Che Guevara (1928–1967)

One of the reasons that I enjoy autobiographical books, is that it is virtually impossible to maintain a false character throughout several hundred pages.

Were Mr Guevara to be alive today and, to further stretch credibility, were he to be concerned as to my reading of his character, I would hasten to assure him that he need not so do. This book screams that its writer is a thoroughly decent chap: not a single question on the matter may be considered unanswered.

Enlightening and a read that reenforces one's faith in humankind.… (more)

Che Guevera's appeal to young people come from his dreamy temperament, revolutionary ideals, impulsive actions, and longing for a better world. This book captures all those things--as it shows a young man embarking on a poorly planned Latin American trip. The best parts recall him interacting with locals. It shows how his encounters with poverty, the ill, and indigenous culture influenced who he'd become. Likewise, the weakest sections show him as an immature dude full of scatological humor, lustful thoughts, and bizarre commentary on people of African descent. Still, it's hard to fault an autobiographical book for documenting the person at the time, and not who they would mature to become.… (more)

Scientist, traveller, revolutionary. That’s the portrait of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara that emerges from a new collection of his letters that uses material long guarded in Cuban archives. I Embrace You with All My Revolutionary Fervor: Letters 1947-1967 begins with Guevara as a 19-year-old in his native Argentina, spans his ventures across Latin America and in Congo, and ends months before his death in Bolivia. Guevara is a fine letter-writer and this collection highlights the maturity of his young mind. A research medic and a stringent social critic, he is a lively wit who describes himself as a ‘little wandering prophet who, in a loud voice, goes around announcing the coming of the final judgment day’.

The wandering prophet’s communist commitment gestated in his young adulthood, as he saw Latin America’s vast inequalities at close quarters during his motorcycle trip through South America in 1952 and his travels across Central America from 1953 to 1956. In Costa Rica, having witnessed the treatment of local workers by the US multinational company United Fruit, Guevara writes to his aunt: ‘I swore before a picture of the old and lately lamented compañero, Stalin, not to rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated.’

Along with the strength of his ideology, the letters underscore his devotion to science. Guevara appears to have been close to the cutting edge of allergy medicine in Latin America. ‘I am certain’, he wrote in 1954, ‘that if I reach my truly creative phase at about 35, my exclusive, or at least main, concern will be nuclear physics, or genetics, or some other field that brings together the most interesting aspects of knowledge.’

Read the rest of the review at a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/i-embrace-you-all-my-revolutionary-fervor-letters-1947-1967-che-guevara-review">HistoryToday.com.

Daniel Rey is a writer and critic based in New York.… (more)