“Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado” a.k.a “Ernesto Guevara” a.k.a “el Che”

This one time, in band camp- I mean, high school, one of the guys in my year came to school wearing a red t-shirt with the face of the famous revolutionary on it. He was one of those wannabe-communists, one of those young idealists who you realize are total bullshitters since they preach from the comfort and safety of their bourgeois life, private school and plasma TV and maid included. Not very inspiring and revolutionary of him, if you ask me, quite ‘careta’ actually.

    My grandfather once told me, while we were sitting on a beach in Brazil sipping caipirinhas, that el Che ‘enjoyed killing people’. I answered that that seemed like quite a biased and extreme statement. He accused me of being a ‘zurdo’ and I called him an old-fart and ‘facho’, though not to his face, of course, since he grew up in dreary Scotland and might not have minded whooping my ass in good old Gaelic fashion.
    The monochromatic picture of el Che, which you can get on t-shirts, flags, keychains, tattoos and pretty much any other useless consumer product (quite ironically for the leader of the anti-capitalist campaign; I have a feeling he would be rolling in his grave if he knew how his face was being used for a multi-million dollar industry), is probably the most famous photograph of the 20th century. Yes, I know we’re already in the 21st century, but we’re only 10 years in so don’t be a smartass.
    El Che was an Argentino born in Rosario on June 14, 1928, the eldest of five children of a family of Spanish, Basque and Irish descent. Blah, blah, blah. On to more interesting info stolen from the Wiki-Universe! So, yeah, Ernestito went to the UBA to study medicine but also found time to travel throughout Latin America on a motorcycle (which I find kind of odd. Have you ever talked to an UBA med student? Where the hell did Ernesto find the time to go off on his two little crusades?) and realize that the world is full of poverty and hunger and other sad/clichÈ things (Ernesto, you had to take a trip to realize this? Yeah, right.) The good thing about this trip is that it inspired the 2004 ‘Diarios de motocicleta’ movie, starring the so-gorgeous-you-can’t-believe-he’s-a-scruffy-revolutionary Gael Garcia Bernal, who is a Mexican but was quite believable as a speaker of ‘castellano argentino’.
    El Che decides he wants to make America a better, more just, place, and he helps the Castros in Cuba overthrow the US-backed president Batista, then goes off around the world trying to incite simiChe lar ‘revoluciones del pueblo’. At some point though, Guevara’s ideals and dreams of a more promising future seem to have degraded into a violent war on capitalism, and his full-on ‘guerrillero’ status made him quite willing to kill for the cause he believed in. Finally, like any good martyr, he was captured in Bolivia, with the help of the CIA, and executed.
    Many people, not only Argentinos, view this man as a hero, a freedom-fighter, while others view him as a terrorist. In my opinion he started out right, with a really positive and selfless attitude towards helping his fellow man out, but, probably due to the fact that he was fighting an ‘undefeatable’ enemy, ended up resorting to brutal aggression and killings, which sort of prevents his reach into sainthood, at least in my eyes.
    Anyways, el Che is always an interesting, though sometimes heated, topic of conversation. Here in Buenos Aires you shouldn’t worry about talking about him to locals, so long as you present your point of view respectfully. It might happen that you talk shit about him to some hardcore fan and end up with a ‘trompada’ to the face, but hey, it’s better than talking about Cristina Kirchner, right? Since there’s no discussion there and everyone knows she’s a megalomaniac whore. Period.
    ‘Sueña y seras libre de espÌritu, lucha y ser·s libre en la vida’
    El Pendejo Porteño