Murder story
HENRY TUBE
Nothing could better illustrate the crucial tenet of much Spanish and Latin American literature that life is dream, or at least fiction, than the case of the guerrilla chieftain, Ernesto Che Guevara. Presumed dead since last October, this 'little .t-wentieth century condottiere,' as he called himself, has already become more myth than man. That is to say, he has not created a new myth, but merged almost indistinguishably with an old one. It is therefore only to be expected that posters should be appearing in shop windows, beside the Carnaby Street stickers, portraying not so much the man Che, as the idealised subject of innumerable re- ligious pictures.
And this element of hagiography is very noticeable in the feverish enthusiasm of John Gerassi's acknowledgements at the front of Venceremos I: 'Many volunteered to type, proofread, even to cook for me, so I could keep at it as much as possible.' This collection of speeches and writings, some of which have already appeared in this country in different translations, has all the makings of Holy Writ; and the photograph on the back of the dust- jacket, featuring Che with propelling pencil, wristwatch and Monte Cristo No. 4 cigar in mouth, could as well be of the star actor rest- ing between 'takes' for a Hollywood New Testament spectacular.
But though a quasi-Christian tone is clear in many of Guevara's own statements: 'we all must work every day, work in the direction of inner improvement,' the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love,' our sacrifice is a conscious one: it is in payment for the freedom we are building,' the flag under which we fight would be the sacred cause of redeeming humanity'; even so, one is more often reminded of the debased twentieth cen- tury version of the myth, that of the Great Scoutmaster. The immediate impression given by Guevara's account of the Revolutionary War is of a glorified camping holiday: 'I must men- tion here that, at last, I was going to get a canvas hammock. This was a royal gift, which I had not yet been awarded, in keeping with the guerrilla law: a canvas hammock went to those who had already made their own out of burlap sacks.' I will always remember this happened by the banks of the La Plata river, the day we ate horse meat for the first time.' And this impression, of a man instilling the values of a healthy outdoor life, is reinforced by many of the later exhortatory speeches: '[work] is engaged in happily, to the accom- paniment of revolutionary songs, amidst frater- nal camaraderie and human relationships which are mutually invigorating and uplifting.' But the penalties for failure in this particular Outward Bound School tended to be rather severe: 'At that moment, a tremendous storm broke out, and it got very dark: amidst a
veritable deluge, interrupted by lightning bolts and thunder, the life of Eutimio Guerra was snuffed out, and no one heard the shot that killed him.'
The other strand of the myth, Che as armed, crusader rather than saviour, is more straight-
forward and more specifically South American.
Bernardo O'Higgins, who hoped for 'adorable equality,' Miranda, whom Napoleon called 'a Don Quixote—with this difference, that he is not mad,' San Martin ('I do not seek military glory, nor am I ambitious for the title of conqueror of Peru: I only wish to free it from oppression. What good would Lima do me if its inhabitants were hostile politically?'), Cuba's own Marti; of these and many others Guevara is, as it were, the reincarnation. But above all of Bolivar, of whom Unamuno wrote: 'Bolivar, founder of fatherlands, lived and worked and created on a spiritual plane, where reality ends and fiction begins, or rather, where fiction ends and reality begins. In Bolivar history is legend.' And it was Bolivar himself who said: 'The three greatest fools of history have been Jesus Christ, Don Quixote . . . and me!' It is almost too predictable that we should find Guevara, in his last letter to his parents, writing: 'Dear Folks, Once again I feel Rocinante's bony ribs between my legs. Again I begin my journey, carrying my shield.'
There is a double irony in this situation. In the first place that, while the basis of Che's appeal is as old as history, he himself believed he was helping to initiate a new stage in evolution, first expressed by Marx: 'Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environ- ment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny'; and carried forward in our own time by the more advanced concept of armed insurrection : 'the Cuban Revolution takes up Marx at the point where he himself left science to shoulder his revolutionary rifle.' Che often refers to 'the new man,' the indi- vidual within the collective, who will be the end-product of the revolution, but this 'new man' is only the age-old utopian ideal of 'the perfect man,' unselfish, happy in his work, loving his neighbour instead of exploiting him. Thus Che's programme is seen to be the per- fection of the individual through exhortation and personal example, hand-in-hand with the destruction of existing society through the barrel of the gun. To combine the ideals of Christ with the practice of Tamburlaine hardly seems the prescription for a new world.
The second irony is the effect that Guevara has on the existing world. John Gerassi writes:' 'This book was made possible for a reason few people over forty will understand: that is that America's conscientious youth . . . admire Che Guevara like no other man of the modern era.' Of course. But if Che had been as long dead as; say, Bolivar, would he not also be admired for the same reasons by the equally conscientious old fools over forty? The most saddening thing about this book is the way that, as it goes on, Guevara's attacks on 'imperialism' and 'the west' become as vaguely generalised, as hysterically inaccurate as his support for 'the east.' The confrontation of two more or less corrupt power blocs, inhabited by individuals old and young, of every politi- cal persuasion, whose romantic ideal after all these centuries is still the armed hero, whether of history, fiction or the present day, is our un- fortunate reality. If we really wished to build a new world, we should have to learn, like Don Quixote at his last gasp, to confine our fictions to the library.
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