Ernesto Che Guevara, Essay Example

Early Life

Ernesto Che Guevara de la Serna, came into this world on June 14, 1928 in Rosario, Argentina in South America, and began a career that earned him worldwide acclaim as well as hate depending on the political philosophy that was embraced, by the time he died in 1967, according to DiscovertheNetworks.org (2011).

Guevara studied medicine at the University of Buenos Aires before turning to pursue political activism in nearby Guatemala and Bolivia, according to DiscovertheNetworks.org (2011).

Career Paths

The medical doctor life changed dramatically when he met Cuban revolutionaries Fidel and Raul Castro in a Mexican city in 1954, because he later joined them in the successful overthrow of Fulgenico Batista government in 1959, serving in the capacity of military adviser, according to DiscovertheNetworks.org (2011).

Biographical data on Che Guevara, supplied by A&E Television Network (2011), describe him as Marxist Revolutionary, Physician, Author, Guerilla Leader and Military Theorist, and his philosophy on life can be summed up in his famous quote, “Better to die standing up than to live on your knees”(A&E Television Network, 2011).

Executions

Immediately after Fidel Castro came into power in Cuba and the defeat of American inspired Bay of Pigs overthrow demise, Che Guevara was given the responsibility to manage the La Cabana Fortress Prison, according to A&E Television Network (2011). It was reported that he used extra-judicial powers to summarily execute approximately 550 people.

However, according to Discoverthenetworks.org (2011), historical records including eve witness testimony placed the actual execution figures far above the modest 550 reported.  A Cuban prosecutor name Jose Vilasuso, defected in horror and disgust after seeing Guevara personally signed 400 death warrants within a few months at the head of the prison, while Iaki de Aspiezu, a Basque priest who performed confession and last rites for the executed, reported that the Marxist revolutionary had himself ordered 700 executions, according to Discoverthenetworks.org (2011).

Additionally, Cuban Journalist Luis Ortega, a personal acquaintance of Che Guevara since 1954, wrote in his book that Guevara sent 1897 men to the firing squad (Discoverthenetworks.org, 2011).

It could be argued that base on the reports that Guevara was Fidel Castro’s Chief Executioner, according to Discoverthenetworks.org (2011), but he was also the country’s Minister of Economics in 1960 and Minister of Industry in 1961, and played devastating role in the devaluation of the peso to practically nothing as well as the closure of several factories mass exodus of thousands of skilled workers with only their clothing on their backs.

International Fame

The fame of Guevara had spread worldwide by 1960, as reflected in the New York Times Magazine, according to Fontova (2005), which featured him as a revolutionary commander on its cover page and crowned him as the “Brains” of the Cuban Revolution when they describe how he guides the country with icy calculation, vast competence, high intelligence and perceptive sense of humor. According to Vargos Llosa (2005), Che Guevara might have enamored his own death but he was enamored by other peoples’ death, base on his April 1964 speech entitled Message to the Trans-continental, when he summed homicidally his idea of justice. Guevara remarked that hatred is an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy was one that pushes a man beyond his natural limitations, making him evolve into an effective, violent, selective and bloody killing machine (Vargos Llosa, 2005).

Comparisons

Remarks of this nature, along with the number of summary executions has led many to compare Guevara to the likes of Chek’s head Felix Drezenski, Gestapo chief Himmler and Berai; the brains behind Stalinism, according to Discoverthenetworks.org (2011).

Demise

Che Guevara’s demise began in earnest when the Soviets began finding the cost to bankroll the Cuban economy, especially due to the drastic reduction in sugar production, and told Fidel Castro that his military advisor, and former Minister of Industry and Economics had to go, according to Discoverthenetworks.org (2011).

The Argentine firebrand made things worse by later in an Anti-Soviet speech in Algeria in 1964 branded the Soviet Union as accomplices of imperialist exploitation. When he returned to Cuba he was attacked verbally by both the Castro bothers, had his telephone disconnected and placed under house arrest, according to Discoverthenetworks.org (2011).

Guevara departed from Cuba in 1964 and made trips to Algeria, Congo, and Tanzania by 1965 but achieved little in terms of military success, before deciding to set his sights of Bolivia for another guerilla adventure, according to Discoverthenetworks.org (2011).

The Military Advisor made a grave  cultural mistake while in this country, in that he ignored the fact that the section of Bolivian people that he was trying to galvanize to rise up and overthrown the government, had receive land from President Paz Estenssoro in the 1952-53 period, so that they could work it and live in peace. These people unlike the Cubans had no desire to overthrow a government that had helped them in this way, according to Discoverthenetworks.rog (2011).

The end of Che Guevara came in 1967 , when the Bolivian Army with the help of Cuban-American CIA captured him in a river valley and executed him the following day without offering him the luxury of a trial as he was expecting due to his popularity, according to Discoverthenetworks.org (2011).,

Conclusions

It was a fitting end to a perhaps glamorous career and perhaps justice was served, in that Che Guevara had summarily executed nearly 2000 prisoners at La Cabana Fortress prison in Cuba, with many not even afforded a trial, and for him to be executed in a similar manner.

He was made a hero by the New York Times and perhaps many other media organizations, national leaders and business organizations, some of whom today are using his name to market products like key chains, wallets, mugs, bandanas and denim jeans, according to Vargos Llosa (2005), but no one could help in when he was place before the well trained Bolivian firing squad, hundreds of miles from Havana, where it is felt by many that his former friend Fidel Castro had plotted with the Soviet Union to sent him to his death.

Works Cited

A&E Television Network, (2011). Che Guevara Biography www.biography.com/people/che-guevara-9322774 , 11.28/11

Discoverthenertworks.org (2011). Che Guevara A Guide to the Political Left www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2054 , 11/18/11

Fontana, H. (2005). Monster Center for the Study of Popular Culture www.discoverthenetworks.org/articles/monster%20-%20Che.pdf , 11/28/11

Vargos Llosa, A. (2005).  The Killing Machine Che Guevara, from Communist Firebrand to Capitalist Brand The New Republic www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?cd=1535 , 11/28/11