People From Rosario

"It's like he is alive and with us, like a friend. He is kind of like a Virgin (Mary) for us. We say, "Che, help us with our work or with this planting,' and it always goes well.""

"I knew that the moment the great governing spirit strikes the blow to divide all humanity into just two opposing factions, I would be on the side of the common people."

"With the news of Che's death, rallies were held from Mexico to Santiago, Algiers to Angola, and Cairo to Calcutta. The population of Budapest and Prague lit candles; the picture of a smiling Che appeared in London and Paris...when a few months later, riots broker out in Berlin, Paris, and Chicago, and from there the unrest spread to the American campuses, young men and women wore Che Guevara T-shirts and carried his pictures during their protest marches."

"What has made Guevara a cultural icon is not his example for poor countries, but his capacity to provoke empathy among the spoiled youth of the affluent West."

"I looked out over the old harbour of Havana, where Alberto Korda took his famed portrait of Che ... It was taken on 4 March 1960 at a funeral service and not published until seven years later, after Guevara's death. I mulled over how, since that time, the photograph - like the posters and murals derived from it - has become associated with every site of struggle from Soweto to the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organisation. That image continues to be one of the most iconic in contemporary culture, with reproductions available in the most surprising places."

"Che was wearing green fatigues, and his usual overgrown and scraggly beard. Behind the beard his features are quite soft, almost feminine, and his manner is intense. He has a good sense of humor, and there was considerable joking back and forth during the meeting ... Although he left no doubt of his personal and intense devotion to communism, his conversation was free of propaganda and bombast. He spoke calmly, in a straightforward manner, and with the appearance of detachment and objectivity ... I had the definite impression that he had thought out his remarks very carefully — they were extremely well organized."

"It was difficult to recall that this man had once been one of the great figures of Latin America. It was not just that he was a great guerrilla leader; he had been a friend of Presidents as well as revolutionaries. His voice had been heard and appreciated in inter-American councils as well as in the jungle. He was a doctor, an amateur economist, once Minister of Industries in revolutionary Cuba, and Castro's right-hand man. He may well go down in history as the greatest continental figure since Bolivar. Legends will be created around his name."

"What I appreciated most was his honesty — and his ability to transform negative things into positive things. ... he was not compromising. It wasn't easy unless you shared his vision and believed in it."

"He always did what he said he was going to do, That's why he is still timely."

"We can in no way accept that my father should appear on women's underwear or men's underwear or that it should be on the back pocket of a pair of jeans or that they use it as a commercial image for a pair of glasses. We think that is lacking in respect and we won't accept that."

"That he was shot after capture demonstrates the fear that the Bolivian authorities felt even of an imprisoned Che. They were afraid to bring to him to trial: afraid of the echoes his voice would have aroused from the courtroom: afraid to prove that the man they hated was loved by the world outside. This fear will help to perpetuate his legend, and a legend is impervious to bullets.""

"Che was not an insane fanatic, and he did not have a pathological love of bloodshed and human cruelty. However, he was not a normal and contented man. If he had been, he would never have become a revolutionary. He was a dreamer, an adventurer, and a rebel against the established order of things. He was a man deeply incensed by the social injustices which he saw all around him, and motivated by a sincere desire to rectify them. He was the perfect revolutionary—the super idealist who insists on bringing haven immediately to earth. Moreover, his willingness to die for his ideals indicates that he possessed far more courage and conviction than the ordinary man."

"He belongs more to the romantic tradition than the revolutionary one. To endure as a romantic icon, one must not just die young, but die hopelessly. Che fulfils both criteria. When one thinks of Che as a hero, it is more in terms of Byron than Marx."

"We predict that Guevara will be eulogized as the model revolutionary who met a heroic death."

"Long Live Che Guevara!"

"As a supporter of the ideals for which Che Guevara died, I am not averse to its reproduction by those who wish to propagate his memory and the cause of social justice throughout the world, but I am categorically against the exploitation of Che's image for the promotion of products such as alcohol, or for any purpose that denigrates the reputation of Che."

"Debray wrote of tossing out the old Marxist-Leninist theories about slowly fomenting revolution. Instead, according to Debray, revolutions began by taking the initiative with an army raised from rural people. That was Castro’s strategy in the mountains of his native Oriente province. And it was what Che was doing in Bolivia. Only in Che’s case, it had not worked out well, and in November a photograph circulated of a Bolivian air force colonel displaying Che’s half-naked corpse. Debray, too, had been caught by the Bolivian army, but rather than killing him, the Bolivians kept him in a prison in a small town called Camiri. In the beginning of 1968 Debray was still there, though the Bolivians allowed his Venezuelan lover, Elizabeth Burgos, to come to the prison so the couple could be married. So in 1968 Fidel Castro’s close friend and co-revolutionary became a martyr, a canonized saint of the revolution—forever young, to borrow a phrase from Bob Dylan, bearded and bereted, with those smiling eyes, the pure revolutionary in deeds and clothing. At the José Martí International Airport in Havana, a poster of the martyr appeared with the message “Youth will intone the chants of mourning to the chatter of machine guns and cries of war. Until victory, forever.” All over Cuba the phrase was written, “Until Victory, Forever.” Sixty thousand students in gray high school uniforms marched past Castro’s reviewing stand, and as each group passed they declared, loudly and enthusiastically, “Our duty is to build men like Che.” “Como Che”—to be like Che, to have more men like Che, to work like Che—the phrase filled the island. The cult of Che had begun."

"Che never wavered from his firm revolutionary stand, even as other Cuban leaders began to devote most of their attention to the internal problems of the revolution."

"I love to see T-shirts or flags with Che Guevara, Diego [Maradona] and Argentina anywhere in the world. It gives me a beautiful feeling."

"Che was an intolerant and dogmatic fanatic, incapable of respecting dissent and ready to eliminate it by force."

"If the personal is political, so is the political personal. If it is true, as Che Guevara so eloquently said, that a revolutionary commitment to human liberation is fueled by love, then how can we not be heartbroken by oppression?"

"Revolutionaries are not normal people': an understatement in relation to Ernesto Che Guevara. Physician, brilliant intellect, competent soldier, charismatic leader, developed—and eventually creative-Marxist economist, always a man able to capture the spirit of an experience in his own being, Che remains one of the four or five greatest revolutionaries in modern history."

"I think that a political revolution is something that starts within each of us. Yes, I think there will be a revolution. There must be a revolution. I think there must be a revolution in this country. But I think that the revolution of institutions cannot really add a new solution or really take unless it is the revolution that begins with the self based on the internal demands of the people. As Che Guevara said shortly before he died, the great revolutions are those revolutions guided by the basic principles of love. And I am not speaking of wishy-washy flowery love, I'm thinking of what I have been saying to you for the last half hour that requires the nitty gritty alterations of institutions into our dreams."

"To hold life in profound respect and to be ready to take up arms and, if need be, to kill, is contradictory only in the eyes of Christian or pacifist humanism. For revolutionary humanism, for Che, the people's war is the necessary answer, the only possible answer, of the exploited and oppressed to the crimes and the institutionalized violence of the oppressors."

"Che was not only a heroic fighter, but a revolutionary thinker, with a political and moral project and a system of ideas and values for which he fought and gave his life. The philosophy which gave his political and ideological choices their coherence, colour, and taste was a deep revolutionary humanism. For Che, the true Communist, the true revolutionary was one who felt that the great problems of all humanity were his or her personal problems, one who was capable of feeling anguish whenever someone was assassinated, no matter where it was in the world, and of feeling exultation whenever a new banner of liberty was raised somewhere else."

"The first thing to note is that in my son's veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels."

"We also honour the great Che Guevara, whose revolutionary exploits, including on our own continent, were too powerful for any prison censors to hide from us. The life of Che is an inspiration to all human beings who cherish freedom. We will always honour his memory."

"On his trips, he would receive gifts from his hosts, some of them very expensive. He would get presents for me as well, and he would give them away if he considered them too ostentatious. I was given a color TV only to see Che pass it on to a factory worker. And back then, it was sort of an unimaginable item. Once, after a trip to Algeria, he received a barrel of an excellent wine. When he arrived home, he told me to give it to the army barracks near our home. I would not always unconditionally obey his mandates. Knowing that wine was one of the few treats he allowed himself, I kept five liters."

"By the 1980s that sense of identity and chicanismo, that militant clarity, was hard to find. "Young people don't want to be called Chicano today," more than one professor of Chicano Studies commented to me. "It isn't really that they don't want to be called Chicano, it's more that the term has no special meaning to them, they don't know about the movement," said a former Chicana activist. At many schools, Chicanos and Chicanas were more likely to be taking courses in business administration than Chicano Studies. Ah, some of us sighed, where is Che Guevara now that we really need him?"

"At times our Chicano leftism meant little more than picking-up-the-gun, minimal thought was given to any deeper politics than having a Che Guevara poster on the wall (forgetting that Che himself would have demanded more)."

"I worked with Che in the military regiment at La Cabaña, putting order into the revolution; he personally asked me to take command of the new revolutionary police ... there was a lot of resentment against us at the beginning. People still loyal to the old regime would have done anything against us and the new, free, Cuba. Not many people wanted to stain their hands with such a job. But I did, and Che even more. Some call him "the butcher of La Cabaña" because of all the executions he had to carry out, but he did it honourably. He was a great man - so humble, so free, with such conviction. It was such a pleasure and an honour to be around him. But we were all convinced of what we were fighting for. We fought for our people to be fully happy. And we stayed alive to keep an eye on that marvellous victory."

"To his critics, Guevara was a trigger-happy megalomaniac whose bloody example led thousands to their deaths in futile uprisings that only hardened military repression from Guatemala to Chile."

"Che did not wander about in the mantle of Merlin, teaching humankind the wonder of everyday peace and harmony. Instead, he used his critical faculties to uncover and expose the mechanisms of oppression used by the global ruling class to keep the poor from taking up arms against their oppressors."

"Most people today think of Che Guevara as a revolutionary who fought against capitalism, authoritarianism and US imperialism. Less well known is that Guevara was central to the creation of Cuba’s economic policy in the early 1960s; policies that remain largely unchanged. He ran the land reform programme, was President of the National Bank of Cuba, Minister of Industry, member of the National Directorate for the economy, member of the Council of Ministers, and chief negotiator with the Soviet bloc. Guevara would steer Castro and Cuba towards a Marxist economy. He led the collectivisation and nationalisation of agriculture; nationalised virtually all industrial and commercial activity; introduced central planning; established price controls and rationing; replaced the currency and seized most savings; set the wage levels of all jobs; set industrial policy and investment; and controlled all foreign exchange and bartered with Russia, China and other communist countries."

"For my generation and for the generations that came after, Camilo Cienfuegos and Che Guevara preside over an irreversible constellation of heroes and, for that reason, have become integrated into the most beautiful popular imagination on the planet."

"He was just like a Christ, with his strong eyes, his beard, his long hair. He is very miraculous."

"Why do we say Che is alive? Because of his grandeur, his transcendence. For us, Che is here, very much alive, in everything we say."

"He took joy in killing counterrevolutionaries and was one of the most hard-edged, most Stalinist, pro-Soviet communists of the whole leadership."

"Most people don't know the real Che Guevara — the Che Guevara who wrote that he was thirsty for blood, the Che who assassinated thousands of people without any regard for any real legal process."

"The myth of the holy Che must finally be destroyed."

"We feel sick about this grand show that goes on every year on the anniversary of his death. Rather than honour a man who came to invade the country, we should honour the armed forces, the soldiers who defended the country."

"You know how much I admire Che Guevara. In fact, I believe that the man was not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age: as a fighter and as a man, as a theoretician who was able to further the cause of revolution by drawing his theories from his personal experience in battle."

"He was demanding of everyone and practiced being a personal example. Once, Guevara and other ministry officials were served steaks during a severe food shortage. Steaks are a treasured meal for Argentines, but Guevara became incensed and ordered it all removed. "What is this? No one is touching this meat. Take it away.""

"Che Guevara taught us we could dare to have confidence in ourselves, confidence in our abilities. He instilled in us the conviction that struggle is our only recourse. He, was a citizen of the free world that together we are in the process of building. That is why we say that Che Guevara is also African and Burkinabè."

"Che T-shirts are among the first things you'll see after landing at the Havana airport. But at least the Cubans know whom they're glorifying. In the United States, Che's life story and ambitions seem beside the point, or maybe they've just been reduced to caricature. The guy's face is shorthand for "I'm against the status quo." He's politics' answer to James Dean, a rebel with a very specific cause."

"In the late 1960s, if a popularity poll had been taken among the protesters, Lev Trotski, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara would probably have headed the list. They were disgusted with Soviet leaders from Stalin to Brezhnev and agreed that American Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, who had reinforced the USA’s military intervention in the conflict in Vietnam, were war criminals. The esteem for Che Guevara was enhanced by his good looks. The fact that Guevara died on campaign in Bolivia even though he could have had a comfortable career in Cuba was also counted unto him for righteousness. A similar reaction was evoked by Ho Chi Minh. Like Guevara, he was taking on the might of ‘American imperialism’. Data on Ho’s repressive regime in Hanoi were limited and would anyway have been disbelieved by his admirers if they had learned about them. The chant went up outside American embassies and on peace marches: ‘Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh!’"

"Che lives!" is the slogan for a generation of restless students and budding revolutionaries the world over. The Black Panthers, who occasionally style themselves 'Che-type,' have adopted his black beret. Arab guerrillas sometimes name combat operations in his honor. Posters of Che adorn dorm walls from Berkeley to Berlin, and his books have become basic-training manuals for the New Left. Writers from Graham Greene to Susan Sontag have extolled him. West German Playwright Peter Weiss has even compared him to "a Christ taken down from the Cross."

"Che did not view economic development as an end in itself. Development of a society has meaning only if it serves to transform men and women, enhance their creative capacities, and draw them beyond self-centeredness. The transition to the kingdom of freedom is a voyage from 'me' to 'us'. And socialism cannot carry out this transition with what Che called 'the dull instruments left to us by capitalism'. We cannot advance toward communism if life under socialism is organized like a competition among wolves, as in the previous society."

"Che Guevara is an incredible individual. He had so much, but sacrificed it all for the benefit of other people."

"He taught me to think — he taught me the most beautiful thing which is to be human."