Legends of the legend: Ernesto Che Guevara
At the same time, they are so used to the image of the hero that many do not even know his name. I personally met a girl who, pointing to a T-shirt with Ernesto Che Guevara, asked: “Is it Osama bin Laden?” And after she was given the name Comandante, she asked: “Who is he?” And “he” is a man with a capital letter , a representative of the rarest breed of people who do not close their eyes to the chaos happening around them. Begin to act - selflessly, purposefully, tough, but effective. The Cuban revolution is a vivid example of how you can and should fight for your freedom and assert your rights!
Take the current situation and compare it with the events of 50's in Cuba. America, then and now, dictates its own rules (if not to the whole world, to its good half), it is destroying the economies of countries and republics. It breaks the spirit and way of life of an ordinary peasant, putting the strong on his knees and killing the weak. But Che Guevara could not and did not tolerate the conditions imposed by America and the Batista regime, he led the liberator detachments and wrested Cuba’s independence (and above all the people) from the slave-owning dollar and the communist USSR. You ask: “How did one person manage to organize such a large-scale coup?” I answer: not one, but with the help of his faithful friends, Fidel and Raul Castro, and with the help, of course, of love. Che Guevara always said: “Revolution is driven by love! The love of humanity, justice and truth! It is impossible to bring up a revolutionary if he does not have these qualities! ”Everything I write below will answer the question:“ Who is Che Guevara and what goal has she pursued all her life? ”
Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna (Che's full name) was born into a family with aristocratic roots in the city of Rosario, Argentina, in May 1928, but his date of birth is considered to be 14 of June. This was done in order to avoid the shame of having a baby born earlier than the wedding date. Ernesto was the eldest of five children raised in this family. His father, Ernesto Raphael Guevara Lynch - of Irish descent, worked as an engineer in civilian skills. Mother, Celia de la Serna, had Spanish roots. Therefore, rather arbitrary moods prevailed in the family, as is often the case with educated people. The library had a lot of progressive literature, including Marx, Bakunin and Kropotkin. Tete (so affectionately called the young Ernesto at home) was a very painful child. At the age of two, he became ill with asthma. This was the reason that he went to school two years later than his peers. But since childhood, Ernesto tried to overcome the disease. From the age of fourteen he was engaged in rugby, with fifteen gliding. In parallel, he became interested in swimming and even made a trip to the Amazon on a raft.
The disease also influenced his professional choice - Ernesto enters the medical faculty. During his studies, he makes a series of ascents on the steepest peaks of the Amazon. And in 22, he quits school and with a friend goes on a motorcycle journey, which soon breaks down and friends have to change to a bicycle. On the way, they earn additionally dockers in the port, wash dishes, cut wood and perform many other jobs. At the same time, Ernesto comes in handy with the knowledge of medicine - he often treats those in need and in parallel writes notes in local newspapers. So, Guevara, according to his own statement, traveled all of Latin America, with the exception of Haiti and San Domingo. The poverty and doom of most of the places Ernesto visited left an indelible sense of intolerance towards the status quo in his soul. “Due to the nature of my trips, first as a student and then as a doctor, I began to directly face poverty, hunger, illness, lack of material resources to cure my son or daughter, despair of hunger and constant punishment. It got to the point that the loss of a child for parents became an everyday occurrence, and this happened everywhere, among the oppressed peoples of our native America. And then I began to realize that there are things that are much more important. The people needed other help ... ”- so Guevara later talked about his becoming a revolutionary. Therefore, it is not surprising that when they met in Mexico “bearded men”: Cuban revolutionaries who dreamed of putting an end to the Batista regime in their homeland, Che became an ardent supporter of their ideology. The bottom line was simple: the United States, with the help of its puppet regimes, is exploiting the peoples of America, taking advantage of all the resources and growing fat on their poverty. The purpose of the "rebels" - to stop the domination of the States over the people of Cuba. By this time, Ernesto had already been arrested more than once, for participating in student unrest and protest actions, as he had always been intolerant of manifestations of the oppressive regime and injustice in general.
Dramatically, Guevara’s life changed after meeting Fidel Castro in Guatemala. Need I remind you that Fidel is an eminent speaker. His art of talking or arguing is still admired. In the person of Guevara, Castro found a like-minded friend and friend, their relationship became so trusting that Fidel offered Ernesto to take part in the expedition of the Granma yacht to Cuba as a doctor. He agreed with delight.
November 25, 1956, 82 of a man with weapons and provisions loaded on board the yacht. On the way, they were subjected to a batista army air attack. Only part of the "bearded", and, more precisely, the entire 12 people reached the shore. At this time, another problem was discovered: the yacht lost its course and instead of the rocky shores, the rebels found themselves in impassable swamps. Guevara has frequent asthma attacks. Fighting ahead, Che, as the Cubans called him, gained absolute confidence and became an authority among Cubans who initially distrusted him. After all, they reasoned like this: “Well, we, of course, are fighting for our Motherland, but what is this Che ready to give his life for Cuba?” Interjection “Che”, Argentines use to attract attention to whom they refer (“che” is akin to our word “hear”). And Guevara himself did not miss the opportunity to insert his favorite “che” in his appeals. But after the 5 battle of December in the town of Alegria del Pio, Ernesto became the leader (Comandante) of one of the columns heading for Havana. Along with Raul Castro and Camilo Cienfuegos, who led two other columns, under the general guidance of Fidel Castro, Guevara went to the city of Santa Clara, thereby proving his importance to the brothers in arms. During this partisan campaign, it was necessary not only to wage bloody battles with the army of Batista, but also to teach the peasants to provide the necessary medical assistance to the wounded and defeated leprosy - "leprosy". The lack of medicines, food and clean water made the rebels and ordinary people say goodbye to their loved ones and forgive each other. Subsequently, such a bitter loss and reconciliation will reveal the phrase: "One spirit." About this Guevara will write a book later. During battles and victories, Che became so absorbed in his new role that he learned to suppress even asthma attacks. Indeed, because of his illness, Che did not have a loud voice of the speaker, but was able to be heard at any time. The peasants, too, in turn, helped. Learning about the approaching partisans, staged riots and thereby helped the resistance movement. Che entered Havana as a generally accepted leader and favorite of the people.
He was a favorite not only of the people. Unofficial sources indicate the approximate figures of his mistresses - 40, 60 and even 100. But official wives, Che had only three. He met his first wife in Guatemala. Perduk Ilda Gadea was "a young wife with Chinese blood - in proportions that are difficult to calculate." In 1955, Che and Ilda got married. Their daughter was born in Mexico when Ernesto was in prison. During the partisan years, Comandante began an affair with the Cuban beauty Aleida March. After the overthrow of Batista in 1959, Che divorces Ilda and marries Aleida. She bore him four children. But the most famous companion of the revolutionary was Tamara Bunke Bider, who is also the partisan “Tanya” (a pseudonym that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya took for herself). “Tanya” was not beautiful, but Che valued her talents: brilliant knowledge of German and Russian, virtuoso playing the piano and accordion, athlete, ballerina and many other qualities unknown to Che, but driven by Tamara, made the revolution leader flutter and admire the employee “Stasi” (Ministry of State Security of the GDR). And it was she who, in 1967, in Bolivia, was preparing a base for underground fighters, and after the defeat of the resistance movement, she fled from Che to the mountains, where they were separated by death, in the person of Mario Terana. But more about that later ... And now we will return to the well-deserved victory over the Batista regime.
On January 1, 1959, in the city of Santa Clara, taking all the significant points from the station, ending with the transmission lines, Comandante received news that Batista was running, and his regime was overthrown. The United States has to recognize the provisional government led by Castro. Already February 16 Fidel holds the post of prime minister. After the victory of the revolution, Che was settled in one of the castles, not far from Havana, appointing him to the post of commander of the fortress. In addition to the death sentences (and more than 500 civilian and military members of the former regime were executed), Guevara is in charge of reorganizing the national army. This period of his biography is usually hushed up, preferring to sculpt the image of such a good-natured man from a Comandante. But the fact remains that Che indicates that he was a consistent and merciless revolutionary! After finishing the massacre of the "enemy" 7 of October, Guevara was appointed to the post of director of the program "Industrialization of Cuba." He remains in this position only until November 26. He manages in the morning to carry out his bureaucratic functions, and half a day he works in production as a simple worker, then as a combiner at harvesting sugar cane, then in a metal-rolling shop. After that, he was appointed president of the National Bank of Cuba. At this time, he publishes a cliché with a signature, where instead of a surname indicates a revolutionary nickname - Che. American banks are outraged by this and refuse to accept pesos, signed by the partisan nickname, but Guevara says that money will soon be canceled anyway, bills are not worthy of anything else. Now these bills from coin collectors are very expensive. Guevara is a supporter of rapid industrialization and centralization of the economy, which is why he enters into disagreements with other members of the government, causing political unrest.
On February 23, 1961, he was appointed minister of industry in the Cuban government, in whose position he continues to defend the centralization of the economy, but on this basis, Che's relationship with Castro is cracking. In October 1965, Guevara announces to Castro that he leaves all official posts and renounces his Cuban citizenship. Che disagrees with the Soviet government after the installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba during the Caribbean crisis, stating that without permission from the Cuban people, the USSR wants to create a colonial regime akin to the American one, and when the Cuban leadership takes a pro-communist position, it refuses to become a party member. While visiting the Soviet Union, he criticizes the Soviet model of communism, believing that the gains of the socialist revolution are lost by the bureaucratic system, which has become the new aristocracy and the powerless position of the people, living even by those standards very modestly, to put it mildly. A comrade and close friend of Fidel is experiencing an opposition to his outspoken attitude to Ernesto. Yes, and the universal love of the people for Che, apparently, awakened a kind of jealousy of the new Cuban dictator. According to unofficial sources, the frantic Fidel substituted Che, leaving no other options than to seek death in the hot spots of that time. Recalling the spirit of the revolution, Che, with a small detachment of Cubans, goes to Congo (Leopoldville) - now Zaire, to support the Congolese rebels in the struggle against the American-Belgian imperialists. Their goal was to bring the socialist government back to Kinshasa by guerrilla warfare methods. But the attempt to organize broad demonstrations of the masses there failed — the peasants simply did not support his aspirations. Defeated in the mountains of Lulaburg, Che returns to Cuba.
After analyzing his mistakes, in April 1967, Ernesto enters the territory of Bolivia with a detachment. He is supported by Bolivian miners by armed rallies. However, the local regime severely suppresses all sorts of unrest, and on the “frantic Che,” the authorities call in to help the American special services. The United States makes a request from the Cuban government several times about the location of Cuban citizens in Bolivia, but the Fidel government refuses to admit this fact and claims that Commander Che is being treated within the Island of Freedom. And on October 8 1967, in the area of the village of Vallegrande, Che Guevara's squad was discovered and surrounded. An unequal battle was imposed on them, and when they tried to break out of Tanya’s entourage with Guevara’s closest associates, they were killed, and Che himself was wounded and taken prisoner.
To date, there are several versions of the murder of Comandante: some claim that Guevara was shot and his hands were cut off (to confirm the fact of the death of the Great Che); others say that his entire body was chopped into pieces and scattered around the perimeter of the La Iguera Mountains; still others say they tortured him cruelly, but he didn’t believe that they would kill him. In fact: October 9, 1967, at 13: 23 in the afternoon, in the village of Higuera, the Revolutionary Person, Human Che, was shot with four shots in the chest. Che Guevara’s fear of even the dead was so great that the house in which he was killed was razed to the ground, and the place of the so-called burial was kept secret. Only in June, 1997, the Argentine and Cuban scientists were able to find and identify the remains of the legendary Comandante. They were transported to Cuba and October 17 1997, with honors buried in the mausoleum of the city of Santa Clara.
Thus, this short man, who became a legend of the twentieth century, included a number of contradictions. On the one hand, the constant search for death and risk, on the other - an extraordinary spirit of vitality and pleasures of this very life. The ambitions of the leader and the desire to constantly prove to others that he is not worse than them. The rebellious spirit of a passionate revolutionary and the passion of a lover. After death, he, one of the most prominent fighters against capitalism, became a brand with a steady income, a hero of a number of books, publications and films. In the Latin American countries there is a cult of the Comandante, they pray to him as a saint. His life has become a legend. Nowadays, it is hard to understand what was real and what was speculation. When writing this material it was very difficult to distinguish myths from truth.
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