Argentine Marxist revolutionary and guerrilla leader
At two years old he developed asthma from which he suffered
all his life, and his family moved to the drier climate of Alta
Gracia (Cordoba) where his health did not improve. Primary education
at home, mostly by his mother,
Celia de la Serna. He early became a voracious reader of Marx,
Engels and Freud which all were available in his father's library,
it is probable that he had read some of their works before he
went to secondary school (1941), the Colegio Nacional Dean Funes,
Cordoba, where he excelled only in literature and sports. At
home he was impressed by the Spanish Civil War refugees and
by the long series of squalid political crises in Argentina
which culminated in the 'Left Fascist' dictatorship of Juan
Peron, to whom the Guevara de la Sernas were opposed. These
events and influences inculcated in the young Guevara a contempt
for the pantomime of parliamentary democracy, and a hatred of
military politicians and the army, the capitalist oligarchy,
and above all the U.S. dollar/imperialism. Yet although his
parents, notably his mother, were anti-Peronist activists, he
took no part in revolutionary student movements and showed little
interest in politics at Buenos Aires University (1947) where
he studied medicine, first with a view to understanding his
own disease, later becoming more interested in leprosy.
In 1949 he made the first of his long journeys, exploring northern
Argentina on a bicycle, and for the first time coming into contact
with the very poor and the remnants of the Indian tribes. In
1951, after taking his penultimate exams, he made a much longer
journey, accompanied by a friend, and earning his living by
casual labor as he went : he visited southern Argentina, Chile,
where he met Salvador Allende, Peru, where he worked for some
weeks in the San Pablo leprosarium, Colombia at the time of
La Violencia, and where he was arrested but soon released, Venezuela,
and Miami. He returned home for his finals sure of only one
thing, that he did not want to become a middle-class general
practitioner. He qualified, specializing in dermatology, and
went to La Paz, Bolivia, during the National Revolution which
he condemned as opportunist. From there he went to Guatemala,
earning his living by writing travel-cum-archaeological articles
about Inca and Maya ruins. He reached Guatemala during the socialist
Arbenz presidency; although he was by now a Marxist, well read
in Lenin, he refused to join the Communist Party, though this
meant losing the chance of government medical appointment, and
he was penniless and n rags. He lived with Hilda Gadea, a Marxist
of Indian stock who forwarded his political education, looked
after him, and introduced him to Nico Lopez, one of Fidel Castro's
lieutenants. In Guatemala he saw the CIA at work as the principal
agents of counterrevolution and was confirmed in his view that
Revolution could be made only be armed insurrection. When Arbenz
fell, Guevara went to Mexico City (September 1954) where he
worked in the General Hospital. Hilda Gadea and Nico Lopez joined
him, and he met and was charmed by Raul and Fidel Castro, then
political emigres, and realized that in Fidel he had found the
leader he was seeking.
He joined other Castro followers at the farm where the Cuban
revolutionaries were being given a tough commando course of
professional training in guerrilla warfare by the Spanish Republican
Army captain, Alberto Bayo, author of Ciento cincueto preguntas
a un guerrilleo, Havana 1959. Bayo drew not only on his own
experience but on the guerrilla teachings of Mao Tse-tung, and
'Che', as he was now called (it means chum or buddy
and is Italian origin), became his star pupil and was made a
leader of the class. The war games at the farm attracted police
attention; all the Cubans and Che were arrested, but released
a month later (June 1956). When they invaded Cuba, Che went
with them, first as doctor, soon as a Commandante of the revolutionary
army of barbutos. He was the most aggressive, clever and successful
of the guerrilla officers, and the most earnest in giving his
men a Lenist education: he was also a ruthless disciplinarian
who unhesitatingly shot defectors, as later he got a reputation
for cold-blooded cruelty in the mass execution of recalcitrant
supporters of the defeated president Batista. At the triumph
of the Revolution Guevara became second only to Fidel Castro
in the new government of Cuba, and the man chiefly responsible
for pushing Castro towards communism, but a communism which
was independent of the orthodox, Moscow-style communism of some
of their colleagues. Che organized and directed the Instituto
Nacional de la Reforma Agraria to administer the new agrarian
laws expropriating the large land holders; ran its Department
of Industries; was appointed President of the National Bank
of Cuba; forced non-communist out of the government and key
posts and acting obstinately against the advise of two eminent
French Marxist economists who were called in by Fidel Castro
and who wanted Che to advance much more slowly and of the Soviet
advisers, he pushed the Cuban economy so fast into total Communism,
and into crop and production diversification, that he temporarily
ruined it.
In 1959 he married Aledia March and together they visited Egypt,
India, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan and Yugoslavia. Back in Cuba,
as Minister for Industry he signed (February 1960) a trade pact
with the USSR, which freed the Cuban sugar industry from dependence
on the teeth of the U.S. market; in it is foreshadowing his
failure in the Congo and Bolivia, in an axiom which proved to
be hopelessly misleading; ' It is not always necessary to wait
until the conditions for revolution exist: the instructional
focus can create them.' And, with Mao Tse-tung, he believed
that the countryside must bring the revolution to the town in
predominately peasant countries. Also at this time, he glorified
his own kind of communist philosophy. (Published later in the
Socialism and Man in Cuba, March 12 March 1965). It can be summed
up in him ' Man really attains the state of complete humanity
when he produces, without being forced by physical need to sell
himself as a commodity.' He was moving away from "Moscow",
towards Mao, and beyond into what is essentially the old idealistic,
Anarchism. His formal breach with the Soviet Communist came
when, addressing the Organization for Afro-Asian Solidarity
at Algiers (February 1965) he charged the USSR with being a
'tacit accomplice of imperialism' by not trading exclusively
with the Communist bloc and by not giving underdeveloped socialist
countries aid without any thought of return. He also attacked
the Soviet
government for its policy of coexistence; and for Revisionism.
He initiated the Tricontiental Conference to realize a program
of revolutionary, insurrectionary, guerrilla cooperation in
Africa, Asia and South America. On the other hand, after a halfhearted
attempt to come to some kind of terms with the U.S.A., he was
also attacking the North Americas, at the UN as Cuba's representative
there, for their greedy and merciless imperialist activity in
Latin America.
Che's intransigence towards both capitalist and communist establishment
forced Castro to drop him (1965), not officially, but in practice.
For some months even his whereabouts were a secret and his death
was widely rumored: he was in various African countries, notably
the Congo surveying the possibilities of turning the Kinshasa
rebellion into a Communist revolution, by Cuban-style guerrilla
tactics. He returned to Cuba to train volunteers for that project,
and took a force of 120 Cubans to the Congo. His men fought
well, but the Kinshasa rebels did not, they were useless against
the Belgian mercenaries and by autumn 1965 Che had to advise
Castro to withdraw Cuban aid.
Che's final revolutionary adventure was in Bolivia: he grossly
misjudged the revolutionary potential of that country with disastrous
consequences. The attempt ended in his being captured by a Bolivian
army unit and shot a day later.
Because of his wild, romantic appearance, his dashing style,
his intransigence in refusing to kowtow to any kind of establishment
however communist, his contempt for mere reformism, and his
dedication to violent, flamboyant action, Che became a legend
and an idol for the revolutionary- and even the merely discontented-
youth of the later 1960s and early 70's a focus for the kind
of desperate revolutionary action which seemed to millions of
young people the only hope of destroying the world of bourgeois
industrial capitalism and communism.
Note: Che's remains were found near Vallegrande, Bolivia at
the end of June 1997. His remains were identified and were returned
to Cuba.
From A Dictionary of Modern Revolution, written by
Edward Hyams
Copyright 1973, published by Taplinger Publishing Co., Inc.
mother,
Celia de la Serna. He early became a voracious reader of Marx,
Engels and Freud which all were available in his father's library,
it is probable that he had read some of their works before he
went to secondary school (1941), the Colegio Nacional Dean Funes,
Cordoba, where he excelled only in literature and sports. At
home he was impressed by the Spanish Civil War refugees and
by the long series of squalid political crises in Argentina
which culminated in the 'Left Fascist' dictatorship of Juan
Peron, to whom the Guevara de la Sernas were opposed. These
events and influences inculcated in the young Guevara a contempt
for the pantomime of parliamentary democracy, and a hatred of
military politicians and the army, the capitalist oligarchy,
and above all the U.S. dollar/imperialism. Yet although his
parents, notably his mother, were anti-Peronist activists, he
took no part in revolutionary student movements and showed little
interest in politics at Buenos Aires University (1947) where
he studied medicine, first with a view to understanding his
own disease, later becoming more interested in leprosy.
buddy
and is Italian origin), became his star pupil and was made a
leader of the class. The war games at the farm attracted police
attention; all the Cubans and Che were arrested, but released
a month later (June 1956). When they invaded Cuba, Che went
with them, first as doctor, soon as a Commandante of the revolutionary
army of barbutos. He was the most aggressive, clever and successful
of the guerrilla officers, and the most earnest in giving his
men a Lenist education: he was also a ruthless disciplinarian
who unhesitatingly shot defectors, as later he got a reputation
for cold-blooded cruelty in the mass execution of recalcitrant
supporters of the defeated president Batista. At the triumph
of the Revolution Guevara became second only to Fidel Castro
in the new government of Cuba, and the man chiefly responsible
for pushing Castro towards communism, but a communism which
was independent of the orthodox, Moscow-style communism of some
of their colleagues. Che organized and directed the Instituto
Nacional de la Reforma Agraria to administer the new agrarian
laws expropriating the large land holders; ran its Department
of Industries; was appointed President of the National Bank
of Cuba; forced non-communist out of the government and key
posts and acting obstinately against the advise of two eminent
French Marxist economists who were called in by Fidel Castro
and who wanted Che to advance much more slowly and of the Soviet
advisers, he pushed the Cuban economy so fast into total Communism,
and into crop and production diversification, that he temporarily
ruined it.
Soviet
government for its policy of coexistence; and for Revisionism.
He initiated the Tricontiental Conference to realize a program
of revolutionary, insurrectionary, guerrilla cooperation in
Africa, Asia and South America. On the other hand, after a halfhearted
attempt to come to some kind of terms with the U.S.A., he was
also attacking the North Americas, at the UN as Cuba's representative
there, for their greedy and merciless imperialist activity in
Latin America.
