His figure stares out at you from t-shirts, coffee mugs and posters, jingles at the end of key rings and jewelry, pops up in rock songs and operas and art shows. His hippie hair and wispy revolutionary beard, the perfect postmodern conduit to the nonconformist, seditious '60s, that disruptive past confined to gesture and fashion! He is ardently followed by many even worshipped by the masses. He remains the potent symbol of rebellion and the alluring zeal of revolution. Amidst all the hype this apotheosis of his image has been accompanied by a parallel disappearance of the real man, swallowed by the myth…..I am talking about THE man who had the courage and audacity to take on the mighty Americans to stand for what he truly and firmly believed in….the revolutionary….the reformist….the rebel…CHE GUEVARA
The legend of Che began in the erstwhile jungles of Argentina. The obscure Argentine doctor abandoned his profession and his native land to pursue the emancipation of the poor of the earth.He left his native land after being moved by the plight of the Cubans and along with a handful of others he had a dream of the mad mission of invading Cuba and overthrowing the dictator. A bit over two years later, after a guerrilla campaign in which Guevara displayed such outrageous bravery and skill that he was named comandante, the insurgents entered Havana and launched what was to become the first and only victorious socialist revolution in the Americas.His men were battered and bruised but not down and out.What ensued was mythical and to an extent miraculous.Che stood like a titan in front of the mighty American backed dictator thereby frightening it to its very core.And then he was transformed into a moral guru; a messiah who cared for the injured and emancipated the poor while continuing the struggle against oppression and tyranny.
His execution in Vallegrande at the age of 39 only enhanced Guevara's mythical stature. That Christ-like figure laid out on a bed of death with his uncanny eyes almost about to open; those fearless last words "Shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man" .With this the revolution surged with thousands thronging to the streets chanting -No lo vamos a olvidar! (We won't let him be forgotten.)This led to wave after wave of aftershocks and his killers feared him more after he was dead than when he had been alive!
More than 40 years have passed, and the dead hero has indeed persisted in collective memory, but not exactly in the way the majority of us would have anticipated. Che has become ubiquitous; but all that he stood for has been forgotten. He has been transformed into a symbol which is just cool. This erasure of complexity is the normal fate of any icon. More paradoxical is that the humanity that worships Che has by and large turned away from just about everything he believed in. The future he predicted has not been kind to his ideals or his ideas. Back in the '60s, it was presumed that his self-immolation would be commemorated by social action, the downtrodden rising against the system. But the collapse of communism and rise of the very power he fought against has only compounded the problem. He was branded a fanatic, a militant, an insurgent and even a terrorist. His name was publicly cringed upon until a decade ago. Gone is the generous Che who tended wounded enemy soldiers, gone is the vulnerable warrior who wanted to curtail his love of life lest it make him less effective in combat and gone also is the darker, more turbulent Che who signed orders to execute prisoners in Cuban jails without a fair trial.
For what remains is just the myth! They are there, always there, the terrifying conditions of injustice and inequality that led Che many decades ago to start his journey toward that bullet and that photo awaiting him in Bolivia. They continue to haunt millions who cannot even afford a square meal a day and spend their nights under the starry night. The young of the world grasp that the man whose poster beckons from their walls cannot be that irrelevant, this secular saint ready to die because he could not tolerate a world where the displaced and dislocated of history, would be eternally relegated to its vast margins. . So somewhere in the world among us lies a Che Guevara who would rise once his level of tolerance is breached. Perhaps in the world of incessantly shifting identities the the fantasy of an adventurer who changed countries and crossed borders and broke down limits without once betraying his basic loyalties provides the restless youth of our era with a rationale and direction by appealing to their sensibilities and questioning their moral beliefs. And as Mr. Ariel Dorfman puts “The powerful of the earth should take heed: deep inside that T shirt where we have tried to trap him, the eyes of Che Guevara are still burning with impatience.”
Peace be with you Che…….You will live forever in our hearts!
Prologue:I have written this as i was appalled to know that while so many proudly flaunt their Che tees no one actually knows who he is.
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