Che: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of a Revolutionary

by Joseph Hart (Editor)

Ernesto "Che" Guevara—medical doctor, chess player (he played Bobby Fischer by telephone in 1963), motorcycle rider, president of the Cuban National Bank, ruthless killer—would have celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday this June 14, had he lived. Instead, he was executed in the Bolivian jungle, captured leading a quixotic insurgency, a canonizing death that produced one of the era's most enduring plaster saints and symbols of revolutionary yearning. He has since been venerated and reviled in dozens of biographies, memoirs, essays, and films. This most photogenic of all revolutionaries (himself a photographer) was also obsessively shot by Fidel's court photographers —the serendipitous snap by Korda became the most reproduced photo of the age—from the Sierra Maestra to the Congo. Che was a prolific writer, too; and from his youthful Motorcycle Diaries, through nine volumes of essays and speeches, to the journal of his fatal Bolivian adventure, Che as much wrote the revolution as lived it. This anthology contains selections from Fidel Castro, Jon Lee Anderson, Mark Cooper, Regis Debray, Jorge Castaneda, Paco Taibo, Gary Hart (writing as John Blackthorn), Mary-Alice Waters, and many others. In addition, there are rare official and personal documents, letters, diary passages, and 50 black and white photographs.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

492 pages, Paperback

First published February 23, 2004

Reviews

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been reading this book off and on for almost 2 years. The short excerpts make great bedtime reading. And I'd say the excerpt-format is a big plus in general because you are confronted with various authors with various associations, sympathies, and perspectives on the man. The excerpted writing from works by Che himself are also intriguing.

Overall, Latin America to this day could use more modest success and less brilliant failure when it comes to social justice. Che, however, strikes me a person who preferred brilliant failure, although his hapless death in Bolivian jungle strikes me as less brilliant and more as downright bone-headed. His misadventure in the Congo was clearly bone-headed – which to Che’s credit he readily admitted. In all, I couldn’t help coming away from this book with a strange mix of admiration and disgust for the man known as “Che.”