‘Revolution in the Revolution’: A Perspective on Che Guevara’s Writing

A personal diary entry on Che Guevara

Long before I heard about Che Guevara, the Cuban Revolution and its band of rebels, during my high school, I found Régis Debray’s Revolution in the Revolution? Later I found it was around the same time (circa 1997-98), the remains of Che’s body, without his hands, was also found in an unmarked grave in Bolivia. Three decades earlier, he was executed, which according to an American author, by ‘Bolivian soldiers, trained, equipped and guided by U.S. Green Beret and CIA operatives’ (refer to The Death of Che Guevara: Declassified by Peter Kornbluh).

I admit there are a lot of unclear concepts in Debray’s book till now and that, on a personal note, I had found the book in our outhouse used as a store room and only started reading it years later, probably when I was in college.

‘I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.’

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara (14 June 1928 – 9 October 1967)
Image source: http://anarchistdreamer.tumblr.com

To cut to the chase, Revolution in the Revolution? was a paperback that turned out to be seminal and equally serious for two reasons. Firstly, revolutionary movements were a reality in my native place; still it is, though the degree has changed for several reasons. In the meantime, these changes have fitted more into a scheme of thing, which directly matches Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield’s view of the entire world being phony.

However the movements cannot be snubbed for any current flows unabated, as is evident from the present conflict quotient of the place. Secondly, on the cover of the Revolution, there is a blurb written by Jean-Paul Sartre that reads: Debray was arrested not for being a part of the armed rebellion but for writing this book on guerilla warfare. It was a surprise: I was too naïve and took printed words are just pieces of reading and learning and nothing exists beyond this functionality.

‘Che: The world symbol of the possibilities of one man’

So many biographies of Che Guevara have been written; and a personal favourite is the The Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson. There have always been books on him; now it is about the books by him.

From the Motorcycle Diaries to the Latin American Diaries, Che was a prolific writer as much as he was an accomplished doctor-slash-guerrilla at the battlefield. His masterpiece is Guerrilla Warfare, which offers an exhaustive analysis and theoretical framework of the Cuban Revolution, while professing the strategies of social revolution and the tactics of a guerrilla with great attention to detail.

Needless to say, Guerrilla Warfare is prescribed for various counterinsurgency schools and military academies; and in it, he explained the seven golden rules:
● Do not engage in a fight that cannot be won
● Move continuously, hit and run
● Use the enemy as the main supplier of weapons
● Hide your movements
● Make use of the element of surprise in military actions
● Form new columns once some power has been won
● In general, proceed through three phases: strategic defense, balance between the possibilities of enemy action and guerrilla action, and finally the total annihilation of the adversary

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Today is 25 October 2012. A couple of days ago, I found Guerrilla Warfare and Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (republished by the Left Word) in the most unlikely place at a makeshift book stall inside a religious gathering in New Delhi. No issues for the pious people and place! Significantly these were sold at a heavily discounted price (both of them were sold at ₹50 each, though it was ₹250 and ₹450 respectively).

‘Better to die standing, than to live on your knee’

Broadly divided into four chapters, Guerrilla Warfare has (1) General principles of the guerrilla warfare; (2) The guerrilla band; (3) Organisation of the guerrilla front; and (4) Underground organisation, holding power and epilogue.

Che walked the talk and did not wait for the ripe apple. Rather he had made it fall. This was one of his exceptional qualities. His detractors always condemn his cruelty and his job of an executioner. But he knew that revolution cannot be a dinner party. When the struggle was over, it can be noted that he was not in the military but served elsewhere like the president of the Cuban national bank. He was never tired of searching for the Ideal Man and continued his revolutionary activities.

Pro-Americans and capitalists will always find fault in his works and ideology but they cannot help themselves using his ubiquitous Korda image in so many commodities, including coffee mugs, t-shirts and so forth. Blind imitation and ignorance are entirely different, though.

In Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War (originally published as Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria by the Editorial Union), he documented and put down the history of the armed struggle clearly in black and white from his memory. It is noted that he started writing it seeing the significance of documentation. The nearly 300-page account of their successful revolt follows a chronological order, divided into several chapters. It also has around 30 rare photographs, starting from the days in the Sierra Maestra to end of the revolution, including two pages of the original manuscripts of this book with annotations in Che’s handwriting.

Like he always wished for, Che did not stop with the success of the Cuban revolution. He was searching for the Ideal Man and he almost attained that status, until the Bolivian army funded by the CIA murdered him.

Further Reading

● http://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/index.htm
Che Guevara Internet Archive: Biography, Images and Speeches
● http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.01/debray.html
“In the '60s, Regis Debray fought beside Che Guevara in Bolivia. Today, his obsession isn’t ideology— it’s ‘mediology.’”
● http://www.marxists.org/archive/glaberman/1968/04/regis-debray.htm
‘(Debray) has seemed to be the theoretical embodiment of the Cuban Revolution and his writings are an attempt to develop a theory of the Latin American Revolution based on the Cuban experience.’

● The Death of Che Guevara: Declassified
By Peter Kornbluh