Was Ernesto Che Guevara a destructive rebel or a man of the people?

Question

Overall, this guy felt deeply for the suffering of poor and oppressed people. Did the means justify the ends?

Answer 1

Dude-seriously-stop smokin' that sh*t and watching the History channel.

Answer 2

Many people believe he was for the people. He was a rich mans son who once raped a nun at a hospital for lepers. A movie was made call motorcycle diaries. This was mostly feel good propaganda. When he joined Castro in Cuba it was all about Ernesto and not about Cuba.

Answer 3

He was not a man of the people. After they had overthrown the Cuban government, he did not stick around to make sure the people were looked after. Instead he headed off to find a new revolution to fight.

Answer 4

No commie is a man of the people. He was misguided and didn't think his actions through. If he did he'd have realized there were better ways to support the people.

Answer 5

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was the symbol of revolution for the youth movement during the sixties and early seventies. With the Viet Nam War ready to tear the country apart, we had revolutionaries, hippies and the establishment; the establishment made him a house hold word by expressing their hatred and fear while the rest selected him as the icon for the unrest, communism and revolution.

After the over throw of the Batista government (January 1959) Castro announced he was a communist and that began the invisible war with American. We have had a 47 year blockade of Cuba. This should show the world that such actions are worthless, but it is an easy way to look like you are doing something. We know it only hurts the old, sick and children but the many thousands of Cuban exiles insist we continue the blockade.

Castro seemed glad or even obliged to accept aid from the Soviet Union while Che was more a Maoist and followed the Chinese ideas. It goes with out saying this upset the Russians and Castro.

Che had come to view the Northern Hemisphere, led by the U.S. in the West and the Soviet Union in the East, as the exploiter of the Southern Hemisphere. He strongly supported Communist North Vietnam in the Vietnam War, and urged the peoples of other developing countries to take up arms and create "many Vietnams" If the Soviets and Castro were not upset before they certainly were after hearing this statement.

In 1965, Guevara made public his disappointments in Algiers and described the Kremlin as "an accomplice of imperialism". Guevara's dismissal from the ministry followed immediately on his return from Algiers. 1966. Soon afterwards Che dropped out of sight. He visited several sites but showed up in Bolivia. Castro revealed an undated letter purportedly written to him by Guevara some months earlier in which Guevara reaffirmed his enduring solidarity with the Cuban Revolution but declared his intention to leave Cuba to fight abroad for the cause of the revolution. He explained, "Other nations of the world summon my modest efforts”, and that he had therefore decided to go and fight as a guerrilla "on new battlefields". In the letter Guevara announced his resignation from all his positions in the government, in the party, and in the Army, and renounced his Cuban citizenship, which had been granted to him in 1959 in recognition of his efforts on behalf of the revolution

His disappearance was variously attributed to the relative failure of the industrialization scheme he had advocated while minister of industry, to pressure exerted on Castro by Soviet officials disapproving of Guevara's pro-Chinese Communist bent as the Sino-Soviet split grew more pronounced, and to serious differences between Guevara and the Cuban leadership regarding Cuba's economic development and ideological line. Others suggested that Castro had grown increasingly wary of Guevara's popularity and considered him a potential threat. Castro's critics sometimes say his explanations for Guevara's disappearance have always been suspect, and many found it surprising that Guevara never announced his intentions publicly, but only through an undated and uncharacteristically obsequious letter to Castro.
In 1966, Guevara turned up incognito in Bolivia where he trained and led a guerrilla war in the Santa Cruz region. In his manual Guerrilla Warfare, Guevara had stressed that the guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area, it is an indispensable condition, but Guevara failed to win the support of the peasants and his group was surrounded near Vallegrande by American-trained Bolivian troops. "The decisive moment in a man's life is when he decides to confront death," Guevara once said. "If he confronts it, he will be a hero whether he succeeds or not. He can be a good or a bad politician, but if he does not confront death he will never be more than a politician." After Guevara was captured, Captain Gary Prado Salmón put a security around him to be sure that nothing happened. Guevara told him, "don't worry, captain, don't worry. This is the end. It's finished." (from the document film 'Red Chapters,' 1999) .Guevara was shot in a schoolhouse in La Higuera on October 9, 1967, by Warrant Officer Mario Terán of the Bolivian Rangers at the request of Colonel Zenteno. Terán was half-drunk, celebrating his birthday. Guevara's last words were: "Shoot, coward you are only going to kill a man." In order to make a positive fingerprint comparison with records in Argentina, Guevara's hand were sawed off and put into a flask of formaldehyde. They were later returned to Cuba. Guevara's corpse was buried in a ditch at the end of the runway site of Vallegrande's new airport. "Che considered himself a soldier of this revolution, with absolutely no concern about surviving it," said Fidel Castro later in Che: A Memoir.

In 1997, the body of Che was recovered in Bolivia after Jon Lee Anderson (who was working on Guevara's biography) received information on its whereabouts. The remains were then flown back to Cuba.

Che Guevara has become a cultural symbol for people all over world. Che is an icon for anyone who stands up against oppression of any form. Today, it has become cool to own a part of Che. It could be in the form of a T-shirt, cap, football or bumper car sticker. Not many people understand or even attempt to understand what he stood for but they know that being part of the Che cult is the thing to do

You might enjoy and help you understand better if watch “Motorcycle Diary” and “Che”.

God Bless You and Our Southern People.