Forty years after his assassination, Ernesto "Che" Guevara remains ubiquitous. His image is familiar to everyone. Taken by Alberto Korda, the famous photo of Che shows a young revolutionary looking into the middle-distance with an expression of intense, steely determination. The image has come to symbolise the struggle for Third Wold independence, and is synonymous with the Cuban Revolution, which overthrew a US-backed dictator to institutionalise people's power.
Now, Che's presence is looming even greater, as the advancement of socialism in Latin America rises to challenge the widely heralded defeat of alternatives to capitalism following the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Che's leadership role in the Cuban Revolution β which has survived despite a concerted campaign of US aggression since 1959 β has inspired many by demonstrating that an alternative to the inequality of capitalism is possible, and that a fight for justice is winnable. However it was Che's involvement in a failed revolutionary movement, in Guatemala in the mid-1950s, that became the watershed in his development as a revolutionary socialist and contributor to socialist thought.
Che travelled to Guatemala hoping to learn more about the leftist government of Jacobo Arbenz, which had carried out a series of land reforms in 1952 that aimed to end the latifundia system (large estates belonging to semi-feudal landowners), and in 1953, threatened to nationalise some of the property of the mammoth United Fruit Company, undermining the power of the wealthy elite and US business owners and opening up some political space for the poor majority. Che described Guatemala as a country where one could breath "the most democratic air" in Latin America.
Che's analysis of the political conditions in revolutionary Guatemala was that an invasion by the US to overthrow Arbenz was inevitable, as evidenced by the mounting, covert activities of the CIA as part of "Operation Success". This operation was aimed at creating a situation of general political unrest and anxiety, and assembling, training and arming a militia group called the "Liberation Army", led by exile Castillo Armas, to execute a coup. The US had long demonstrated its willingness to intervene in "hemispheric threats", that is, to use military force to crush uprisings of the popular power that threatened their interests in the continent. The dictatorships of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba and Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua were proof of this.
It became evident to Che that in order to defeat this imminent invasion, it was necessary to organise a defensa popular (people's army) to defend the sovereignty of Guatemala against a CIA-backed military coup. This people's military uprising to reject the US would necessitate the involvement of the majority of Guatemalans, and lead to an explicitly socialist revolution in the country. To this end, Che joined an armed people's militia organised by the Communist Youth, but was unable to participate in its activities.
The Arbenz government proved resistant to arming the population, and the CIA's mounting destabilisation campaign reached a head in July 1954, when Arbenz was forced to resign. In the following period, those connected with Arbenz were hunted and arrested, and Arbenz was replaced by Armas. Some 100,000 people were murdered and civil war ensued for decades.
Che identified the Catholic Church and the mainstream press as some of the culprits in the tragedy, but emphasised the failure of Arbenz to "arm the people" as a critical factor.
These formative experiences led to Che's identification of imperialism as the foe of the oppressed. He concluded that without challenging the division of society into those who own and exploit and profit, and those who labour for their living, and without challenging the subordination and dependence of the Third World on the US, and creating genuine popular participation in exercising power, real equality cannot be attained.
In a message to the Tricontinental solidarity organisation based in Havana, having left Cuba in 1965 to attempt to work to extend the revolution to other parts of the Third World, that was publicly released in April 1967, Che said that "We must keep in mind that imperialism is a world system, the final stage of capitalism, and that it must be beaten in a great worldwide confrontation" in which mass movements would aim for "the real liberation of peoples, a liberation that will be the result of armed struggle in the majority of cases". The experience of Guatemala had demonstrated to Che that the US, and its allies in the Third World who also have interests in protecting the private ownership of wealth and resources, would not relinquish their power and profits willingly, and would resort to violent and undemocratic means to preserve them.
The Guatemalan experience implanted the concept of internationalism into Che's mind, also, as the best way of combating the "common enemy" imperialism β "There are no borders in this struggle", he said in Havana in 1960. "We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, because a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory, just as any country's defeat is a defeat for all of us." He specifically called for unity in Latin America, saying in 1963, "In all countries where oppression reached intolerable proportions, the banner of rebellion must be raised; and this banner of historical necessity will have a continental character."
In this way, self-determination, indigenous rights, natural resources β the things that had been trampled by the colonisers β could be strengthened and rehabilitated through struggle by disinherited peoples. It was this internationalist sentiment that led Che to participate in socialist struggles all over Latin America, most successfully in Cuba.
Further, Che realised that the oppressed must organise themselves, and that they cannot rely on any capitalist government, even a progressive one like Arbenz's, to provide this independent organisation.
This conclusion was compounded by Che's experience working as a doctor on health brigades for part of his stay. As documented in letters in Jon Lee Anderson's biography Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, witnessing the horrific "misery, hunger, disease" created by colonialism and now imperialism, along with his assessment of the specific political conditions of Guatemala, triggered a shift in Che's social conscience. He re-evaluated his ambitions, which were initially to become "a famous researcher", and found that his personal fulfilment now lay in his contribution to the revolutionary movement as a whole.
Che began to formulate the idea of a "revolutionary doctor" β who would not merely seek to cure the ailments of individual patients (which would inevitably resurface), but who would aim to practice "social medicine", to cure all social as well as health blights and raise the class consciousness of the people.
In a speech in Havana in 1960, Che outlined his concept of the "new man", saying that "a new type of human being should be created". This new person would be someone who would feel motivated to work for the benefit of society, and not for profit, and who, in this way, would reconcile the pursuit of their individual goals with the needs of society. In a letter to the Urugauyan paper Marcha in 1965, Che considered "the individual's quality of incompleteness, of being an unfinished product". To Che, involvement in the revolutionary movement was both exhilarating and intellectually stimulating, and socially useful β or rather, necessary. What better application of one's creativity, skills and intelligence than to aid the creation of a just world?
Che is still important. And his ideas and legacy still resonate with millions of people who have been inspired by his lasting image of boldness and rebellion, his example of uncompromising struggle against injustice and exploitation, and his commitment to equality through transferring power to the poor. His spirit cannot be contained in a T-shirt. It is exploding onto the streets of Latin America at this moment.
When the youth of Venezuela organise the implementation of social programs to provide health and education to their country's poor, or the young people of Cuba facilitate their country's national elections later this year, or even when students in Australia resist intimidation to protest against the head of the world's biggest imperialist power, George Bush, they are following Che's example β recognising that a better world is possible, and actively fighting for it.
This is why Che's posthumous mystification and iconoclasm is deeply ironic β Che was not a consumerist or an idealist. He was a citizen of the world who brought the fight for social justice into every aspect of his life. His revolutionary ideals remain exemplary, still, to generations of people across the globe. This is why the CIA murdered him in Bolivia on October 9, 1967. The US attempted to murder Che's ideas and his examples. But it failed.
Resistance to injustice, and most importantly, challenges to US capitalist dominance are rising, and succeeding, and Che's lessons about the nature of imperialism, the necessity of independent working class organisation and the role of the individual in constructing socialism are guiding them.
[Lauren Carroll Harris is a member of Resistance.]