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It's been over 30 years since a man called "Che" was captured, tortured and killed by Bolivian troops at the behest of their US and CIA paymasters. Over 30 years later, and still the man is held in the highest regard as a revolutionary who saw the entire world as his home, and every place where there was oppressed as his field of battle. He was born Ernesto "Che" Guevara in 1928 in Argentina, and as he grew to manhood in the political ferment of the 40's, he yearned for a united Latin America that could resist the economic, political, and military domination of the US. He entered medical school, and during those years traveled throughout the continent, in Chile, Peru, Bolivia and other countries, before getting his degree in 1953. It would be his travels, rather than his formal schooling, that affected and influenced him the most. "Che" saw a continent locked in poverty and misery, under the thumb of the US, her corporations and the CIA. He saw, in country after country, how the US bought government and military leaders off, to protect American corporate "interests" (profits). He would later explain, "I began to look into what I needed to be a revolutionary doctor. I was then in Guatemala. However, the aggression came, the aggression unleashed by the United Fruit Co., the [US] State Department, [former US Secretary of State (1952-59)] John Foster Dulles, and the puppet then put in named Castillo Armas. "Then I realized one fundamental thing: to be a revolutionary doctor or to be a revolutionary, there must first be a revolution." This revelation pushed Che to make an historic decision: to join Cuba's Fidel Castro in launching a revolutionary war against the Batista government, a guerrilla war built in the countryside against the center, in which he served as a gifted commander. The Cuban Revolution triumphed on Jan. 1, 1959, and a month thereafter Che was proclaimed a Cuban citizen "by birth." His revolutionary example, and sacrifice endeared him to millions. But, Che was by nature an internationalist, who saw revolution as the only situation to global suffering and poverty, and oppression. After the CIA-ordered killing of Congo Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, it was Che and 100 other Cuban volunteers who turned up in the Congo to help defend the revolutionaries. The CIA and Western Capital backed Mobutu, and plunged the Congo into 30 years of dictatorship and exploitation. Shortly before his Bolivia adventure, Che wrote an historic message that echoed around the planet, that reflected his profoundly internationalist revolutionary spirit: "Let us develop genuine proletarian internationalism with international proletarian armies. Let the flag under which we fight be the sacred cause of the liberation of humanity, so that to die under the colors of Vietnam, Venezuela, Guatemala, Laos, Guinea, Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil—will be equally glorious and desirable for a Latin American, an Asian, an African, and even a European." Over 30 years after his execution by Bolivian troops, his words still ring with a unique power: "Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear, if another hand reaches out to take up our arms." Ernesto "Che" Guevara remains, across the bridge of time a Cuban and a global inspiration. MAJ1997 ©1997 by Mumia Abu-Jamal |
A Man Called "Che"