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Monday, February 22, 2010

What Che Means to My Generation



(Something a little more serious....)



I was perusing the Kindle Store for biographies on Ernesto "Che" Guevara when I across two options. The first appeared to be a more traditional biography. It was highly-reviewed by the Amazon customers, but I wanted to explore my options. In my opinion, personal anecdotes and the subject's writing or correspondence paint a much more vivid portrait of the individual rather than a chronology of their life (David McCullough's John Adams and Charles R. Cross' Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain are the best two biographies I've ever read). The second option had the ominous title Exposing the Real Che Guevara, but was still highly reviewed. I understood that it probably wasn't what I was looking for but I was intrigued and decided to read the product description and the customer reviews anyway.



The author, Humberto Fontava, is a Cuban exile who gathered his research from "scores of interviews with survivors of Che's atrocities as well as the American CIA agent who interrogated Che just hours before the Bolivian government executed him." It's understood that Fontava is writing with an agenda and that is only made clearer by the dubious nature of his primary sources. Fortunately for Fontava, if customer reviews on Amazon are any indication, he has reached his target audience. Overall, the book (currently) has 4 stars out of 5, and the three primary reviews are glowing affairs. It goes without saying that the author and the reviewers are the kind of people who watch Fox News and give me a dirty look when I'm wearing my Che shirt. In the end, however, the choice of which Che biography to buy wasn't particularly difficult; I chose the former and moved on.



Fontava's book is the natural bi-product of a controversial icon like Che Guevara. What neither Fontava nor his readers seem to realize is that no matter how many books are written "exposing" Che Guevara (even if they do actually use legitimate sources) it won't make the slightest dent in Che's status. From an strictly American perspective, we might as well throw out everything that's ever been written about Che. We all know the bare bones history of Che and everything beyond that is simply unnecessary (the irony of writing this after buying his biography is not lost on me). Che has become a cultural icon like Jesus, Kurt Cobain, and George Washington. These individuals are all "above" history and have moved into the realm of myth. Americans don't conjure up images of Guevara ruthlessly shooting pregnant women as Fontava would have us do. We picture his handsome face, with a staunch look of determination firmly ingrained onto it. We see the word "Revolution." We imagine the young men and women overcoming their parents and elders who refuse to see the errors of their ways. That Fontava failed to grasp this, the most basic truth about his subject, is even more damning to his credibility than anything he could ever write or say. What's worse: right now, we need Che the Icon more than ever.



I don't need to inform anyone that the United States is beginning its descent in collapse. The most appalling element of this collapse is the source. As the Vietnam War was winding down in the early 70's, the atmosphere in America must have been mixed parts of elation, hope for the future, and regret for the past. The "baby boomers" were able to pat themselves on the back and feel good knowing that they had helped bring about the end of Vietnam. Through protests, sacrifices, and ant-war messages in music and television, they had forced the government to cave in and withdraw from Vietnam. Yet, it was hard to focus on their triumph knowing the cost. Friends, boyfriends, and brothers had all died. The young generation must have thought to themselves that the best way to honor their loved ones' memories was to ensure that it never happened again. Unfortunately, that sentiment did not last as not thirty years later we find the cycle repeating itself. The bloody quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, Intelligent Design, and the inability to fix Social Security all confirm that history really does repeat itself. It's a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions: our parents have failed us the same way that their parents failed them. Grant Morrison wrote, "Every adult places his hope in the future while simultaneously destroying it." Is it really any wonder that the American middle-class youth have begun clinging to the image of eternall young rebel?

Obviously men such as Humberto Fontava and his readers don't "get" Che Guevara. Che does not represent socialism, he represents the young triumphing over the old. As icons go, he bears more similiarity to James Dean or Holden Caulfield than he does to Karl Marx or Peter Lenin. Che is an image that the young generation can rally behind as we tell our parents that they are wrong. As I stated earlier, we need Che now more than ever.

1 comment:

  1. What a complete load of childish bullshit. Che was a bloodthirsty, cold-blooded murderer. He killed innocent, defenseless people whose only crime was to call for democracy or to criticize the Cuban dictatorship. He believed in a system of totalitarian slavery and mass murder that killed scores of millions of people in the 20th Century. Even on your own, astonishingly inhumane terms, he was a failure - a totally incompetent joke of a guerilla leader whose sojourn in South America was so pathetically executed as to read like something out of a surreal comedy.

    If someone arrested, convicted without trial, and put a bullet into the head of someone you loved because they criticized George W. Bush, I doubt your reaction would be to defend that killer because they were like so cool, you know like Kurt Cobain who's like a total poet, dude.

    And the worst part of your infantile rant is that you admit that you don't even care about the truth, just that Che is now famous. So hey, he must have been great, huh?

    And don't even get me started on the part about the young being wiser than their elders. Um, no. What's the defining characteristic of young people? That they're young. As in, they have less experience and therefore wisdom than their elders. When you grow up to become an adult who is capable of critical thought, you will be embarrassed by this garbage. Until then, keep extolling the virtues of mass murderers, I guess.

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