Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, 1928-1967

He became a voracious reader of Marx, Engels and Freud which were allavailable in his father's library, it is probable that he had read some of their works before he went to secondaryschool (1941), the Colegio Nacional Dean Funes, Cordoba, where he excelled only in literature and sports. Athome he was impressed by the Spanish Civil War refugees and by the long series of squalid political crises inArgentina which culminated in the 'Left Fascist' dictatorship of Juan Peron, to whom the Guevara de la Sernaswere opposed. Argentine Marxist revolutionary and guerrilla leader At two years old Che Guevara developed asthma from which he suffered all his life, and his family moved to the drierclimate of Alta Gracia (Cordoba) where his health did not improve. Primary education at home, mostly by hismother, Celia de la Serna. "Che was the most complete human being of our age." -Jean-Paul Sartre

These events and influences gave the young Guevara a contempt for the pantomime ofparliamentary democracy, and a hatred of military politicians and the army, the capitalist oligarchy, and above allthe U.S. dollar and imperialism. Although his parents, notably his mother, were anti-Peronist activists, he took nopart 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 inleprosy. In 1949 he made the first of his long journeys, exploring northern Argentina on a bicycle, and for the firsttime coming into contact with the very poor and the remnants of the Indian tribes. In 1951, after taking hispenultimate exams, he made a much longer journey, accompanied by a friend, and earning his living by casuallabor as he went: he visited southern Argentina, Chile, where he met Salvador Allende, Peru, where he workedfor some weeks in the San Pablo leprosarium, Colombia at the time of La Violencia, and where he was arrestedbut soon released, Venezuela, and Miami. He returned home for his finals sure of only one thing, that he did notwant to become a middle-class general practitioner.

He qualified, specializing in dermatology, and went to LaPaz, Bolivia, during the National Revolution which he condemned as opportunist. From there he went toGuatemala, earning his living by writing travel-cum-archaeological articles about Inca and Maya ruins. Hereached 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 in rags. He lived with Hilda Gadea, a Marxist of Indian stock who forwarded hispolitical education, looked after him, and introduced him to Nico Lopez, one of Fidel Castro's lieutenants. InGuatemala he saw the CIA at work as the principal agents of counterrevolution and was confirmed in his viewthat 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 hemet and was charmed by Raul and Fidel Castro, then political emigres, and realized that in Fidel he had found theleader he was seeking. He joined other Castro followers at the farm where the Cuban revolutionaries were being given a toughcommando course of professional training in guerrilla warfare by the Spanish Republican Army captain, AlbertoBayo, author of Ciento cincueto preguntas a un guerrilleo, Havana 1959. Bayo drew not only on his ownexperience but on the guerrilla teachings of Mao Tse-tung, and 'Che', as he was now called (it means chum orbuddy and is Italian origin), became his star pupil and was made a leader of the class. The war games at the farmattracted police attention, all the Cubans and Che were arrested, but released a month later (June 1956). Whenthey invaded Cuba, Che went with them, first as doctor, soon as a Commandante of the revolutionary army ofbarbutos.

He was the most aggressive, clever and successful of the guerrilla officers, and the most earnest ingiving his men a Leninist education. At the triumph of the Revolution Guevara became second only to Fidel Castro in the newgovernment of Cuba, and the man chiefly responsible for moving Castro towards communism, but a communismwhich was independent of the orthodox, Moscow-style communism of some of their colleagues. Che organizedand directed the Instituto Nacional de la Reforma Agraria to administer the new agrarian laws expropriating thelarge land holders; ran its Department of Industries; and was appointed President of the National Bank of Cuba. In 1959 he married Aledia March and together they visited Egypt, India, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan andYugoslavia. Back in Cuba, as Minister for Industry he signed (February 1960) a trade pact with the USSR whichfreed the Cuban sugar industry from dependence on the teeth of the US market; in it is the foreshadowing of his failurein the Congo and Bolivia, in an axiom which proved to be hopelessly misleading: ' It is not always necessary towait until the conditions for revolution exist, the instructional focus can create them.' And, with Mao Tse-tung, hebelieved that the countryside must bring the revolution to the town in predominately peasant countries. Also at thistime, 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 heproduces, 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 breachwith the Soviet Communist Party 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 exclusivelywith 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 theTricontiental 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 theUSA, he was also attacking the North Americas, at the UN as Cuba's representative there, for their greedy andmerciless imperialist activity in Latin America.

Che's intransigence towards both capitalist and communist establishments forced Castro to drop him (1965), notoffically, but in practice. For some months even his whereabouts were a secret and his death was widelyrumoured: he was in various African countries, notably the Congo, surveying the possiblities of turning theKinshasa rebellion into a Communist revolution by Cuban-style guerrilla tactics. He returned to Cuba to trainvolunteers for that project, and took a force of 120 Cubans to the Congo. His men fought well, but the Kinshasarebels did not, they were useless against the Belgian mercenaries and by autumn 1965 Che had to advise Castroto withdraw Cuban aid. Che's final revolutionary adventure was in Bolivia: he grossly misjudged the reveloutionary potential of thatcountry with disastrous consequences. The attempt ended in his being captured by a Bolivian army unit and shota day later. Because of his wild, romantic appearance, his dashing style, his intransigence in refusing to kowtow to any kind ofestablishment however communist, his contempt for mere reformism, and his dedication to violent, flamboyantaction, Che became a legend and an idol for the reveloutionary- and even the merely discontented- youth of thelater 1960s and early 70's a focus for the kind of desperate revolutionary action which seemed to millions ofyoung people the only hope of destroying the world of bourgeois industrial capitalism.