“With apologies to the authors who might feel themselves alluded to, I am among those who think that Che’s biography— comprehensive, all-encompassing, and with all the historical objectivity it requires —is still yet to be written, despite all of those which have been written until now.”
Orlando Borrego, Che: El camino del fuego, 2001
On Biographies: Personal, Intellectual, and Integral
Fifty-five years after his tragic death, and like Luigi Pirandello’s six characters who pined in search of an author, Che Guevara, a radically revolutionary and anti-capitalist figure like few others —and simultaneously a sharp and profound critical theorist of the social reality in which he lived— is still searching for the biographers capable of writing his complex, rich, and multifaceted integral biography. Far from the traditional recounting of anecdotes and events organized at random and strung together casually and purely chronologically, an integral biography is clearly organized on the basis of a general articulating principle. As a true common thread, this principle would set out, from an organizing methodological criterion and a clear particular model of interpretation of the extraordinary character in question, the principal explanatory keys to the life and work of our exceptional subject.
This would be a complex biographical undertaking, capable of reconstructing the complicated dialectic (progressive and regressive) which goes from the situational, geographic, and temporal contexts which serve as its framework to the individual in question and his work, and later goes from the singular “project,” in the Sartrean sense, of this character toward his various effects on and modifications of his specific circumstances, space, and time: i.e., on his particular general context. In other words, this would be a biography capable of explaining the individual and his work in the context of his world and his times, but also the modification of that time and that environment by the action of the individual and the multiple effects of his activity and of his various projects.
In the particular case of Che Guevara, this also implies that it is impossible to write his personal biography without at the same time writing his intellectual biography as a component of the former. Ernesto Guevara de la Serna is a character who was not exclusively or predominantly an intellectual (as, for example, Fernand Braudel was), nor only a man of action or a primarily practical political leader (as was, for example, Fidel Castro), but a rare and complicated mixture of an energetic, exceptional, and radical man of action, simultaneously gifted with an equally penetrating, fundamental, and exceptional ability for theorizing and thinking.[1]
Because contrary to the image assumed and disseminated until now by the immense majority of Che’s biographies, which register and emphasize only his practical dimensions as an exceptional man of action, itemizing them in his qualities, or in his dimension as a superb strategist, or as a charismatic and energetic leader, or as an admired and beloved commander, or as an ethical and exemplary militant, or as a model anti-capitalist and radical revolutionary (and so on, and so on, and so on), Che Guevara was also undoubtedly, in addition to all of these things, an exceptional theorist: unquestionably the main theorist of the experience of the Cuban Revolution in its first decade. Likewise, he was the main theorist of a possible, truly anti-capitalist road toward the construction of socialism in Cuba, as well as one of the three main theorists of the anti-capitalist revolution in all the countries of what was then called the Third World, alongside Mao Zedong and Frantz Fanon. In addition to reflecting, investigating, and theorizing on how to make the revolution in primarily peasant countries, without a large industrial proletariat or solid and organic capitalist development, Che also developed and systematized in general terms how to implement this new theory of the Third World revolution in the specific context of all of Latin America, to turn the continent into a second or third Vietnam, into a genuine “Latin American Vietnam”.
“che guevara has been an exceptional theoretician, being the main theoretician of the experience of the cuban revolution, in its first decade of life, as well as the theoretician of a possible truly anti-capitalist way of building socialism in cuba”
In lacking the organic incorporation of Che’s essential dimension as a theorist of the Revolution (Cuban, Latin American, and global) and as a theorist of the construction of socialism in Cuba and in general, and in consequently lacking a recovery of his complex intellectual biography as an essential dimension in constant interaction with his personal journey and itinerary, the biographies written until now about him as a figure and a character are necessarily incomplete, insufficient, partial, limited, and fundamentally incapable of giving a true account of our subject’s complex integral life journey. Thus, like Pirandello’s creations, Che is still searching for his true biographer, and for a biography that can at least be considered to rise to the truly imposing stature of this exceptional character.[2]
The Editorial Misadventures of an Intellectual Legacy
Furthermore, it has only been in the last years that several essential testimonies by different participants have become public, which deal with the concrete practical and organizational aspects of the important overall Guevarian project of promoting a continental revolution on the Latin American scale, in order to create a second and/or third Latin American Vietnam in the territories of our continent, explicitly stated and defended in his celebrated “Message to the Tricontinental” (1966-1967).[3]
This broad collection of speeches, conferences, interviews, and works written by Che himself, along with testimonies —first by Cuban intelligence and later by the Latin American network of the project of continental revolution— alongside more detailed studies by Nicaraguan, Argentinian, Peruvian, Chilean, Brazilian, Bolivian, etc. organizations and movements themselves, which, having been identified and become public in the last fifteen or twenty years, explain both the absence of the intellectual biographical dimension as well as many of the factual and empirical limitations of reconstructions of Che’s personal life on the part of those biographies of the 1990s already mentioned but also, more generally, on the part of all biographies written about Che Guevara until now.
Thus, shocking as it may seem, it has only been during the 21st century that several truly essential writings by Che have been published, including his Apuntes Críticos a la Economía Política (published in English as Critical Notes on Political Economy) and Apuntes Filosóficos (Philosophical Notes). The same is true of the texts that complement Notes on Political Economy, Che’s reflections on the challenges of the transition to socialism in Cuba, and his thoughts on the important debate of 1963-64 surrounding the situation and direction of the Cuban economy. Likewise, only in the last decade were the seven volumes of Orlando Borrego’s essential Che en La Revolución Cubana (Che in the Cuban Revolution) published; this work is almost a sort of Che’s “Complete Works”, though only for the period between January 1959 and March 1965. For 47 years, the collection was an utter bibliographic rarity whose existence was known of only by a handful of people.[4]
But it is also only in the last 25 years that important texts by Che Guevara himself have been published, such as a compilation of his writings on Latin America, or his diary of the revolutionary war in Cuba, which served as the basis for his Pasajes de la Guerra Revolucionaria (published in English as Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War). Also among these texts are Che’s diary of his entire participation in the Congolese guerilla war and a selection of his written correspondence from 1947 to 1967, published only three years ago, in 2019.
The very delayed publication of this important part of Che’s intellectual legacy, partly explains the huge limits and the enormous negative biases characteristic of his existing biographies. But furthermore, they clearly demonstrate the scope of the enormous intellectual challenge implied by a concrete, organic, integral biography of Ernesto Che Guevara, which is yet to be written. In light of the materials listed here, which only became known to the general public in the last quarter-century, this biography would need to organically incorporate all the major discoveries, contributions, and elements contained in these only recently disseminated texts.
One of these elements is the entire radical and anti-capitalist critique posed by Che in his Critical Notes on Political Economy against the project of so-called developed socialism in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe. In addition to drawing Che significantly closer to Maoist and pro-China political postures, this lays the foundations for his energetic and ongoing effort to seek and create a new theory of an untried, radically anti-capitalist road for building socialism in Cuba and of the subsequent transition from socialism to communism. Che’s search for and first elaboration of a new theory of the construction of socialism in Cuba, and in general, resolutely, systematically, and critically recovers the profound lessons of Marx and Lenin on this complex topic. At the same time, it attempts to update and adjust them to the complex realities of Cuba, Latin America and the Third World in the second half of the twentieth century.[5]
Che’s criticism of the Soviet model and theoretical outline of a new model for the construction of socialism also clearly underpin the Guevarian texts compiled in Retos de la Transición Socialista en Cuba (1961-1965) (Challenges of the Socialist Transition in Cuba), as well as those included in El Gran Debate sobre la Economía en Cuba (published in English as The Great Debate on Political Economy). In these texts (to mention only two examples among many), Che presents a challenging and provocative thesis: a new society attempting to break radically from capitalism and effectively overcome it, must be able to transform human labor from an activity which is externally imposed, exhausting, alienating, and tedious, into work which is taken on by individuals themselves as a self-assumed task. In reappropriating labor in this way and conceiving of it as voluntary and as a personal duty to society, labor (if still difficult and perhaps even tiresome) would become pleasant, agreeable, and much more tolerable and manageable for workers themselves.[6]
Also significant is Che’s defense of his own creation, the ‘Budgetary Finance System’ (Sistema Presupuestario de Financiamiento), as a key piece of a truly non-capitalist economy. In contrast to the Soviet and Eastern European models, the ‘Budgetary Finance System’ radically rejected the validity of the law of value and the primacy of material incentives; likewise, it rejected the commodity nature of products exchanged between state-owned enterprises, as well as economic competition between supposedly “socialist” enterprises. Instead, Che defended the rational organization and intelligent distribution of goods according to the population’s needs, via the mechanism of central planning, as well as the primacy of moral incentives and the product (and not commodity) status of goods involved inter-state exchanges. He was a proponent of the distribution and recovery of money without charging interest on the part of banks, as well as inter-enterprise emulation through voluntary labor and purely symbolic rewards and recognition. In other words, Che promoted a genuinely anti-capitalist system and model of organization for the Cuban economy which at the same time might be much more universally valid for any society of what was then called the Third World whose capitalist development was deformed or insufficient and who, after a social revolution, might attempt its own process of transition to socialism.
It bears noting that in this important debate surrounding the economic model of the construction of socialism in Cuba and the Third World, Guevara’s main interlocutors (in addition to Cuban theorists and economists) were Charles Bettelheim and Ernest Mandel, two of the most important Marxist economists of the time. Once again, this underscores Che’s huge intellectual stature as a critical social theorist, and therefore the importance of including his intellectual biography as a central, essential dimension of his integral biography. This stature explains the fact that no less an intellectual than Jean-Paul Sartre, after meeting and speaking with Che, described him as “one of the most lucid minds of the Revolution,” adding that Che was “a highly cultured man” and that there “was a gold mine in each of his sentences”.[7]
“in this important debate on the economic model for the construction of socialism in cuba and in the third world, guevara had as his main interlocutors, in addition to certain cuban theoreticians and economists, also charles bettelheim and ernest mandel, that is, two of the most important marxist economic theorists of that time”
Che Guevara’s dimension as an intellectual, as well as a first-rate Marxist critical theorist, has been ignored by the great majority of his biographies and those who study him. This aspect of his life manifests just as strikingly upon a serious and in-depth reading of the seven volumes of Che en la Revolución Cubana. In this work, in addition to more rigorous and broader investigations of subjects mentioned above, we find sharp and penetrating reflections on, among other topics, women’s oppression under capitalism and the paths to their emancipation in the new, socialist society; frontal critiques of racism; the role of the new education in shaping the “New Man”; the new socialist art and the critique of Soviet ‘socialist realism’; or the new and old types of families; or the character and function of mass media. We even find examinations of the casual character of proper names, and the much greater value of nicknames, among many examples we might cite.[8]
In closely studying the seven volumes of Che en la Revolución Cubana we find a complete and highly developed general assessment of the Latin American conjuncture, and of all the truly anti-capitalist movements, organizations, and struggles which filled the vast geography of the region in Che’s time. Che patiently developed this critical assessment of the semi-continent and its struggles throughout his residence and work in Cuba, and it allowed him to (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) support and promote the truly revolutionary and anti-capitalist projects which materialized in all of Latin America at that time, culminating in his own continental revolutionary project, initially in Bolivia, in a manner that was not at all coincidental.[9]
To the vast body of contributions included in the volumes of Che en la Revolución Cubana, and as part of the recently published Guevarian intellectual legacy, we must add Che’s Apuntos Filosóficos (Philosophical Notes). This text clearly demonstrates the type of Marxism which Che upheld and sought to embody: a profoundly anti-capitalist, and therefore openly anti-dogmatic Marxism, far from the rigid manuals of the USSR, radically critical of schematism and oversimplification. Che’s Marxism was furthermore open to confrontation with other positions, and able to recover the valid elements of those positions. It was a living Marxism, creative and heuristic; true to the spirit of its founder, it was capable of interacting with the specific realities it sought to explain, learning from them while illuminating their concretion and development. Rather than a rigid, one-size-fits all formula or a revealed, immutable truth, it was meant to function as a true “guide for action” and an intelligent, explanatory synthesis of action itself.[10]
Only in recent years, have the majority of Che’s texts on Latin America have been published, including writings that span from his first journey in Argentina in 1950 to communiques issued by the National Liberation Army of Bolivia (Ejército de Liberación Nacional de Bolivia, ELN) in 1967. These texts provide a series of important pieces of evidence for the complete reconstruction of Che Guevara’s critical Marxist consciousness, from its inception and evolution to its maturation and consolidation. They take us from the restless young man, clearly already a rebel spirit, searching for his place in the world and what he wanted to accomplish in life, to the Marxist anti-capitalist revolutionary who in full awareness committed himself to the insurgent project of promoting and fomenting the Cuban Revolution. This is the complex journey of Che’s intellectual genealogy, which gives him direct, first-hand experience of almost every country in Latin America, as well as elements of reflection derived from living through the achievements and limitations of the Bolivian and Guatemalan revolutions, in addition to lessons from the debates, projects, and crossroads which the revolutionary groups of Peru, Central America, Venezuela, and various Caribbean nations (including Cuba itself) face of the first half of the 1950s.[11]
Repeating a process that he would practice constantly throughout his life, Che transformed his accurate and detailed record of the concrete, specific struggle he led in Cuba in the late 1950s into a series of more general, more universally-valid lessons, enshrined in Guerrilla Warfare’s central theses and main arguments, on how to organize a guerrilla war that has a real chance of succeeding in any Third World nation. It is thus interesting to compare Diary of a Combatant to Guerrilla Warfare, and Guerrilla Warfare to The Bolivian Diary, in order to show Che’s agile, intelligent movement from concrete experience to general theory and back again; from this general theory to the equally wisely thought-out, structured, and organized layout of another, new concrete experience.[12]
“his important text Guerrilla Warfare is not only a brilliant ‘instruction manual’ for revolutionaries throughout Latin America, but also a clear analytical synthesis that elevates the concrete and particular experience of the Cuban revolution from 1956 to 1958 to the rank of a general and universal theory”
Something similar occurs in Che’s Pasajes de la Guerra Revolucionaria: Congo (published in English as the Congo Diary), in which he not only narrates the failed experience of his participation in the Congolese guerrilla war but (albeit briefly) outlines an analysis of the real possibilities and challenges of the creation and construction of an “African Vietnam,” and, comparatively, of a Latin American Vietnam; i.e. of his long-term project of continental revolution on the Latin American scale. This constant movement from the empirical to the theoretical and vice-versa is also present in some of the letters included in his 1947-1967 correspondence; among these is the essential letter to Fidel Castro which Che writes in March 1965. This letter is a brilliant and penetrating analysis of the situation and crossroads which then defined the Cuban Revolution, and yet it somehow remained completely unknown for more than 40 years: though a fragment of it containing a third of its total content was published in 2006, its full text was not published until 2019, 54 years after its writing. The delayed publication of this exceptional critical assessment of the achievements and challenges of the Cuban Revolution again affirms part of the reasons for the major limits and huge distortions and inadequacies of the biographies and studies of and concerning Che Guevara which have appeared until now.[13]
Thus, in light of this theoretical and documentary legacy of Che Guevara, which for the most part has only been published in the 21st century, we can more easily understand why neither his most well-known biographies nor the great majority of the texts dedicated to his figure and work have been capable of recognizing Che as one of the three principal Marxist theorists —alongside Frantz Fanon and Mao Zedong— at the global level in the years following the second World War. Furthermore, we can also understand the significance of reconstructing Che’s intellectual biography as an organic and essential part of his overall biography. And all this in addition to his well-known and frequently-cited aspects as an exemplary militant; a great military strategist; an indisputable political leader; a man of model ethics and morals; a great builder of socialism in Cuba; a brilliant diplomat of the Cuban Revolution; a charismatic and attractive character; and the model embodiment of the revolutionary, or of the “New Man” which he promoted. In addition to all these and other much-referenced aspects of his life, he was also a sharp critical social theorist, whose fundamental theoretical contributions and teachings are worth recovering patiently, studiously, rigorously, and urgently.
The slow times of testimonials and balance sheets
As we have seen, one of the primary reasons for the enormous faults and evident limits, biases, and errors present in Che’s most widely-circulated biographies, as well as in the great majority of the studies on various aspects of his life, figure, and work, has been the hugely delayed publication of a considerable and significant part of his intellectual legacy, including several of his manuscripts, transcriptions of his conferences and oral interventions at all types of forums, and his personal notes and letters.
In addition to this is the complimentary but likewise fundamental fact that it has only been recently we have seen the late publication (or in other cases the delayed broad circulation) of multiple testimonies by various actors who participated directly in the general political project that Che Guevara progressively, patiently, and systematically designed, projected, organized, promoted, and materialized from 1959 to 1967. This project is none other than the creation and development of a continental revolution in the entire, vast territory of Latin America, creating a new or many new Vietnams on our Latin American soil.
These testimonies, by friends and enemies alike, only now allow us to recognize the fact that during those last nine years of his life, Che dedicated the greater part of all of his efforts and energy to two colossal tasks. The first of these was the titanic effort to create a new and unprecedented model for building socialism in Cuba which, breaking with the Soviet model applied in the USSR and in a large part of Eastern Europe, would be a radically anti-capitalist model of the transition to and construction of socialism. The second task, on which he would stake even his own life, would be to advance the equally anti-capitalist and radical Latin American continental revolution, step by step and day by day, by bringing movements, organizations, people, projects, and networks into it, whether from Guatemala or Argentina, Peru or Nicaragua, Chile or Colombia, Brazil or the Dominican Republic, Panama or Bolivia, or Venezuela, Ecuador, or Uruguay.[14]
“Che dedicated all his efforts to create for the Cuban revolution a new and unprecedented model for the construction of socialism on the island, which, breaking with the Soviet model applied in the USSR and in a large part of Eastern Europe, would be a radically anti-capitalist model of transition to socialism and its organic construction”
The scope and complexity of this vast project, strictly Latin American in its dimensions, has only been able to be precisely examined and recognized in light of these recently-revealed testimonies, as well as in view of thorough and in-depth studies of each of the movements, networks, or projects mentioned above. Among these are the testimonies of members of the Cuban intelligence apparatus, who beginning in 1959 and through the 1970s organized the significant support which the Cuban Revolution (at Che’s request and with his constant participation and supervision) gave to almost all of the Latin American political and social movements and organizations who chose the path of armed struggle and guerrilla war. In relating their logistical and organizational support work in various Latin American countries, and even in the Congo, Algeria, and Czechoslovakia, testimonies like those of Manuel “Barbarroja” Piñeiro, José “Diosdado” Gómez Abad, Daniel Lescaille (Ulises Estrada), or Abelardo “Furry” Colomé Ibarra confirm the always Latin American horizon of Che Guevara’s general revolutionary project.[15]
These are important accounts of Cuba’s support for and promotion of pan-Latin American movements and organizations, many of whom also formed part of a regional network of local and national support for Che’s continental revolution. To these testimonies must be added an entire series of detailed studies and assiduous research, often based on interviews and/or recountings of oral histories, on the various components of that national and local network woven around the great author of Guerrilla Warfare. These studies or research might deal, for example, with the organization and construction of the Ejército Guerrillero del Pueblo (People’s Guerrilla Army, EGP) in Argentina, or the Peruvian guerrillas of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (Army of National Liberation) and the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Left Movement). They might address Che’s links to Leonel Brizola and the efforts of the Capãrao guerrilla and other Brazilian guerrilla movements (planned but never carried out); or the formation and role of Chile’s Ejército de Liberación Nacional in the Guevarian framework; or Che’s links to Favio Vázquez and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional of Colombia; or the likewise Colombian Larrota brothers and the Movimiento Obrero Estudiantil Campesino 7 de enero (January 7 Worker-Student-Peasant Movement). They might deal with Fabricio Ojeda, Douglas Bravo, and the Venezuelan Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (Armed Forces of National Liberation); or with the inheritors of the Unión Revolucionaria de la Juventud Ecuatoriana (Revolutionary Union of the Ecuadorian Youth); or Che’s debates with and ties to Turcios Lima and Yon Sosa and the entire Guatemalan guerrilla movement; or his direct support for Rodolfo Romero’s Nicaraguan guerrilla project, which Che planned to join personally; and so on and so on. To these could also be added in-depth studies or biographies of certain key figures in Che’s Latin American network, such as Tamara Bunke Bider (better known as Tania La Guerrillera), Jorge Ricardo Masetti (Comandante Segundo), Harry “Pombo” Villegas, or José Maria Martínez Tamayo (Papi/ Mbili/Ricardo), among others.[16]
In addition to this vast documentary and testimonial body on the strictly continental nature of Che Guevara’s project for Latin America, we can also add the enormous corpus of books, texts, photographs, and even objects related to the ELN guerrilla in Bolivia, which Che led in 1966 and 1967. In this corpus figure the previously published journals of several members of the Bolivian guerrilla (including those of Harry “Pombo” Villegas, Alberto “Pacho” Montes de Oca, Israel “Braulio” Reyes Zayas, Eliseo “Rolando” Reyes Rodríguez, and Octavio “Morogoro” de la Concepción y de la Pedraja, as well as still-unpublished journals which some researchers have been able to consult, such as the second half of Morogoro’s journal, and that of Restituto José “Negro” Cabrera Flores. In addition to these are the already-published narratives of José “Paco” Castillo Chávez and the traitor Ciro “Pelao” Bustos, as well as Antonio “León” Domínguez Flores’s still-unpublished narrative.[17]
There are also the testimonies of Che’s enemies: the Bolivian military officers who have had access to the military archives of the Bolivian Army and to relevant objects, including the original copies of journals, internal documents of the guerrilla movement, and photographs. These officers have also had access to texts, drawings, and sketches from the depositions of those who betrayed the guerrilla struggle, Ciro Bustos and Regis Debray, and those who deserted it (and of those among the deserts who Che himself called “the ‘dregs’ of the guerrilla.”
Finally, we have the testimonies of members of the Guevarian guerrilla movement’s urban support network, like Rodolfo Saldaña and Loyola Guzmán. These testimonies demonstrate how the Bolivian ELN had begun to awaken vast popular support among Bolivia’s subaltern classes and sectors, including students, teachers, workers, multiple left organizations and parties, and, of course, the miners, who on the eve of the terrible San Juan massacre of June 23rd, 1967, had already decided to donate a day’s wages in support of the guerrilla movement, and to seek channels to connect directly with it and even supply it with new armed militants. So much was their support that the San Juan massacre should be understood partly as the René Barrientos government’s fearful and brutal attempt to prevent a possible alliance between the ELN and the key sector of the working miners of Bolivia.[18]
In view, then, of all these important bodies of testimony, studies, and research, which include testimonies from within the Cuban intelligence apparatus; studies on various movements, organizations, figures, and local and national initiatives directly connected to Che; published journals and unpublished but viewable ones written by members of the guerrilla movement; and the testimonies of Bolivian military officers and members of the ELN’s urban guerrilla network, it becomes possible to understand the real dimensions and truly continental proportions of Che Guevara’s project for creating a new Vietnam in Latin America, for the liberation of all Latin American peoples while also being in solidarity with the global radical anti-capitalist revolution. This continental dimension is the true global horizon of all of Che’s revolutionary initiatives, and (once again) is absent, or present only in a marginal and minor way, from the immense majority of the existing biographies and studies around the figure and life of Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Thus, ninety-four years since his birth and fifty-five since his death, Che is still a Pirandellian character in search not of an author, but of one or many biographers, and of a true, organic, adequate, and complete integral biography.
Translation from Spanish to English: Noah Mazer.
[1] We believe that when addressing this complex issue of biography and of the complicated relations between personal, intellectual, and integral biographies, it is always useful to consider the contributions on the subject, both valuable examples as well as brilliant general reflections, made by Jean-Paul Sartre in L’idiot de la famille: Gustave Flaubert de 1821 a 1857, 3 volumes, Éditions Gallimard, París, 1988, and Crítica de la razón dialéctica, Volume 1, “Cuestiones de Método”, Editorial Losada, Buenos Aires, 1963, or by Walter Benjamin in Dos Ensayos sobre Goethe, Gedisa Editorial, Barcelona, 1996; Textos sobre Kafka, Eterna Cadencia Editora, Buenos Aires, 2014; and Baudelaire, Éditions La Fabrique, Paris, 2013. See also Giovanni Levi, “Les usages de la biographie”, in Annales. E.S.C., November-December 1989, Vol. 44, No. 6, and Carlos Antonio Aguirre Rojas, “(Re)construyendo la Biografía Intelectual de Fernand Braudel”, in Retratos para la Historia, Prohistoria Ediciones, Rosario, 2015.
[2] It is curious that, while the 30th anniversary of Che’s death saw the publication of the three voluminous biographies which are the most widespread about him today (those by Jon Lee Anderson, Pierre Kalfon, and Paco Ignacio Taibo II), the 40th and 50th anniversaries of Che’s disappearance registered no publications of works equal to these three. It is worth insisting on the fact that these three biographies, the most circulated generally, are merely personal biographies that broadly ignore the aforementioned, crucial dimension of Che’s intellectual biography. Furthermore, these biographies are purely descriptive and anecdotal and thus lack a general driving idea or global articulating principle, as well as a general explicatory model, a clearly-explained methodological criteria, or an articulated and coherent overall interpretation of Che’s particular life and his complex dialectic with his world and his times. In the end, this has contributed to limited, stereotyped, and impoverished views of Che’s character and figure remaining the prevailing ones until now; views which ignore his crucial lessons and fundamental contributions to the field of critical social theory.
[3] Che says: “It is the road of Vietnam; it is the road that the peoples must follow: it is the road that will be followed in America (…) America, a forgotten continent (…) that begins to make itself felt (…) in the voice of the vanguard of its peoples, which is the Cuban Revolution, will have a much more important task: that of creating a second or third Vietnam, or the second and third Vietnam of the world.” From “Mensaje a los Pueblos del Mundo a través de la Tricontinental”, in Ernesto Che Guevara, Obras escogidas: 1957-1967, Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, Havana, 2007, Vol. 2, p. 564-65. It is important to note that despite this explicit declaration by Che, none of the biographies published until now have truly taken seriously this Guevarian general project of the continental revolution, which straightforwardly explains Che’s series of failed attempts to integrate himself into the guerrilla movement first in Nicaragua, then in Argentina, later in Peru, and finally his project in Bolivia, which did materialize.
[4] This seven-volume compilation collects practically each and every one of Che’s texts and interviews, as well as the transcriptions of the internal and external meetings, conferences, and TV appearances that Che participated in from January 1959 to March 1965. Surprisingly, it was published in 1966, by the Cuban Ministry of the Sugar Industry, in only an abridged print run: 200 copies, according to some authors, or 300, according to others. Although Che himself knew of this compilation and even held it in his hands, and although Fidel Castro received the first printed copy, these few hundred copies were never circulated, remaining asleep and stored away for decades on the grounds of the sugar Ministry. But it is even more surprising that this compilation was never republished in much larger print runs in Cuba until 47 years after its initial publication: Editorial José Martí printed a run of 5,000 books between 2013 and 2016. And it is apparent that none of the authors of Che’s three most disseminated biographies, published between 1996 and 1997, made a serious and detailed reading of these seven volumes. Had they done so, they would have been obliged to radically modify the ways in which their biographies represent Che, upon recognizing his dimension as a critical theorist of different fundamental realities and processes, and would inevitably have had to incorporate his intellectual biography as a part of (and in a dialectic with) his integral biography, which, as Orlando Borrego rightly notes, has yet to be written.
[5] Cf. Ernesto Che Guevara, Apuntes Críticos a la Economía Política, Ocean Press, Havana, 2005. We insist on the point that it is difficult to understand the fact that this text —which Che himself wanted to publish quickly and whose editing and publishing he entrusted directly to Orlando Borrego at the end of 1966— took four long decades to finally see the light of day. On the pro-Mao, pro-China postures which Che expressed clearly, though only in circles restricted to those close to him; cf. for example, Ernesto Che Guevara, Che en la Revolución Cubana, Editorial José Martí, 2015, Vol. VI, p. 428.
[6] Cf. Ernesto Che Guevara, Retos de la Transición Socialista en Cuba (1961-1965), Ocean Sur, 2009, particularly the essay “Una actitud nueva ante el trabajo”, where Che uses a poem by León Felipe to pose this highly intriguing and controversial though, also heuristic and challenging thesis.
[7] On these clear and admiring statements by Jean-Paul Sartre on Che Guevara, cf. Jean-Paul Sartre, Huracán sobre el Azúcar, Ediciones Uruguay, Montevideo, 1961, p. 58-59 and 101. On the debate mentioned, cf. Ernesto Che Guevara, El Gran Debate sobre la Economía Cubana, Ocean Sur, Havana, 2006. It is notable that in this debate, Charles Bettelheim would defend the Soviet system of economic calculation against Che’s critiques; only a few years later, Bettelheim would criticize this system radically and completely after his journey to China and ideological turn towards pro-Mao and pro-Chinese positions very much like those that Che promoted in his own time.
[8] Cf. Ernesto Che Guevara, Che en la Revolución Cubana, 7 volumes, Ed. José Martí, Havana, 2013-2016. On Che’s critique of proper names and vindication of nicknames and pseudonyms, cf. Carlos Antonio Aguirre Rojas, Pesquisa sobre el Che Guevara, Ed. Contrahistorias, México, 2021.
[9] Cf. Ernesto Che Guevara, Che en la Revolución Cubana, cited above; on the basis of all that has been referenced here, we believe that this work undoubtedly deserves a much greater general dissemination in Cuba and Latin America than it has had thus far.
[10] Cf. Ernesto Che Guevara, Apuntes Filosóficos, Ocean Sur, Havana, 2012. It bears noting that this collection includes Che’s important letter to Armando Hart (dated December 4, 1965) in which Che describes his plan to broaden his Marxist education and the development of a genuinely critical, anticapitalist thought. Che recommends extending this plan to all Cubans through an extensive editorial program of publishing predominantly (though not exclusively) Marxist authors.
[11] Cf. Ernesto Che Guevara, América Latina: Despertar de un continente, Centro de Estudios Che Guevara, Ocean Press, Havana, 2003, and María del Carmen Ariet García, El pensamiento político de Ernesto Che Guevara, Ocean Press, Havana, 2003. It must be mentioned that contrary to a ridiculous, broadly-disseminated (including by some of Guevara’s own biographers) idea of a young “adventurer,” these texts on Latin America present the image of an exceptionally restless youth searching for his place in the world, who is at the same time profoundly sensitive to what he observes and profoundly reflective about what he is living through; who theorizes and deeply assimilates the new experiences which he plays a role in. We believe that this deep sensitivity, reflectiveness, and theorization are the exact opposite of an “adventurer,” in the strict and rigorous sense. Here one cannot use basic, unsustainable dictionary definitions or argue that Che himself once described himself as “half adventurer and half bourgeois,” a phrase he wrote to his wife Aleida March in a clearly metaphorical and self-ironic tone. If we were to take this phrase in the crudely literal sense, we would need to ask the defenders of the ridiculous thesis that Che was an “adventurer” if they would go so far as to say that he was likewise a “bourgeois.” This posture reveals the inability of the defenders of this absurd image of Che as a simple and vulgar adventurer, to capture his complex, multifaceted, and profound personality.
[12] Cf. Ernesto Che Guevara, Diario de un Combatiente, Ed. Ocean Sur, Havana, 2011, as well as La Guerra de Guerrillas. The latter text and the important article that complements it, “Guerra de Guerrillas: un método”, are included in Che en la Revolución Cubana, Vol. VII, 2016.
[13] Cf. Ernesto Che Guevara, Pasajes de la Guerra Revolucionaria: Congo, Ed. Ocean Sur, Havana, 2009, and Epistolario de un Tiempo: Cartas 1947-1967, Ocean Sur, Havana, 2019.
[14] This strictly Latin American dimension of Che’s project of continental revolution has not truly been organically taken up by the biographers, scholars, and researchers of his life and work. To cite only one example, this failure is clearly demonstrated in the still-open debate surrounding why Che chose to fight in Bolivia. But this question and this debate lose a great part of their meaning and relevance if we seriously take up the Latin American dimension of the Guevarian project. Today we know for certain that in 1959, Che was toying with the idea of going to fight in Nicaragua; that in 1963 and 64, he was considering traveling to Argentina to fight with the EGP, which he himself had organized; and that at the beginning of 1966, he was still convinced that he would go fight in Peru. A few months later, Che finally decided to organize what in his framework would be the “mother guerrilla column” in Bolivia: this would be the origin of subsequent guerrilla columns that would break off later to fight on other fronts in Bolivia itself, as well as in other countries of Latin America. Accordingly, Che’s choice of Bolivia is not very relevant, and it obeyed entirely circumstantial and immediate factors of the Latin American conjuncture at the end of 1966. This makes the question of why Che chose Bolivia an easily solvable one and makes it likewise easy to reappraise the relatively minor significance of this choice. On this Latin American dimension of Che’s project, cf. Manuel “Barbarroja” Piñeiro, Che Guevara y la Revolución Latinoamericana, Ocean Sur, Havana, 2006, and Aleida March, Evocación:Mi vida al lado del Che, Ocean Sur, Havana, 2011.
[15] On these testimonies, cf. Manuel Piñeiro, Che Guevara y la Revolución Latinoamericana, cited above; José Gómez Abad, Cómo el Che burló a la CIA, RD Editores, Seville, 2007; Ulises Estrada, Tania La Guerrillera y la Epopeya Suramericana del Che, Ocean Press, Melbourne, 2005; and Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, “Testimonio del General Abelardo Colomé Ibarra”, in Luis Báez, Secretos de Generales, Editorial Losada, Barcelona, 1997.
[16] Of the vast body of studies and investigations we mention, to name only a few, we might list the following: Gabriel Rot, Los Orígenes Perdidos de la Guerrilla en la Argentina: la Historia de Jorge Ricardo Masetti y el Ejército Guerrillero del Pueblo, Waldhuter Editores, Buenos Aires, 2010; Jan Lust, “El rol de la guerrilla peruana en el proyecto continental del Che”, in América Latina en Movimiento, October 7, 2016, at https://www.alainet.org; Denise Rollemberg, O Apoio de Cuba a Luta Armada no Brasil: O treinamento guerrilheiro, Editora Mauad, Río de Janeiro, 2001; Pedro Valdés Navarro, El Compromiso Internacionalista: El Ejército de Liberación Nacional: Los ‘Elenos’ Chilenos, 1966-1971, Formación e Identidad, LOM Ediciones, Santiago de Chile, 2018; Manuel “Barbarroja” Piñeiro, Che Guevara y la Revolución Latinoamericana, cited above; Jon Lee Anderson, Che: Una Vida Revolucionaria, EMECÉ Editores, Buenos Aires, 1997; and Gustavo Rodríguez Ostria, Tamara, Laura, Tania: Un misterio en la guerrilla del Che, RBA Libros, Barcelona, 2011. This last study is interesting for the new information it supplies, beyond its biased and untenable intention of “demystifying” the figures of Tania and Che, which we do not share whatsoever.
[17] On these journals and testimonies, cf. Carlos Soria Galvarro, El Che en Bolivia. Documentos y Testimonios, Vol. II, Los Otros Diarios, La Razón, La Paz, 2005; Harry “Pombo” Villegas, Un Hombre de la Guerrilla del Che, Colihue, Buenos Aires, 2007; and Arnaldo Sauceda Parada, No disparen… soy el Che, Imprenta Oriente, Santa Cruz, 1987.
[18] Cf. Rodolfo Saldaña, Fertile Ground: Che Guevara and Bolivia, Pathfinder Press, New York, 2001, and Loyola Guzmán, “Recuerdos de Loyola”, and “Loyola dice su verdad”, included in Vols. IV and V, respectively, of El Che en Bolivia. Documentos y Testimonios, La Razón, La Paz, 2005. Also the ‘Diario de Loyola’, published in the Journal Hoy, La Paz, Bolivia, in the 31 August, and the 1,2,3,4,6 and 7 September 1969.
