"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."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Mark Kurlansky, 1968: The Year That Rocked the World (2004)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Che_Guevara
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"Words that do not match deeds are unimportant."
"Silence is argument carried out by other means."
"I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. It exists when people liberate themselves."
"The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall."
"In order to know about the illnesses of society, you have to know what men are suffering from, how they suffer."
"I don't think you and I are very closely related, however, if you are capable of trembling with indignation each time…"
"Real revolutionaries adorn themselves on the inside, not on the surface."
"I knew that the moment the great governing spirit strikes the blow to divide all humanity into just two opposing fact…"
"We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it."
"Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel!"