you consider the reasons why. maybe us imperialism, nah. as far as current manifestations, che is a symbol, not a man. maybe similar to kennedy and "camelot". not an unusual ocurrence for dead leaders. che is a symbol for social reform, anti-capitalism. symbols often wind up on t-shirts. stick it to the man, t-shirts. but you are right, most advocates don't truly understand the man or the message.
Meh...Che'
Those Che T-shirts are as bad as flags. People who sport, wave, hang, or display them are mental midgets desperately in need of a history lesson, regardless of their country of origin.
I believe an even more famous revolutionary once said "Revolution is not a tea party." When you're trying to transform society on a grand scale there will be casulties. Is it fair? No, but inevitable. Che will always be seen as the heart of latin america no matter what facts are brought to light.
Really? How many people did Ghandi murder? Guevara makes me angry that a person can only be executed once.
None directly, but Ghandi did "mentor" young girls. So all influential men may have had some sort of personal weakness that makes them a man and not a perfect godlike being. It is possible to separate portions of a mans life from a powerful ideal they may have championed.
Che died 40 years ago. Why are you still mad?
The mistake on the left always runs to the cult of the individual. But you do overlook, Mr. Ridley, Guevara's time in the Congo, and if we are to call a thing what it is, the American--us, you and me,--CIA support of the assassination of Lumumba and later support of Mobutu's looting of the country has ever since led to one worse bloodletting after another, all of which making the Santa Clara prison look like Santa's workshop.
Pacifism is a lonely business in the world these days, and would the world would follow in Ghandi's and King's footsteps, but oops, both were shot and killed. Guevara haters almost always have blood on their own hands. Ghandi and King certainly have had a bigger influence on me, a lefty for decades, than Che Guevara or even the greatest of all the Black Muslims, Malcolm X, a man whom I admire as a great and important American, but don't idolize, who preached "by any means necessary.
"The mistake on the left always runs to the cult of the individual
that IS patently false and belies the otherwise insightful post.
I read yesterday in the NY times that there is now a CHE bikini. I think his daughter was upset by this, according to the piece....
here's a link to that article:
http://www
Yea, yea, yea. Next thing you be telling us that Mao wan't a wise, kind, benevolent socialist leader, or that Stalin caused famines in the Ukraine, or that the old US Communist Party (real patriots, all) wasn't funded and directed from Moscow. Don't let yourself get blinded by reality, only myths are real.
heh
The great irony is that this leftist/Ma
Keep spelling "wear" like that, because it's hilarious.
Ok I admit I made a typo, there are you happy?
I for one do not buy the propaganda.
I guess they should be wearing Klaus Barbie sweatshirts. That is who the CIA sent to Bolivia
to get rid of Che. I hope Emo Morales can avoid the same fate.
Whta was the disastrous economic policy you talk about. Is it anything like what Emo Morales is trying to do now. Stop Bolvia form being raped by western corporations.
A Bolivian could not even get a drink of water in his own country without paying tribute to Bachtel.
http://www
Bechtel go to let us edit.
Link it to Bechtel's water monopoly and the law against Bolivian farmers digging wells on their own land.
Viva la revolution.
In his diaries Che referred to Bolivian villagers as "animalitos" (little animals).
Che is dead. Get over it.
Sounds to me like you have swallowed the propaganda hook, line and sinker.
Yes, only a pro-Che view could be construed as "propagand
What a joke.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara was a nihilist of the worst order. He preached death and destruction and egged Castro on during the Cuban Missile Crisis believeing that the Soviets and the Americans should settle their differences with the use of nuclear weapons.
I find his historical reinvention baffling.
"I find his historical reinvention baffling."
Have you, by any chance, noticed how so many of Hollywood's A-list cozy up to Hugo Chavez? When Hollywood types like Robert Redford make movies like "The Motorcycle Diaries" about Che, it's no wonder. But then the "perception of reality" is where you'll find that the Hollywood elite's belief system is based.
Now, don't go comparing Chavez to Che. Chavez deserves better. He's a dictator, yes - but no worse than any of the Middle East tyrants we're cozying up to. The US' only real problem with Chavez is that he's not doing what we want, and he has a lot of oil.
Since when are DICTATORS democratically elected?
Hell, we didn't elect Dubbya...t
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