"It must be clearly established, however, that the government of
the United States is not the champion of freedom, but rather the perpetuator
of exploitation and oppression against the peoples of the world and against
a large part of its own population." [url=http://www.playagiron.net/docs/guevara/unche.php]Full copy
of the speech[/url].
[b]1965[/b] - At the start of the new year
Guevara is still moving, to the Congo, then to Guinea, Ghana, Dahomey,
Algiers, Paris, Tanzania and Peking. In February, while addressing the
Tricontinental Conference at Algiers, he hints at his disillusionment with
the established socialist countries, implying that they are exploiting
underdeveloped nations for their own ends.
"Socialism cannot exist without a change in conscience to a new
fraternal attitude toward humanity, not only within the societies which
are building or have built socialism, but also on a world scale toward
all peoples suffering from imperialist oppression," Guevara states.
"We have to prepare conditions so that our brothers can directly
and consciously take the path of the complete abolition of exploitation,
but we cannot ask them to take that path if we ourselves are accomplices
of that exploitation."
"The development of countries now starting out on the road to liberation
should be paid for by the socialist countries ... There should not be
any more talk about developing mutually beneficial trade based on prices
rigged against underdeveloped countries by the law of value and the inequitable
relations of international trade brought about by that law."
"If we establish that kind of relation between the two groups of
nations, we must agree that the socialist countries are, in a way, accomplices
of imperialist exploitation. It can be argued that the amount of exchange
with underdeveloped countries is an insignificant part of the foreign
trade of the socialist countries. That is a great truth, but it does not
eliminate the immoral character of the exchange."
[url=http://www.playagiron.net/docs/guevara/aaconf.php]Full copy
of the speech[/url].
In March Guevara is back in Cuba but with his policies now discredited
stays only long enough to drop out of the political scene. His treatise
[url=http://www.playagiron.net/docs/guevara/man.php]'Socialism
and Man in Cuba'[/url], in which he elaborates on his theory of the 'New
Man', is published on 12 March.
In April he tells Castro he is relinquishing all his official positions
and his Cuban nationality. In July he travels to the Congo with a group
of Cuban volunteers to ferment a rebellion in the eastern part of what
is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The rebellion, which is not
widely supported by the local people, fails. Guevara moves on.
On 3 October Castro publicly reads a farewell letter written to him
by Guevara in April. "I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my
duty that tied me to the Cuban revolution in its territory," the
letter says, "And I say goodbye to you, the comrades, your people,
who are already mine ... Other nations of the world call for my modest
efforts. I can do that which is denied you because of your responsibility
as the head of Cuba, and the time has come for us to part."
[url=http://www.playagiron.net/docs/guevara/tofidel.php]Full copy
of the letter[/url].
During the same period, Guevara drafts and circulates his 'Message to
the Tricontinental' in which he effectively declares war on the US. "Our
every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for
the people's unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States
of America," the message says. [url=http://www.playagiron.net/docs/guevara/tricont.php]Full copy
of the message[/url].
[b]1966[/b] - Guevara returns to Cuba in
March, but quickly travels on to Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and
Bolivia, where he joins and becomes a leader of a communist guerrilla
movement attempting to overthrow the country's military government.
[b]1967[/b] - The guerrilla band has some
initial success but receives little support from the local people.
"The ... masses don't help us in anything and instead they betray
us," Guevara complains.
Never numbering more than 50 men and one woman, the guerrillas are soon
outmanoeuvred by about 1,800 US-trained and armed Bolivian troops. The
troops are assisted by advisers from the CIA.
On 8 October Guevara is wounded in the foot and captured near Vallegrande,
in the mountains of central Bolivia. "I'm Che Guevara and I'm worth
more to you alive than dead," he tells his captors. He is carried to
the village of La Higuera, 30 km southwest of Vallegrande, and placed
under guard in the schoolhouse, along with other captured rebels.
Around noon the following day, and against the CIA's wishes, Guevara
is executed with four gunshots to his chest. His last words are reported to
be, "I know you have come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only
going to kill a man."
Guevara is dead at the age of 39.
Following the execution, Guevara's hands are removed so his identity
can be confirmed by fingerprinting. On 11 October his handless body, and
the bodies of six of his executed colleagues, is secretly buried near the
airport at Vallegrande.
On 18 October Castro delivers a eulogy for Guevara to nearly a million
people assembled in Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion. Castro states that
Guevara's example and ideals will be an inspiration for future generations
of revolutionaries.
"They who sing victory over his death are mistaken," Castro
says. "They are mistaken who believe that his death is the defeat
of his ideas, the defeat of his tactics, the defeat of his guerrilla concepts
... If we want to know how we want our children to be we should say, with
all our revolutionary mind and heart: We want them to be like Che."
The same month, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk receives a report from
his Bureau of Intelligence and Research that predicts that Guevara "will
be eulogised as the model revolutionary who met a heroic death."
[b]Postscript[/b]
[b]1995[/b] - In July a Bolivian general
reveals the location of Guevara's grave.
[b]1997[/b] - What are thought to be the
remains of Guevara's body are exhumed from their communal grave in
Vallegrande and returned to Cuba in July. The 30th anniversary of
his death is celebrated across Cuba. On 17 October the remains are
reburied in a specially built mausoleum in Santa Clara, the site
of his decisive victory against Batista's forces at the end of 1958.
More than 100,000 Cubans attend the service.
"Why did they think that by killing him, he would cease to exist as
a fighter?" Castro says at the ceremony to mark the reburial. "Today
he is in every place, wherever there is a just cause to defend."
[b]2000[/b] -
[url=http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/guevara01.html]'Time' magazine[/url] names Guevara
as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th Century. "Though
communism may have lost its fire, he remains the potent symbol of rebellion
and the alluring zeal of revolution," the magazine states.
Meanwhile, Castro remains in power in Cuba, but the idealism of the
revolution has soured and his rule has become a dictatorship.
According to the Human Rights Watch World Report 2005, "The Cuban
government systematically denies its citizens basic rights to free expression,
association, assembly, movement, and a fair trial. A one party state, Cuba
restricts nearly all avenues of political dissent. Tactics for enforcing
political conformity include police warnings, surveillance, short term
detentions, house arrests, travel restrictions, criminal prosecutions,
and politically-motivated dismissals from employment."
About 300 people are held as political prisoners.
Guevara's legacy remains a potent force. Images of the long-dead
revolutionary are found throughout Cuba, and schoolchildren begin
every day with the pledge, "Seremos como el Che" - we will be
like Che.
[b]2008[/b] - Rosario, the city in Argentina where
Guevara was born, recognises its most famous son on 14 June, the 80th anniversary
of Guevara's birthday, with the unveiling of a 3.6 metre bronze statue of the
dead revolutionary.
It is the first major public memorial to Guevara to be erected in Argentina.
[b]Comment:[/b]
Restless and complex, practical and idealistic, caring and brutal, self-serving
and naive - and this is just scratching the surface of the contradictory
personality that has fuelled the myth and legend of Che Guevara. On the
one hand there is the temptation to dismiss Guevara as a frenetic dreamer
consumed by the movement and romance of revolutionary action. On the other
is an admiration for his total commitment to the utopian belief that a
'New Man' could create a just and equal society.
Guevara's preparedness to challenge the dominant world powers was also
admirable. A bitter critic of the US, he also earned the enmity of socialist
states. The Soviet Union opposed his fateful mission to Bolivia, reportedly
because it involved a dispute with the "legitimate" Latin American
communist parties favoured by the Soviets.
There is much to admire in Guevara, and yet there is also uneasiness.
Uneasiness because it is only a short step from someone like Guevara to
someone like Osama bin Laden, and because the two are essentially fellow
travellers. Uneasiness over all the revolutionary clichés that
Guevara was so skilled at employing. Uneasiness over all the leftist rhetoric
so readily consumed and regurgitated by baby-boomer acolytes from the
West. Uneasiness over the subsequent incorporation of the form of Che
Guevara into a revolutionary myth while the substance of the man is overlooked.
Today I see Western youths wearing the famous 'Heroic Guerrilla' image
of Guevara on T-shirts and wonder what this is about. Some, like those
well-known social liberals boxer Mike Tyson and soccer player Diego Maradona,
even go so far as to have the image tattooed on their bodies, presumably
to demonstrate the permanence of their fidelity to Guevara's "ideals".
The image has stolen all the meaning. Guevara has been completely subsumed
by a culture that he hated.
In 1967 Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the US rock-band 'The Doors',
sang the lyric, "We want the world and we want it, Now!" Guevara
could have said it himself. It may have sounded revolutionary then. Today
it just sounds immature and stupid.
Guevara is a false hero. He is an adolescent fantasy, not a mature role
model.
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