What did he do? Why was his impact so large?
Come on mate…it’s not that hard a question:
He’s the guy on my T-Shirt
:rolleyes:
He’s the bloke they named Che Stadium for.
He was Castro’s right hand man. Che was sort of Trotsky, to Castro’s Lenin. But later, Castro got sick of him, and sent Che to Argentina, where he (Che) was assassinated.
Che : The Photobiography of Che Guevara
by Christophe Loviny is a good recent book about him. He was Argentinian… I don’t know that Castro “sent” him there. Interesting guy.
[Edited by JillGat on 05-13-2001 at 06:06 PM]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/companero.htm
Companero
The Life and Death of Che Guevara
By Jorge G. Castaneda
Chapter One: Childhood, Youth, and Asthma in Argentina
A very good recent book about him is Che Guevara : A Revolutionary Life, by Jon Lee Anderson.
Briefly: Che Guevara was an argentinean medical student who became enamoured of the communist ideal, and after meeting the Castro brothers (Fidel and Raul) in Mexico, joined them in their guerilla war in Cuba. After the defeat of the Batista regime, he became an important figure in the Cuban government, spent two years in the Congo training revolutionary soldiers, and eventually went to Bolivia to lead a guerilla group, was captured and shot in 1967.
Why has he become an iconic figure? I think it’s a combination of several things:
[ul]
[li]He was well-educated, intelligent, eloquent and handsome.[/li][li]He abandoned a life of privilege to dedicate his life to a cause.[/li][li]He joined and had an important part in a successful armed insurrection, helping overthrow a corrupt and brutal regime.[/li][li]He died as a relatively young man, in circumstances that would justify his followers claiming him as a martyr (he was summarily executed.)[/ul][/li]
All in all, his life history makes him a romantic and idealistic figure. After reading Jon Lee Anderson’s book, however, I was surprised to read how ferocious and pitiless Che Guevara was in wartime circumstances. Like any historical figure, he definitely had a dark side.
Ressl, Welcome to the board. If you search you will find earlier threads. That is the first thing to do before you post a question.
And he left the relative comfort of being a high-rank Party apparatchik in a country that was one of the darlings of the worldwide left at the time, in order to keep on doing actual on-the-field revolution.
On the one hand this preserved the image of Che as the committed True Believer who wanted revolution to reach the whole world NOW.(The fact that he failed badly in both his post-Cuba revolutions being overlooked…)
OTOH, it fueled speculation that Fidel was not entirely unhappy to have Che’s butt be the one that was on the line of fire, far from Havana – thus serving as a foil to Castro in a nice little parable on the corruption of power.
**
Immediately after the revolution’s victory, he also showed that dark side: he was a key figure in the purges and executions of real and alleged former-regime supporters; and of those within the revolutionary movement itself when Fidel “came out” as a communist.