Cross Talk
The eternal Che Guevara
LAST week would have been more appropriate to write about Ernesto Che Guevara since October 9 was his death anniversary. I am late not because I forgot, but because I dithered. How should I remember a man who is larger than life? Death anniversaries only commemorate lives, which are over. But that isn't true for Che Guevara. His life has become more than before after he died.
Another twist of irony. Ernesto Che Guevara should have been laid in state after his death, thousands filing past his body for one last glimpse of the world's most indefatigable revolutionary figure. Instead, the state of his body lying in the laundry room of a hospital in Vallegrande, a Bolivian village, presented him as a trophy in a big game hunt.
The world's greatest revolutionary was lifeless, his body riddled with bullets, hands chopped off as evidence, and eyes left open in a vacuous stare. He was surrounded by people who had come not to mourn but celebrate his death.
Forty-one years after he was captured and killed, Che Guevara's memory endures, grows even stronger. In fact, he is more alive today than dead, more popular than before, more celebrated than ever. It's a negation of the pernicious scheme of his killers. They had hastily buried him in an unmarked grave to deny him any chance of martyrdom. As it happens, after all these years Che is the most adorable martyr in the world.
Jimi Hendrix is credited for saying: "Once you are dead, you are made for life." True to these words, Jimi died at 27, and he is still sorely missed by music lovers. Che lived longer than him, 39 when he died. In his fight for a better world, in his dream of erasing inequality, in his unflinching faith in the power of the peasantry, his life ended in mid-flight, an unfinished business, an aposiopesis. But he is made for life.
Perhaps there is a terrible fascination for life cut short at its prime. Perhaps it lingers like the afterglow of a bright burst. James Dean was a second-rate actor, who turned into an icon of youth after he died in a road accident at the age of 24. Buddy Holly was a gangly kid from the hick part of Texas. He became a music legend since his death in a plane crash at 22. Jim Morrison finished his earthly journey at 27, dead in a bathtub in his Paris apartment.
On the opposite side of the coin, what is the fate of heroes who live their full course of life? Marlon Brando died a bloated recluse, a pale shadow of his illustrious days. Bono was a figure of enormous sex appeal, but looks odd as an aging Irishman. What about Paul McCartney? He isn't in the news unless there is a divorce or court settlement.
What would have happened to Che Guevara? He would have been eighty years old, hairline receding, skin sagging, faltering in his walk, at best sitting in the power of a Latin American country, contemporaneous with Cuba's Fidel Castro, shuffling between life and death, between holding power and looking for succession. May be he would have moderated in his revolutionary zeal. May be he would have given up or made more mistakes.
But death has made him admirable and ageless. The image of the man, captured by photographer Alberto Korda, at a memorial service in Havana, embodies the glamour of a revolutionary at its photogenic best. No other image -- apart from the one of Marilyn Monroe standing at a subway grid -- has been reproduced as many times in history.
Che's famous likeness appears on posters, subway walls and countless consumer articles such as T-shirts, mugs, key chains, wallets and cigarette lighters all over the world, once even on a vodka bottle in Britain.
If alive, his life could have taken a different turn. He was obsessed with the peasantry, convinced that the struggle for socialism in the mainly rural countries of Latin America should be based upon their guerrilla struggles.
According to Daniel Waldron of Socialist Party in Ireland, that was the core weakness of Che's political mistakes. He was unable to see that the working class had the ability to effect social change. Che might have changed his mind, if he were around.
And he might have made more mistakes, as he had in the past. As Cuba's Minister of Economics, his policy made the Cuban peso practically worthless. During his days as Minister of Industries, a previously prosperous Cuba was rationing food, closing factories and losing productive citizens fleeing the country.
He even got appointed the governor of the central bank of Cuba by mistake. Che himself told Rene Burri, a photographer from Magnum Photos, that when asked if there was an economist in the room, he raised his hand because he thought the question was whether there was a communist in the room.
Che had already changed in his last days, increasingly hardened in his battle against imperialism and capitalism, lancing even with the Soviet Union. The asthmatic child from Argentina had become the most renegade revolutionary, despised by both superpowers. Jorge Castañeda, author of Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara, once said to a reporter of the Guardian that Castro was ready to send a rescue team to save Che, but between them US President Johnson and Soviet leader Kosygin had agreed otherwise.
It was the ultimate twist of irony that Che had first come in contact with a revolutionary situation in Bolivia, and it was in the same country that the curtain fell on his revolutionary life. In Vallegrande that irony elevated him to a supernatural position.
The people still regret that Santo (Saint) Ernesto was so brutally murdered in their village. Then they will remind you of the curse. It haunts those who killed the Saint. Six of the politicians and military officers who shared responsibility have already died violent deaths. One by one, they were either murdered or died in accidents, including President Barrientos, the man who had ordered Che's execution. He died in a helicopter crash.
In the last analysis, Che Guevara lived for what he believed. He extolled the virtue of guerilla struggle as a way to deliver the high ideals of liberating humankind from exploitation and oppression. He continues to inspire activists with the idea of self-sacrificing struggle on behalf of the downtrodden, because he died to become its "living" legend. His slogan was "Hasta La Victoria Siempre" (Towards the Eternal Victory). He will remain eternal until that victory is achieved.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments