A Tribute
WHY
CHE GUEVARRA'S LEGACY ENDURES
by
Roland G. Simbulan*
This month of October 2007, many social reformers around the world
and Latin American governments especially, commemorate the 40th
anniversary of the death of the Argentine medical doctor and Latin
American revolutionary, Dr. Ernesto "Che" Guevarra.
Today, the presence of this bearded revolutionary heartthrob wearing
a beret with a red star not only endures in the omnipresent T-shirts,
tobacco brands, couture bags, and other souvenir items that many
Filipinos consciously, or unknowingly, wear or use .
The name "Che" continues to be an inspiration to many
Latin American governments and social movements all over the world
which have emerged and continue to defy the forces that celebrated
too soon his demise 40 years ago: Yankee imperialism and its stooges.
A colleague in the academe who visited South America in 2001 observed
that pious Catholic peasants and indigenous peoples of the Andes
mountains of South America or the Amazon even compare his charismatic
image, life and murder in the hands of CIA assassins with Jesus
Christ.
The French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre did say that Che "was
the most complete human being of our age." Today, Che's militant
battlecry continues to inspire those who resist the forces of
U.S.-led globalization that dominate the world. He was the inspiration
of our own murdered heroes Bobby de la Paz and Juan Escandor,
medical doctors who--like Che--joined and offered their lives
in the struggle for fundamental social change. During the dark
years of the Marcos dictatorship, both Filipino doctors opted
to serve the rural poor. They lived, persevered and were killed
trying to heal the social cancer and became part of the Filipino
people's struggle for national and social transformation.
Less known to many, is the fact that Che introduced in Cuba the
concept of "social medicine", where medicine becomes
a collective responsibility. In 1965, in a speech before Cuban
doctors and health workers, Che outlined his idea of social medicine:
"The battle against disease should be based on a principle
of creating a robust body -- not creating a robust body through
a doctor's artistic work on a weak organism, but creating a robust
body through the work of the whole social collectivity. One day,
medicine will have to become a science that serves the struggle
against the fundamental causes of disease and poverty. "
October 8 is the official commemoration of the death of this revolutionary
hero and icon. But according to a recent biography of Che by Mexican
journalist Paco Ignacio Taibo II, the date of his death should
be Oct. 9, because Che was still alive when captured at Quebrada
del Yuro on Oct. 8, 1967, by Bolivian Rangers and their CIA/U.S.
Green Beret advisers. He was executed on Oct. 9, according to
the eyewitness account of a Bolivian teacher at a rural schoolhouse
at the Vallegrande, where he had been brought the day before on
a stretcher. The official Bolivian government version then was
that he was already dead when captured by Bolivian government
forces on Oct. 8. But even the chief then of the Bolivian Armed
Forces, General Alfredo Ovando who was to become president of
Bolivia, later admitted that Che "died" on Oct. 9, not
on the 8th when he was captured wounded but alive.
Who
is this man whom Cuban President Fidel Castro admires so much
that when once asked how he wanted Cuban children to be, he said,
" We want them to be like Che". Who was Che Guevarra,
and why does his memory, and legacy, endure today not only in
Cuba where he helped win a revolution in 1959 with the highest
rank of Commandante of the guerrilla army of Castro's July 26th
Movement, but also among social reformers all over the world,
especially in Latin America where he remains a beloved icon? He
is now revered and honored even by Evo Morales, the first indigenous
president of Bolivia, whose government forces Che once fought
against.
After the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, where he emerged
as a brilliant theoretician of guerrilla warfare, Che was appointed
by President Fidel Castro to head key centers for the restructuring
of the Cuban economy: the National Agrarian Reform Institute and
the Industrialization Program which managed all the American companies
in Cuba that were nationalized. He later headed the National Bank
of Cuba, and subsequently served as Industry Minister. Even as
an economic manager in Cuba, Che led and showed by his example
the "New Man" that he envisioned: working voluntarily
for the "collective," emulating manual labor and forging
an inseparable bond between leaders and the masses who toil hand
in hand to build the new socialist order.
But after a few years, Che gave up the comforts that went with
being a government bureaucrat and minister. Soon it was reported
that Che Guevarra was leading a group of Cuban volunteers in support
of guerrilla struggles in Africa. Then, he decided to lead a guerrilla
foco (armed contingent) in Bolivia, a country at the very center
of Latin America straddling five countries around it, and spearheaded
the continental revolution in Latin America as an internationalist,
to create, in his own words , " two, three, four more Vietnams
against Yankee imperialism."
Today, 40 years after his death and martyrdom in the hands of
advisers and hatchetmen of the United States , Che's spirit of
struggle against injustice lives on in the hearts of those in
the South fighting the domination of U.S. imperialism and its
corporate control over the world economy. Today, it is not only
in Cuba where Che Guevarra is admired and remembered. While experiencing
devastating quagmires and quicksands in far-flung military interventions
and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is
facing a "revolt" of sorts in the Latin American continent
with the emergence of democratically elected progressive governments
in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, among others. Their
progressive national leaderships have joined hands to resist U.S.
corporate domination and U.S. militarism right in the empire's
back door--"Our America", as Che fondly called the entire
Latin American continent in his speeches and writings. There,
Che's spirit lives , entrenched and unperishable: " Many
shall perish, victims of their errors...but new fighters and new
leaders shall appear in the warmth of the revolutionary struggle."
Indeed, Che's life-long struggle and his ideals are an inspiration
for generations of progressive peoples and revolutionaries.
Che's
legacy lives on with those who defy oppression and the tyranny
of imperialism. For he professed with the example of his life
what he taught in his writings -- that every revolutionary leader
should be leading his squad in battle. Che's spirit endures because
he embodies the vigor, spirit and idealism which some of us have
lost or seem to have forgotten with time, with the fading of one's
youth. Che Guevarra's martyrdom at the hands of the Bolivian 2nd
Ranger Battalion, which was--like the Armed Forces of the Philippines--trained,
armed and advised by U.S. Special Forces (Green Berets) and the
CIA, did not end the revolutionary and progressive struggles in
Latin America. Che himself predicted this when he wrote, "Wherever
death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this,
our battlecry, may have reached some receptive ear and another
hand may be extended to wield our weapons and other men be ready
to intone the funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine
guns and new battle cries of war and victory."
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* Roland Simbulan is a Professor at the University of the Philippines
and is Senior Fellow of the Center for People Empowerment in Governance
(CenPEG). This tribute was read before students of the University
of the Philippines, Oct. 10, 2007.
