Another View of Che

by Bernard J. Berg

This is the Che photo by Alex Korda, taken at a funeral for 136 Cubans killed in a counterrevolutionary terrorist attack in 1960.  It has been reproduced hundreds of millions of times.  Korda never received a cent.  He did sue Smirnoff Vodka in 1960 when they used the photo in an advertizing campaign.  Korda died in 1961.  (editor's note)  

Regular [Morning Call] columnist Gary Olson's February 5 op-ed on the iconic revolutionary, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, drew the termites out of the woodwork to react to his positive assessment of the legendary commandante of the Cuban revolution.  At least four writers [on the pages of the Morning Call] labeled Che a thug, murderer of innocents, terrorist, etc..  In a coincidental piece, [rightwing columnist] Jonah Goldberg wrote that Che "shouldn't be anybody's hero"  because he "was a murderer who believed that the U. S. is the great enemy of mankind."  I suppose Goldberg would say the same about Martin Luther King, Jr., who, in his Declaration of Independence From the Vietnam War (April 4, 1967) called the U. S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today..." 

That assessment has remained valid for the past 41 years.  Leon Papir, a Cuban emigre businessman in the Lehigh Valley opined that "Che's utopian dream had possibilities (but) his journey to achieve (them) was unrelentingly wrong.  Perhaps he should have finished medical school."  Hello?  Che graduated from the University of Buenos Aires in 1953 with an M.D. degree.  When he came under fire as one of Castro's surviving band enroute to the Sierra Maestra he had a split second to opt to grab a first-aid kit or a box of ammo.  He took the latter in a defining moment for his future. One writer criticized Che for leaving his wife and children's welfare to the State while he went off to foment revolution in Bolivia.  In the writer's opinion this was "not exactly the sentiments of a passionate individual struggling for social justice and a better world." 

On the contrary, this was precisely the sentiment required.  As Che said, "I will carry to new battle fields... the fight against imperialism wherever it is to be found.  I leave no material goods to my wife and children...and I do not regret it.  I am glad it is so.  I ask nothing for them...the State will provide for their needs and their education." (Jon Lee Anderson, CHE GUEVARA, A REVOLUTIONARY LIFE).  Imagine that!  A government actually being responsible for the welfare of its people! 

Readers might consider these other opinions about Che's character:  "Che was the most complete human being of our age."-  Jean-Paul Sartre;  "Che's life had the unique virtue of impressing even his worst ideological enemies and making them admire him...Che did not die defending any interest or cause other than that of the exploited and downtrodden of this continent...even his worst enemies have not dared to suggest otherwise."-Fidel Castro; "The death of Che Guevara brought a sense of grief and disappointment to people who had no Marxist sympathies.  He represented the idea of gallantry, chivalry and adventure in a world more and more given up to business arrangements between the great world powers..."

Graham Greene In Anderson's book related an incident early on that revealed that Ché was no Boy Scout.  For him (Che), the end definitely justified the means.  A "compañero" had betrayed the location of the fledgling group of guerillas who had survived the disastrous landing of the Granma, and had made their way up into the Sierra Maestra.  Fidel ordered that the hapless turncoat be executed.  While he and his brother Raul hemmed and hawed over who should do it, Che picked up a .32 pistol and put a bullet through his head.  Then he clinically described the exit wound as would a coroner. 

Anderson tells us that "Che's 'Message To The Tricontinental" written on the eve of his departure from Cuba..."appealed to the revolutionaries everywhere to create 'two, three, many Vietnams' as part of an international war against imperialism."  Che questioned the validity of the so-called "peace" of the unjust post-WWII world, and called for a "long and cruel" global confrontation to bring about the 'destruction' of imperialism in order to foster a 'Socialist revolution' as the new world order.  "And in a litany of the qualities that would be required for this battle, he cited 'hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy impelling us above and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to, and transforming him into an effective, violent, seductive and cold killing machine.  Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy."(op.cit.) 

Betrayed by the Bolivian Communist Party, cut off from supplies, unable to build up an army from the reluctant ranks of the peasantry, Ché was wounded in a gun battle in the dense bush of Bolivia on October 8, 1967, and executed the following day on orders from the Bolivian high command, relayed by Bucks County CIA operative, Felix Rodriguez, who was on the scene. Che's legacy could not be put in any better words than those of the U. S.'s own Teddy Roosevelt: "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood... who spends himself in a worthy cause.  Who in the end knows the triumph of high achievement and if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.  So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." Che's body lay on public display in the lalundry room of Vallegrande hospital in Bolivia.  Hundreds of the curious filed past.  The nuns at the hospital thought he resembled Jesus Christ.  Dead?  As Graham Greene put it, "a legend is impervious to bullets."