Che Guevara - Legacy

Legacy

"The discovery of Che's remains metonymically activated a series of interlinked associations – rebel, martyr, rogue figure from a picaresque adventure, savior, renegade, extremist – in which there was no fixed divide among them. The current court of opinion places Che on a continuum that teeters between viewing him as a misguided rebel, a coruscatingly brilliant guerrilla philosopher, a poet-warrior jousting at windmills, a brazen warrior who threw down the gauntlet to the bourgeoisie, the object of fervent paeans to his sainthood, or a mass murderer clothed in the guise of an avenging angel whose every action is imbricated in violence – the archetypal Fanatical Terrorist."

— Dr. Peter McLaren, author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution

Over forty-five years after his execution, Che's life and legacy still remains a contentious issue. The contradictions of his ethos at various points in his life have created a complex character of unending duality, one who was "able to wield the pen and submachine gun with equal skill", while prophesizing that "the most important revolutionary ambition was to see man liberated from his alienation." Guevara's paradoxical standing is further complicated by his array of seemingly diametrically opposed qualities. A secular humanist and sympathetic practitioner of medicine who didn't hesitate to shoot his enemies, a celebrated internationalist leader who abdicated violence to enforce a utopian philosophy of the collective good, an idealistic intellectual who loved literature but refused to allow reactionary dissent, an anti-imperialist Marxist insurgent who was radically willing to forge a poverty-less new world on the apocalyptic ashes of the old one, and finally, an outspoken anti-capitalist whose image has been expropriated and commoditized; Che's history continues to be rewritten and re-imagined.

An array of notable individuals have lauded Guevara as a hero; for example, Nelson Mandela referred to him as "an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom", while Jean-Paul Sartre described him as "not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age". Others who have expressed their admiration include authors Graham Greene, who remarked that Che "represented the idea of gallantry, chivalry, and adventure", and Susan Sontag, who expounded that " goal was nothing less than the cause of humanity itself." In the black community, philosopher Frantz Fanon professed Guevara to be "the world symbol of the possibilities of one man", while Black Panther Party head Stokely Carmichael eulogized that "Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us." Praise has been reflected throughout the political spectrum, with the libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard extolling Guevara as a "heroic figure", lamenting after his death that "more than any man of our epoch or even of our century, was the living embodiment of the principle of revolution", while journalist Christopher Hitchens commented that " death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do—fought and died for his beliefs." Sociologist Michael Löwy contends that the many-facets of Guevara's life (i.e. doctor and economist, revolutionary and banker, military theoretician and ambassador, deep thinker and political agitator) illuminated the rise of the "Che myth", allowing him to be invariably crystallized in his many metanarrative roles as a "Red Robin Hood, Don Quixote of communism, new Garibaldi, Marxist Saint Just, Cid Campeador of the Wretched of the Earth, Sir Galahad of the beggars... and Bolshevik devil who haunts the dreams of the rich, (while) kindling braziers of subversion all over the world."

Conversely, Jacobo Machover, an exiled opposition author, dismisses the hero-worshipping and portrays him as a ruthless executioner. Former Cuban prisoner Armando Valladares echoes similar sentiments, declaring Che "a man full of hatred" while accusing him of executing dozens who never stood trial. Alvaro Vargas Llosa of The Independent Institute has hypothesized that Guevara’s contemporary followers "delude themselves by clinging to a myth", while describing Guevara as "Marxist Puritan" who employed his rigid power to suppress dissent, while also operating as a "cold-blooded killing machine". Llosa has also accused Guevara's "fanatical disposition" as being the linchpin of the "Sovietization" of the Cuban revolution, speculating that he possessed a "total subordination of reality to blind ideological orthodoxy". Detractors have further theorized that Che-inspired revolutions in much of Latin America had the practical result of reinforcing brutal militarism and internecine conflict for many years. Hoover Institution research fellow William Ratliff places Guevara as a creation of his historical environment, referring to him as a "fearless" and "head-strong Messiah-like figure", who was the product of a martyr-enamored Latin culture which "inclined people to seek out and follow paternalistic miracle workers." Ratliff speculates that the economic conditions in the region suited Guevara's commitment to "bring justice to the downtrodden by crushing centuries-old tyrannies"; describing Latin America as being plagued by what Moisés Naím referred to as the "legendary malignancies" of inequality, poverty, dysfunctional politics and malfunctioning institutions. In his own assessment of Guevara, British historian Hugh Thomas opines that Che was a "brave, sincere and determined man who was also obstinate, narrow, and dogmatic." At the end of his life, according to Thomas, "he seems to have become convinced of the virtues of violence for its own sake", while "his influence over Castro for good or evil" grew after his death, as Fidel took up many of his views. In Thomas' assessment, "As in the case of Martí, or Lawrence of Arabia, failure has brightened, not dimmed the legend."

Meanwhile, Guevara remains a beloved national hero to many in Cuba, where his image adorns the $3 Cuban peso and school children begin each morning by pledging "We will be like Che." In his homeland of Argentina, where high schools bear his name, numerous Che museums dot the country, which in 2008 unveiled a 12-foot (3.7 m) bronze statue of him in the city of his birth, Rosario. Additionally, Guevara has been sanctified by some Bolivian campesinos as "Saint Ernesto", to whom they pray for assistance. In stark contrast, Guevara remains a hated figure amongst many in the Cuban exile and Cuban-American community of the United States, who view him with animosity as "the butcher of La Cabaña". Despite this polarized status, a high-contrast monochrome graphic of Che's face, created in 1968 by Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick, has become one of the world's most universally merchandized and objectified images, found on an endless array of items, including T-shirts, hats, posters, tattoos, and bikinis, ironically contributing to the consumer culture Guevara despised. Yet, he still remains a transcendent figure both in specifically political contexts and as a wide-ranging popular icon of youthful rebellion.