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Che

Benicio Del Toro

“It is better to die standing, than to live on your knees.” – Che Guevara

I cannot help but think of those “grand old white men” who gave us those wonderful words found in the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights. I cannot help but wonder how fast they would have turned their horses around to burn these documents had they known what they were going to unleash. The slave that they had defined as 3/5th human would hear these words and say they are talking about us. We fought a war over the fact that many Americans did not believe in their hearts that all men are created equal, that the black man is equal to the white man in his creation. It would take another 100 years after that to rub this stain out of the nation’s carpet. As hard as they tried, they could not turn that pony around. Women took those words to their bosom and informed men that they were writing about them too. It was not until the 20th century that women would get to leave the kitchen to vote and we are still debating what these words mean. Can’t turn that pony around. Homosexuals heard these words too, and even though the right-wing is still trying to define them as 3/5th human, even trying to push politicians to change the Constitution to stand in the way of our gay brothers and sisters right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These walls of hatred are starting to crumble. Fifty years from now the arguments against gay marriage will sound as hallow as the same arguments made about interracial marriage half a century ago. As hard as they try, no one is going to able to stand in the way of that pony.

This idea of justice, this light of freedom, not only freed those individuals that those “grand old white men” tried to keep chained, but others outside of our borders saw the glow. They said to themselves, those words speak to me also. Men and women in the third world, whose countries had felt the iron boot of colonization, heard these whispers in the wind. Nelson Mandela spent almost a lifetime in prison because these words rested in his heart. Ghandi gave his life for the concept behind these words. It will be the ethical fence that we will have to deal with in a few years as we become financially bound to China, as they swallow our debt or make our stuff. Will America stand on the sideline when it financially costs us, when some young man stands up with a rifle and says he wants to be free? If we examine our past record in Latin America, we have stood with the moneymen and tried to turn the horse around. While we like to view ourselves as the defender of the defenseless, our report card in Central and South America doesn’t make the grade. I can hear the voice of the conservatives, the hate American ideals crowd, muttering under their breath, but even they cannot turn this horse around.

Young people in their designer jeans wear his image on a black t-shirt as a fashion statement. It is ironic that his face appears on baseball caps, coffee mugs, and posters, probably made in third world sweat shops. A movie, The Motorcycle Diaries, about his early travels on a motorcycle can be found at the high altar of consumerism, Walmart. A person can plunk down $100 to see an actor play him in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Evita, on Broadway. Now, we get a big screen, multi-million dollar biopic to the man who is simply remembered by the Spanish word for pal, Che. After his death, he has become the darling of the capitalist world, a system he gave his life fighting against. He is Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, better known to the world as Che Guevara. (Here is a trivia question. What Latin American country (South America, Central America, and the Caribbean) has the highest standard of living? Answer later in the essay.)

Why has this angry young man with a gun in his hands captured our imaginations so? More foreigners journey to his grave than his fellow countrymen. French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre called him "the most complete human being of our age." Yet, he personally oversaw the murder and execution of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people, was one of the central figures in the Cuban missile crisis, and wrote extensively about terrorist tactics. Still, if you were going to create a man to stand against the terrorism of consumerism and capitalist injustice, a storyteller could not do better than Che. Like St. Francis and the Buddha, he was born to wealth that he would turn his back on. Che was the eldest of five children born into the upper middle class in Rosario, Argentina in 1928. He went off to the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine, but decided to take a year off of his studies to travel around South America on 1939 Norton 500 cc motorcycle named “La Poderosa II” with his friend, Alberto Granado.

This trip had a profound effect on the young man. He saw real poverty for the first time and the powerlessness of the people to change their plight in life. He came to believe that revolution was the only chance the poor had. Upon graduation, he went to Guatemala, where his ideals cemented when he watched the Jacobo Arbenz government get toppled by a CIA-backed coup d'état in1954. Two years later, he was the only non-Cuban on board a yacht heading for the island to help overthrow the U.S. backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. Over the course of the next 3 years he rose up the ranks from a simple doctor to becoming Commandante of the Revolutionary Army of Barbutos, second only to Fidel Castro, and is credited with winning the decisive battle in the revolution. As a reward, Castro named him President of the National Bank of Cuba and Minister of Industries where he implemented socialist philosophy as quickly as possible. He had a key role in bringing Soviet missiles to the island that brought the world as close to a nuclear holocaust as we have ever been during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Later he remarked that if the missiles had been under Cuban control, he would have fired them at U.S. cities. Beloved by the people, front and center on most diplomatic trips, and a powerful spokesman for the cause, writing numerous books and articles, then, he just vanished. Maybe it was jealously on Castro’s part. Maybe it was that the two leaders had different ideas on the best ways of implementing socialism. Maybe it was pressure by Soviet officials who were nervous about Che’s ties to the Communist Chinese. Maybe it was a series of failures in his industrialization scheme. Maybe he truly believed that he needed to be on the front lines. Whatever the reason, Che resigned from his positions in the government, renounced his Cuban citizenship, and left the island behind.

For the next two years, he brought the revolution to the people in the Congo and throughout Latin America. Betrayed by a deserter, Bolivian Special Forces, aided by the CIA, encircled his small force of 50 men and captured a wounded and ill Che, after a bullet shattered his rifle. The next day he was executed. Ever defiant to the end, he spat at the soldier sent to kill him, "I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward! You are only going to kill a man." He was only 39 years old. I don’t know what it says, but even after almost half a century of sanctions, Cubans still have the highest standard of living of any in Latin America. It is a tidbit that bothers the firm capitalist in me. Why haven’t the benefits of usury taken root in the nations we claim to protect? If a rising tide lifts all boats, why have the boats of our trading partners in Latin America not risen more than the Cubans’. Every year billions of dollars are exploited by major international corporations. Huge cattle herds, owned by the likes of McDonald’s, roam up and down the continent. Yet, bone-chilling poverty still continues, the kind of poverty that enraged Che and enrages me. I am an American. I love this country and it’s ideals, and I think, so would Che.

Verdict: A Long, Boring Miss, But Del Toro Deserves An Oscar Nomination