Famous Argentinian Marxist revolutionary who played an important role in the Cuban
Revolution, and through a firm internationalist perspective attempted to help promote
revolutions throughout the world. While in many respects a great and appropriately honored
revolutionary, some of his political views and theories were seriously wrong, and even led to
disaster both for others and himself. (See: FOCO
THEORY.)In 1951 Che took a year off from his medical studies and travelled around South America on a motorcycle. He later wrote up his experiences in his Motorcycle Diaries, eventually made into a well-known and excellent film. Che was transformed by the horrible poverty and conditions of the people that he saw on this trip, and soon came to understand that the great inequalities of wealth in Latin America were due to the domination of capitalism, neocolonialism and imperialism. He graduated with a medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires in 1953.
Che participated in the social reform program of the government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala, and the 1954 CIA-organized overthrow of that democratically elected government further radicalized him.
Che met Fidel Castro in Mexico and joined his 26th of July Movement. He was with Castro in December 1956 when they “invaded” Cuba and then set up guerrilla operations in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Che played an important leading role in the two years of low-level guerrilla warfare in Cuba. This guerrilla warfare was one of the factors that led to the collapse of the Batista dictatorship around January 1, 1959.
Che also played an important role in the first years of the Cuban revolutionary government. He served at various times as Minister of Industry, president of the national bank, and a high-level Cuban diplomat. He played an important role in agreeing to bring Soviet nuclear-armed missiles to Cuba, about which President John F. Kennedy and U.S. imperialism came very close to starting a nuclear world war.
While Castro tended to lean toward Soviet revisionist ideology (as well as toward the Soviet Union for economic support and military protection), Che was more ambivalent and on a few questions took a position closer to that of Maoism. Che always firmly upheld the need for revolutionary armed struggle, though it seems he did not fully appreciate the importance of the peasantry in Third World countries. However, for him moral incentives under socialism were much more important than material incentives. He argued that it was necessary to work toward forging a new political consciousness, or toward creating a “new man”, as a means of promoting socialist production, whereas revisionists typically argue that production must be hugely expanded first before any progress toward creating a “new man” can be achieved (or even be seriously attempted).
Perhaps partly because of the intensifying Sino-Soviet split and Castro’s siding with the revisionists, Che gradually became more and more disatisfied with his role in the Cuban government. Finally, in 1965 he resigned from all roles in that government and first headed off to the Congo (Kinshasa) in Africa to participate in revolutionary guerrilla warfare there. After that failed, he headed to South America, and made another attempt at his foco strategy in Bolivia. This failed even more disastrously. In 1967 Che was captured by the Bolivian Army (with the help of the CIA), and was then secretly tortured and executed. It was the sad end to the life of a sincere and dedicated revolutionary.
But even in death, Che Guevara still serves the world revolution as an honored and respected martyr. He is perhaps as famous and influential today as he has been at any time since the late 1960s.
See also the important 1985 essay, “Guevara, Debray, and Armed Revisionism”, by Lenny Wolff, at http://www.bannedthought.net/Cuba-Che/Guevara/Guevara-Debray-Wolff.pdf for a strongly critical appraisal of Che, Régis Debray, and focoism.