by Philip Gambone

Americans of a certain age will recall, as I certainly do, images of the revolutionary guerilla Che Guevara—handsome, defiant, heroic, almost saintly—plastered on the dorm-room walls of our more left-leaning college classmates. Che's portrait, in photos and posters, became for many young Americans in the 1960s "the ultimate icon" of revolt and revolutionary zeal, says his biographer, Jon Lee Anderson. As the "the world's most charismatic guerilla fighter," Che became "a figure of veneration for guerillas of all kinds."

Che is still recognized today as a consummate revolutionary who, despite his mistakes and failures, embodied a personal code of "passionate defiance to an entrenched status quo," Anderson writes. While I was not one of Che's fans during college, in recent years, my interest has been piqued by two factors. He was yet another "Writer in Mexico," whose letters during his time in this country make for fascinating reading. Moreover, during this time of growing authoritarianism in the United States, Che's defiant resistance to injustice and corruption is a tonic reminder that tyranny need not be met with passive resignation.

Ernesto Guevara was born in 1928. His parents—of Spanish, Basque, and Irish ancestry—were middle-class, left-leaning Argentinians and supporters of the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War. His mother, who drove her own car, signed her own checks, and crossed her legs in public, taught young "Ernestito" to read at age four. By the time he was 14, Che was delving into Freud, Jung, and an abridged edition of Das Kapital. Another one of his biographers, Douglas Kellner, notes that from an early age, he felt an "affinity for the poor."

Teenage Che and his family
*

In 1948, Che enrolled in the medical school of the University of Buenos Aires. During his medical school years, he undertook various motorcycle trips, first around the north of Argentina and later, in the first half of 1952, through South America. "He went where people were the poorest and the neediest," says writer Alfredo Reyes Trejo, "as though he wished to absorb all the misery in his America in one blow." During this second journey, Che kept a diary, later published as The Motorcycle Diaries. In the Preface to that book, his daughter, Aleida, notes that his yearning for adventure led to the discovery of "the reality of our continent … He grew increasingly aware of the pain of many others and he allowed it to become a part of himself."

On July 7, 1953, after receiving his medical degree, Che embarked on another odyssey through Latin America, visiting Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Central America. "These trips filled him with experiences that would become an awareness of the contradictions, inequalities and injustices of the Latin American scene," writes Adalberto Santana, a research fellow at UNAM.

Che (center back row) in medical school
*

In Guatemala, where he had gone to study medical care, Che got to know other Latin American leftists. Under the popularly elected president Jacobo Árbenz, Guatemala was in the midst of a reform program which, among other objectives, sought to wrest power from the United Fruit Company. Che's time in Guatemala taught him, he wrote to a friend in Peru, about "the fallacies the Yankees are capable of and their marvelous propaganda machine."

In another letter from Guatemala, this one to his mother, Che predicted that he would reach his "truly creative phase" when he was about 35 and that his main concern would be science—nuclear physics or genetics. He was certain that "the Americas will be the theater of my adventures in a way that is much more significant than I could have imagined."

While in Guatemala, a CIA-backed military coup toppled Árbenz. "They bombed several Guatemalan military installations," Che wrote to his mother, adding that "a plane machine-gunned the lower neighborhoods of the city, killing a two-year-old girl. The Yankees have finally dropped the good guy mask … and now commit atrocities everywhere." The violent overthrow continued to radicalize Che.

Jacobo Árbenz
*

In September 1954, Che fled to Mexico, which had become a sanctuary for countless left-wing exiles from around the world, including Jews and Spanish Republicans fleeing Franco's fascist state. There he got a job in the allergy ward of the General Hospital in Mexico City. He was adding, he said, "a new country to my collection, which means I now have the full set of Latin American countries, and am only missing the islands to complete it."

In Che's letters from Mexico, "you can witness how a young person changes over time," writes his daughter Aleida in the Foreword to I Embrace You with All My Revolutionary Fervor: Letters 1947-1967 (Seven Stories Press, 2021). That change was already evident in Che's first letter from Mexico, when, at the end of September 1954, he wrote to his fellow medical school friend, Berta ("Tita") Infante. "The atmosphere here is completely different from what it was in Guatemala. Here you can also say what you want, but on the condition that you can pay for it; that is, you can smell the scent of the democracy of the dollar."

I Embrace You with All My Revolutionary Fervor
*

He spent his mornings working at the hospital—working without pay "on whatever they need to make sure that I don't completely forget that I'm a doctor"—and his afternoons in the city's parks taking pictures, which earned him a little money to ease his hunger. At night, he studied. To his mother, he wrote that he had a good apartment, cooked his own food and bathed everyday "thanks to the unlimited supply of hot water." He was still not earning enough to pay for a washerwoman.

Che had mixed feelings about Mexico. Although he thought the country had been "entirely given over to the Yankees," he liked the country, calling it "this beautiful part of the planet." While Mexico could be "tough and inhospitable," it was also a country that treated him well. He liked how libertarian the Mexicans were. "They allow divorce," he reported.

Earlier, during his time in Peru, Che had met a young revolutionary, Hilda Gadea. She was now living in exile in Mexico, and they started seeing each other again. Through her, Che began to meet other Latin American radicals. By the end of "the wretched financial year of 1954," he was also working as a writer and editor at the Latin News Agency (Agencia Latina de Noticias). The work paid him 700 Mexican pesos a month, which provided him with a basic level of subsistence.

Che and Hilda - Chichen Itza (1955)
*

Che planned on staying in Mexico some six months. Eventually, he hoped to go to Europe, "no matter what happens." He also hoped to get a chance to visit the United States—"the belly of the beast," he called it—and said that he knew he would leave "just as anti-Yankee as when I arrive (that's if I do get in)." Nor had he abandoned the idea of slipping "behind the Iron Curtain to see what's happening there." He felt that sooner or later he would join the communist party, whose sense of comradeship he admired. The way the gringos were treating Latin America was making him increasingly indignant.

In the spring of 1955, Che got a gig covering the Pan American Games for Agencia Latina, both as a reporter and a photographer. The work, which included chaperoning journalists from South America, was exhausting. Moreover, his stint as a research scientist made him feel like "a first-rate failure." The money to fund his projects had been blown away "by the same wind that swept the Agencia and I find myself limited to presenting a modest paper in Mexico."

To Che's surprise, his paper attracted some notice and resulted in his obtaining a scholarship at the General Hospital in Mexico City. His standing as a doctor was rising. "The next step," he wrote his mother, "could be the United States (very difficult), Venezuela (feasible) or Cuba (probable)."

Che and Fidel Castro
*

In July, Che met Raúl Castro, a Cuban student leader who had been released from prison in Havana. A few days later, he met Raúl's brother, Fidel. Fidel impressed him as an extraordinary man, one who faced and resolved the most impossible things. The two men shared the same optimistic spirit. His letters home, especially to his mother, are guarded about his increasing association with militants. Instead, he reported to her that he had climbed Popocatépetl, the highest volcano in Mexico. "We were truly heroic but failed to reach the peak. I was prepared to leave my bones there but we got a fright when both feet of my Cuban climbing compañero became frozen and the five of us had to go back down."

To his father, always the more radical of his two parents, Che opened up a bit more. "Upheavals are taking place everywhere in the world … When Nixon came to Puerto Rico they rounded up all the Puerto Rican nationalists and others like them, and are holding them hostage without anyone knowing where they are. The media says nothing about this and talking to the media is banned, at the risk of them being shut down. The FBI is much more dangerous than the Mexican police; here they act as they please and arrest anyone without pretext."

The economic situation in Mexico was terrible as well, he told his father. Prices were rising and "the rot is so great that union leaders have been bought off and are signing detrimental agreements with various Yankee companies in which they give up the right to strike for one or two years … The only way you can make any money here is becoming a direct lackey of the gringo, something that I would not recommend for a variety of reasons." By now, Che was assiduously studying Marx and Engels. "There is a group of children from sixth grade whom I have enchanted with my adventures and who are interested in learning about the teachings of Saint Karl," he told his mother. "I have decided to dedicate what little spare time I have to this."

Juan Peron
*

In September, Juan Perón, whose reforms Che admired, was ousted from power as president of Argentina. A week later, Che wrote to his mother: "Here, progressive people have defined the Argentine process as 'another triumph of the dollar, the sword and the cross.'"

From now on, Che's letters from Mexico became increasingly bitter, and his determination to participate in revolutionary struggle more focused. But he also had some happy news: he had married Hilda, and they were expecting a child. They were also planning on taking a little trip to the south of Mexico. "There are some magnificent archaeological sites in that region, such as Chichén–Itzá, which we hope to visit."

On February 15, 1956, Che and Hilda's daughter was born. "My communist soul is bursting with happiness because she looks just like Mao Tse Tung," he tauntingly wrote to his mother, who was becoming increasingly distressed over her son's revolutionary views. Che saw that his bohemian lifestyle would have to come to an end. "I'll do my duty of abandoning my knight-errant cape and take up some kind of weapon for combat," he told Tita Infante.

Castro and Che in Miguel Schultz Prison
*

Four months later, Che's self-described inter-American notoriety got him arrested and jailed by the Mexican police. He was suspected of being one of a group of exiled Cuban revolutionaries. From Miguel Schultz prison, where Fidel Castro was also being held, he wrote to his mother: "During this time in prison, and during the period of training, I totally identified with my compañeros in the struggle." There had been a time in his life, he told her, when he thought that total identification with a group of combatants—the "I" subsumed by the "we"—was ridiculous. Now, however, it was "really beautiful to feel this sense of 'we.' The Revolution needs large doses of passion and audacity, things we possess collectively as humankind."

While in prison, Che wrote a poem—"Canto a Fidel"—in which he affirmed his commitment to help the young leader (Castro was 29) liberate his homeland. The first stanza reads:

Released from prison, Che went underground. He began to see that his profession was "that of a grasshopper, here today, there tomorrow." Whereas earlier he had thought his focus was medicine, the new stage of his life demanded that he change his priorities. "Now Saint Carlos [Marx] is primordial," he wrote his mother. "He is the axis and will remain so for however many years the spheroid has room for me on its outer mantle."

With his marriage to Hilda breaking down, Che now saw no prospects for himself in Mexico. "I'm just waiting to see what happens with the Revolution," he wrote Tita Infante in November 1956. "If it works out well, I'll head for Cuba." His last letter to his mother from Mexico was harsh. He had read the latest news from Argentina, where the new administration was cracking down on other political parties, including the Communists. "All these events display such a clear tendency—to favor one caste or class—that there can be no mistake or confusion. That class is the national landowning class, allied with foreign investors, as always."

What he didn't say to her is that he had joined a guerrilla squadron organized by Fidel to topple the Batista dictatorship in Cuba. In late November, he sailed with them as the expedition's doctor on the yacht Granma. Che was carrying a knapsack filled with medicine and a case full of bullets. The 82 men who landed on December 2, 1956, were gunned down by the Cuban Army. The few survivors, including Che, hid in the Sierra Maestra. Gradually, they won over the local peasants to their cause. Castro, who deemed him cojonudo (awesome), named Che a commander of the guerillas. The voyage of the Granma was "one of the greatest revolutionary feats of the 20th century," writes Santana. It marked the beginning of the Cuban Revolution, which would topple Batista at the end of 1958.

Che Guevara
*

Che believed that armed struggle was the only solution for those who were fighting for justice and freedom against the entrenched political machine. That armed struggle cost him his life. After serving in various ministerial capacities in Cuba, he secretly entered Bolivia to assemble a guerilla force for the liberation of that country. He was captured on October 8, 1967, and executed the next day.

"Wherever death may surprise us," Che had said a few months earlier, "let it be welcome, provided that this our battle cry may have reached some receptive ear." As revealed in his letters, Che's time in Mexico confirmed his passion for justice and set him resolutely on his revolutionary course. "Che's myth is still potent enough to both enthrall and engender debate, as well as to cause political turmoil," biographer Anderson writes.

Whatever one may think of his tactics—and they were often brutal—his letters present us with a man of deep convictions and honorable character whose fervent commitment to the downtrodden and powerless was steadfast to the end. Che once wrote, "Everyday people attend to their grooming, why not to their heart?" A motto to ponder.

**************

Philip Gambone, a retired high school English teacher, also taught creative and expository writing at Harvard for twenty-eight years. For over a decade, his book reviews appeared regularly in The New York Times. Phil is the author of seven books. His memoir, As Far As I Can Tell: Finding My Father in World War II, was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by the Boston Globe. His new collection of short stories, Zigzag, was published last year by Rattling Good Yarns Press. His books are available through Amazon and at "Tesoros," the bookshop at the Biblioteca.

Visit SMA's Social Network

Contact / Contactar