Che Guevara

Yet again I noticed someone on the street wearing a Che Guevara shirt. I had to wonder: what relevance does he have today, and what is the big deal anyway?

 Here are the most important facts regarding him:

1.         Born in Argentina, June 28, 1928.  Real name Ernesto Guevara de la Serna.  His nickname “Che” comes from his affectation of peppering his talk with “che”, a phrase meaning, “man” or “pal” and used often by South Americans.

2.         Toured South America in 1951 – the so-called “Motorcycle Diaries” reflect this voyage.  He also figures in the recent movie “Lost City”, which deals with not only the 1959 revolution but also much of the events in Cuba after that.  However, it does not focus on Guevara himself. 

3.         A medical student with asthma, he became a revolutionary.  He had no formal military training – the Argentine government exempted him from conscription because of his asthma.  Keeping this in mind, he was a modestly competent guerilla leader.

4.         The only successful revolution with which he is associated, and with which he admittedly had a major role, was the Cuban revolution in 1959.  He was highly placed within the Cuban government under Castro, but his actual role in the regime amounted to little more than summary executions of various political enemies.   As is so often the case, Marxist revolutionaries are fairly capable of overthrowing timid dictators like Batista but equally incompetent at successfully running a country once they take over.

5.         He left Cuba in 1965, tried, unsuccessfully to incite rebellion in the Congo, then tried, again unsuccessfully, to incite rebellion in Bolivia.

6.         He was tracked down and killed in October 1967 by Bolivian soldiers trained by the US Special Forces.  Various mementos, recovered by Rodriguez, the CIA operative who helped find him, are proudly displayed at Langley.

 So when you boil it all down, Che Guevara’s biggest and most important “legacy”, if you can call it that, is communist Cuba.  However, this seems to ignore an even larger and more important figure – obviously Fidel Castro himself.  Who led the rebellion?  Castro.  Who dealt with Krushchev?  Castro.  Who ran the country, all the way up to the present day?  Castro.  Who kept the country a going concern even after Soviet aid dried up following the fall of the Soviet Union? Castro.  Guevara left the country in 1965 and  hadn’t done a whole lot until that point anyway.  And as noted above, he was unsuccessful at the two subsequent revolutions he was involved with.

 As of today, Cuba is a poor, crappy country, second only to Haiti in poverty.  The Castro apologists blame the US for this; we embargo Cuba yet trade with Vietnam and China.  Ah...but we’re not refusing to TRADE with Cuba, we’re refusing to EXPLOIT Cuba.  Since, as they claim, the United States invariably unfairly exploits any country with which it conducts trade, Cuba should be prosperous and thriving without the yoke of Yankee imperialism upon its neck (and things are much worse for the Chinese and Vietnamese since “Tio Sam” became welcome there once again...right?).  How can we hurt Cuba if we’re not doing anything to it?  “Yankee go home”?  Fine, we went home.  So what’s the problem? 

 None of this, of course, is Guevara’s fault.  He left the country in 1965 and died in 1967.  Any success or failure of Cuba since then is the full responsibility of Fidel Castro.  So why is it Che Guevara on the t-shirts, and not Castro?