Che Guevara's birthday

Surely its significant that his face is better known than any of his ideas...

Check out his bio on enrager.net/history:

http://www.enrager.net/history/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=104

He was in no way, shape or form anti-stalin. He fell out with Castro over this, when che took an extrme stalinist line and urged the USSR to drop nuclear bombs on the US. He was the one who forced through the liquidation of the (often anarchist) agricultural collectives and co-ops, as well as demolishing what pitifully few workers rights existed, he was the one who proclaimed " I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that i won't rest until i see these capitalist octopuses annihilated", and he was the one who forged links with the CP of Cuba who had participated in Batista and other dictatorships. He was also rather keen on the chinese Stalinists who he turned to when the USSR didn't go the way he wanted it under kruschev.

There's a reall good short pamphlet called "Saint Che: The truth behind the legend of the heroic Guerilla, Ernesto Che Guevara' by Larry Gambone which AK Press stock.

http://www.akuk.com/

Someone here also reckons he knobbed a dolphin!

now now don't be letting the truth get in the way of a great t-shirt.

a pic of che (traditional image of course)

text: arch stalinist, destroyer of working class autonomy and dolphin fucker!

see the looks on the trots when we start wearing them

just you wait til the wma t-shirts come out (hint hint to certain londoners), they'll be even better then that idea. although maybe we should have worked the dolphin fucking in somewhere to improve it...

..... and of course the only reason Castro cut him loose to 'ferment revolution' abroad is that he was making such a fuck up of the Cuban economy as Minister of Finance.

when the j26 movement took power in cuba after batista fled, they didn't really know why they'd won. the only people to make any real analysis of why the cuban revolutionaries succeeded were, imo, the us government.

castro and guevara felt they had a model of revolution which could be exported across the continent of latin america and which would work elsewhere. this plainly wasn't true as none of the groups inspired by che guevara's "guerrilla warfare" and "guerrilla warfare: a method" were able to emulate the cuban experience. throughout latin america no rural (or urban) guerrilla movement of the 1960s got anywhere. apart from the cubans, the only other country in the americas which saw guerrillas win was nicaragua, in 1979.

this was due to several factors.

as i've said above, the us government looked carefully at the reasons for the success of the cubans. in response they came up with the alliance for progress, which provided funds for counter-insurgency training to latin american regimes. it's worth recalling that che guevara was captured by a party including cia agents.

the guerrillas in cuba were lucky. spanish is spoken throughout the island. in many latin american countries, spanish is spoken by the people in the cities, but not by the majority of the rural population. a wide variety of indigenous languages are spoken instead, and spanish speakers are often looked on with sullen hostility. none of the rural guerrilla movements of the 1960s had any but the most token indian presence, and the lack of common ground between the guerrillas and their target supporters - the peasants - undermined them. again, the class composition of the guerrillas across latin america worked against them. they really did have fuck all in common with the rural populace! if you look at which classes they came from, latin american guerrillas were almost without exception middle class, educated city-dwellers: not the sort of people with whom peasants had any sympathy.

guerrillas throughout the continent were advised by guevara, initially, that his foco method of guerrilla warfare could only be successfully employed against illegitimate repressive regimes like that of batista. he soon broadened the types of regimes against which he felt it could be effectively used to include liberal democracies. it beggars belief that someone could be so foolish as to suggest that! but lots of people - in many latin american countries - did, and died as a result of their faith in the great che.

again, whilst guevara laid great emphasis on the land question, he himself ignored it in bolivia. the 1952 revolution in bolivia - although it hadn't resulted in a huge land reform - had gone some way to satisfying the peasantry. in peru, a left-wing military dictatorship presided over a partial land reform which placated the peasantry - the guerrillas there met sticky ends. and again and again across the continent... whereas guevara was initially cautious when determining the circumstances when guerrilla warfare was worth pursuing, he soon advocated it in a wider range of situations than was wise.

che guevara and fidel castro may have wrought great changes in cuba, but it is clear that their influence on the wider latin american left was malign. this may not have been their intent, but the results of their ill-starred encouragement for guerrilla warfare across latin america in circumstances when it could not possibly have succeeded led to the deaths of many well-intentioned but politically naive leftists.

The fact of the matter is that the Sandinistas threw indigenous tribes off their land and discriminated against them, believing that they were too primitive to understand what the Sandinista movement was all about.

The Zapatista movement is more than a movement with an indigenous base. It is actually an indigenous movement.

It's too simplistic to dismiss them as scum, neither is it true. They did a hell of a lot for the Cuban people (as well as many things against the Cuban people). One of Che's greatest acts was to show the other American countries that it was possible to resist the imperial power to the north and win.

We shouldn't need any icons to be smashed because we shouldn't have any icons. Che, like Castro, like Bakunin, like Kropotkin, like the rest of them, was a human, shaped by his time and his culture. As a human he had his failings and his strengths. Personally, I think the former outweigh the latter, but the latter are sizeable. It doesn't compromise me as an anarchist to recognise that.

Whilst I see your point, I think you've misunderstood mine. What I was arguing was that the Cuban revolution gave the sign that it is possible to resist the north and win. This is fairly indisputable, I would have thought. It is possible to see any number of guerilla forces who have taken inspiration from the experiences of Che Guevara. You are completely right to say that the majority of them have failed, but my point was that they at least gained the dignity of resisting their oppression. To quote either Ibarruri or Zapata (depending on who you believe, "It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!

In ]?Guerilla Warfare, Guevara refers to three "fundamental contributions" that the Cuban revolution made to the anti-US imperialism resistance:

1. It is possible for the resistance to beat a regular army.

2. You don't always have to wait for the conditions to be in place. The insurrectionary forces can create the conditions.

3. At least in developing America, the battlefield should be the countryside rather than the cities.

My post refers to the first. I disagree with him about the second (for obvious reasons) and the third seems to be a product of its time.

On some smaller nit-picking points: the opinions of comrades here can hardly be described as "testimonies". Secondly, it seems a bit inaccurate to claim that the root of repression in Central and South America is the failed guevarista model of revolution (capitalist exploitation had quite a lot to do with it too!). Thridly, I'm curious why you chose to put speech marks around

?

But before I get labelled as a Che apologist, let me make it clear that I am not. He fought against US imperialism, only to welcome Russian imperialism. His enthusiasm for fighting led to his death (and the deaths of many others). He was, above all, a militarist and this kind of person, whether from the left or the right, tends to believe strongly in discipline, inflexibility and the humanity of inhumane actions. His political theory was book-based (the story about how Che became Cuban treasurer: Castro had the revolutionary command around the table and asked for volunteers. Che's hand shot up. "I didn't know you were an economist," says Fidel. "Oh," replies Guevara, sheepishly, "I thought you said,'communist'.") He saw the will of the "Cuban people" made flesh in Fidel Castro (!!!). He believed in the sacrifice of the people to achieve political progress (without actually asking the people). He was preapred to counter mass murder in order to get his communist world (a typical communist approach: how do we safeguard the revoultion? Well, we could kill everyone who isn't a communist and start all over again...). That said, I think it is too simplistic, as I wrote earlier, to dismiss the gains of the Cuban revolution by referring to Guevara as a cunt or as scum. My main point was that, like everyone, he had his shortcomings and his strengths. An approach more in keeping with the spirit of anarchism might be to focus on his strengths whilst being clear about his weaknesses. After all, we are willing to forgive Bakunin his racism; Kropotkin his enthusiasm for an imperialist war; Proudhon his misogeny etc.

Couldn't agree more.

Not for any religious reasons! In fact, it's not a case of focusing on the positive, it's a case of being aware that is there (as opposed to dismissing our enemies as cunts and the like). Why? Well, because we can learn from both the positive and the negative. Believe it or not, there are even good things to be said about the police!

?

it is interesting that in yr three points (1. It is possible...) you do not mention little things like the land question, which guevara made central to the potential success of rural guerrilla warfare. nor do you mention the class composition of the rural guerrillas of latin america in the 1960s. the only (marxist) guerrilla movement in south (not latin) america to come close to toppling its government was shining path, and a nasty bunch of people they were/are too. they spent a decade working with peasants in peru before they took up armed struggle, learning the indigenous languages, getting to know the peasants and their concerns, and forming a base, a foundation if you will, among them. the rural guerrillas inspired and funded by the cubans without exception ended in defeat: from venezuela to peru to colombia (camillo torres?) to bolivia, the foco idea fucked up!

latin america has seen but two successful guerrilla movements, if success is determined by gaining power in the country as a whole: the july 26 movement in cuba (with its urban allies) and the sandinistas in nicaragua. the colombian guerrillas haven't done too badly, with large areas of that country under their control, but they have not, and are unlikely to, seize power there.

if you really look at the class composition of the guerrillas of the 1960s, you will see ex-army officers, students, and a couple of token workers and peasants. the july 26 movement was filled with people like castro (lawyer), guvara (doctor) and so on and so forth: they were effectively upper middle class revolutionaries. and when they came across genuine working class revolutionaries? look at what happened to their erstwhile comrades after the seizure of power in 1959.

yes, it's possible for guerrillas to defeat a regular army. but it's unlikely, when that army is being trained and supplied by the united states specifically to fight guerrillas. it is unlikely when that guerrilla movement is alien to the battlefield they choose - when their urban experience and manner of speaking and language is entirely dissimilar to that of the people, the peasantry, they expect to assist them. it is unlikely when the local conditions are not taken into account, when the land question doesn't have the same centrality as it had in cuba, for instance. the best example of this is bolivia in 1967. the 1952 revolution there might not have produced paradise, but the partial land reform had resulted in tying the peasantry in sympathy to the government so they didn't see their interests best served by supporting guevara's guerrillas: who in any case couldn't even chat to the locals in their own language.

the root of repression in modern, post-1959, latin america is, to a large extent, the success of the cuban revolution. as i've said above, in an earlier post, the successful cuban revolutionaries didn't really know why they had won. the americans, on the other hand, looked closely at the cuban revolution and their response to prevent another cuba was to establish the alliance for progress. ok, they did also try to topple the castro regime through insurgency, terrorism and invasion, but without success. but their ultimate solution to preventing another cuba was to provide counterinsurgency training to latin american goverments, which led to military regimes as the military in latin america, when faced with guerrilla movements, felt that civilian governments weren't doing enough to counter the threat. they, and the americans, were prepared to sacrifice democracy to prevent another revolutionary success.