(Rosario, Argentina, 1928 - Higueras, Bolivia, 1967) Latin American revolutionary. Together with Fidel Castro, whose movement he joined in 1956, he was one of the main architects of the triumph of the Cuban revolution (1959). He later held positions of great relevance in the new government, but, dissatisfied with the ineffectiveness of the offices and faithful to his purpose of extending the revolution to other Latin American countries, in 1966 he resumed his guerrilla activity in Bolivia, where he would be captured and executed a year later.
Thus, Che Guevara became the greatest revolutionary myth of the twentieth century, having given his life in the struggle against imperialism and dictatorship. He was immediately an icon of the youth of May '68, and his figure has remained as a timeless symbol of ideals of freedom and justice that, like the heroes of yesteryear, he considered more valuable than life itself. Even today, in protest actions, that profile of him based on Alberto Korda's famous photograph is still frequently exhibited.
Biography
Ernesto Che Guevara was born into a well-to-do family in Argentina, where he studied medicine. His leftist militancy led him to participate in the opposition against Juan Domingo Perón; from 1953 he traveled through Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and Guatemala, discovering the dominant misery among the masses of Latin America and the omnipresence of North American imperialism in the region, and participating in multiple protest movements, experiences that inclined him definitively towards Marxism.
In 1955 Ernesto Che Guevara met Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl Castro in Mexico, who were preparing a revolutionary expedition to Cuba. Guevara befriended the Castros, joined the group as a doctor and disembarked with them in Cuba in 1956. Once the guerrillas were installed in Sierra Maestra, Guevara became Fidel's lieutenant and commanded one of the two columns that left the eastern mountains to the west to conquer the island. He participated in the decisive battle for the capture of Santa Clara (1958) and finally entered Havana in 1959, putting an end to the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
The triumph of the revolution, carried out with scarce means, was facilitated by the unsustainable situation of the country in those years. Despite registering the highest per capita income in Latin America, wealth was concentrated in few hands; this very strong social imbalance was repeated in the marked contrasts between the countryside and the city. On the political level, corruption, clientelistic mechanisms and ineffectiveness had been accentuated to unsuspected limits under the despotic and authoritarian regime of Fulgencio Batista; his government managed to bring together against him the most disparate sectors of opinion and interests. The Cuban economy, extremely conditioned by the presence of the United States, was based on tourism in urban areas and on a capitalist agriculture that had generated a large rural proletariat, a determining factor in the revolutionary process.
From revolution to politics
The new revolutionary government granted Guevara Cuban nationality and appointed him head of the Militia and director of the Agrarian Reform Institute (1959), then president of the National Bank and Minister of Economy (1960), and finally Minister of Industry (1961). In those years, Guevara represented Cuba in several international forums, where he denounced U.S. imperialism head-on. In a trip around the world he met Gamal Abdel Nasser, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sukarno and Josip Broz Tito (1959); in another trip he met several Soviet leaders and the Chinese Zhou EnLai and Mao Zedong.
In the task of building a new society in Cuba, and especially in the field of economy, Che Guevara was one of the most tireless collaborators of Fidel Castro. In the economic plan that took place at the beginning of the new government, he opted for an original, creative and non-bureaucratic and non-institutionalized interpretation of Marxist principles. Seeking a path for the real independence of Cuba, he strove for the industrialization of the country, linking it to the help of the Soviet Union, once the attempted invasion of the island by the United States had failed and the socialist character of the Cuban revolution had been clarified (1961).
His restlessness as a professional revolutionary, however, made him secretly leave Cuba in 1965 and go to the Congo, where he fought in support of the revolutionary movement in progress, convinced that only armed insurrectional action was effective against imperialism.
In Bolivia
Released from his positions in the Cuban State, Che Guevara returned to Latin America in 1966 to launch a revolution that he hoped would be continental in scope: valuing the strategic position of Bolivia, he chose that country as a center of operations to install a guerrilla movement that could spread its influence to Argentina, Chile, Peru, Brazil and Paraguay. At the head of a small group he tried to put into practice his theory, according to which it was not necessary to wait for social conditions to produce a popular insurrection, but that armed action itself could create the conditions for a revolutionary movement to be unleashed; such ideas were collected in his book La guerra de guerrillas (1960).
However, his action did not catch on among the Bolivian masses. From the beginning his group, baptized as the National Liberation Army and composed of Cuban veterans of the Sierra Maestra and some Bolivian communists, encountered a lack of support from the peasants, who were completely alienated from the movement. Without any popular support in the rural world, and without support in the big cities due to the rejection of the communist political organizations, the possibilities of success diminished drastically.
Isolated in a jungle region where he suffered the aggravation of his asthmatic ailment, Ernesto Guevara was betrayed by local peasants and fell into an ambush by the Bolivian army in the Valle Grande region, where he was wounded and captured on October 8, 1967. Since Che had already become a symbol for young people around the world, the Bolivian military, advised by the CIA, wanted to destroy the revolutionary myth, assassinating him and then exposing his corpse, photographing him and burying him in secret. In 1997 the remains of Che Guevara were located, exhumed and transferred to Cuba, where they were buried with full honors by Fidel Castro's government.
"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality."
- Che Guevara
Che guevara internet archive :caught-in-4che:
Statement by Mr. Che Guevara (Cuba) before the United Nations General Assembly on 11 December 1964 :che-cigar:
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That is why, comrades of the Revolution, we must firmly look to the future and with determination; That is why we should look with optimism at the future. And we will always look to Che's example for inspiration, inspiration in struggle, inspiration in tenacity, inspiration in intransigence against the enemy and inspiration in internationalist sentiment!
That's why we tonight, after this impressive demonstration, after this incredible -for its magnitude, for its discipline and for its devotion- massive demonstration of acknowledgement, which shows how this is a sensitive people, which shows how this is a grateful people, which shows how this people knows how to honor the memory of the brave men who fall in combat, that shows how this people knows how to recognize those who serve them, that demonstrates how this people stands in solidarity with the revolutionary struggle , how this people will always raise and maintain the revolutionary flags and the revolutionary principles aloft; today, in these moments of remembrance, we raise our thoughts and, with optimism in the future, with absolute optimism in the definitive victory of the peoples, let us say to Che, and with him the heroes who fought and fell with him: Ever onward to victory!
Homeland or Death!
We will be victorious!
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All of this ongoing lemmy stuff has extreme levels of different groups of kids spying on each others' treehouses energy
Guys guys I saw them doing authoritarianism
I know I love it. I haven't had this much fun since I was getting in fireworks fights when I was eleven (the fire department only came once).
Going to be taking a break from the internet for a while. Posting is fun and all but I think it's been having a negative effect on my mental health
My dog doesn't care about climate change or the declining rate of profit. She just lies around, makes grumbling noises occasionally and wags her tail if you rub her belly.
I'm becoming a marxist-labradorist.
sometimes we all need to forget about the economy and have a nice belly rub
CHE? Please. He was a tankie that committed genocide. Read a book..:the-democrat:
Sorry comrade. It sucks when hellworld intrudes on the little moments of joy.
seeing the responses that have been generated by just the increased awareness of Lemmy, I'm really starting to think fedratin' is a good move
The "tankies" conversation has already spurned more theory and history to be shared just internally than I've seen in a while. Yes, it will alter the site's composition. Yes, the 'vibe' of the community will change in response. But... those things were already changing (have already changed, and will change -- regardless of federation). There is no default, no "static". No way to stand still. As it stands, we were (are) just a little internet bubble, gloming on to much larger conversations happening in larger websites, playing our discordant notes for... just ourselves, really. And that's fine. If you prefer it that way, that's OK -- voice it, let people know! Personally, I think lemmy offers us a chance to participate in fresher, organic conversations. I think there's more opportunity to share and learn that way. And there's still a degree of separation between us and the rad-libs, we'll have lemmygrad between us and them in the "federated chain".
We’ve grown soft since banning everyone who ever engaged too hard in a struggle session, we need to be tempered in the fire of bullying Libs
Our blades have grown dull and rusted in their metaphoric scabbards. We must alight our metaphorical horses and sweep down from the metaphorical hills and engage in metaphorical combat to remember what it means to metaphorically be a warrior.
Lemmy instances think we do a heckin authoritarianismerino
The singer from the gig keeps bugging me to talk about the gig but she burnt the bridge by treating me like an idiot when i needed help with directions to the non gps-able venue. I'm not going to give you free advice and my kindness when you cant even do me one small nice thing.
She was awful on the gig and her shittiness came out multiple times since she booked us. Also, shes a small business owner i found out, which makes sense on why she wanted to nickle and dime us the entire way through.
Bug eyed ass lady i can see why everyone runs from her
Honestly I'm thinking of just packing it in and making my band the recording solo project again that it started out as. I have no patience these days for shows, or hell, even other musicians.
Kinda gross that we’re platforming this genocidal maniac with a stickied thread. Do better.
Exterminating the mafioso ethnicity in Cuba was one of the great crimes of the 20th century
Murdering all the assassins and torturers in Cuba as a joke was not okay.
Find documentary about cool mushrooms: :)
It's all about new age spiritualist shit: :(
I wanted to literally hear about cool and weird mushrooms, not listen to a beardy hippy guy babble about magic mushrooms and traditional medicines in a vaguely orientalist fashion.
Hate that shit. Mycorrhizal network! Cool! Chemical signalling and apparently mutually beneficial symbiotic relationships between different species! Mutualist survival strategies! Wait... wait... oh no. Oh no he's talking about healing the human subconscious and higher vibrational frequencies. Oh no. I have been bamboozled.
Thinking about when people clapped like seals for the line “Putin’s cockholster”
Colbert's skewering of Bush at the 2006 WHCD feels like millions of years ago
can't wait for Bush to be a guest on Colbert's current show that'll be some real :rust-darkness: shit