Why Che Guevara?
Throughout history, there have been many socialist leaders, revolutionaries in charge of serving the people. Some of them, like Hugo Chavez, clearly intended, and achieved, the opposite. Others like Pol Pot did more damage to their nation than they did good. We also have Stalin and Mao Zedong with their massive plans for their peoples’ nations, yet still seen by the West as totalitarian dictators. But nobody exemplifies the left better than Che Guevara.
Born in 1928 in Santa Fe, Argentina to an upper-class Argentine family, Guevara developed an affinity for the poor during his childhood. He played sports, from rugby to cycling, and developed an interest in reading. After being exposed to the goalposts and checkmates of the world, and reading authors from Marx and Lenin to Jack London and Sigmund Freud, Guevara decided to go into the classy profession of medicine.
Throughout his years as a medical student, Guevara traveled from Chile to Peru to Colombia to Cuba, and while all of these places were different, there was one thing that remained the same; poverty. Guevara was quick to notice that all of these places were suffering from the same disease, death, and hunger that he had never before known of. Rather than blaming the adversity on the people who suffered them, Guevara knew that capitalism, western imperialism, and right wing dictatorship were to blame. He was convinced that he needed to quit becoming a doctor and make his career about serving the people.
In 1953, one year after his return, the new Dr. Ernesto Guevara set out again, this time to Central America. He eventually ended up in a Mexico city bar with a man none other than Fidel Castro. The Cuban Revolution was born.
Guevara boarded a ship called the Granma with 81 other revolutionaries an d set sail for Cuba. 60 of the others didn’t survive the journey or were promptly killed by the Batista regime. He was forced to retreat to Southeast Cuba, and while there, viewed more of the harsh conditions in which the people lived in.
During the Cuban Revolution, Guevara had executed several traitors, deserters, and enemy operatives within his ranks. While despised by some, this is virtually nothing compared to the 20,000 civilians, not traitors, killed by the Batista regime.
With the use of radio technology and pure strategy alone, Castro and the revolution were able to capture Havana in 1959. Castro had appointed Guevara to various posts, including Minister of Industries and Chairman of the Central Bank for a short time in the new socialist state.
Yet in 1965, Guevara traveled to the Africa, the unstable weak link of Western imperialism. Castro believed that revolutions in Africa could spark something bigger, the communist world revolution we’ve all been waiting for.
He traveled to North Africa, meeting with Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella in his last known public address. He arrived in the Congo in 1965 and was praised by a local teenager for “showing the same respect to black people that he did to whites”. The guerilla leader was weak, and along with the presence of the deadly British mercenary Mad Mike Hoare, Guevara was too scared to fight, and left Africa as a result.
Guevara next traveled to Bolivia, where he was killed by the CIA.
While Che Guevara’s life ended in 1967, his legacy continues until today.
Unlike every other socialist leader, Guevara hadn’t fought for his own power, nor to crush his opponents. Che had engaged in the revolution for one purpose and one purpose alone, to serve the people. And he rejected Stalin’s “socialism in one country” concept, because the whole world, not just Cuba, Bolivia, or Congo, is suffering under capitalism.
Guevara’s leadership in Cuba didn’t have much of a lasting effect with the end of the Cold War in 1991. In fact, it had near none of a lasting effect, for Xi Jinping certainly isn’t serving the Chinese people just as Vladmir Putin is serving Vladmir Putin. But the ideas of Che Guevara can return to our world, and that and that alone makes Dr. Ernesto Guevara the proud holder of my profile picture.
