Ernesto Guevara, Tambien Conocido como El
Che by Paco Ignacio Taibo II
A
Review
I just finished reading Paco
Ignacio Taibo II’s biography of Che Guevara.
Che kept a diary for most of his adult life which
is the main source of information for the author. If you are already a Che fan, there is
plenty you will like about this book. He
is idealistic, committed, fearless, determined, brilliant, and charismatic. If you are a critic or a foe, you will have
to read into it the negatives. The
executions he directed or carried out himself are mentioned as being in the
course of battle or of enemies whose crimes against the revolution were
indisputable. He is uncompromising,
fanatical, self-centered. These
attributes are evident in this biography.
He is a dedicated communist and fiercely anti-American revolutionary who
succeeded in planting in Cuba an economic system which could not function. And he was determined to do the same in the
Congo and throughout Latin America. But
he misjudged these country’s preparedness for revolution as well as the efficacy
of communist economics. He was in short
a miss-guided fanatic who died in an ill-prepared armed invasion of a country
that was not his own.
There are many aspects of Che’s
life that might have been mentioned in a book on his life but were not. Nothing is mentioned about the events leading
up to the Cuban revolution, or the history of Cuba, the history America’s relationship
with Cuba or with Latin America in general.
No judgments are made or evaluations of the revolution or its resultant
government or of the history that followed.
No evaluation is made of Cuba’s
tryst with the Soviet Union which brought the world to the brink of nuclear
war, which Che was prepared to see come about.
Taibo is one of my favorite
authors and I now feel I know something about Ernesto Guevara de la Serna and
the events in his life. But I do not
feel informed about the world he lived in.
