Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life

by Jon Lee Anderson

Around this time, Osvaldo and Ernesto were reading Faulkner, Kafka, Camus, and Sartre. In poetry, Ernesto was reading the Spanish Republican poets García Lorca, Machado, and Alberti, and the Spanish translations of Walt Whitman and Robert Frost. But his overall favorite remained Pablo Neruda. Among Latin American writers, he had also delved into Ciro Alegría, Jorge Icaza, Rubén Darío, and Miguel Ángel Asturias.

“I realize that something that was growing inside of me for some time ... has matured: and it is the hate of civilization, the absurd image of people moving like locos to the rhythm of that tremendous noise that seems to me like the hateful antithesis of peace.”

“I fall on my knees, trying to find a solution, a truth, a motive. To think that I was born to love, that I wasn’t born to sit permanently in front of a desk asking myself whether man is good, because I know man is good, since I have rubbed elbows with him in the country, in the factory, in the logging camp, in the mill, in the city. To think that he is physically healthy, that he has a spirit of cooperation, that he is young and vigorous like a billy goat but he sees himself excluded from the panorama: that is anguish. ... To make a sterile sacrifice that does nothing to raise up a new life: that is anguish.”

“There, in the final moments of people whose farthest horizon is always tomorrow, one sees the tragedy that enfolds the lives of the proletariat throughout the whole world; in those dying eyes there is a submissive apology and also, frequently, a desperate plea for consolation that is lost in the void, just as their body will soon be lost in the magnitude of misery surrounding us. How long this order of things based on an absurd sense of caste will continue is not within my means to answer, but it is time that those who govern dedicate less time to propagandizing the compassion of their regimes and more money, much more money, sponsoring works of social utility.”

“By the light of the single candle which illuminated us ... the contracted features of the worker gave off a mysterious and tragic air. ... The couple, frozen stiff in the desert night, hugging one another, were a live representation of the proletariat of any part of the world. They didn’t even have a miserable blanket to cover themselves, so we gave them one of ours, and with the other, Alberto and I covered ourselves as best we could. It was one of the times when I felt the most cold, but it was also the time when I felt a little more in fraternity with this, for me, strange human species.”

“The hills show their gray backs prematurely aged in the struggle against the elements, with elderly wrinkles that don’t correspond to their geological age. How many of these escorts of their famous brother [Chuquicamata] enclose in their heavy wombs similar riches to his, as they await the arid arms of the mechanical shovels that devour their entrails, with their obligatory condiment of human lives?”

“There we were in a legendary valley, detained in its evolution for centuries and which is still there today for us, happy mortals, to see.”

“A beaten race that watches us pass through the streets of the town. Their stares are tame, almost fearful, and completely indifferent to the outside world. Some give the impression that they live because it is a habit they can’t shake.”

“These Argentines, they think they are the owners of everything.” They were white; she was Indian. They had power; she didn’t.

Symptom and cause were wrapped up into one ugly package. Standing behind the local regimes and perpetuating the injustice were the North Americans and their overwhelming economic power. Ernesto’s antidote in the case of Chile was to “get the uncomfortable North American friend off its back,” but he warned in the same breath of the dangers and difficulties of expropriation. Ernesto didn’t have a cure for all these ills, but he was searching. Perhaps the “red flame dazzling the world” was the answer, but he wasn’t yet sure.

“The so-called good people, the cultured people, are astonished at the events taking place and curse the importance given to the Indian and the cholo, but in everyone I seem to sense a spark of nationalist enthusiasm with some of the government’s actions. ... Nobody denies the need to finish off the state of things symbolized by the power of the three tin-mine hierarchies, and the young people believe it has been a step forward in the struggle toward a greater equality in people and fortunes.”

‘The future belongs to the people, and little by little or in one fell swoop they will seize power, here and in the whole world. The bad thing is that they have to become civilized, and this can’t happen before, but only after, taking power. They will become civilized only by learning at the cost of their own errors, which will be serious ones, and which will cost many innocent lives. Or perhaps not, perhaps they won’t be innocent, because they will have committed the enormous sin contra natura signified by lacking the capacity to adapt.

All of them, all the unadaptable ones, you and I, for example, will die cursing the power they, with enormous sacrifice, helped to create. ... In its impersonality, the revolution will take their lives, and even use their memory as an example or a domesticating instrument for the youth who will come after them. My sin is greater, because I, more subtle and with more experience, call it what you wish, will die knowing that my sacrifice is due only to an obstinacy which symbolizes the rotten civilization that is crumbling.’”

You will die with your fist clenched and jaw tense, in perfect demonstration of hate and of combat, because you are not a symbol (something inanimate taken as an example), you are an authentic member of a society which is crumbling: the spirit of the beehive speaks through your mouth and moves in your actions; you are as useful as I am, but you don’t know how useful your contribution is to the society that sacrifices you.’”

“I saw his teeth and the picaresque expression with which he took a jump on history, I felt the squeeze of his hands and, like a distant murmur, the formal salute of farewell. ... In spite of his words, I now knew ... I will be with the people, and I know it because I see it etched in the night that I, the eclectic dissector of doctrines and psychoanalyst of dogmas, howling like one possessed, will assault the barricades or trenches, will bathe my weapon in blood and, mad with fury, will slit the throat of any enemy who falls into my hands. “And I see, as if an enormous tiredness shoots down my recent exaltation, how I die as a sacrifice to the genuine revolution of individual will, pronouncing the exemplary mea culpa. I feel my nostrils dilated, tasting the acrid smell of gunpowder and of blood, of the dead enemy; now my body contorts, ready for the fight, and I prepare my being as if it were a sacred place so that in it the bestial howling of the triumphant proletariat can resonate with new vibrations and new hopes.”

It was Ñico who gave Ernesto the nickname El Che Argentino. Che is a Guaraní word that Argentinians typically use in a locution that translates loosely as “Hey, you.”

Ernesto argued back that given present circumstances in Latin America, no party that participated in elections could remain revolutionary. All such parties inevitably would be forced to compromise with the right and then seek an accommodation with the United States. For a revolution to succeed, a head-on confrontation with Yankee imperialism was unavoidable. At the same time, he was critical of the Communist parties, which he felt had moved away from the working masses by engaging in tactical alliances with the right.

Despite their many differences, Ernesto and Fidel shared some traits. Both were favored boys from large families, extremely spoiled, careless about their appearance, and sexually voracious. For both of them, relationships came in second to personal goals. Both were imbued with Latin machismo. They believed in the innate weakness of women, were contemptuous of homosexuals, and admired brave men of action. Both possessed an iron will and a larger-than-life sense of purpose. And finally, both wanted to carry out a revolution.

“I fight for the things I believe in, with all the weapons at my disposal and try to leave the other man dead so that I don’t get nailed to a cross or any other place. ... What really terrifies me is your lack of comprehension of all this and your advice about moderation, egoism, etc., ... that is to say, all of the most execrable qualities an individual can have. Not only am I not moderate, I shall try not ever to be, and when I recognize that the sacred flame within me has given way to a timid votive light, the least I could do is to vomit over my own shit.

For all great tasks, passion is needed, and for the revolution, passion and audacity are needed in large doses, things we have as a human group.”

“Precious time and money had to be diverted to get us out of the Mexican jail,” he wrote later. “That personal attitude of Fidel’s toward people whom he holds in esteem is the key to the fanatical loyalty he inspires.”

“This incident was symptomatic of the state of high tensions that prevailed as we waited for the relief the battle would bring. At such times, even those with nerves of steel feel a certain trembling in the knees and each man longs for the arrival of that luminous moment of battle.”

It is hard to escape the sense that Che’s deeply felt desire to rid himself of his “I” and to become part of a group derived from the inherent isolation imposed by his asthma.

“We began to feel in our flesh and blood the need for a definitive change in the life of the people,” he wrote. “The idea of agrarian reform became clear, and oneness with the people ceased being theory and was converted into a fundamental part of our being.” Perhaps without realizing it, Che had evolved into the revolutionary doctor he had once dreamed of becoming.

All of them have common characteristics: (A) The governing power “has inflicted numerous casualties on the rebels.” (B) There are no prisoners. (C) “Nothing new” [to report] by the governing power. (D) All the revolutionaries, whatever the name of the country or region, are receiving “surreptitious help from the Communists.” How Cuban the world seems to us! Everything is the same. A group of patriots are murdered, whether or not they have arms, whether or not they are rebels, always after “a fierce fight” ..., they kill all the witnesses, that is why there are no prisoners. The government never suffers a casualty, which at times is true, because killing defenseless human beings is not very dangerous, but at times it is also a great lie; the Sierra Maestra is our unimpeachable witness. And, finally, the same handy accusation as always: “Communists.” Communists are always those who pick up their arms tired of so much misery, wherever in the world the action takes place; democrats those who kill the indignant people, whether they be men, women, or children. How Cuban the world is! But everywhere, as in Cuba, the people will have the last word, that of victory, against brute force and injustice.

Che drove back in a jeep with Oscar “Oscarito” Fernández Mell, a twenty-five-year-old doctor who had just left Havana to join the rebels. With Che in the driver’s seat, they traveled at breakneck speeds along a narrow dirt road that skirted steep precipices. Oscarito was visibly nervous, and Che told him not to worry, adding, “When we get to where we’re going, I want to tell you something.” Oscarito was later duly informed that Che had never driven before. With his old sidekick, Alberto Granado, he had learned to drive a motorbike, but he had never sat behind the wheel of a car.

Hearing of soldiers advancing to take the heights of Altos de Merino, Che rushed over there on the morning of July 3. “Upon arriving I found that the guards were already advancing. A little combat broke out in which we retreated very quickly. The position was bad and they were encircling us, but we put up little resistance. Personally I noted something I had never felt before: the need to live. That had better be corrected in the next opportunity.”

In spite of everything, one can’t help admiring him. He knows what he wants better than we do. And he lives entirely for it.’”

Something which has really developed in me is the sense of the collective in counterposition to the personal; I am still the same loner that I used to be, looking for my path without personal help, but now I have a sense of my historic duty. I have no home, no woman, no children, nor parents, nor brothers and sisters, my friends are my friends as long as they think politically like I do and yet I am content, I feel something in life, not just a powerful internal strength, which I always felt, but also the power to influence others, and an absolutely fatalistic sense of my mission, which strips me of all fear.

Might it not be that our fraternity can defy the breadth of the seas, the rigors of language and the lack of cultural ties, to lose ourselves in the embrace of a fellow struggler? ... Cuba has been invited to the new Afro-Asian People’s Conference. [And Cuba will go] to say that it is true, that Cuba exists and that Fidel Castro is a man, a popular hero and not a mythological abstraction; but it will also go to explain that Cuba is not an isolated event, merely the first signal of America’s awakening. ... [And when they ask]: “Are you the members of the Guerrilla Army that is leading the struggle for the liberation of America? Are you, then, our allies on the other side of the sea?” I must say [to them] and to all the hundreds of millions of Afro-Asians that ... I am one brother more, one more among the multitudes of brothers in this part of the world that awaits with infinite anxiety the moment [when we can] consolidate the bloc that will destroy, once and for all, the anachronistic presence of colonial domination.

I don’t think that an individual example, statistically speaking, has any importance, but I began my career studying engineering. I finished as a doctor. Later I became a comandante and now you see me here as a speaker. ... That is to say, within one’s individual characteristics, vocation doesn’t play a determining role. ... I think one has to constantly think on behalf of masses and not on behalf of individuals. ... It’s criminal to think of individuals because the needs of the individual become completely weakened in the face of the needs of the human conglomeration.

This people [of Cuba] you see today tell you that even if they should disappear from the face of the earth because an atomic war is unleashed in their names ... they would feel completely happy and fulfilled if each one of you, upon reaching your lands, can say: “Here we are. Our words come moist from the Cuban jungles. We have climbed the Sierra Maestra and we have known the dawn, and our minds and our hands are full with the seed of the dawn, and we are prepared to sow it in this land and to defend it so that it flourishes.” And from all the other brother nations of America, and from our land, if it still survived as an example, the voice of the peoples will answer you, from that moment on and forever: “It shall be so: may liberty be conquered in each corner of America!”

Moderation’ is another one of the terms the colonial agents like to use,” Che said. “All those who are afraid, or who are considering some form of treason, are moderates. ... But the people are by no means moderate.”

“I became aware, then, of a fundamental fact: To be a revolutionary doctor or to be a revolutionary at all, there must first be a revolution. The isolated effort of one man, regardless of its purity of ideals, is worthless. To be useful it is essential to make a revolution as we have done in Cuba, where the whole population mobilizes and learns how to use arms and fight together. Cubans have learned how much value there is in a weapon and the unity of the people.”

At the heart of the revolution, then, was the elimination of individualism. “Individualism as such, as the isolated action of a person alone in a social environment, must disappear in Cuba. Individualism tomorrow should be the proper utilization of the whole individual to the absolute benefit of the community.” The revolution was not a “standardizer of the collective will”; rather, it was a “liberator of man’s individal capacity,” for it oriented that capacity to the service of the revolution.

How does one reconcile individual effort with the needs of society? We again have to recall what each of our lives was like, what each of us did and thought, as a doctor or in any other public health function, prior to the revolution. We have to do so with profound critical enthusiasm. And we will then conclude that almost everything we thought and felt in that past epoch should be filed away, and that a new type of human being should be created. And if each one of us is his own architect of that new human type, then creating that new type of human being—who will be the representative of the new Cuba—will be much easier.

Che castigated Jacobo Arbenz for having “given up the battle” without a fight. Leadership was a sacred duty granted to an individual “chosen” by the people on the basis of trust. It was a privilege that came with the obligation to honor that trust, if necessary, with one’s life.

“I don’t know if the Cuban revolution will survive or not,” he told Leonov. “It’s difficult to say. But if it doesn’t ... don’t come looking for me among the refugees in the embassies. I’ve had that experience, and I’m not ever going to repeat it. I will go out with a machine gun in my hand, to the barricades. ... I’ll keep fighting to the end.”

“Every action taken should be something that takes one closer to the seizure of power,” Che said, “and after the seizure of power, the goal should be the conquest of the national territory.”

“Violence is not the monopoly of the exploiters and as such the exploited can use it, too, and, what is more, ought to use it when the moment arrives. ... We should not fear violence, the midwife of new societies; but violence should be unleashed at that precise moment in which the leaders have found the most favorable circumstances. ... Guerrilla warfare is not passive self-defense; it is defense with attack. ... It has as its final goal the conquest of political power. ... The equilibrium between oligarchic dictatorship and popular pressure must be changed. The dictatorship tries to function without resorting to force. Thus we must try to oblige the dictatorship to resort to violence, thereby unmasking its true nature as the dictatorship of the reactionary social classes.”

The Congo also featured prominently in Che’s speech; just a few days earlier the Lumumbist revolutionaries had been ousted from their stronghold at Stanleyville by Belgian paratroopers flown in on American planes. Che characterized the “massacres” committed in Stanleyville as an example of “imperialist bestiality ... a bestiality which knows no frontiers nor belongs to a certain country. Just as the Hitlerian hordes were beasts, so are the Americans and Belgian paratroopers beasts today, as were yesterday the French imperialists beasts in Algeria, because it is the very nature of imperialism which bestializes man, which converts them into bloodthirsty wild animals willing to slit throats, commit murder, and destroy even the last image of a revolutionary or the ally of a regime which has fallen under its boot or struggles for his liberty.”

He then proceeded to link the “white imperialist” action in the Congo with western indifference to the apartheid regime in South Africa and the racial inequalities in the United States. “How can the country that murders its own children and discriminates between them daily because of the color of their skins, a country that allows the murderers of Negroes to go free, actually protects them and punishes the Negroes for demanding respect for their lawful rights as free human beings, claim to be a guardian of liberty?”

Not everyone was displeased with Che’s presence. Malcolm X, who had left the Nation of Islam a few months earlier and had been traveling in Africa and the Middle East, was also inflamed over the Congolese conflict, and he also equated white intervention in Africa with racism in the United States. He and Che had found a common cause. During his stop in Ghana, Malcolm X had reportedly discussed with Cuba’s ambassador in Accra the idea of recruiting black Americans to help fight in Africa’s wars.

“I love a revolutionary,” he said. “And one of the most revolutionary men in this country right now was going to come out here with our friend Sheikh Babu, but he thought better of it. But he did send this message. It says: ‘Dear brothers and sisters of Harlem. I would have liked to have been with you and Brother Babu, but the actual conditions are not good for this meeting.* Receive the warm salutations of the Cuban people and especially those of Fidel, who remembers enthusiastically his visit to Harlem a few years ago. United we will win.’ This is from Che Guevara. I’m happy to hear your warm round of applause in return because it lets the [white] man know that he’s just not in a position to tell us who we should applaud for and who we shouldn’t applaud for. And you don’t see any anti-Castro Cubans around here—we eat them up.”*

Che gave an interview to Josie Fanon, the widow of the late Martinican revolutionary Frantz Fanon, author of the fiery anticolonialist manifesto The Wretched of the Earth. The interview appeared in the magazine Révolution Africaine. Che said that Africa represented one of “the more important fields of struggle against all forms of exploitation existing in the world—against imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism.” There were, he felt, “great possibilities for success due to the existing unrest” but also many dangers, including the divisions among the Africans that colonialism had left.

I want it known that I do so with a mixture of joy and sorrow. I leave here the purest of my hopes as a builder and the dearest of my loved ones. And I leave a people who received me as a son. That wounds a part of my spirit. I carry to new battlefronts the faith that you taught me, the revolutionary spirit of my people, the feeling of fulfilling the most sacred of duties: to fight against imperialism wherever one may be. This comforts and more than heals the deepest wounds.

Nothing essential has changed, except that I am more conscious, my Marxism is deeper and more crystallized. I believe in the armed struggle as the only solution for the peoples who fight to free themselves and I am consistent with my beliefs. Many will call me an adventurer, and I am, but of a different type, of those who put their lives on the line to demonstrate their truths.

Grow up as good revolutionaries. Study hard to be able to dominate the techniques that permit the domination of nature. Remember that the Revolution is what is important and that each one of us, on our own, is worthless. Above all, try always to be able to feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world. It is the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary. Until always, little children. I still hope to see you again. A really big kiss and a hug from Papa.*

Che denied that the building of socialism meant the “abolition of the individual.” Rather, the individual was the essence of the revolution: the Cuban struggle had depended on those individuals who fought and offered their lives for it. A new notion of self, however, had emerged in the vortex of that struggle—“the heroic stage” that had been attained when those same individuals “vied to achieve a place of greater responsibility, of greater danger, and without any other satisfaction than that of fulfilling their duty. ... In the attitude of our fighters, we could glimpse the man of the future.”

Let me say, at the risk of appearing ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love. It is impossible to think of an authentic revolutionary without this quality. This is perhaps one of the greatest dramas of a leader; he must combine an impassioned spirit with a cold mind and make painful decisions without flinching one muscle. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize their love for the people, for the most sacred causes, and make it one and indivisible. They cannot descend, with small doses of daily affection, to the places where ordinary men put their love into practice. The leaders of the Revolution have children who do not learn to call their father with their first faltering words; they have wives who must be part of the general sacrifice of their lives to carry the Revolution to its destiny; their friends are strictly limited to their comrades in revolution. There is no life outside it. In these conditions, one must have a large dose of humanity, a large dose of a sense of justice and truth, to avoid falling into extremes, into cold scholasticism, into isolation from the masses. Every day we must struggle so that this love of living humanity is transformed into concrete facts, into acts that will serve as an example, as a mobilizing factor. We know that we have sacrifices ahead of us and that we must pay a price for the heroic act of constituting a vanguard as a nation. We, the leaders, know that we must pay a price for having the rig...