Who was Che Guevara, Really? Cuba’s Revolutionary

Who was Che Guevara? Really? Although usually painted in the same broad strokes as other communist leaders like Fidel Castro and Joseph Stalin-part of the post-World War II drive to create an enemy strong enough to drive the American economy which stood to collapse following victory over the previous worldwide enemy, Hitler-Che Guevara was much more complex than many critics understand. To say that he was a totalitarian given to seeking broad authoritarian powers is to describe his actions in much the same that Pres. Bush could be described. But the comparison ends there.

Che Guevara was beloved by the Cubans he helped to free from the US-backed despotism of Batista. Don’t agree? Surely, you’ve heard of that messy little thing called the Bay of Pigs, right? The planned invasion to reclaim Cuba from the socialist revolutionaries and hand it back over to the American gangsters who were running it? Just one more reason why JFK should hardly be ranking high among US Presidents. The Bay of Pigs in many respects resembles the Iraq invasion under perpetrated by Pres. Bush. Both were ill-conceived because the leaders of both invasions were absolutely certain that the native peoples would welcome American imperialist aggressors with open arms, taking up the battle to demand democracy. There was only one problem as far as Cuba was concerned; there are a multitude of problems as far as Iraq is concerned.

Cubans had already had a taste of American-style democracy. And they had little to show for it. The average Cuban was enjoying a much better life after Che and Castro brought about the revolution than he had before it. Under the watchful eye of America’s gangsters, illiteracy was rampant in Cuba. Che Guevara was instrumental in bringing that rate down. Under American-style democracy many Cubans were unemployed or exploited in the jobs they did have. Che Guevara instituted economic reforms that tried to get people to work for the benefit of the country, rather than so they could make enough money to buy a new hi-fi on which to listen to the latest record by Frankie Avalon or a new color TV so they could what color Little Joe Cartwright’s vest really was.

There are those who confuse socialism with Soviet-style totalitarianism and wish to place Che Guevara in with them. What hurts this argument the most, perhaps, is that Che Guevara was the most vocal critic of the Soviet Union that could be found outside America. What some of Che’s critics fail to realize is that he was just as outspoken against Soviet collective-style economic policies as he was against American style capitalism. Boiling down Che’s worldview to communism versus capitalist is simplistic to the point of childish. In fact, Che saw that the core problem with capitalism-the false idea of property ownership leading to exploitation and alienation of the worker-was also at work in the Soviet Union. It wasn’t necessarily capitalism that Che was revolting against, it was exploitation and ownership under any system.

While it is proper to characterize Che Guevara as a revolutionary, usually the appellation is utilized in an almost pejorative sense in order to distance him as an outsider who simply get that what life is all about is the great American capitalist idea of 300 TV channels, a five-bedroom house for a childless couple, and a twenty-ton SUV for people who never drive out of the city, much less off-road. In fact, Che Guevara was a revolutionary in the truest sense of the word. He wanted to revolutionize a way of life that devalues and dismisses the human spirit. That’s not to minimize the violence he engaged in or condoned. But to blindly demonize Che’s for his violent means while holding up to admiration a man like George W. Bush who cares nothing about improving the lives of the people he claims to be helping is foolish.