Movie can clarify vision of rebel Che Guevera

By Weekly Archive On Feb 5, 2008

This
was first published February
4, 2008, in The Morning Call.

Last
year was the 40th anniversary of the death of mythic, Argentine-born,
physician-turned revolutionary, Ernesto ”Che” Guevara de la Serna.
Now, director Steven Soderbergh (”Traffic”) is shooting a film
about Guevara, with Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro as Che. In the
stills I’ve seen from location in Spain, Del Toro bears an uncanny
resemblance to Guevara.

Reportedly, Soderbergh used recently
declassified CIA transcripts as background preparation and there is a
responsibility to correct a narrative grievously marred by
misinformation, vilification and commercialization since Che’s death.
That includes the marketing of Alberto Korda’s iconic photograph of
Che, something that would have appalled him. A few years ago I
spotted a teenager wearing a shirt bearing this ubiquitous image. I
asked him what he knew about the man. After a moment’s hesitation, he
replied, ”I think he plays lead guitar for Rage Against the
Machine.”

Soderbergh follows the footsteps of Walter Salesh’s
2004 film ”The Motorcycle Diaries,” in attempting to set the early
record straight. Salesh tracks Che and his friend Alberto Granada on
an eight-month trek across Argentina, Peru, Columbia, Chile and
Venezuela.

When leaving his leafy, upper middle-class suburb
(his father was an architect) in Buenos Aires in 1952, Guevara is 23
and one semester from earning his medical degree. The two young men
embark on a last fling before settling down to careers and lives of
privilege. They are preoccupied with women, fun and adventure, not
seeking or expecting a life-transforming odyssey.

The film’s
power is in its depiction of Guevara’s emerging political
consciousness as a consequence of that experience. During the
8,000-mile journey, they encounter poverty, exploitation and brutal
working conditions, all consequences of an unjust international
economic order. Influenced by these encounters, Guevara turns away
from a medical career, believing that while essential, medicine can
only treat the symptoms of poverty. For him, revolution becomes the
only way to address suffering’s root causes, what Harvard Medical
School Prof. Paul Farmer terms politics as medicine on a grand
scale.

One hopes that Soderbergh’s work builds on Salesh’s
film and provides context for Che’s oft quoted statement that, ”The
true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.”

We
do know that in 1954, while working for the Guatemalan government,
Guevara witnessed the overthrow of the democratically elected,
populist Jacobo Arbenz by a CIA-sponsored coup. This experience
reinforced Che’s belief that peaceful progressive change would not be
tolerated by the Colossus of the North.

Che escapes Guatemala
for Mexico City where, after working briefly in the allergy ward of a
hospital, he meets the Castro brothers, who had fled Cuba. Intent on
overthrowing the reviled Cuban dictator Gen. Fulgencio Batista, their
ragtag group of 82 exiles arrives by boat in Cuba on Dec. 2, 1956,
and are ambushed. Only 16 rebels evade capture or death by escaping
to the mountains. After two years of organizing, land redistribution
and fierce fighting, the guerrilla army proclaims victory on Jan. 1,
1959.

After serving in two government posts, Che left Cuba in
late March, 1965, to participate in the global liberation struggle,
first in the Congo and later in Bolivia where he attempted to
organize a peasant movement. In Bolivia, CIA agent Felix Rodriguez
was assigned to track his movements in cooperation with the pro-U.S.
military government. A Bolivian battalion directed by U.S. Green
Berets and the CIA wounded and capture Che on Oct. 8, 1967. On the
following day, a Bolivian soldier executed him. He was 39. He was
mutilated and secretly buried in Vallegrande, Bolivia. In 1997, his
remains were discovered and transferred for interment in Cuba.

Che’s
legacy is exemplified by a recent incident in Bolivia. Health care
improved dramatically in Cuba after the revolution, and cataract
surgery became a world-recognized specialty. Today, Cuban doctors
perform free eye operations in other Latin American countries. Under
Operation Milagro (Miracle), financed by Venezuelan petrodollars,
600,000 people have had their vision restored. According to Cuba
specialist Salim Lamrani, one recent elderly Bolivian recipient,
Mario Teran, had lost his sight due to cataracts and could not afford
surgery. He appeared at Operation Milagro hospital in August 2006 and
Cuban doctors restored his vision. Why does this anecdote merit
mention? Mario Teran was the young sergeant who executed Che Guevara
in 1967 in Bolivia. It’s both poignantly ironic and morally inspiring
that today’s Cuban doctors embody Che’s passionate and incorruptible
struggle for social justice and a better world.

Gary
Olson is professor and chair of the political science department at
Moravian College in Bethlehem. His e-mail address is
olson@moravian.edu.

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