Che Guevara

"We'll still have to wait many years for history to deliver a definite judgement on Che, when the passions of both sides have passed."

"The students caught between the two superpowers and equally disillusioned by East and West, "inevitably pursue some third ideology, from Mao's China or Castro's Cuba." (Spender, op. cit., p. 92.) Their calls for Mao, Castro, Che Guevara, and Ho Chi Minh are like pseudo-religious incantations for saviors from another world; they would also call for Tito if only Yugoslavia were farther away and less approachable."

"The iconic Che lives large in the popular culture, and the commodified Che is within easy reach of everyone. But Che Guevara was also a flesh-and-blood human being—flawed, contradictory, trembling, and real... It's been said that Che was a citizen of the world. Perhaps more accurately, Che was a citizen of a world that did not yet exist."

"He set out to do more than just upend the world's economic system — he wanted to change what it means to be a human being. Ernesto Guevara's hombre nuevo, new man, was endowed with the ability to permanently prioritize the "other" over the "self.""

"The Young Lords Party understood themselves to be a revolutionary nationalist party with an internationalist vision. According to Melendez, three texts formed the core of the Young Lords' political education program: Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, Mao Tse-tung's Little Red Book, and Che Guevara's Man and Socialism: Transformation of the Individual. Grounded in Mao's critique of nationalism and Fanon's analysis of colonialism, as well as Vladimir Lenin's writings on imperialism and the national question, the nationalism of the Young Lords was much more ideologically explicit than that of most Chicano leaders...Inspired by Che Guevara, the Young Lords Party sought to engage the internal struggle of the individual "to manifest change within himself in order to create a revolution in society.""

"Che Guevara - hero of the Cuban Revolution, left-wing icon and the face that has sold more posters than anyone else in history. Remembered as a romantic freedom fighter, an expert in guerrilla warfare, and a thoughtful philosopher who died young for his cause, Guevara has always been the revolutionaries' revolutionary. Stylish, vehemently anti-American and considerably better looking than Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, he practically invented the image of the bearded, beret-wearing left-wing radical, as adopted by thousands during the 1960s and 70s."

"The discussions that count, are those that continue albeit silently in thought. In my mind, the discussion with Che has continued for all these years, and the more time passed, the more he has been right. Even today, dying while putting in motion a never ending struggle, he continues, always, to be right."

"The death of Che Guevara places a responsibility on all revolutionaries of the World to redouble their decision to fight on to the final defeat of Imperialism. That is why in essence Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us."

"He wasn't able to inspire revolutions because individuals don't inspire revolutions — they inspire movements, respect, and, sometimes, adulation and admiration. Once he was dead, of course, the fact that you could read him any way you wanted, and that there was no danger of being contradicted by him, made it easier in a sense for Che to inspire people. But the fact is that none of the political movements that Che inspired after his death in 1968 were triumphant. The cultural movements were, but the political movements didn't go anywhere."

"Che brought the ideas of Marxism-Leninism to their freshest, purest, most revolutionary expression."

"Che sowed the seeds of social conscience in Latin America and the world, he was a flower prematurely cut from its stem."

"If we wanted to express how we'd like our revolutionary combatants, our militants, our men, to be, we should say without hesitation of any kind: that they be like Che! If we wanted to express how we'd want the men of future generations to be, we should say: that they be like Che! If we wanted to say how we'd want our children to be educated, we should say without faltering: we want them to be educated in Che's spirit! If we wanted a model of a man, a model of a man who does not belong to this time, but who belongs to the future instead, I'd heartily say that this model without a single stain on his conduct, attitude or behavior, is Che! If we want to express how we want our children to be, we must say with all the heart of vehement revolutionaries: we want them to be like Che!"

"Why did they think that by killing him, he would cease to exist as a fighter? ... Today he is in every place, wherever there is a just cause to defend."

"Che is fairly intellectual for a Latino."

"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.""

"This secular saint was ready to die because he could not tolerate a world where the poor of the earth, the displaced and dislocated of history, would be relegated to its vast margins."

"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."