As an Indigenist activist, the term „America“ holds a special meaning for me. Erroneously credited to Albergo Vespucci, the name America is derived from Amerrique, an Aboriginal nation that came into contact with both Vespucci and Christofaro Columbo, when both explorers raided Nicaragua in the early 1500`s. According to Guyanese researcher Jan Carew in his excellent book, „Fulcrums of Change“, Vespucci copped this Aboriginal appellation which literally means, „People of the Lands of Strong Winds“ as a nickname due to a cultural mis-association with the European quest for gold in the „New World“.The designation stuck and was applied to the entirely of both land masses by the occupying European powers and has remained the „official“ name to this day. For a young medical student and future political figure, this recognition of a pre-Columbian American identity was the visceral inspiration behind a personal movement to unite a continent and liberate the poor of the world. A true American hero.
This week marks the 40th anniversary of the American CIA`s once covert assassination of legendary Argentinean revolutionary Ernesto Guevara de la Serna. If the name does not ring a bell, perhaps it is because he is better known to socialists and capitalists alike as „Che“. From all logical accounts, the single most popular political figure of the last, and perhaps this century. Despite the immensely profitable over-saturation of the romantically radical iconic image by photographer Alberto Korda plastered across t-shirts throughout the world, the intrinsic genuineness of Che as the people`s fighter remains. Much to the consternation of laissez- faire Europocentric neo-liberal, neo-fascist and neo-conservative counter-revolutionaries in the Americas, Che lives.
While an admittedly antagonistic U.S. mainstream media persists in portraying Che Guevara as little more than a failed leftist revolutionary, those subject to the whims of the First World perceive him quite differently. Che represents the individual who comes not from the bottom social rungs of society but from the privileged upper-classes who devotes his or her life to social justice. Unlike most other prominent liberation leaders, Che Guevara in many
aspects personally exemplified the true revolutionary. Like his compatriot Dr. Fidel Castro, Che lived as his people did side-by-side and shared their conditions. When Castro`s daughter Alina Fernandez Revuelta famously defected to the United States in 1993, she inadvertently added a degree of legitimacy for her father`s personal politics when she confirmed to the local New York media that Dr. Castro denies himself the availble material luxuries Cuba`s decidedly miniscule economic elite freely enjoy. She made it quite clear that she was staunchly opposed to her father, especially his politics, and regarded his Marxist piety as, „loco“. While her mother and father were always loyal to their revolution, Ms Revuelta is just the other thing. And for American supporters of Cuban political sovereignty, her comments only solidified their admiration of Cuban revolutionaries and made Castro and Che heroes to a new generation of activists.
For those not inclined to political matters, Che is simply a name for a new moderately-priced wine from Argentina. They know little about him other than Mexican actor Gael Garcia has played him twice; most famously in the film adaptation of „The Motorcycle Diaries“ or that he was a rabidly violent communist that finally got what was coming to him in Bolivia.
This is sad because there was much to the man to be admired. As a young medical student wishing to see „His America“, Che and his cousin traveled together through the continent encountering the poor and Indigenous communities he would never have come into contact with in his society. Witnessing the indigent circumstances in which countless people lived, something within him led to a conversion of his worldview and a revolutionary was born. His experiences treating easily preventable diseases and his observations of Indigenous colonial oppression led him to see socialist revolution as a means of removing the yoke of socio-political repression and imperialist manipulation from the north. And further, he took his struggle across the world, which for the majority of his adherents will forever cause him to be seen as a real people`s revolutionary. Che Guevara thought locally and acted globally. A lesson many American progressives could, and should have learned from.
And some have. Brazil, Chile, Bolivia and especially Venezuela have not only learned the lessons of people power but have put them into practise and gained political power in their respective countries. Unlike Che however, they all used the ballot box and peaceful means that for the first time in South American history, popular revolutions have been relatively peaceful affairs conducted via fair and free elections. And even after the failed U.S.-supported coup that temporarily removed Hugo Chavez from power, he was able to regain positive presidential control through a popular uprising with a minimum of violence. Che`s lessons were indeed learned and internalised by not just the politicians but the common people for whom Che lived and eventually died at the hands of government paramilitary assassins.
There was another lesson made clear to revolutionaries and that was to understand that resistance to the machinations of the capitalist order was punishable by penalty of death. While incarceration is regarded as an honourable price to pay for their beliefs, few are willing to put their lives where their politics lie. Even the killing of Che is shrouded in the unmitigated lethality of the colonialist/imperialist order. To make Che`s death wounds appear faithful to the official story that he was killed during a jungle firefight, Felix Rodriguez, the CIA operative leading the unit sent to locate Che´s small band of fighters ordered the Bolivian soldier who did the deed to shoot him in such a way so as to make it seem as if Guevara had been killed in action as opposed to a covert extra-judicial execution.
Dr. Castro as president of the Cuban republic is the survivor of more than 22 assassination attempts by the American government and a federally-sponsored coup among numerous other aggressions by the U.S against the Cuban state and people. Even after the public admission of such illegal as well as unethical measures, Cuba, its leaders and its heroes and heroines are characterized as clear and present dangers to the world at large. Despite the fact that Cuba, aside from supporting anti-colonialist left-wing African liberation movements in Africa during the 1970s, has never directly threatened the United States or any other nation in the world and has never sought the military capacity to wage war until they were invaded by U.S.-sponsored mercenaries is still being demonised as an aggressor when it is a victim of first Spanish, then American imperialism.
To understand the continuing appeal of Che Guevara, one must first comprehend his relation to the Cuban revolution. While it is quite logical to assume that without Che Castro`s militia would have still been successful, Che`s contributions to the movement cannot be diminished by capitalist anti-Cuban propaganda. A Comandante in the rebel forces, Che`s knowledge of medicine, formal education and his emerging military skills made him a popular figure amongst the 26th of July Movement. It was also during this period that Che was alleged by many to be responsible for the execution of suspected spies, deserters and others who violated his strict prohibition of abuse of the Cuban peasantry. His reported bravery in combat and hands-on strict military discipline was carried on during the revitalization of the Cuban economy.
Of course all of this is darkened and keenly demoralized by anti-revolutionaries when discussion turns to his command of the La Cabana prison where he oversaw the trial and execution of numerous people including former Batista regime officials and members of the BRAC, (Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities) the dictatorship`s brutal secret. Sincere revolutionaries judiciously confess that these were largely lawless proceedings where it is estimated that conceivably between 156 and 550 people were executed on Guevara‘s orders during his term there. Revolutions are a nasty business on both divides and such abuses are terribly common before, during and sometimes long after the conditions for such means come to an effectual end. Dr. Castro has himself admitted to the killing of many Bastista-era government and military personnel on the grounds of their anti-social, often racist and sometimes murderously violent repressive actions against common Cuban people. While I personally abhor capital punishment as a means of justice, I find it extremely contradictory that U.S. anti-Castro zealots can disparage Cuba for such actions when the United States legally condones the execution of persons on circumstantial evidence, condones torture in detention and uses kidnapping to round up terror suspects.
If the lynching of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the Israeli execution of German transportation administrator Adolf Eichmann years after the second European tribal wars can be considered a justifiable consequence of their responsibilities in the mass deaths of others, questioning Cuban executions becomes a useless endeavour in double standards.
Che was a human being who like all human beings had faults and made errors that apparently did not seem like errors to him and other at the time. It is foolish for conservatives to paint Che with one brush while leftists change the colour to suit their own particular preferences. Che used and suggested what he thought would work to solidify and insure that the revolution was in place to stay and worked on an international level to make it possible everywhere. In the pursuit of such lofty goals, excesses can and will be made. And in the obsessive capitalist pursuit of profit, the body count since the industrial revolution globally has yet to be estimated, but there is no doubt that the numbers would shame all of us who live by way of the charge card. Like Che, we are all prisoners of our time and space. Unlike Che and those like him, many of us accept the paradoxes as appropriate provided that we in the U.S. are only presented the end-result of such exploitations.
This is the significance of Che Guevara and this is why he lives on in the dreams of peoples, communities and nations struggling to live free of exploitation and the fear of oppression. While his active revolution was a long and unsuccessful struggle to free the entire world, his ideas, commitment and personal dedication to social change on a grand scale inspires millions to fight for their rights.
This is Che. A true American hero.