By Anthony Boadle
Reuters
Thursday, October 4, 2007; 10:59 AM
HAVANA (Reuters) - "Pioneers for Communism: we will be like Che," Cuban
children chant each morning in school courtyards, hands raised in a
salute to the revolutionary martyr.
Roadside billboards of the leftist icon proclaim: "Your example lives
on, your ideas endure."
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Forty years after he was captured by soldiers in a Bolivian jungle and
executed on October 9, 1967, Argentine-born doctor Ernesto "Che" Guevara
is still a national hero in Cuba, where he joined Fidel Castro in the
guerrilla uprising that ousted a U.S.-backed dictator in 1959.
But as the ailing Castro, now 81, fades from the political stage after
emergency intestinal surgery last year, many Cubans appear more
concerned with making ends meet in an inefficient state-run economy than
following Guevara's lofty ideals.
Guevara was industry minister and central bank governor in the early
years of Castro's rule. He advocated nationalizing private businesses
and dreamed of a classless society where money would be abolished and
wages unnecessary.
To this day, he is the poster boy of communist Cuba, held up as a
selfless leader who set an example of voluntary work with his own sweat,
pushing a wheelbarrow at a building site or cutting sugar cane in the
fields with a machete.
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Emblazoned on T-shirts, Swatch watches and other products of the
capitalist consumer society he sought to bury, the image of a
long-haired Guevara with a star on his beret is a universal symbol of
protest, even for some young Cubans.
"Many of us idolize Che more than Fidel. He is a symbol of rebellion in
Cuba too, not just for government supporters," said Ruth, a computing
student who asked not to be named fully. "The problem is Cuban society
has gone down the drain."
Cuba will mark the 40th anniversary of Guevara's capture on Monday in
Santa Clara, the central city he captured as a guerrilla leader in 1958
and where a mausoleum was built for his bones when they were dug up from
a secret grave in Bolivia and returned to Cuba a decade ago.
Dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe says Guevara remains well
respected "for his courage as a guerrilla fighter" but that no one
advocates his economic ideas in Cuba today.
"Cubans are having a very hard time because of the economic crisis. They
are no longer motivated by these ideals. Their only worry is eating
three meals a day," he said.
Acting President Raul Castro, who took over the government from his
elder brother Fidel Castro 14 months ago, has launched a national debate
on reforms, including proposals to allow more private enterprise and
foreign investment.
TOUGH GUERRILLA
Older Cubans who fought with Guevara and followed his revolutionary
adventures remember him as an austere and demanding leader who drove his
outnumbered men into battle with dictator Fulgencio Batista's soldiers.
"He was marvelous. He gave his life to help the poor," said Celida
Caballero, 77, whose husband Isidoro Rodriguez was an illiterate
wood-cutter when he smuggled weapons and medicine under his logs to
Guevara's rebels in the Escambray hills of central Cuba in 1958.
Rodriguez shed a tear as he recalled the day Guevara's death was
announced four decades ago. "That was such a loss for the Cuban people.
He is our hero."
Critics say there was a dark side to the revolutionary legend.
Biographer John Lee Anderson describes how Guevara executed traitors
during the rebel war in the Sierra Maestra mountains, a task his Cuban
comrades-in-arms could not stomach.
When Batista fled Cuba and Castro's bearded guerrillas marched into
Havana, Guevara set up his office in the La Cabana fortress overlooking
the city, where he oversaw the trials of Batista henchmen and executions
by firing squad in the moats.
When he set off to Bolivia in 1965 to start a new guerrilla
insurrection, Guevara said in his parting letter to Castro that he was
leaving behind his wife and four children with no material goods.
"And I am not sorry: I'm glad it is that way," said Guevara, a Marxist
who believed in building a "new man" who would put community needs above
personal interest.
Besides the massive iron figure overlooking Havana's Revolution Square
and the famous image of Guevara gazing into the distance from posters
and banknotes, one former guerrilla fighter says little else remains of
him in contemporary Cuba.
"If the new man that Che wanted is what we have today, it has been a
total failure," said Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, a leader of the Escambray
front until Guevara showed up.
Menoyo said he admired Guevara the guerrilla fighter but not the
communist, a view that led him to break with Castro and earned him 22
years in Cuban prisons.
"If Che were alive today, he would probably be protesting against this
failed system just like me."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/04/AR2007100401088.html
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