Honor Che Guevara-Revolutionary Fighter- A Documentary Review

 

DVD REVIEW

SACRIFICIO-WHO BETRAYED CHE GUEVARA, A DOCUMENTARY, 2001

This year marks the 59^th anniversary of the Cuban July 26^th movement, the 53rd anniversary of the Cuban Revolution and the 45^th anniversary of the execution of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara by the Bolivian Army after the defeat of his guerilla forces and his capture in godforsaken rural Bolivia. Thus, it would seem fitting to review a documentary concerning the life of a man who stood for my generation, the Generation of ‘68, and for later generations as an icon of revolutionary intransigence.

That is what I would like to do but this hour long documentary left me with more questions than it answered. Mainly I asked myself why, at this far remove from the events, it is necessary to find scapegoats or heroes around Che’s capture. Sure, we always search for historical accuracy where we can. And we know that history can be a terrible taskmaster. However, I am not convinced that the supposed victim here Ciro Busto, one of Che’s subordinates, who has been named in some historical accounts as the man who tipped the Bolivian authorities to Che’s presence in Bolivia, has made his case. Nor, for that matter, has the other subject of this research Regis Debray, although he seems to have won the historical argument. Moreover, it is entirely possible that others could have betrayed his presence, including local peasants, or that rather than betrayal it was a question or erroneous judgments. That is my position. In any case, both Ciro and Debray were tried and received 30 year sentences and after an international campaign served three years.  Furthermore, all I know is that with the death of Che a real revolutionary fighter went down. The only winner here was the American government and its various agents.

A word on a couple of the people interviewed here. One Felix Rodriquez of Bay of Pigs, Watergate and Iran Contra fame, a notorious soldier of fortune gets to put his two cents worth in since he was in on the capture of Che. Mark this- this is the rank and file face of the enemy of the peoples of the world and believe what he has to say at your peril. The second is Debray himself. Whatever his mistakes that led  to Che’s capture and I believe  that they were, if anything errors of judgment, in Bolivia he is now a  case study in the demise of revolutionary integrity that swamped the Generation of ’68 once the revolutionary wave ebbed. Debray was no mere maverick leftist journalist but essentially Fidel’s man in Europe. For those with short memories, or who were not alive then, Debray authored a book called “Revolution Within the Revolution,” a book that debunked the traditional Marxist notions of the centrality of the urban working class as the focal point of revolution and touted the ‘purity’ of the guerilla strategy as the way forward toward socialism. Of course this petty bourgeois professorial ‘philosopher’ now has political amnesia on that subject. Unfortunately, many a Latin American youth would up dead or in prison trying to fight for that perspective. Honor their sacrifice. No honor to Debray from these quarters.