Che Guevara: "Imperialism cannot be trusted. Not for a moment can be trusted. Never! ”
On 7 October 1967, a che Guevara guerrilla deserter informed the Bolivian authorities of the location of Che Guevara's guerrillas. Bolivian government forces then deployed 1,800 troops to surround the area.
Unsuspectingly, Che Guevara led the remaining 17 guerrillas to Chile across the Yulang Ravine, where they soon fell under siege by the Bolivian army. When fighting broke out, Che Guevara decided to let the 5 wounded and sick go first, leaving himself and the rest of the team to play cover.
After three hours of fierce fighting, the guerrillas were outnumbered, and Che Guevara himself was shot in the leg and wounded and captured. The five wounded and sick successfully left Bolivia with the help of the Bolivian Communist Party and the Chilean organization led by Allende. According to one of the survivors, Che Guevara had a chance to escape, but he gave it up to someone else.
The Bolivian government, despite the U.S. recommendation to "extradite Che Guevara to Panama for trial," insisted on "executing" him. On 9 October, Che Guevara was brutally murdered by the Bolivian government at the age of 39.
In the 1990s, the Hong Kong scholar Leung Man Tao commented that if Che Guevara had lived to this day, he would have been in his 70s. But he was always young, and he died in the midst of romantic ideals. Today, Che Guevara's portrait is popular around the world, becoming a symbol of the communist revolution and the left-wing movement in the West, and a symbol of idealism.
This issue takes you to know what kind of person Che Guevara is and why he is remembered.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="11" > latin American revolution</h1>
Che Guevara was born in 1928 to an aristocratic family in Argentina. His father's family was well-known in the region, and his mother, who was also an aristocratic family, had previously served as Spain's governor-general in Peru. After graduating from high school, Che Guevara entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine.
During the summer vacation of 1950, Che Guevara traveled half of Argentina. The next year, he hooked up with his friends, who took a year off school to travel around South America. This experience not only gave Che Guevara a glimpse of the magnificent natural beauty of South America, but also gave him a glimpse of the poverty and backwardness of South American countries, and the suffering of being exploited and oppressed by the United States.
Why can the United States plunder South America's wealth with impunity? Why is it that by selling out the interests of the country, the ruling class can have no worries about food and clothing? The people of South America work hard, but they can't eat? A series of questions echoed in Che Guevara's mind, and this experience gradually gave rise to internationalist ideas.
Che Guevara realized that studying medicine could not save South Americans, and that the only way to change all this was through revolution. He wrote in his diaries that the people who wrote them were already dead when they re-set foot on Argentine soil. I am no longer me.
After graduating from college in 1953, Che Guevara once again traveled around South America. This time, he met post-revolutionary Bolivia.
The anti-imperialist revolution in Bolivia
In 1952, the Bolivian military junta, at the behest of the United States, prepared to send 30,000 troops to participate in the Korean War, a move that drew public outrage in Bolivia. The nationalist revolutionary movement began to mobilize the masses and carry out an armed uprising. With the support of the workers' and peasants' class, Pace Esdensolo overthrew the junta and seized state power.
The new regime withstood pressure from the United States and implemented a series of partially socialist reforms, including guaranteeing women's suffrage, nationalizing American businesses, conducting land reforms, and helping Indians rebuild village communities. For a time, Bolivia was thriving, showing a completely different social landscape from before. All this was seen by Che Guevara, who was even more determined to overthrow capitalism.
In December 1953, Che Guevara came to Guatemala in Latin America. At this time, a socialist revolution was underway in Guatemala.
In those days, it was almost normal for American capital to buy out Latin American presidents to stage coups. By the hand of Latin American governments, the United States can interfere in Latin America's internal affairs, change laws, and gain privileges. The United States provides support to the pro-American regime, and the pro-US regime helps the United States reduce tariffs and suppress the people.
The only ones who suffer are the Latin American people, who work hard in factories and plantations controlled by American capital and whose income is only enough. As long as the workers resisted together, they would be suppressed by the US-sponsored military junta, and if the junta did not obey, the United States would change to a military junta.
In 1928, workers from the United Fruit Company in the United States launched a march in Colombia demanding better work conditions. At the behest of the United States, the Colombian military junta carried out a brutal massacre of marching workers, and thousands of workers were machine-gunned.
The Revolution in Guatemala took place in an environment oppressed by American capital. Under the leadership of democratically elected President Abens, Guatemala launched a campaign to "fight the local tycoons and divide the land". Guatemala's confiscation of United Fruit Company's land and its distribution to poor people for farming infuriated the United States, which began to support Abens's political enemies and attack the Albans regime.
Here Che Guevara became acquainted with numerous revolutionaries who rebelled against the United States and capitalism, including his first wife, the Peruvian female revolutionary Ilda Gadri, who together threw themselves into the battle to defend the Regime of Albans. In a letter to his family, Che Guevara frankly acknowledged his ties to the Guatemalan Communists, and he was blacklisted by the CIA.
In 1954, the United States propped up Guatemalan officer Armas in Honduras, who led heavily armed mercenaries to invade Guatemala, Guatemala was defeated, and President Albans was forced to resign and go into exile. The wanted Che Guevara also fled to Mexico, and the Guatemalan Revolution failed.
Graffiti in Guatemala City in honor of Abens
Ironically, democratically elected President Abens has been portrayed by the United States as a "dictator." Armas, who slaughtered 9,000 leftists and tens of thousands of Guatemalans, was instead called a "victory for democracy" by the United States.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="28" > the Cuban Revolution</h1>
Guatemala's defeat made Che Guevara realize that if he wanted to benefit all of humanity, he must launch a revolution to overthrow the reactionary dictatorship through armed struggle, to overthrow capitalism, and especially the axis of capitalism, the United States. In the days that followed, he made money while studying medicine while immersing himself in the study of Marxist works.
In Mexico, Che Guevara became acquainted with the Castro brothers, Cuban revolutionaries who were also in exile and were gathering revolutionary forces to prepare for a counteroffensive. Similar experiences and values quickly made Che Guevara and Fidel Castro friends.
At that time, Cuba, like other Latin American countries, was under the rule of a military junta (Cuba was the Batista government). Che Guevara joined Castro's "July 62 Movement" and fought with him for the Cuban Revolution.
In 1956, 82 Cuban fighters, including Che Guevara and Castro, huddled on a yacht, returned to Cuba. After landing, they were attacked by the Batista junta and had no choice but to run into the mountains to fight guerrillas. In this battle, the guerrillas suffered heavy losses, only 12 people escaped the siege, and Che Guevara, a medic, resolutely threw away the medical kit and carried a steel gun, and at that moment, he changed from a medic to a soldier.
Che Guevara, with extraordinary courage and perseverance, concern for his comrades, coldness towards his enemies, and high combat skills, was soon appreciated by Castro, who became Castro's most powerful assistant.
In the days when the guerrillas entered the mountains, Castro's revolutionary ideas were supported by the broad masses of workers and peasants, and the spark of socialism took on a burning trend. As the guerrillas grew in number and strength, the Batista junta began to be overwhelmed.
In 1959, Castro led an armed force into the capital, Havana, Batista fled with the money, and the Cuban Revolution was victorious. For his outstanding contribution to the cause of the revolution, Che Guevara was granted cuban citizenship and held important positions in the Castro government.
<H1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="37" > missile crisis</h1>
He was soft on the enemy, and during his tenure as prison inspector, Che Guevara executed a total of 156 (600) war criminals who had committed crimes against the Cuban people. He had no doubts about the cause of communism, and during his tenure as president of the National Bank, Che Guevara was active in socialist reform, implementing land reforms and nationalizing large enterprises. During his tenure as Minister of Industry, Che Guevara braved the U.S. blockade and signed a series of cooperation and trade agreements with the Soviet Union. Che Guevara also became known for his tough stance toward the United States.
In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis broke out. The crisis ended in a compromise between the United States and the Soviet Union, with the Soviet Union withdrawing its nuclear missiles deployed in Cuba and the United States withdrawing missiles deployed in Turkey. Both sides can be said to have achieved their predetermined goals, and the ending is quite satisfactory.
The only one who is dissatisfied is the Cuban leadership, which has been firmly opposed to the withdrawal of missiles throughout the missile crisis. Che Guevara claimed: If the nuclear button were in my hand, I would not hesitate to press it, so that we could destroy the Core of Capitalism in the United States and our revolution would be victorious, even if it would cost tens of millions of sacrifices.
Che Guevara was also seen by many as a demon who brought war because of this remark.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="42" > parted ways</h1>
After the missile crisis, Cuba's days have calmed down. During his tenure in Cuba, Che Guevara lived frugally and without any bureaucracy. He refused to give himself a raise, he hadn't seen movies and hadn't enjoyed entertainment. At the same time, he also actively participated in voluntary labor, working and studying with many Cuban people.
In 1964, Che Guevara attended the United Nations General Assembly as a senior Cuban official. After that, he visited Algeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other African countries. He also interrupted his trip to Africa and visited China for the second time. He has come here to clarify Cuba's position and to bridge some of the differences between the two sides. Because the background was the Sino-Soviet polemic, Castro fell to the Soviet Union because of financial assistance (they gave too much).
The following year, Che Guevara returned to Cuba, where he and Castaro began to disagree on a number of revolutionary issues. Castaro wanted only to build Cuba, and Che Guevara's ideal was to continue the revolution and liberate the whole world. He saw that in the days of peace, revolutionaries in many countries sat in luxury cars, losing their former vigor, and he saw the soviet model of a single model and began to worry about the future of socialism.
Che Guevara visits China
Che Guevara's nowhere to rest on his enthusiasm and ideals led him to abandon cuba's austere life and choose to pick up a gun and continue to fight, spreading the seeds of communism throughout the world. Soon after, Che Guevara resigned from all his duties and flew to Africa. In order not to involve Cuba, he also resigned as a Cuban citizen.
In a farewell letter to Castro, Che Guevara wrote: "There are still many places in the world that need me to give my modest efforts.
In April 1965, Che Guevara traveled through Tanzania to the Congo, where he began to spread revolutionary ideas and teach guerrilla experience to the rebels. Che Guevara hoped to train the rebels into brave guerrillas and lead them to overthrow the puppet regime fostered by the United States.
But everyone looks up to the capabilities of Africans. Che Guevara's revolutionary cause was not going well, he struggled hard in the African jungle for 7 months, and even thought about killing himself to set an example for the revolution. But the bitter pleas of his comrades could not be stopped, and in the end, Che Guevara led the few remaining Cuban comrades out of the Congo.
The CIA and the excessive presence of Congolese government forces on the ground were not major factors in hindering the revolution's success. Che Guevara recalled in his diary that the people they organized in the Congo were ignorant, clumsy, poorly disciplined, and the infighting that began at the beginning of the revolution and were unable to form a fighting force was the main reason for the failure of the uprising.
But it is clear that Premier Zhou Enlai's summary is more objective. Premier Zhou said that the success of the Cuban revolution was somewhat accidental, and guerrilla warfare alone could not bring a key impact to the revolution. The reason why the spark of the stars can burn the plains must be that place has the conditions for "burning the plains". Instead of taking the lessons seriously, Che Guevara blindly ran out to sell them, thinking that everywhere was "a fire that would burn." This kind of revolution, which is "divorced from the masses, without the leadership of the Party, without the establishment of base areas, and without taking the line of long-term armed struggle," is adventurism and desperationism.
Castro, upon learning of Che Guevara's whereabouts, tried to persuade him to return to Cuba. But Che Guevara responded that he would never set foot in Cuba again unless it was to prepare for a revolution in Latin America. After leaving congo, Che Guevara traveled to Tanzania, the Czech Republic and East Germany, where he investigated social conditions, studied economics, philosophy, and documented his combat experiences.
In 1966, Che Guevara chose bolivia in South America for the location of his next struggle.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="55" > destined to fall bolivia</h1>
Bolivia is a landlocked country in South America. Bolivia was chosen because Che Guevara saw in Bolivia the shadow of the Cuban Revolution.
As mentioned above, in 1952, Pest Esdensolo overthrew the junta through the Bolivian Revolution and carried out a series of partially socialist reforms. But by the end of the 1950s, bolivia's leadership had shifted to the right, and they could not resist the economic sanctions of the United States and advocated an alliance with the United States to establish a bourgeois government. Subsequently, the Bolivian government compensated foreign capital, which caused dissatisfaction among the people.
In 1964, the commander of the Bolivian Air Force, René Barientos Otunño, with the support of the army commander and a group of oligarchic capitalists, staged a military coup d'état that ousted Esden solo and ended the short-lived revolution in Bolivia.
The military coup sparked popular discontent, and strikes and demonstrations followed. In response, the junta used extremely tough means to suppress it, and in a few years, nearly 10,000 people were killed.
In Che Guevara's view, this is very similar to the Pre-Revolutionary Batista regime in Cuba. Che Guevara is optimistic that if the Cuban Revolution can be reproduced here, through the location of Bolivia in the center of South America, the flame of the revolution will surely spread to Chile, Argentina, Brazil and other countries, and may trigger changes throughout Latin America. Coupled with the fact that the United States was now mired in the quagmire of the Vietnam War, this was a godsend.
In July 1966, Che Guevara secretly returned to Cuba, and Castaro, under pressure from all sides, gave Che Guevara all the support he could. After one last meeting with his wife and children, Che Guevara led 17 Cuban guerrillas to Bolivia.
Che Guevara thought he had learned the lessons of the Congo, but it turned out that he still did not know enough about Bolivia. Bolivia's military junta inherited most of the policies of the National Revolution, such as land reform and the nationalization of large enterprises. The degree of popular antipathy to the new Government is far less than that of the Cuban people against the Batista regime. Strikes and demonstrations were also only for the interests of the workers, not to accept socialist ideas and subvert the Barientos regime.
At this time, the "big brother" of socialism, the Soviet Union, reached a policy of détente with the United States and showed little interest in opening up a new battlefield in South America. Cuba, which was highly dependent on the Soviet Union, did not dare to go against the meaning of "Big Brother" and could only secretly provide a small amount of support to Che Guevara. The United States, on the other hand, regards Latin America as its own backyard and naturally will not allow Che Guevara to make a revolution. The United States, in cooperation with Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay and other countries, vowed to wipe out Che Guevara in Bolivia.
With the difficulty of gaining the support of the population and friendly forces, and with the enemy outnumbered, Che Guevara's trip to Bolivia seemed doomed to failure.
Thus appears the scene at the beginning of the article, where Che Guevara is arrested by the Bolivian military junta. A sergeant in government forces was tasked with executing Che Guevara. The sergeant trembled and did not dare to shoot, but Che Guevara calmly said to the executioner, "Shoot coward, you are going to kill a man."
With 6 gunshots, Che Guevara's life was frozen at the age of 39.
Magically, the executioner who killed Che Guevara was also cured of cataracts by Cuban medical benefits in 2007.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="68" > symbol of the idealist</h1>
After Che Guevara's death, in order to make the guerrillas "abandon their illusions", the CIA announced his death to the world, and the CIA director often took Che Guevara's personal belongings, including a Rolex watch, to show off in front of reporters.
But unexpectedly, with the CIA's propaganda, Che Guevara's story began to be known. People marveled at his spirit, literary works of praise appeared around the world, and even Western "liberals" who rejected Che Guevara's ideals expressed sincere admiration for his idealism and sacrifice. In just a few years, Che Guevara became a public icon for many young people in the Middle East and the West.
In 1960, while Che Guevara was still in Cuba, Castro's photographer Alberto Corda snapped a photograph of Che Guevara and named it Heroic Guerrilla. After Che Guevara's death, the photograph became widely circulated and quickly became one of the most recognizable images of the 20th century, being dubbed "the most daring photograph in the world".
Based on this photograph, irish artists created portraits of Che Guevara. Today, the portrait, which appears most often on T-shirts, has become a cultural symbol, synonymous with communism, idealism, heroism, anti-globalization and even rebellious spirit, always in conflict.
In 1997, the remains of Che Guevara were repatriated to Cuba. At Castro's behest, Cuban officials decided to bury Che Guevara's body in Santa Clara as a state funeral.
On the day of the funeral, hundreds of thousands of people in Santa Clara spontaneously poured into the streets, and the hearse was sprinkled with flowers, and the Cuban people had tears in their eyes to send off the hero of the Cuban Revolution. Castro delivered a speech praising The merits and spirit of Che Guevara. "We need a model, a timeless model, and he's Che Guevara."
Don't ask if the campfire should burn, first ask if the cold and darkness are still there. Don't ask whether the bullet should be loaded, first ask whether oppression and exploitation are still there, don't ask whether there is a tomorrow for the just cause, first ask whether the injustice in the world is still there today. —Che Guevara