Argentine communist revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, who helped lead the
Cuban Revolution of 1959. (photo: teleSUR)
Remembering Che Guevara 50 Years After His Assassination
By James Cockcroft, teleSUR
10 October 17
In light of a recent upsurge in denunciations of Che and the Cuban
Revolution, it is important to separate fact from fiction.
The year 2017 is the 50th anniversary of the CIA-ordered assassination of
Che Guevara.
In light of a recent upsurge in denunciations of Che and the Cuban
Revolution, it is important to separate fact from fiction.
Here are five important points to take into account, all in historical
context, drawn from countless reliable sources, especially from the
"References" section at the end of this article.
First, there is a burgeoning school of professional Cuba bashers, including
some self-proclaimed leftists, who in effect seek the overthrow of the Cuban
Revolution.
Apparently expecting perfection, they tend to only see the failures of the
Cuban Revolution and its historical leaders. In so doing, they distort the
truth beyond recognition and base their arguments on such outright lies as
describing Che as an ardent Stalinist wedded to authoritarian ways, or
saying the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, CDRs, are used for
spying on and controlling people."
In reality, however, the CDRs were and continue to be key institutions of
the evolving and by no means perfect participatory socialist democracy the
young revolutionaries set about trying to establish in 1959 in the face of
ongoing U.S. aggression abetted by diehard supporters of the overthrown
Batista dictatorship.
And now, 58 years later, by maintenance of the economic blockade, control
over Guantánamo, acts of terrorism, military threat, a sophisticated
cultural offensive and the budgeting of dissidents," CIA agents and NGOs
inside Cuba, not to mention the mendacious slanders spewed forth by the mass
media of disinformation, including some of the social media.
Second, Che understood the centrality of politics impelled by ethics where
subjective factors prevail, leading to the rapid conversion of Cuban society
into a giant school of reclaiming Cuban culture and ethical values.
Hence, the literacy and voluntary labor campaigns, the advances in
education, medicine, peoples participation, agrarian reform, housing
reform, and so on that converted idealistic goals based largely on the
thoughts of Martí, Mella, Guiteras, and other revolutionaries in Cuban
history into evolving on-the-ground realities that even in ones wildest
dreams had never appeared possible.
Third, rejecting the use of capitalist methods to fight capitalism, Che and
Fidel used the methods of dialectical Marxism-Leninism to implement the
maximum possible option: make a socialist revolution of national liberation
that would transform institutions and social and human relations through an
organized and conscious praxis that despite errors recognized publicly
by each of them and their successors continues today.
Fourth, as known at the time and revealed in collections of Ches writings
after his assassination ordered by the CIA in 1967, Che repeatedly warned
about the dangers of not seeing the deficiencies of existing socialism and
of mechanically copying Soviet manuals and methods.
He observed that the intransigent dogmatism of the Stalin era has been
succeeded by an inconsistent pragmatism
returning to capitalism. He saw the
actions and proposals of the Cuban Revolution as clashing with what one
reads in the (Soviet) textbooks and contributed insightful Marxist
critiques of both capitalist and socialist societies and their theories.
Fifth, Che, like Fidel, was profoundly committed to the cause of peace, but
unfortunately had to take up arms to move the world closer to that ephemeral
goal. To make a world without war possible, Che gave his life, even as Fidel
did. We can learn much from their examples.
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