Why Christians should know about Che Guevara

Published in the 16 January edition of Christian Renewal magazine.

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara de la Serna is arguably the most iconic Marxist revolutionary of all time. A surprising menagerie of people have made use of his name and legacy: from communist dictators and guerrilla warriors to artists and agitated middle-class students. His image, especially the famous Alberto Kordo portrait, has adorned political posters, t-shirts, and high-fashion handbags, and his books are still in print in numerous languages. One of the most surprising things about the worldwide ‘cult of Che’ is how little most his followers know about his life and what he believed.

Che Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928, the eldest of five children in an aristocratic, yet Marxist-leaning, family. He was an unusual child, whose interests were as varied as philosophy, rugby, chess, the military, and poetry. At school he was nicknamed ‘Chancho’ (‘pig’) because of his proud aversion to bathing, but he was given his more famous nickname because of his habit of frequently saying the colloquial exclamation, ‘che’ (rough equivalent: ‘hey’, ‘man’, or ‘mate’).

At age 20, Che began to study medicine at the University of Buenos Aires. Four years later, in 1952, he set off with a university friend for a year of travel. On an old motorcycle they named ‘La Poderosa II’ (‘The Mighty One II’), they headed north to work for the summer at a leper colony in Peru. Their journey was chronicled by Che in his book, Notas de Viaje, and popularised by the film, ‘Motorcycle Diaries’ (2004).

As they travelled, the two men noted the widespread poverty and oppression of the people they encountered - how different life in Buenos Aires was from what they were seeing in the countryside. The trip took longer than they had anticipated due to many (sometimes humorous) mishaps with the motorcycle, but they eventually made it to the leper camp.

In 1953 Che graduated from medical school and traveled again, this time all the way to Guatemala. There Che sought to observe first-hand the transition from capitalism to communism as the recently elected Marxist president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, sought to implement reforms. Although he strongly sympathized with the Guatemalan Marxists and was widely known in their circles, he at first refused to join the Communist Party and become active politically.

A year later, however, a CIA-backed coup overthrew the communist government, replacing Arbenz with Carlos Castillo Armas; from this time onward, Che committed himself to fighting what he perceived to be the imperialism of the West, particularly the United States. When the Argentine embassy offered him a flight back to his homeland after the coup, he turned it down and headed north to Mexico City, where he intended to join a Cuban revolutionary group that was forming there.

When he met a young Fidel Castro in Mexico City in September 1954, Che immediately joined his ‘Movimiento 26 de Julio’ (‘July 26th Movement’), which was preparing to overthrow the Cuban dictator, Gen. Fulgencio Batista. Although he was supposed to be the group’s medic, Che trained as a soldier along with the others. Gone were the days when he was content to remain an observer and see how political solutions might bring about change. Che now believed that the only answer was violent revolution.

In November 1956, the Movimiento invaded Cuba. Nearly half the group was captured or killed almost immediately; soon after landing, the number was down to 15-20 members. According to Fidel Castro’s recent autobiography, the force was reduced to three men, two rifles, and 120 rounds of ammunition at its weakest moment. Che quickly distinguished himself as a leader in the small band, and after nearly three years of guerrilla fighting, they famously succeeded in overthrowing Batista’s government and installing Fidel as the new communist leader.

After the Cuban revolution, Guevara held several high-level positions in the Cuban government. He again served as Fidel’s second-in-command, at various times overseeing the island nation’s prisons, agriculture, manufacturing, and banking. All the while, he was organizing small revolutionary expeditions in which the Cuban government would send advisors, finances, and equipment to communist guerrillas in Panama, the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere. He was also instrumental in bringing to Cuba the Soviet missiles that instigated the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962; he was quoted soon afterward as saying that if the missiles had been in Cuban control, they would have been launched at cities in the United States.

Government administration positions did not suit Che’s thirst for revolution. In March 1965, he disappeared, and his whereabouts were an international mystery. Months later, he resurfaced in the Congo, leading a revolutionary expedition of a dozen Cubans to train locals in Marxist ideology and guerrilla warfare techniques. The expedition was short-lived, however; Che’s preface to his published diary of his time in the Congo begins, ‘This is the history of a failure.’ He withdrew temporarily to Mozambique and Prague while planning his next move.

Che’s final expedition was in 1966 and 1967. Again he led a Cuban-backed force, this time intending to start a revolution in Bolivia. He set up a clandestine training camp in the mountains and tried to recruit locals to join his movement. He was surprised at their reluctance, and he was even more surprised when the Bolivian government learned of his whereabouts before he had had a chance to recruit and train a proper army. Backed by the CIA and a battalion of US Army Rangers, the Bolivian military captured Guevara in October 1967 and quickly executed him. After displaying his body to prove his demise, Che was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1997, his remains were found and transferred to Cuba, where he is interred in the city of Santa Clara.

Pro-Che demonstrations protesting his execution occurred around the world, and the news of his death sparked a flurry of articles, tributes, and even folk songs about him. Che quickly became the quintessential symbol of revolution in all its forms. Young and old, East and West, rich and poor, learned and unlearned all appealed to Che as representing their fight against oppression. French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre even called Che ‘the most complete human being of our age.’

After his death, however, stories of Che’s brutality increasingly emerged. The same man who had started his revolutionary career by noting the cruelty and oppression experienced by the poor became, his critics argued, the very thing he had so hated. While fighting in Cuba, he regularly killed those accused of being informers or deserters. During his time as a government official in Cuba, as many as several hundred people were executed without judicial process by Che’s order. Many more stories of his ruthlessness emerged from the Congo and Bolivia.

Yet even now, the ‘cult of Che’ remains around the world; he is as recognizable an icon today as he was in his lifetime. Some of his latter-day followers believe in his Marxist revolutionary ideology, while others use his image as a symbol of fighting the system in all its forms, without reference to any particular political philosophy.


Why should Christians know about Che Guevara?

Most Christians view Che Guevara as the antithesis of what they believe, and consequently they might not see any point to learning anything about him. However, given his religion-like cult status in popular culture and the great number and wide variety of people who seem to identify with him, it might benefit Christians to know two things about this radical Marxist revolutionary:

1. Che Guevara correctly identified many of the same problems that Christians recognize.

One of the most enigmatic things about Che Guevara is the way he was both a ruthless revolutionary and yet so sensitive to the suffering in the world. In his travels as a young man through South America, he was deeply moved by the injustice and poverty he witnessed. Instead of pursuing a potentially lucrative and successful career as a medical doctor, he completely gave up his former life and committed himself to doing anything he could to right those wrongs. No sacrifice was too high, even his life.

This is, without doubt, why Che Guevara’s legacy remains so strong today. Those who feel oppressed are looking for a larger-than-life figure, a hero who represents the hope for release from their chains. Sadly, Che Guevara was not that hero, and all who look to him, his ideology, or his image for salvation hope in vain.

In this respect (and only this respect), Che Guevara’s life is reminiscent of what we as Christians are called to do. Should anyone be more sensitive to the troubles of the world than we are? And should anyone be more willing to sacrifice than we are? What an indictment it is that a Marxist revolutionary was more sensitive and more willing to sacrifice himself than I am.

2. Sadly, Che Guevara offered gravely wrong solutions to those problems.

The great tragedy of Che Guevara’s life is that he sacrificed everything in vain, and he took down a great many people with him. Many lost their lives fighting with and against him, and the echoes of his actions are still reverberating today.

Each of Che Guevara’s solutions to the problem of injustice and oppression ultimately fails to solve the problem. Warfare causes as many problems as it solves; revolution replaces one oppressive government with another. In the final analysis, he caused a multitude of people to feel the very kind of political, economic, and religious oppression that he so loathed. Indeed, Che Guevara himself became the very kind of iron-fisted dictator that he had overthrown.

Only the gospel offers a solution to these problems, and how different that solution looks: Jesus came to save his people, not as a Che-style iconic warrior, but as a sacrifice. He sends forth his people, not as an expeditionary force of Marxist missionaries intent on fomenting rebellion, but as merciful servants who are poor in spirit; meek mourners who hunger and thirst for righteousness, not bloodshed; and persecuted peacemakers who are pure in heart.

We go forth into a world that makes a hero of a murderer and revolutionary while executing the innocent, but we offer a message that can turn that all upside down. Che Guevara thought he could change the world, but we have the assurance of the One who is seated on the throne that, if we follow him, we most certainly will change the world. May our King grant us the grace and courage we need to do so.