Last week marks the fiftyth anniversary of the death of Ernesto Che Guevara. Rather, fifty years since his assassination by vengeful and, admittedly, rather cowardly performers hired by the CIA. This is an occasion to once again remember who Comandante Che was, what he was, and most importantly, what legacy he left behind. And it must be said right away that there is no single answer to any of these questions. Moreover, the attitude towards him is directly opposite in different groups of people - from unbridled adoration to fierce hatred.
One in many faces
Even an attempt to somehow unequivocally classify the very occupation of Che Guevara will immediately lead to the need for a number of reservations. For example, one cannot simply say that Che is a Latin American revolutionary. If only because he acted as a revolutionary, he not only in Latin America. And even to call him only a revolutionary would be a big stretch, because for a number of years he acted as a statesman, and, as someone correctly noted, a statesman, a statesman is by nature a counterrevolutionary. And Che behaved in completely different ways at different stages of his life. Either he is an exalted romantic, then he is a merciful enemy for the people opposing him, or he is a ruthless punisher who knows no mercy to anyone.
The son of the exploiters
Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna is a native of Argentina. Born June 14, 1928 in the city of Rosario. Father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, is an architect. Mother, Celia De La Serna, is a hereditary planter. It would seem that this portends Che's revolutionary future? But, for example, his paternal grandmother descended from the Irish rebel Patrick Lynch. Like this. And my father, in fact, was not far away. He took and took care of the workers on the family mate plantation. Well, how did you care? I began to pay them for their labor with money, not food. Result: the terrible discontent of the neighboring planters and the need to leave for the city. Namely in Rosario, where Che was born. True, even there the family did not huddle in basements, but opened a factory. For the processing of all the same Argentine tea - mate. In short, it cannot be said that Che had been oppressed by exploiters from childhood. He himself, in general,came from the exploiting class. Yes, the family was not too rich and experienced the consequences of the economic crisis. Things were going smoothly. But all five children have graduated.
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Childhood is interesting, but not easy
And yet Che's childhood cannot be called easy. The fact is that very early, namely at the age of two, the boy experienced his first asthma attack. And this disease did not let him go until his death. On the one hand, asthma made Ernesto's life very difficult. On the other hand, it very tempered his character. Because of the son's illness, the family had to give up everything and move to a mountainous area - to the province of Cordoba. A villa was purchased there. The mother looked after the baby. My father found a job as a construction contractor. Due to illness, Ernesto had to study at home in primary school, because he simply could not attend school. So he studied further - with constant breaks during exacerbations. For all that, he graduated from both high school and college. And he entered the university in the capital - in Buenos Aires, at the Faculty of Medicine. Continuous difficulties, but also communication. There were many of the latter. As Che Guevara's father later recalled, peers and friends of his son constantly crowded in their house. Everybody was there: children of communists and the rich, intellectuals and workers. Everyone had the opportunity to speak, they did not shut their mouths to anyone.
Chess and books are to blame
Where is Cuba in all this? Indeed, thanks to the events on the Island of Liberty, Che later became so famous. Maybe the future Cuba is just in that very communication in his childhood? Or maybe his hobby for chess. Guevara himself claimed that he first heard about Cuba when he was eleven years old. Then the great Capablanca came to Buenos Aires. And Cuba could also be in the books. The fact is that the parents of the future revolutionary had an extensive library in their house. And if at first he, like all the boys, was fond of Jules Verne and Jack London, then later they were replaced by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Gorky. And only then did Karl Marx and Engels, and Lenin, and Bakunin, and Kropotkin.
Spanish syndrome
The Spanish Civil War was a kind of litmus test at the beginning of the last century. By the way she was treated, one could immediately tell who is who. It is clear that the Latin American intelligentsia, not to mention specifically the Latin American communists, sided with the anti-fascists. Ernesto's parents did not stand aside either. They provided all possible assistance to the Republicans. And when World War II flared up and Argentine President Peron actually found himself on the side of Germany and its satellites, they became his opponents. And these were not just words: bombs were being made in the house of Che's parents.
Traveling in Latin America
Further, at the very end of his studies at the university (and Ernesto studied at the Faculty of Medicine), he made two big trips to Latin America. The first trip he made with his older friend Granado and visited Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Chile. It was then, on the first and second voyages, that Che saw all the poverty of the population of Latin American countries and how companies from the United States are making money on this population. He witnessed a military coup and saw how in Guatemala the government of President Arbenz expropriated the land of the landowners, as well as the land of the American company United Fruit, as the company was forced to increase the wages of workers. And I saw how it ended: the invasion at the instigation of the Americans by Colonel Armas, executions of Arbenz's supporters, bombing and sweeping operations. Che took part in the struggle on the side of Arbenz and soon found himself on the lists of "dangerous communists". In the same place, in Guatemala, Ernesto first met with the supporters of Fidel Castro.
Another Che
To write about how Che Guevara became close, first with Raul Castro, and then with Fidel (they liked each other very much during the first meeting in the safe house, where the future actions of the revolutionaries in Cuba were discussed), about preparations for the operation and the hardest expedition to Granme doesn’t make sense. As well as the fact that the revolutionary idea itself after landing on the island was literally on the verge of failure, since government troops were waiting for them, and Fidel's detachment was almost destroyed within a few days.
However, then the revolutionaries took root in the Sierra Maestra mountain range and organized a powerful partisan movement there, and in the end it all ended in the victory of the revolution. And then another Che appeared.
Revolutionary executioner
Until that moment, he was, rather, a revolutionary romantic and even to some extent a philanthropist.
At least that's how he was described. He tried to alleviate the fate of even captured soldiers of government troops. After the victory of the revolution, when the repressions inevitable in such situations began, Guevara seemed to be replaced. Repression, as usual, began with the functionaries of the Batista regime, who were said to be directly responsible for torture and execution. But then it came down to just political opponents, and even to former allies. The flywheel of repression is easy to start, but it can be extremely difficult to stop.
And at that terrible time, Che told the judges that there was no need to delay the proceedings, that in the revolution, proof is not a matter of paramount importance, the main thing is conviction. Moreover, he noted that a miscarriage of justice can always be corrected by the so-called appeal tribunal. But the fact is that, as the researchers note, the appeals tribunal did not overturn a single death sentence. And the head of this tribunal was … Che. Moreover, he personally directed the executions in one of the prisons.
Professional rebel
Then there was Guevara, a statesman in Cuba. And then he became a professional rebel and constantly tried to find a place where he could still start a future revolution. He went through a failed attempt for him and his people to organize a revolutionary movement in the Congo. It seems that he met with representatives of the Mozambican movement for independence. I was looking for a painful point of the capitalist world, and preferably more than one. I dreamed of creating "many Vietnamese". And he was not at all afraid of, in his own words, "quotas of deaths and immense tragedies." The main thing is the “shining future”.
He preached what was later called "Guevarism", and in practical application "Fockism" (from the word hearth). The idea was that one should not wait for a full-fledged revolutionary situation to mature. It is possible and necessary to create partisan movements that, by their struggle, will gradually push the hitherto inert masses towards revolution. In the end, Che ended up in Bolivia.
International right versus left international
Guevara managed to organize a partisan movement in Bolivia. Of course, with the help of revolutionary Cuba, and some even say that with the support of the KGB and the Stasi. In fact, all this is a mystery, "covered in darkness." But even if this is so, then on the other hand he was opposed by no less sophisticated specialists. The fact is that the Bolivian authorities turned to the CIA for help. And, as the researchers note, Che Guevara was a terrible headache for the CIA. There they were really afraid that he would be able to launch revolutionary processes throughout Latin America. Therefore, the best forces, well trained in anti-partisan struggle, were thrown into its elimination. In one of the documentaries, it was said that even Klaus Barbier, the "Butcher of Lyons", a Nazi criminal, helped to prepare the operation to capture Che. Also a mystery, "covered in darkness." But it wouldn't be surprisi.gif"
How Che Guevara was defeated
In the end, as everyone knows, Che was captured and then brutally killed with nine shots.
Moreover, five bullets were fired at the legs. Four more in the shoulder, arm, chest and throat. Then everything was done so that the place of his burial could not be found.
But the mass grave, in which Guevara was also buried, was eventually found. The remains were transported to Cuba. And again they were buried with all possible honors. However, we can conclude that in the end the winners were those whom Che himself tried to destroy. In this case, we are not talking about the fact that he was physically killed. The point is that his very image was commercialized. In the same way as they once made all sorts of hippie things fashionable, or as they put rebellious rock music into the consumer line.
Now these are just brands, "baubles", "chips", T-shirts with images of some faces. And whose face is there - Guevara or Jobs, Marx or Musk - who cares!..
Mark Raven