Poster boy of the revolution
In the late ’60s, the image became a symbol of rebellion and of opposition to the war in Vietnam. Today, it is popular as a T-shirt, but how many people beyond Latin America know about the extraordinary man it depicts?
Lucía Álvarez de Toledo, an Argentine journalist and translator, is determined to do justice to her compatriot and has talked to many people who knew Che, including his widow, Aleida, his family, and journalists who interviewed him. She has read everything that has been written about him in Spanish, English, French and Italian, making her a leading ‘Che-ologist.’ She has translated two books about Che – Travelling with Che Guevara, by Alberto Granado (his companion in Walter Salles’ 2003 movie, The Motorcyle Diaries), and Young Che, by Ernesto Guevara Lynch, Che’s father. Her bibliography includes 14 books by Che, and 200 others, mainly on Che and/or the Cuban revolution.
With so much in print, there has to be a strong rationale for another biography of Che. Álvarez de Toledo presents her work as a personal insider’s account, drawing on her own background to illuminate the world that Che grew up in. She aims to clarify myths and misconceptions. The Motorcyle Diaries depicted the poverty and injustice that led the young medical student to fight for the Cuban revolution. The film rekindled interest in the man who walked away from his powerful, post-revolutionary position as a Cuban government minister and international diplomat to renew the armed struggle against oppression as a guerrilla leader in the Congo and then Bolivia. His Congo campaign was abandoned as a fiasco, while the equally disastrous Bolivian one ended in his death, in 1967, aged 39, shot in cold blood, in captivity, by a sergeant of the Bolivian army.
Lucía Álvarez de Toledo was born in 1938, into the same social background as Che Guevara, but 10 years later. Her family, like his, was descended from an early generation of immigrants, who arrived before 1813, when Argentina gained independence. Che’s father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, came from landed gentry of Spanish and Irish ancestry. Álvarez de Toledo does not specify these Irish ancestors, but they are believed to have left Galway in the early 18th century.
His parents were part of an enlightened bourgeoisie, but would have been horrified to be called aristocrats. Both had small, private incomes from inherited lands and the children went to private schools, but when Ernesto was out of work, money was tight. But they had excellent connections: when Che was named as one of the men fighting with Castro in Cuba, his father was able to seek information from the Argentine ambassador in Cuba, who was his first cousin.
Ernesto (Che’s birth name) junior was the first of four children. The family moved a lot, searching for a climate that would help young Ernesto’s asthma. This was severe throughout his life and, in his biographer’s opinion, was one of his defining characteristics; she reckons that being asthmatic gave him greater than usual determination and removed the normal fear of death after so many close calls. As a schoolboy, he did not let asthma stop him playing rugby: he organised a friend with an inhaler to run up and down the sidelines in case he needed it.
Che learnt French from his mother, as a child, and was a voracious reader in both Spanish and French. The list of books that he read during his campaigns ranges from philosophy (Hegel), politics and history, to physics, and novels by Stendhal and Graham Greene. He was a serious chess player all his life, and, as a minister and diplomat, was famous for his memory for detail and his ability to function on four hours of sleep a night.
His biographer says it was humanitarian concerns rather than politics that led to Che’s advocacy of armed revolution to liberate Latin America from foreign domination. He first experienced action in Guatemala, in 1955, in a coup that failed for lack of arms, convincing him that violent opposition was the only effective path. He travelled on to Mexico City, where he met Fidel Castro, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Álvarez de Toledo puts much emphasis on Che’s physical beauty, more striking than most film stars. It was a quality that also impressed men, including the American journalists, IF Stone, who called him “the most beautiful man I ever met,” and Lyle Stuart, who said you could feel the electricity when Che entered a room. “He was charged with magnetism and charm and strength, and, yes, beauty.” The many photos in the book confirm his attractiveness.
His biographer describes a highly intelligent, cultivated man with a sophisticated sense of humour. This was accompanied by an innate probity and sense of justice that, unfortunately, often made him overestimate his comrades-in-arms. His sad conclusion after the Congo campaign fell apart was that you cannot liberate a country that does not want to fight. Such was his faith in the Cuban revolution that, when he left to fight in the Congo, he made no provisions for his wife and four children, saying in his formal letter of farewell to Castro that he knew the state would provide for them.
Lucía Álvarez de Toledo has done a diligent job and her judgment is generally sound. Her biography is liberally illustrated with photos, but it will add little that is new to those already familiar with Guevara’s life and works, while the many highly-condensed historical summaries will be hard work for those who are not. In spite of her obvious enthusiasm for her subject, her writing is tepid, colourless and strangely lacking in narrative drive given the exciting, fast-paced and tragically short life it describes.
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