By John Wight 

On 9 October 1967 Ernesto Che Guevara was executed by a Bolivian army officer at the end of his ill-fated attempt to help foment revolution throughout Latin America. He was executed at the behest of the CIA, who in their usual misreading of the human spirit and its inextinguishable desire to be free, hoped his death would deal a major blow to the influence of the Cuban Revolution in a part of the world traditionally viewed as America’s backyard, there to provide the cheap labour, raw materials, and markets required to maintain the huge profits of US corporations. 

But the CIA were wrong, just as successive US administrations have been wrong, in thinking that the ideas for which Che Guevara fought and died could ever be killed with a bullet. The Cuban Revolution continues as a beacon of hope and inspiration for the poor of the undeveloped world. Achievements in the realms of healthcare, education, and science have and continue to astound a world in which the dominant ideology, free market capitalism, has waged an unremitting and determined campaign designed to demonise socialism and socialist ideas. In this Hollywood has played a key role, with its near total monopoly on film production and, crucially, distribution, churning out film after film designed to reaffirm so-called American values of individualism and the attainment extreme wealth as the pinnacle of human aspiration, values embodied in the myth of the American dream.

That a tiny island nation with a population of 12 million people, located 90 miles off the coast of Florida, should have the temerity not only to assert its right to independence – both political and economic (on the understanding that you cannot have one without the other) – but also would reject the cultural and ideological hegemony of Rome – i.e. the Unites States, and could survive for so long, is nothing short of heroic. Che exemplified, and continues to exemplify, the heroism of the Cuban people, and his life and ideas have never been more popular, potent and relevant than they are today.

The legend of Che, for that is what he has come to represent now, a legend, has not only continued unabated since his death, it has grown, grown in parallel with the rise of US imperialism in our time and its countless victims. In every town and every city, from Los Angeles to London, Beirut to Bethlehem, from Nairobi to New Delhi, the iconic image of Che captured by Alexander Korda  (right) is as ubiquitous as it is powerful, carried on T-shirts, posters, caps, coffee mugs, carried on a myriad items. It of course doesn’t hurt that Che with his movie star looks brought glamour to the concept and meaning of revolution. Yet that is still not enough explain the popularity of the image, even among those living in the relative comfort and luxury of the West. For what the image and the man represents is something transcendent in the human experience, that of an ideal which stands in opposition to the values of self aggrandisement, material success, and blind ambition drummed into us every minute of every day courtesy of advertisers and mainstream entertainment. The antidote to this daily barrage of deadening neoliberal and free market ideology is the ascetic self sacrifice, the primacy of will, and the unshakeable belief in the ability of man to change the course of history and break his chains that the image of Che represents.

A read through his writings today brings home the fierce determination of a man who burned with anger at the injustice, oppression and exploitation suffered by the world’s poor. In his address to the United Nations general assembly in 1964, he said:

“All free men of the world must be prepared to avenge the crime of the Congo. Perhaps many of those soldiers, who were turned into subhumans by imperialist machinery, believe in good faith that they are defending the rights of a superior race. In this assembly, however, those peoples whose skins are darkened by a different sun, coloured by different pigments, constitute the majority. And they fully and clearly understand that the difference between men does not lie in the colour of their skin, but in the forms of ownership of the means of production, in the relations of production.”

Enough that he should deliver such a powerful testament in solidarity with the poor and oppressed of another land, but Che was also a man who lived the principles of internationalism he so eloquently espoused, and he embarked for the Congo a year later in order to give meaning to them, abandoning the relative comfort and status earned him by the success of the Cuban Revolution to risk his life arms in hand like the warrior poet he was.

In a later speech to the Afro-Asian Conference in February 1965, Che offered this admonition:

“There are no borders in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, because a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory, just as any country’s defeat is a defeat for all of us.”

But perhaps his most enduring pronouncement came in his Message to the Tricontinental in 1967. Under the title ‘Create Two, Three…Many Vietnams’ Che gave his analysis of the world situation as it pertained to the struggle against US imperialism.

“In focusing on the destruction of imperialism, it is necessary to identify its head, which is none other than the United States of America.”

And further on:

“Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear, if another hand reaches out to take up our arms, and other men come forward to join in our funeral dirge with the rattling of machine guns and with new cries of battle and victory.”

Make no mistake, for Che the struggle against imperialism and exploitation could only be won utilising the same kind of force and violence used and utilised without compunction by the oppressor. Not for him non-violence and peaceful protest. His experience, his observation of the poverty and truncated lives suffered by immiserated millions throughout Latin America, Africa, throughout the developing world, instilled in him a rage and a desire to visit retribution on those responsible.

Yet, ironically, this rage, this unbending determination to destroy his enemies, was born of a deep and great love for humanity.

It is precisely this love for humanity, for the poor and the oppressed, which continues to lend such power to the Cuban Revolution and, now, to the Bolivarian revolutionary process currently underway in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez at its head. Che’s life and work has inspired Chavez, who in turn has inspired a long awaited and desperately needed shift to the left throughout Latin America. In Bolivia, where Che met his end, Evo Morales has come to power as a champion of the poor and the much maligned indigenous peoples of that tortured land. In Chile, in Ecuador, left leaning governments have also emerged, evidence that Che’s example and devotion to the cause of social and economic justice remains ever present, acting as a guide and a bulwark against that human wrecking machine otherwise known as neoliberalism.

And, of course, the ongoing carnage in Iraq, the brutal occupation of Palestine, such monstrous iniquities would not have gone unchallenged either. Indeed, given the facts of his life, who could argue that Che would not be calling for all progressive forces wherever they may be in the world to rise up in solidarity with the Iraqi and Palestinian people, calling for the creation of Two, Three…Many Iraqs around the world? Who could argue with that?

Despite such a heroic life and example, there is one incident which sums up more than any speech or article ever could just what Che’s sacrifice and the enduring force of the Cuban Revolution he helped inspire means and represents.

In 2006 Mario Teran, an old man living in Bolivia, was treated by Cuban doctors volunteering their services free of charge to Bolivia’s poor, just as they have and do to the poor in every corner of the developing world. They performed an operation to remove cataracts from Mario’s eyes. It was an operation which succeeded in restoring his sight. Mario Teran is not just any old man. Mario Teran is the Bolivian army officer who executed Ernesto Che Guevara.