He was not a very likely kid to become an icon for revolutionary change—a beacon for social justice, in defense of the Americas, against imperialism, authoritarianism, and foreign oppression.
But he did anyway.
Ernesto “Che” Guevara was born on June 14, 1928.
An asthmatic child raised by a well-to-do family in the hills of Argentina, he would study medicine, grow to be a doctor. But Ernesto Guevara heard another calling: humanity. He wanted to heal not just the sick and the tired, but the reason for their oppression, their poverty, the root of their suffering and exploitation.
Ernesto Guevara learned this over time. In his early 20s, he was a traveler. A wanderer. A self-described vagabond, journeying with his doctor friend, Alberto Granado, across South America on the back of their 1939 Norton 500cc motorcycle, “la poderosa.”
He would have many journeys… and through them he could not escape the haunting shadow plaguing the many countries of the Americas. A shadow of poverty, of inequality, of oppression and injustice, where people’s hands toil just to barely survive, and life is worth little alongside the power and the wealth of the foreign mines, and the US banana companies, and the American troops. Where people worked in near-slave conditions for pennies, and if you stood up you were beaten or locked away. The feudal colonial system imposed centuries before to keep the Indigenous peoples down, and the campesinos working the fields, and the riches flowing into the coffers of foreign countries far away was still intact, only with new rulers at the top.
Ernesto Guevara saw it all.
You might think that his resistance came with the Cuban revolution, when he sailed on the yacht known as the Granma, picked up arms, fought alongside Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra and liberated the island of Cuba…
Or when he denounced capitalism at the United Nations…
Or when he helped to lead Cuba and make it self-sufficient, despite the US embargo that still exists today…
Or when he left it all behind to try and spark a revolution in Bolivia.
But Ernesto Guevara’s resistance—Che’s resistance—began long before all of that. It began when he traveled, when he wandered the land, when he saw the unjust global system all around him. A caste system imposed on the countries of Latin America where the wealthy were at the top and everyone else fought over the miserable crumbs.
And Che Guevara refused to obey. Che vowed to do everything he could to fight it, resist it. And resist he did, with every vein of his existence…
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Che was born this week, in 1928.
He was killed on October 9, 1967, in La Higuera, Bolivia, after being captured while trying to spark a revolution there.
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Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox.
I had a really hard time with this story. Che is such an revolutionary icon. Larger than life. How do you attempt to do something about his life that does justice and also does not repeat the old tropes? This was my attempt. I hope you liked it. As you probably noticed, I did not even try to get into all of the details of his life, or else this story could easily have been an hour long.
That said, I am developing a future podcast that in a way goes in search of Che, follows some of his footsteps here in Latin America as a young man, and tries to look at who he was and what he means still today. Keep an eye out for that here at The Real News. I hope to have it out later this year.
This is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.
As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.
This is episode 46 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
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Written and produced by Michael Fox.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.