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Ernesto Che Guevara is a cult hero for the leftwing of the political spectrum. His figure appears on countless t-shirts, key rings and posters throughout American culture, Latin America and Europe. His favorite pronouncement, “the duty of the revolutionary is to make the revolution,” remains the battle cry of the Marxist left. A frail asthmatic, Guevara took up arms with Fidel Castro and his guerillas during the revolution in Cuba. That revolution eventually brought Castro to power. After that victory, Che led the “revolution” in the Congo and then in Bolivia. He fought dictators throughout the world who were supported by the US. Indeed, his battle cry, “two. . . three. . . many Vietnams,” resonated throughout college campuses in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, Che is in resurgence, perhaps because of the growing anti-Americanism throughout the world. In Cuba, every child must repeat each morning, “We would be like Che.” In 1997, the remains of Che were taken from Bolivia, where he was killed by government forces, and re-buried in a mausoleum in Cuba. He was thereby immortalized as a hero of the Cuban revolution.
But as The Economist argues: “The wider the cult spreads, the further it strays from the man. Rather than a Christian romantic, Guevara was a ruthless and dogmatic Marxist, who stood not for liberation but for a new tyranny. In the Sierra Maestra, he shot those suspected of treachery; in victory, Mr. Castro placed him in charge of the firing squads that executed ‘counter-revolutionaries;’ as minister of industries, Guevara advocated expropriation down to the last farm and shop. His exhortation to guerilla warfare, irrespective of political circumstance, lured thousands of idealistic Latin Americans to their deaths, helped to create brutal dictatorships and delayed the achievement of democracy.”
Therefore, it is frankly shocking that the present ruler of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, is promoting the same Che drivel in his country today. Chavez seeks to construct an educational system that leads to the “formation of a new man.” That phrase was coined by Che in the early years of the Cuban revolution. His “new man” would be motivated by moral rather than material incentives. Indeed, Cuba’s communist government has been pursuing this vain and empty goal for nearly five decades! Chavez contends that “The old values of individualism, capitalism and egoism must be demolished. New values must be created, and that can only be done through education.” Chavez sees education as the key to his “revolution.”
Also consider Nicaragua, which is experiencing the fulfillment of a dictum once uttered by Karl Marx: “History repeats itself—once as a tragedy and once as a farce.” The new president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, is the farce! He first came to power in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, as he opposed the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. But now he is back in power, due largely to a split in the ruling Liberal Party of Nicaragua. He has now struck deals with Venezuela’s Chavez, who has offered power plants, tractors and factories, via soft loans from Venezuelan banks. In a recent speech before the UN, Ortega sounded like Che. He railed against the “avarice of imperialist capitalism.” Along with Chavez, Ortega sees Che as a romantic hero to be emulated and deified. He represents the “new man” of current Latin American socialism.
The tragedy of Ortega and Chavez is that they both are making the same mistake that Che made in the 1960s: You cannot produce the “new man” through politics and social change. The Apostle Paul speaks much of the “new man” in his epistles. (See Ephesians 2 and 3, for example.) That “new man” is the result of appropriating the finished work of Jesus Christ by faith. Jesus then begins that transformational work of eradicating selfishness, self-centeredness and self-indulgence. Jesus’ transforming work begins with the heart, which He transforms radically and completely. Chavez and Ortega are promoting the same old, dead lie of Marx and Lenin. Totalitarian power can transform a people. History has demonstrated that this will not work. The romantic idealism of Che Guevara is a dead idealism. But amazingly, two wannabes are promoting this dead ideology and destroying their nations as a consequence. Only Jesus brings such a transformation. Not Marx. Not Lenin. Not Che.
See The Economist (13 October 2007), pp. 18, 39-41. |
