Che as I knew him (original) (raw)
On the 30th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara
On 9 October 1967, in a little schoolroom in La Higuera, Bolivia, Ernesto “Che” Guevara was assassinated. He had been taken prisoner the day before. Thus ended the life of a revolutionary whom Jean-Paul Sartre called “the most complete human being of our era”. It had led him from Argentina to Guatemala, from Cuba to the Congo, and finally to Bolivia, always inspired by an ardent hope of relieving the sufferings of the poor. President Ahmed Ben Bella met him many times in Algiers from 1962-65 when the city was a haven for anti-imperialists from all over the world.
For thirty years the call of Che Guevara has been ringing in our ears, summoning our consciences to witness. His dying gaze has been engraved on our memories ever since the day when photographs in newspapers all over the world showed us his naked body lying in some forsaken spot in Nancahuazu, blazing with light.
“What matter where death comes upon us,” he said, “as long as our battle cry is heard, other hands take up our weapons, and others arise to intone our funeral dirge”.
The object of Che’s quest was humanity itself. Human dignity and freedom. He spoke and wrote of guerrilla warfare, but rather than an instruction manual he left us a code for living intended, in his own words, “to transform the love of humanity into deeds that serve as an example and stimulus to action.” Fidel Castro said of him that his total disregard for danger was his Achilles’ heel. It was also his strength and his greatness.
Che was a courageous fighter, who had to struggle unremittingly with a body wracked by asthma. Sometimes, when I climbed with him to the Chrea Heights overlooking the town of Blida, I saw him suffer an attack that turned him green in the face. Anyone who has read his Bolivian diary knows in what poor health he faced the terrible physical and mental ordeals with which his path was strewn.
It is impossible to speak of Che without speaking of Cuba and the special relations between us. His life was so closely bound up with the country that became his second home before he turned to wherever the revolution called him.
I first met Ernesto “Che” Guevara in the autumn of 1962, on the eve of the Cuban missile crisis and the blockade decreed by the United States. Algeria had just achieved independence and formed its first government. As head of that government, I was due to attend the September session of the United Nations in New York at which the Algerian flag would be raised for the first time over the UN building, a ceremony (...)
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