FULL STORY KUHUSU TUPAC
This article is about the person. For other uses, see Malcolm X (disambiguation).
"Malik Shabazz" redirects here. For other people of that name, see Malik Shabazz (disambiguation).
| Malcolm X | |
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Malcolm X in March 1964
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| Born | Malcolm Little May 19, 1925 Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. |
| Died | February 21, 1965 (aged 39) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Assassination (multiple gunshots) |
| Resting place | Ferncliff Cemetery |
| Other names | El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz |
| Occupation | Minister, activist |
| Organization | Nation of Islam, Muslim Mosque, Inc., Organization of Afro-American Unity |
| Political movement | Black nationalism, Pan-Africanism |
| Religion | Sunni Islam (converted from Nation of Islam) |
| Spouse(s) | Betty Shabazz (m. 1958) |
| Children | Attallah Shabazz Qubilah Shabazz Ilyasah Shabazz Gamilah Lumumba Shabazz Malikah Shabazz Malaak Shabazz |
| Parents | Earl Little, Louise Norton Little |
| Signature |  |
Malcolm X was effectively orphaned early in life. When he was six his father was killed, and there were rumors that white racists had been responsible. Seven years later he lost his mother as well when she was placed in a mental hospital, after which he lived in a series of foster homes.
In 1946, at age 20, he went to prison for larceny and breaking and entering. While in prison he became a member of the Nation of Islam, and after his parole in 1952 quickly rose to become one of its leaders. For a dozen years he was the public face of the controversial group; in keeping with the Nation's teachings he espoused black supremacy, advocated the separation of black and white Americans and scoffed at the civil rights movement's emphasis on integration.
By March 1964 Malcolm X had grown disillusioned with the Nation of Islam and its head Elijah Muhammad, and ultimately repudiated the Nation and its teachings. He embraced Sunni Islam and, after a period of travel in Africa and the Middle East, returned to the United States to found Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Though continuing to emphasize Pan-Africanism, black self-determination, and black self-defense, he disavowed racism, saying, "I did many things as a [Black] Muslim that I'm sorry for now. I was a zombie then ... pointed in a certain direction and told to march".[2]
In February 1965, shortly after repudiating the Nation of Islam, he was assassinated by three of its members.
Early years
Because of Ku Klux Klan threats—Earl's UNIA activities were "spreading trouble"[6]—the family relocated in 1926 to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and shortly thereafter to Lansing, Michigan.[7] In Lansing the family was frequently harassed by the Black Legion, a white racist group; when the family home burned in 1929, Earl accused the Black Legion.[8]
When Little was six his father was killed in what was officially ruled a streetcar accident, though Louise believed Earl had been murdered by the Black Legion. (As an adult, Malcolm X expressed conflicting beliefs on the question.)[9] After a dispute with creditors, a life insurance benefit (nominally $1,000—about $15,000 in 2010 dollars) was paid to Louise in payments of $18 per month;[10] the issuer of another, larger policy refused to pay, claiming suicide.[11] To make ends meet Louise rented out part of her garden, and her sons hunted game.[12]
In 1937 a man Louise had been dating—marriage had seemed a possibility—vanished from her life when she became pregnant with his child.[13] In late 1938 she had a nervous breakdown and was committed to Kalamazoo State Hospital, where she remained until Malcolm and his siblings secured her release 24 years later. The children were separated and sent to various foster homes.[14][15]
Malcolm Little excelled in junior high school but dropped out after a white teacher told him that practicing law, his aspiration at the time, was "no realistic goal for a nigger".[16] (Later Malcolm X recalled feeling that the white world offered no place for a career-oriented black man, regardless of talent.)[16]
From age 14 to 21 Little held a variety of jobs while living with his half-sister Ella Little-Collins in Roxbury, a largely African-American neighborhood of Boston.[17][18] Then after a short time in Flint, Michigan he moved to Harlem, New York in 1943, where he engaged in drug dealing, gambling, racketeering, robbery, and pimping;[19] according to recent biographies, he also occasionally had sex with other men, usually for money.[20][21] He was called "Detroit Red" because of the reddish hair he inherited from his Scottish maternal grandfather.[22][23] Little was declared "mentally disqualified for military service" after he told draft board officials he was eager to "steal us some guns, and kill us [some] crackers".[24][25]
In late 1945, Little returned to Boston, where he and four accomplices committed a series of breaking-and-enterings targeting wealthy white families.[26] In 1946, he was arrested while picking up a stolen watch he had left at a shop for repairs,[27] and in February began serving an eight- to ten-year sentence for larceny and breaking and entering at Charlestown State Prison.[28] There he met John Bembry,[29] a self-educated man he would later describe as "the first man I had ever seen command total respect ... with words";[30] under Bembry's influence, Little developed a voracious appetite for reading.[31]
Leader in the Nation of Islam
Further information: Nation of Islam
During Little's imprisonment several of his siblings wrote to him about the Nation of Islam, a relatively new religious movement preaching black self-reliance and, ultimately, the reunification of the African diaspora with Africa, free from white American and European domination.[32]
He showed scant interest at first, but after his brother Reginald wrote
in 1948, "Malcolm, don't eat any more pork and don't smoke any more
cigarettes. I'll show you how to get out of prison,"[33] he quit smoking and began to refuse pork.[34]
After a visit in which Reginald described the group's teachings,
including the belief that white people are devils, Little came to the
conclusion that every relationship he'd had with whites had been tainted
by dishonesty, injustice, greed, and hatred.[35] Little, whose hostility to religion had earned him the prison nickname "Satan",[36] began to reconsider his dismissal of all religion and he became receptive to the message of the Nation of Islam.[37]In late 1948, Little wrote to the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, who advised him to renounce his past, humbly bow in prayer to Allah, and promise never to engage in destructive behavior again.[38] Though he later recalled his inner struggle to bend his knees in prayer,[39] he soon became a member of the Nation of Islam,[38] and thereafter maintained a regular correspondence with Muhammad.[40] He later reflected on the time he spent in prison after his conversion: "Between Mr. Muhammad's teachings, my correspondence, my visitors—usually Ella and Reginald—and my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I had never been so truly free in my life."[41]
In 1950 Little began signing his name "Malcolm X",[42] explaining in his autobiography, "The Muslim's 'X' symbolized the true African family name that he never could know. For me, my 'X' replaced the white slavemaster name of 'Little' which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears."[43]
Early ministry
After being paroled in August 1952,[44] Malcolm X visited Elijah Muhammad in Chicago,[45] and in June 1953 was named assistant minister of the Nation's Temple Number One in Detroit.[46][47] Later that year he established Boston's Temple Number 11;[48] in March 1954, he expanded Temple Number 12 in Philadelphia;[49] and two months later he was selected to lead Temple Number 7 in Harlem,[50] where he rapidly expanded membership.[51]The FBI had opened a file on Malcolm X in 1950 after he wrote a letter to President Truman expressing opposition to the Korean War and declaring himself a communist.[52] The FBI began surveillance of him in 1953, and turning its attention from Malcolm X's possible Communist association to his rapid ascent in the Nation of Islam.[53]
During 1955, Malcolm X continued his successful recruitment efforts on behalf of the organization. He established temples in Springfield, Massachusetts (Number 13); Hartford, Connecticut (Number 14); and Atlanta, Georgia (Number 15). Hundreds of African Americans were joining the Nation of Islam every month.[54] Beside his skill as a speaker, Malcolm X had an impressive physical presence. He stood 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m) tall and weighed about 180 pounds (82 kg).[55] One writer described him as "powerfully built",[56] and another as "mesmerizingly handsome ... and always spotlessly well-groomed".[55]
Marriage and family
In 1955, Betty Sanders met Malcolm X after one of his lectures, then again at a dinner party; soon she was regularly attending his lectures. In 1956 she joined the Nation of Islam, changing her name to Betty X.[57] One-on-one dates were contrary to the Nation's teachings, so the couple courted at social events with dozens or hundreds of others, and Malcolm X made a point of inviting Betty X on the frequent group visits he led to New York's museums and libraries.[58]Although they had never discussed marriage, Malcolm X proposed on a telephone call from Detroit in January 1958, and they married two days later.[59][60] They had six daughters: Attallah (b. 1958, named for Attila the Hun);[61][62] Qubilah (b. 1960, named for Kublai Khan);[63] Ilyasah (b. 1962, named for Elijah Muhammad);[64] Gamilah Lumumba (b. 1964, named for Patrice Lumumba);[65] and twins Malikah and Malaak (b. 1965 after their father's death, and named for him).[66]
Increasing prominence
Malcolm X first came to general public attention after the police beating of Nation of Islam member Johnson Hinton.[67][68] On April 26, 1957, two police officers were beating an African-American man with nightsticks when Hinton and two other passersby—all Nation of Islam members—attempted to intervene,[67] shouting "You're not in Alabama or Georgia. This is New York!"[68] One of the officers then turned on Hinton with a beating later determined to have caused brain contusions and subdural hemorrhaging. All four men were arrested.[67]Alerted by a witness, Malcolm X and a small group of Muslims went to the police station demanding to see Hinton.[67] Police initially denied that any Muslims were being held, but as the crowd grew to about five hundred, Malcolm X was allowed to speak with Hinton[69] after which, at Malcolm X's insistence, an ambulance took Hinton to Harlem Hospital.[70]
Hinton was treated and returned to the police station,[69] outside of which some four thousand people were now gathered. Inside, Malcolm X and an attorney made bail arrangements for two of the Muslims. Hinton was not bailed, and police said Hinton could not go back to the hospital until his arraignment the following day.[70] Believing the situation at an impasse, Malcolm X stepped outside the stationhouse; at a hand signal from him, Nation members in the crowd silently left, after which the rest of the crowd also dispersed.[70] One police officer told the New York Amsterdam News: "No one man should have that much power."[70][71]
Within a month Malcolm X was under surveillance by the New York City Police Department, which also made inquiries with authorities in cities in which he had lived and prisons in which he had served.[72] In October, after a grand jury declined to indict the officers who beat Hinton, Malcolm X wrote an angry telegram to the police commissioner; soon undercover officers were assigned to infiltrate the Nation of Islam.[73]
By the late 1950s, Malcolm X began to use a new name, Malcolm Shabazz or Malik el-Shabazz, although he was still widely referred to as Malcolm X.[74] His comments on issues and events were reported in print, on radio, and on television with increasing frequency,[75] and he was prominently featured in a 1959 New York City television broadcast about the Nation of Islam, The Hate That Hate Produced.[75]
In September 1960, Fidel Castro came to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly. Malcolm X was part of a welcoming committee of Harlem community leaders that met with Castro,[76] who was impressed sufficiently with Malcolm X to suggest a private meeting; at the end of two hours Castro invited Malcolm X to visit Cuba.[77] During the General Assembly session Malcolm X was invited to official functions of several African nations, meeting such African leaders as Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, and Kenneth Kaunda of the Zambian African National Congress.[78]
Advocacy and teachings while with Nation
From his adoption of the Nation of Islam in 1952 until he broke with it in 1964, Malcolm X promoted the Nation's teachings, including that black people are the original people of the world,[79] that white people are "devils",[80] that blacks are superior to whites, and that the demise of the white race is imminent.[81] While the civil rights movement fought against racial segregation, Malcolm X advocated the complete separation of African Americans from whites, proposing establishment of a separate country for black people in America[82] as an interim measure until African Americans could return to Africa.[83] He also rejected the civil rights movement's strategy of nonviolence, advocating that black people use any necessary means of self-defense.[84] His speeches had a powerful effect on his audiences, generally African Americans in Northern and Western cities, many of whom—tired of being told to wait for freedom, justice, equality and respect[85]—felt that he articulated their complaints better than did the civil rights movement.[86][87]Malcolm X has been widely considered the second most influential leader of the Nation of Islam after Elijah Muhammad.[88] He was largely credited with the group's dramatic increase in membership between the early 1950s and early 1960s (from 500 to 25,000 by one author's estimate,[89] or from 1,200 to 50,000 or 75,000 by another's).[90][91] He inspired the boxer Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali) to join the Nation of Islam.[92] (though like Malcolm X himself, Ali later left the group to become a Sunni Muslim).[93]
Many white people, and some blacks, were alarmed by Malcolm X and the things he said. He and the Nation of Islam were described as hatemongers, black supremacists, racists, violence-seekers, segregationists, and a threat to improved race relations. Civil rights organizations denounced Malcolm X and the Nation as irresponsible extremists whose views were not representative of African Americans.[94][95][96] Malcolm X was accused of being antisemitic.[97]
Malcolm X was equally critical of the civil rights movement.[98] He described its leaders as "stooges" for the white establishment, and he once described Martin Luther King, Jr. as a "chump".[99][100] He criticized the 1963 March on Washington, which he called "the farce on Washington".[101] He said he did not know why so many black people were excited about a demonstration "run by whites in front of a statue of a president who has been dead for a hundred years and who didn't like us when he was alive".[102]
Leaving the Nation of Islam
On December 1, 1963, when he was asked for a comment about the assassination of President Kennedy, Malcolm X said that it was a case of "chickens coming home to roost". He added that "chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad."[103] The New York Times wrote, "in further criticism of Mr. Kennedy, the Muslim leader cited the murders of Patrice Lumumba, Congo leader, of Medgar Evers, civil rights leader, and of the Negro girls bombed earlier this year in a Birmingham church. These, he said, were instances of other 'chickens coming home to roost'."[103] The remarks prompted a widespread public outcry. The Nation of Islam, which had issued a message of condolence to the Kennedy family and ordered its ministers not to comment on the assassination, publicly censured their former shining star.[104] Although Malcolm X retained his post and rank as minister, he was prohibited from public speaking for 90 days.[105]
One reason for the separation was growing tension between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad because of Malcolm X's dismay about rumors of Muhammad's extramarital affairs with young secretaries, actions that were against the teachings of the Nation. Although at first Malcolm X had ignored the rumors, after speaking with Muhammad's son Wallace and the women making the accusations, he came to believe that they were true. Muhammad confirmed the rumors in 1963 but tried to justify his actions by reference to precedents set by Biblical prophets.[107] Another reason for the separation was growing resentment by people within the Nation. As Malcolm X had become a favorite of the media, many in the Nation's Chicago headquarters felt that he was over-shadowing Muhammad. Louis Lomax's 1963 book about the Nation of Islam, When the Word Is Given, featured a picture of Malcolm X on its cover and included five of his speeches, but only one of Muhammad's, which greatly upset Muhammad. Muhammad was also envious that a publisher was interested in Malcolm X's autobiography.[108] After leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X founded Muslim Mosque, Inc., a religious organization,[109][110] and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, a secular group that advocated Pan-Africanism.[111][112] On March 26, 1964 he met Martin Luther King, Jr. for the first and only time—and only long enough for photographs to be taken—in Washington, D.C. as both men attended the Senate's debate on the Civil Rights bill.[113][114] In April, Malcolm X made a speech titled "The Ballot or the Bullet" in which he advised African Americans to exercise their right to vote wisely.[115][116] Several Sunni Muslims encouraged Malcolm X to learn about Islam. Soon he converted to Sunni Islam, and decided to make his pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj).[117]
International travel
Mecca
With financial help from his half-sister Ella Little-Collins, in April 1964 Malcolm X flew to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to begin his Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca required of every Muslim who is able). However, he was delayed in Jeddah when his US citizenship and inability to speak Arabic caused his status as a Muslim to be questioned.[118][119] He contacted Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, whose The Eternal Message of Muhammad he had received with his visa approval. Azzam's son not only arranged for Malcolm X's release but also lent Malcolm X his personal hotel suite. The next morning Malcolm X learned that Prince Faisal had designated him a state guest,[120] and after completing the Hajj rituals several days later, Malcolm X had an audience with the prince.[121]Malcolm X later said that seeing Muslims of "all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans", interacting as equals led him to see Islam as a means by which racial problems could be overcome.[122]
Africa
Malcolm X had visited the United Arab Republic, Sudan, Nigeria, and Ghana in 1959 to make arrangements for a tour by Elijah Muhammad.[123] After Mecca he visited Africa a second time, returned to the United States in late May,[124] then flew to Africa again in July.[125] During these visits he met officials, gave interviews, and spoke on television and radio in Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanganyika, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Sudan, Senegal, Liberia, Algeria, and Morocco.[126] In Cairo, he attended the second meeting of the Organization of African Unity as a representative of the Organization of Afro-American Unity.[127] Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, and Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria invited Malcolm X to serve in their governments.[128] Following a speech at the University of Ibadan, the Nigerian Muslim Students Association bestowed on him the honorary Yoruba name Omowale ("the son who has come home");[129] he later called this his most treasured honor.[130] By the time Malcolm X left Africa he had met with essentially all its prominent leaders.[128]France and United Kingdom
On November 23, 1964, on his way home from Africa, Malcolm X stopped in Paris, where he spoke at the Salle de la Mutualité.[131][132] A week later, on November 30, Malcolm X flew to the United Kingdom, and on December 3 participated in a debate at the Oxford Union. The topic of the debate was "Extremism in the Defense of Liberty is No Vice; Moderation in the Pursuit of Justice is No Virtue", and Malcolm X argued the affirmative. Interest in the debate was so high that it was televised nationally by the BBC.[133][134]On February 5, 1965, Malcolm X went to Europe again.[135] On February 8, he spoke in London, before the first meeting of the Council of African Organizations.[136] The next day, Malcolm X tried to go to France, but he was refused entry.[137] On February 12, he visited Smethwick, near Birmingham, which had become a byword for racial division after the 1964 general election, when the Conservative Party won the parliamentary seat after rumors that their candidate's supporters had used the slogan "If you want a nigger for your neighbour, vote Labour."[138]
Return to United States
Tensions increased between Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam. As early as February 1964, a leader of Temple Number Seven ordered a member of the Fruit of Islam to wire explosives to Malcolm X's car.[142] In September 1964, Ebony published a photograph of Malcolm X holding an M1 Carbine and peering out a window. The photo was intended to illustrate his determination to defend himself and his family against the death threats he was receiving.[143][144]
The Nation of Islam and its leaders began making both public and private threats against Malcolm X. On March 23, 1964, Elijah Muhammad told Boston minister Louis X (later known as Louis Farrakhan) that "hypocrites like Malcolm should have their heads cut off."[145] The April 10 edition of Muhammad Speaks featured a cartoon in which his severed head was shown bouncing.[146][147] On July 9, John Ali, a top aide to Muhammad, answered a question about Malcolm X by saying that "anyone who opposes the Honorable Elijah Muhammad puts their life in jeopardy."[148] The December 4 issue of Muhammad Speaks included an article by Louis X that railed against Malcolm X, saying "such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death."[149]
Some threats were made anonymously. During the month of June 1964, FBI surveillance recorded two such threats. On June 8, a man called Malcolm X's home and told Betty Shabazz to "tell him he's as good as dead."[150] On June 12, an FBI informant reported getting an anonymous telephone call from somebody who said "Malcolm X is going to be bumped off."[151]
In June 1964, the Nation of Islam sued to reclaim Malcolm X's residence in Queens, New York, which they claimed to own. The suit was successful, and Malcolm X was ordered to vacate.[152] On February 14, 1965, the night before a scheduled hearing to postpone the eviction date, the house burned to the ground. Malcolm X and his family survived. No one was charged with any crime.[153]
Assassination
One gunman, Nation of Islam member Talmadge Hayer (also known as Thomas Hagan) was seized and beaten by the crowd before the police arrived minutes later;[161][162] witnesses identified the others as Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, also Nation members.[163] Hayer confessed at trial to being one of the assailants, but refused to identify the others except to assert that they were not Butler and Johnson.[164] All three were convicted.[165]
Butler, now known as Muhammad Abdul Aziz, was paroled in 1985 and became the head of the Nation's Harlem mosque in 1998. He continues to maintain his innocence.[166] Johnson, who changed his name to Khalil Islam, rejected the Nation's teachings while in prison and converted to Sunni Islam. Released in 1987, he maintained his innocence until his death in August 2009.[167][168] Hayer, now known as Mujahid Halim,[169] was paroled in 2010.[170]
Funeral
A public viewing was held at Harlem's Unity Funeral Home from February 23 through February 26, and it was estimated that between 14,000 and 30,000 mourners attended.[171] The funeral was held on February 27 at the Faith Temple Church of God in Christ in Harlem. The church was filled to capacity with more than 1,000 people.[172] Loudspeakers were set up outside the Temple so the overflowing crowd could listen[173] and a local television station broadcast the funeral live.[174]Among the civil rights leaders attending were John Lewis, Bayard Rustin, James Forman, James Farmer, Jesse Gray, and Andrew Young.[172][175] Actor and activist Ossie Davis delivered the eulogy, describing Malcolm X as "our shining black prince".
There are those who will consider it their duty, as friends of the Negro people, to tell us to revile him, to flee, even from the presence of his memory, to save ourselves by writing him out of the history of our turbulent times. Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain—and we will smile. Many will say turn away—away from this man, for he is not a man but a demon, a monster, a subverter and an enemy of the black man—and we will smile. They will say that he is of hate—a fanatic, a racist—who can only bring evil to the cause for which you struggle! And we will answer and say to them: Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? Did you ever really listen to him? Did he ever do a mean thing? Was he ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance? For if you did you would know him. And if you knew him you would know why we must honor him.[176]Malcolm X was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.[174] At the gravesite after the ceremony, friends took the shovels from the waiting gravediggers and completed the burial themselves.[177] Actor and activist Ruby Dee (wife of Ossie Davis) and Juanita Poitier (wife of Sidney Poitier) established the Committee of Concerned Mothers to raise funds to buy a house and pay educational expenses for Malcolm X's family.[178]
Reactions to assassination
Reactions to Malcolm X's assassination were varied. Martin Luther King, Jr. sent a telegram to Betty Shabazz, expressing his sadness over "the shocking and tragic assassination of your husband."While we did not always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race problem, I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem. He was an eloquent spokesman for his point of view and no one can honestly doubt that Malcolm had a great concern for the problems that we face as a race.[179]Elijah Muhammad told the annual Savior's Day convention on February 26, "Malcolm X got just what he preached", while denying any involvement with the murder.[180] "We didn't want to kill Malcolm and didn't try to kill him", Muhammad said. "We know such ignorant, foolish teachings would bring him to his own end."[181]
The New York Times wrote that Malcolm X was "an extraordinary and twisted man" who "turn[ed] many true gifts to evil purpose" and that his life was "strangely and pitifully wasted".[182] The New York Post wrote that "even his sharpest critics recognized his brilliance—often wild, unpredictable and eccentric, but nevertheless possessing promise that must now remain unrealized."[183]
The international press, particularly that of Africa, was sympathetic.[184] The Daily Times of Nigeria wrote that Malcolm X "will have a place in the palace of martyrs."[185] The Ghanaian Times likened him to John Brown and Patrice Lumumba among "a host of Africans and Americans who were martyred in freedom's cause".[186] Guangming Daily, published in Beijing, stated that "Malcolm was murdered because he fought for freedom and equal rights",[187] while in Cuba, El Mundo described the assassination as "another racist crime to eradicate by violence the struggle against discrimination".[184]
Allegations of conspiracy
Within days of the assassination, questions were raised about who bore ultimate responsibility. On February 23, James Farmer, the leader of the Congress of Racial Equality, announced at a news conference that local drug dealers, and not the Nation of Islam, were to blame.[188] Others accused the NYPD, the FBI, or the CIA, citing the lack of police protection, the ease with which the assassins entered the Audubon Ballroom, and the failure of the police to preserve the crime scene.[189][190]In the 1970s, the public learned about COINTELPRO and other secret FBI programs directed towards infiltrating and disrupting civil rights organizations during the 1950s and 1960s.[191] John Ali, national secretary of the Nation of Islam, was identified as an FBI undercover agent.[192] Malcolm X had confided in a reporter that Ali exacerbated tensions between him and Elijah Muhammad. He considered Ali his "archenemy" within the Nation of Islam leadership.[192] On February 20, 1965, the night before the assassination, Ali met with Talmadge Hayer, one of the men convicted of killing Malcolm X.[193]
In 1977 and 1978, Talmadge Hayer submitted two sworn affidavits re-asserting his claim that Butler and Johnson were not involved in the assassination. In his affidavits Hayer named four men, all members of the Nation of Islam's Newark Temple Number 25, as having participated with him in the crime. Hayer asserted that a man, later identified as Wilbur McKinley, was the one who shouted and threw a smoke bomb to create a diversion. Hayer said that another man, later identified as William Bradley, had a shotgun and was the first to fire on Malcolm X after the diversion. Hayer asserted that he and a man later identified as Leon Davis, both armed with pistols, fired on Malcolm X immediately after the shotgun blast. Hayer also said that a fifth man, later identified as Benjamin Thomas, was involved in the conspiracy.[194][195] Hayer's statements failed to convince authorities to reopen their investigation of the murder.[196]
Some, including the Shabazz family, have accused Louis Farrakhan of involvement in Malcolm X's assassination[197][198][199][200][201] and in a 1993 speech Farrakhan seemed to acknowledge the possibility that the Nation of Islam was responsible:
Was Malcolm your traitor or ours? And if we dealt with him like a nation deals with a traitor, what the hell business is it of yours? A nation has to be able to deal with traitors and cutthroats and turncoats.[202][203]In a 60 Minutes interview that aired during May 2000, Farrakhan stated that some of the things he said may have led to the assassination of Malcolm X. "I may have been complicit in words that I spoke", he said. "I acknowledge that and regret that any word that I have said caused the loss of life of a human being."[204] A few days later Farrakhan denied that he "ordered the assassination" of Malcolm X, although he again acknowledged that he "created the atmosphere that ultimately led to Malcolm X's assassination."[205] No consensus on who was responsible has been reached.[206]
Philosophy
Except for his autobiography, Malcolm X left no published writings. His philosophy is known almost entirely from the myriad speeches and interviews he gave from 1952 until his death in 1965.[207] Many of those speeches, especially from the last year of his life, were recorded and have been published.[208]Beliefs of the Nation of Islam
Further information: Beliefs and theology of the Nation of Islam
Before he left the Nation of Islam in 1964, Malcolm X
taught its beliefs in his speeches. His speeches were peppered with the
phrase "The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that...".[209] It is virtually impossible to discern whether Malcolm X's beliefs diverged from the teachings of the Nation of Islam.[210][211] Malcolm X once compared himself to a ventriloquist's dummy who could only say what Elijah Muhammad told him.[209]Malcolm X taught that black people were the original people of the world,[79] and that white people were a race of devils who were created by an evil scientist named Yakub.[80] The Nation of Islam believed that black people were superior to white people, and that the demise of the white race was imminent.[81] When he was questioned concerning his statements that white people were devils, Malcolm X said that "history proves the white man is a devil."[212] He enumerated some of the historical reasons that, he felt, supported his argument: "Anybody who rapes, and plunders, and enslaves, and steals, and drops hell bombs on people... anybody who does these things is nothing but a devil."[213]
Malcolm X said that Islam was the "true religion of black mankind" and that Christianity was "the white man's religion" that had been imposed upon African Americans by their slave-masters.[214] He said that the Nation of Islam followed Islam as it was practiced around the world, but the Nation's teachings varied from those of other Muslims because they were adapted to the "uniquely pitiful" condition of black people in America.[215] He taught that Wallace Fard Muhammad, the founder of the Nation, was Allah incarnate,[216] and that Elijah Muhammad was his Messenger, or prophet.[217]
While the civil rights movement fought against racial segregation, Malcolm X advocated the complete separation of African Americans from white people. The Nation of Islam proposed the establishment of a separate country for black people in the Southern[82] or Southwestern United States[218] as an interim measure until African Americans could return to Africa.[83] Malcolm X suggested the United States government owed reparations to black people for the unpaid labor of their enslaved ancestors.[219] He also rejected the civil rights movement's strategy of nonviolence and instead advocated that black people should protect themselves by any necessary means.[84]
Independent views
Malcolm X declared that he and the other members of the Organization of Afro-American Unity were determined to defend themselves from aggressors, and to secure freedom, justice and equality "by whatever means necessary", arguing that if the government was unwilling or unable to protect black people, they should protect themselves.[221]
Malcolm X stressed the global perspective he gained from his international travels. He emphasized the "direct connection" between the domestic struggle of African Americans for equal rights with the independence struggles of Third World nations.[222] He said that African Americans were wrong when they thought of themselves as a minority; in a global context, black people were a majority, not a minority.[223]
In his speeches at the Militant Labor Forum, which was sponsored by the Socialist Workers Party, Malcolm X criticized capitalism.[141] After one such speech, when he was asked what political and economic system he wanted, he said he didn't know, but that it was no coincidence the newly independent countries in the Third World were turning toward socialism.[224] Malcolm X still was concerned primarily with the freedom struggle of African Americans. When a reporter asked him what he thought about socialism, Malcolm X asked whether it was good for black people. When the reporter told him it seemed to be, Malcolm X told him, "Then I'm for it."[224][225]
Although he no longer called for the separation of black people from white people, Malcolm X continued to advocate black nationalism, which he defined as self-determination for the African-American community.[226] In the last months of his life, however, Malcolm X began to reconsider his support of black nationalism after meeting northern African revolutionaries who, to all appearances, were white.[227]
After his Hajj, Malcolm X articulated a view of white people and racism that represented a deep change from the philosophy he had supported as a minister of the Nation of Islam. In a famous letter from Mecca, he wrote that his experiences with white people during his pilgrimage convinced him to "rearrange" his thinking about race and "toss aside some of [his] previous conclusions".[228] In a 1965 conversation with Gordon Parks, two days before his assassination, Malcolm said:
-
- Brother, remember the time that white college girl came into the restaurant—the one who wanted to help the [Black] Muslims and the whites get together—and I told her there wasn't a ghost of a chance and she went away crying? Well, I've lived to regret that incident. In many parts of the African continent I saw white students helping black people. Something like this kills a lot of argument. I did many things as a [Black] Muslim that I'm sorry for now. I was a zombie then—like all [Black] Muslims—I was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to march. Well, I guess a man's entitled to make a fool of himself if he's ready to pay the cost. It cost me 12 years.
-
- That was a bad scene, brother. The sickness and madness of those days—I'm glad to be free of them.[2]
Legacy
Malcolm X has been described as one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history.[229][230][231] He is credited with raising the self-esteem of black Americans and reconnecting them with their African heritage.[232] He is largely responsible for the spread of Islam in the black community in the United States.[233][234][235] Many African Americans, especially those who lived in cities in the Northern and Western United States, felt that Malcolm X articulated their complaints concerning inequality better than the mainstream civil rights movement did.[86][87] One biographer says that by giving expression to their frustration, Malcolm X "made clear the price that white America would have to pay if it did not accede to black America's legitimate demands."[236]In the late 1960s, as black activists became more radical, Malcolm X and his teachings were part of the foundation on which they built their movements. The Black Power movement,[55][237] the Black Arts Movement,[55][238] and the widespread adoption of the slogan "Black is beautiful"[239] can all trace their roots to Malcolm X.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a resurgence of interest in Malcolm X among young people, fueled in part by use of him as an icon by hip-hop groups such as Public Enemy.[240][241] His image was on display in hundreds of thousands of homes, offices, and schools,[242] as well as on T-shirts and jackets.[243]
This wave peaked in 1992 with the release of the film Malcolm X,[244] an adaptation of the The Autobiography of Malcolm X which Malcolm X began in 1963 in collaboration with Alex Haley.[108] (Malcolm X had told Haley, "If I'm alive when this book comes out, it will be a miracle";[245] indeed Haley completed and published it some months after the assassination.)[246] In 1998 Time named The Autobiography of Malcolm X one of the ten most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.[247]
Portrayals in film and on stage
Denzel Washington played the title role in Malcolm X[248]—named one of the ten best films of the 1990s by both critic Roger Ebert and director Martin Scorsese.[249] Washington had previously played the part of Malcolm X in the 1981 Off-Broadway play When the Chickens Came Home to Roost.[250] Other portrayals include:- James Earl Jones, in the 1977 film The Greatest.[251]
- Dick Anthony Williams, in the 1978 television miniseries King[252] and the 1989 American Playhouse production of the Jeff Stetson play The Meeting.[253]
- Al Freeman, Jr., in the 1979 television miniseries Roots: The Next Generations.[254]
- Morgan Freeman, in the 1981 television movie Death of a Prophet.[255]
- Ben Holt, in the 1986 opera X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X at the New York City Opera.[256]
- Gary Dourdan, in the 2000 television movie King of the World.[257]
- Joe Morton, in the 2000 television movie Ali: An American Hero.[258]
- Mario Van Peebles, in the 2001 film Ali.[259]
- Lindsay Owen Pierre, in the 2013 television movie Betty and Coretta.[260]
Memorials and tributes
The Malcolm X House Site, at 3448 Pinkney Street in North Omaha, Nebraska, marks the place where Malcolm Little first lived with his family. The house where the Little family lived was torn down in 1965 by owners who did not know of its connection with Malcolm X.[261] The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and a historic marker identifies the site because of the importance of Malcolm X to American history and national culture.[262][263] In 1987 the site was added to the Nebraska register of historic sites and marked with a state plaque.[264]Lansing, Michigan, where Malcolm Little spent his early, formative years, is home to a Michigan Historical Marker erected in 1975 marking his homesite.[265] The city is also home to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Academy, a public charter school with an Afrocentric focus. The Academy is located in the building where Little attended elementary school.[266]
Many cities have renamed streets after Malcolm X; in 1987, New York mayor Ed Koch proclaimed Lenox Avenue in Harlem to be Malcolm X Boulevard.[269] The name of Reid Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, was changed to Malcolm X Boulevard in 1985.[270][271] In 1997, Oakland Avenue in Dallas, Texas, was renamed Malcolm X Boulevard.[272] Main Street in Lansing, Michigan, was renamed Malcolm X Street in 2010.[273]
There have been dozens of schools named after Malcolm X, including Malcolm X Shabazz High School in Newark, New Jersey,[274] Malcolm Shabazz City High School in Madison, Wisconsin,[275] and Malcolm X College in Chicago, Illinois.[276] Meanwhile, the Malcolm X Library and Performing Arts Center of the San Diego Public Library system opened in 1996. It is the first library named after Malcolm X.[277]
The U.S. Postal Service issued a Malcolm X postage stamp in 1999.[278] In 2005, Columbia University announced the opening of the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center. The memorial is located in the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was assassinated.[279] Collections of Malcolm X's papers are deposited at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Robert W. Woodruff Library.[280][281][282]
Published works
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X. With the assistance of Alex Haley. New York: Grove Press, 1965. OCLC 219493184.
- Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements. George Breitman, ed. New York: Merit Publishers, 1965. OCLC 256095445.
- Malcolm X Talks to Young People. New York: Young Socialist Alliance, 1965. OCLC 81990227.
- Two Speeches by Malcolm X. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1965. OCLC 19464959.
- Malcolm X on Afro-American History. New York: Merit Publishers, 1967. OCLC 78155009.
- The Speeches of Malcolm X at Harvard. Archie Epps, ed. New York: Morrow, 1968. OCLC 185901618.
- By Any Means Necessary: Speeches, Interviews, and a Letter by Malcolm X. George Breitman, ed. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970. OCLC 249307.
- The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches by Malcolm X. Benjamin Karim, ed. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971. OCLC 149849.
- The Last Speeches. Bruce Perry, ed. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0-87348-543-2.
- Malcolm X Talks to Young People: Speeches in the United States, Britain, and Africa. Steve Clark, ed. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0-87348-962-1.
- February 1965: The Final Speeches. Steve Clark, ed. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1992. ISBN 978-0-87348-749-8.
MAY ALMIGHTY LORD REST HIS SOUL IN ETERNAL PEACE.........................
"Che" redirects here. For other uses, see Che (disambiguation).
| Che Guevara | |
|---|---|
Guerrillero Heroico
Che Guevara at the La Coubre memorial service Taken by Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960. |
|
| Born | Ernesto Guevara June 14, 1928[1] Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina |
| Died | October 9, 1967 (aged 39) (execution) La Higuera, Vallegrande, Bolivia |
| Resting place | Che Guevara Mausoleum Santa Clara, Cuba |
| Occupation | Physician, author, government official |
| Organization | 26th of July Movement, United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution,[2] National Liberation Army (Bolivia) |
| Religion | None (Marxist humanist)[3][4][5] |
| Spouse(s) | Hilda Gadea (1955–1959) Aleida March (1959–1967, his death) |
| Children | Hilda (1956–1995), Aleida (b. 1960), Camilo (b. 1962), Celia (b. 1963), Ernesto (b. 1965) |
| Parents | Ernesto Guevara Lynch[6] Celia de la Serna[6] |
| Signature |  |
As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed.[9] His burgeoning desire to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the United States prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Árbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow at the behest of the United
Fruit Company solidified Guevara's political ideology.[9] Later, while living in Mexico City, he met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht, Granma, with the intention of overthrowing US-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.[10] Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.[11]
Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals,[12] instituting agrarian land reform as minister of industries, helping spearhead a successful nationwide literacy campaign, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for Cuba’s armed forces, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism. Such positions also allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces who repelled the Bay of Pigs Invasion[13] and bringing the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to Cuba which precipitated the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.[14] Additionally, he was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling memoir about his youthful continental motorcycle journey. His experiences and studying of Marxism–Leninism led him to posit that the Third World's underdevelopment and dependence was an intrinsic result of imperialism, neocolonialism, and monopoly capitalism, with the only remedy being proletarian internationalism and world revolution.[15][16] Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to foment revolution abroad, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and summarily executed.[17]
Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by moral rather than material incentives, he has evolved into a quintessential icon of various leftist-inspired movements. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century,[18] while an Alberto Korda photograph of him entitled Guerrillero Heroico (shown), was cited by the Maryland Institute College of Art as "the most famous photograph in the world".[19]
Contents
Early life
Though suffering crippling bouts of acute asthma that were to afflict him throughout his life, he excelled as an athlete, enjoying swimming, football, golf, and shooting; while also becoming an "untiring" cyclist.[26][27] He was an avid rugby union player,[28] and played at fly-half for Club Universitario de Buenos Aires.[29] His rugby playing earned him the nickname "Fuser"—a contraction of El Furibundo (raging) and his mother's surname, de la Serna—for his aggressive style of play.[30]
Intellectual and literary interests
As he grew older, he developed an interest in the Latin American writers Horacio Quiroga, Ciro Alegría, Jorge Icaza, Rubén Darío, and Miguel Asturias.[33] Many of these authors' ideas he cataloged in his own handwritten notebooks of concepts, definitions, and philosophies of influential intellectuals. These included composing analytical sketches of Buddha and Aristotle, along with examining Bertrand Russell on love and patriotism, Jack London on society, and Nietzsche on the idea of death. Sigmund Freud's ideas fascinated him as he quoted him on a variety of topics from dreams and libido to narcissism and the oedipus complex.[33] His favorite subjects in school included philosophy, mathematics, engineering, political science, sociology, history and archaeology.[34][35]
Years later, a February 13, 1958, declassified CIA 'biographical and personality report' would make note of Guevara’s wide range of academic interests and intellect, describing him as "quite well read" while adding that "Che is fairly intellectual for a Latino."[36]
Motorcycle journey
Main articles: The Motorcycle Diaries (book) and The Motorcycle Diaries (film)
In 1948, Guevara entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. His "hunger to explore the world"[37]
led him to intersperse his collegiate pursuits with two long
introspective journeys that would fundamentally change the way he viewed
himself and the contemporary economic conditions in Latin America. The
first expedition in 1950 was a 4,500 kilometer (2,800 mi) solo trip
through the rural provinces of northern Argentina on a bicycle on which he installed a small engine.[38]
This was followed in 1951 by a nine-month, 8,000-kilometer (5,000 mi)
continental motorcycle trek through most of South America. For the
latter, he took a year off from studies to embark with his friend Alberto Granado, with the final goal of spending a few weeks volunteering at the San Pablo leper colony in Peru, on the banks of the Amazon River.
In total, the journey took Guevara through Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and the United States (Miami, Florida for 20 days),[43] before returning home to Buenos Aires. By trip's end, he came to view Latin America not as collection of separate nations, but as a single entity requiring a continent-wide liberation strategy. His conception of a borderless, united Hispanic America sharing a common Latino heritage was a theme that prominently recurred during his later revolutionary activities. Upon returning to Argentina, he completed his studies and received his medical degree in June 1953, making him officially "Dr. Ernesto Guevara".[44][45]
"A motorcycle journey the length of South America awakened him to the
injustice of US domination in the hemisphere, and to the suffering colonialism brought to its original inhabitants."
— George Galloway, British politician[46]
Guatemala, Árbenz and United Fruit
Main article: 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état
In Guatemala City, Guevara sought out Hilda Gadea Acosta, a Peruvian economist who was well-connected politically as a member of the left-leaning Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA, American Popular Revolutionary Alliance). She introduced Guevara to a number of high-level officials in the Arbenz government. Guevara then established contact with a group of Cuban exiles linked to Fidel Castro through the July 26, 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. During this period he acquired his famous nickname, due to his frequent use of the Argentine diminutive interjection che, a vocative casual speech filler used to call attention or ascertain comprehension, similarly to both "bro" or the Canadian phrase "eh".[51]
Guevara's attempts to obtain a medical internship were unsuccessful and his economic situation was often precarious. On May 15, 1954, a shipment of Škoda infantry and light artillery weapons was sent from Communist Czechoslovakia for the Arbenz Government and arrived in Puerto Barrios.[52] As a result, the US CIA sponsored an army which invaded the country and installed the right-wing dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas.[50] Guevara was eager to fight on behalf of Arbenz and joined an armed militia organized by the Communist Youth for that purpose, but frustrated with the group's inaction, he soon returned to medical duties. Following the coup, he again volunteered to fight, but soon after, Arbenz took refuge in the Mexican Embassy and told his foreign supporters to leave the country. Guevara’s repeated calls to resist were noted by supporters of the coup, and he was marked for murder.[53] After Hilda Gadea was arrested, Guevara sought protection inside the Argentine consulate, where he remained until he received a safe-conduct pass some weeks later and made his way to Mexico.[54] He married Gadea in Mexico in September 1955.[55]
The overthrow of the Arbenz regime cemented Guevara's view of the United States as an imperialist power that would oppose and attempt to destroy any government that sought to redress the socioeconomic inequality endemic to Latin America and other developing countries. In speaking about the coup Guevara stated:
"The last Latin American revolutionary democracy – that of Jacobo Arbenz – failed as a result of the cold premeditated aggression carried out by the US. Its visible head was the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, a man who, through a rare coincidence, was also a stockholder and attorney for the United Fruit Company."[53]Guevara's conviction that Marxism achieved through armed struggle and defended by an armed populace was the only way to rectify such conditions was thus strengthened.[56] Gadea wrote later, "It was Guatemala which finally convinced him of the necessity for armed struggle and for taking the initiative against imperialism. By the time he left, he was sure of this."[57]
Mexico City and preparation
During this time he renewed his friendship with Ñico López and the other Cuban exiles whom he had met in Guatemala. In June 1955, López introduced him to Raúl Castro who subsequently introduced him to his older brother, Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader who had formed the 26th of July Movement and was now plotting to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. During a long conversation with Fidel on the night of their first meeting, Guevara concluded that the Cuban's cause was the one for which he had been searching and before daybreak he had signed up as a member of the July 26 Movement.[60] Despite their "contrasting personalities", from this point on Che and Fidel began to foster what dual biographer Simon Reid-Henry deems a "revolutionary friendship that would change the world", as a result of their coinciding commitment to anti-imperialism.[61]
By this point in Guevara’s life, he deemed that US-controlled conglomerates installed and supported repressive regimes around the world. In this vein, he considered Batista a "US puppet whose strings needed cutting".[62] Although he planned to be the group's combat medic, Guevara participated in the military training with the members of the Movement. The key portion of training involved learning hit and run tactics of guerrilla warfare. Guevara and the others underwent arduous 15-hour marches over mountains, across rivers, and through the dense undergrowth, learning and perfecting the procedures of ambush and quick retreat. From the start Guevara was Alberto Bayo's "prize student" among those in training, scoring the highest on all of the tests given.[63] At the end of the course, he was called "the best guerrilla of them all" by their instructor, General Bayo.[64]
Cuban Revolution
Invasion, warfare and Santa Clara
Only a small band of revolutionaries survived to re-group as a bedraggled fighting force deep in the Sierra Maestra mountains, where they received support from the urban guerrilla network of Frank País, the 26th of July Movement, and local campesinos. With the group withdrawn to the Sierra, the world wondered whether Castro was alive or dead until early 1957 when the interview by Herbert Matthews appeared in The New York Times. The article presented a lasting, almost mythical image for Castro and the guerrillas. Guevara was not present for the interview, but in the coming months he began to realize the importance of the media in their struggle. Meanwhile, as supplies and morale diminished, and with an allergy to mosquito bites which resulted in agonizing walnut-sized cysts on his body,[66] Guevara considered these "the most painful days of the war".[67]
During Guevara’s time living hidden among the poor subsistence farmers of the Sierra Maestra mountains, he discovered that there were no schools, no electricity, minimal access to healthcare, and more than 40 percent of the adults were illiterate.[68] As the war continued, Guevara became an integral part of the rebel army and "convinced Castro with competence, diplomacy and patience".[11] Guevara set up factories to make grenades, built ovens to bake bread, taught new recruits about tactics, and organized schools to teach illiterate campesinos to read and write.[11] Moreover, Guevara established health clinics, workshops to teach military tactics, and a newspaper to disseminate information.[69] The man who three years later would be dubbed by Time Magazine: "Castro's brain", at this point was promoted by Fidel Castro to Comandante (commander) of a second army column.[11]
As second in command, Guevara was a harsh disciplinarian who sometimes shot defectors. Deserters were punished as traitors, and Guevara was known to send squads to track those seeking to go AWOL.[70] As a result, Guevara became feared for his brutality and ruthlessness.[71] During the guerrilla campaign, Guevara was also responsible for the sometimes summary execution of a number of men accused of being informers, deserters or spies.[72] In his diaries, Guevara described the first such execution of Eutimio Guerra, a peasant army guide who admitted treason when it was discovered he accepted the promise of ten thousand pesos for repeatedly giving away the rebel's position for attack by the Cuban air force.[73] Such information also allowed Batista's army to burn the homes of rebel-friendly peasants.[73] Upon Guerra's request that they "end his life quickly",[73] Che stepped forward and shot him in the head, writing "The situation was uncomfortable for the people and for Eutimio so I ended the problem giving him a shot with a .32 pistol in the right side of the brain, with exit orifice in the right temporal [lobe]."[74] His scientific notations and matter-of-fact description, suggested to one biographer a "remarkable detachment to violence" by that point in the war.[74] Later, Guevara published a literary account of the incident entitled "Death of a Traitor", where he transfigured Eutimio's betrayal and pre-execution request that the revolution "take care of his children", into a "revolutionary parable about redemption through sacrifice".[74]
His commanding officer Fidel Castro has described Guevara as intelligent, daring, and an exemplary leader who "had great moral authority over his troops".[77] Castro further remarked that Guevara took too many risks, even having a "tendency toward foolhardiness".[78] Guevara's teenage lieutenant, Joel Iglesias, recounts such actions in his diary, noting that Guevara's behavior in combat even brought admiration from the enemy. On one occasion Iglesias recounts the time he had been wounded in battle, stating "Che ran out to me, defying the bullets, threw me over his shoulder, and got me out of there. The guards didn't dare fire at him ... later they told me he made a great impression on them when they saw him run out with his pistol stuck in his belt, ignoring the danger, they didn't dare shoot."[79]
Guevara was instrumental in creating the clandestine radio station Radio Rebelde (Rebel Radio) in February 1958, which broadcast news to the Cuban people with statements by the 26th of July movement, and provided radiotelephone communication between the growing number of rebel columns across the island. Guevara had apparently been inspired to create the station by observing the effectiveness of CIA supplied radio in Guatemala in ousting the government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.[80]
To quell the rebellion, Cuban government troops began executing rebel prisoners on the spot, and regularly rounded up, tortured, and shot civilians as a tactic of intimidation.[81] By March 1958, the continued atrocities carried out by Batista's forces led the United States to announce it would stop selling arms to the Cuban government.[69] Then in late July 1958, Guevara played a critical role in the Battle of Las Mercedes by using his column to halt a force of 1,500 men called up by Batista's General Cantillo in a plan to encircle and destroy Castro's forces. Years later, Major Larry Bockman of the United States Marine Corps would analyze and describe Che's tactical appreciation of this battle as "brilliant".[82] During this time Guevara also became an "expert" at leading hit-and-run tactics against Batista’s army, and then fading back into the countryside before the army could counterattack.[83]
Radio Rebelde broadcast the first reports that Guevara's column had taken Santa Clara on New Year's Eve 1958. This contradicted reports by the heavily controlled national news media, which had at one stage reported Guevara's death during the fighting. At 3 am on January 1, 1959, upon learning that his generals were negotiating a separate peace with Guevara, Fulgencio Batista boarded a plane in Havana and fled for the Dominican Republic, along with an amassed "fortune of more than $300,000,000 through graft and payoffs".[88] The following day on January 2, Guevara entered Havana to take final control of the capital.[89] Fidel Castro took 6 more days to arrive, as he stopped to rally support in several large cities on his way to rolling victoriously into Havana on January 8, 1959. The final death toll from the two years of revolutionary fighting was 2,000 people.[90]
In mid-January 1959, Guevara went to live at a summer villa in Tarara to recover from a violent asthma attack.[91] While there he started the Tarara Group, a group that debated and formed the new plans for Cuba's social, political, and economic development.[92] In addition, Che began to write his book Guerrilla Warfare while resting at Tarara.[92] In February, the revolutionary government proclaimed Guevara "a Cuban citizen by birth" in recognition of his role in the triumph.[93] When Hilda Gadea arrived in Cuba in late January, Guevara told her that he was involved with another woman, and the two agreed on a divorce,[94] which was finalized on May 22.[95] On June 2, 1959, he married Aleida March, a Cuban-born member of the 26th of July movement with whom he had been living since late 1958. Guevara returned to the seaside village of Tarara in June for his honeymoon with Aleida.[96] In total, Guevara would ultimately have five children from his two marriages.[97]
La Cabaña, land reform, and literacy
To implement a portion of this plan, Castro named Guevara commander of the La Cabaña Fortress prison, for a five-month tenure (January 2 through June 12, 1959).[101] Guevara was charged with purging the Batista army and consolidating victory by exacting "revolutionary justice" against those considered to be traitors, chivatos (informants) or war criminals.[102] Serving in the post as commander of La Cabaña, Guevara reviewed the appeals of those convicted during the revolutionary tribunal process.[12] The tribunals were conducted by 2–3 army officers, an assessor, and a respected local citizen.[103] On some occasions the penalty delivered by the tribunal was death by firing squad.[104] Raúl Gómez Treto, senior legal advisor to the Cuban Ministry of Justice, has argued that the death penalty was justified in order to prevent citizens themselves from taking justice into their own hands, as happened twenty years earlier in the anti-Machado rebellion.[105] Biographers note that in January 1959, the Cuban public was in a "lynching mood",[106] and point to a survey at the time showing 93% public approval for the tribunal process.[12] Moreover, a January 22, 1959, Universal Newsreel broadcast in the US and narrated by Ed Herlihy, featured Fidel Castro asking an estimated one million Cubans whether they approved of the executions, and was met with a roaring "¡Si!" (yes).[107] With thousands of Cubans estimated to have been killed at the hands of Batista's collaborators,[108][109] and many of the war criminals sentenced to death accused of torture and physical atrocities,[12] the newly empowered government carried out executions, punctuated by cries from the crowds of "¡paredón!" ([to the] wall!),[98] which biographer Jorge Castañeda describes as "without respect for due process".[110]
"I have yet to find a single credible source pointing to a case where
Che executed 'an innocent'. Those persons executed by Guevara or on his
orders were condemned for the usual crimes punishable by death at times
of war or in its aftermath: desertion, treason or crimes such as rape,
torture or murder. I should add that my research spanned five years, and
included anti-Castro Cubans among the Cuban-American exile community in
Miami and elsewhere."
Along with ensuring "revolutionary justice", the other key early platform of Guevara's was establishing agrarian land reform. Almost immediately after the success of the revolution on January 27, 1959, Guevara made one of his most significant speeches where he talked about "the social ideas of the rebel army". During this speech, he declared that the main concern of the new Cuban government was "the social justice that land redistribution brings about".[114] A few months later on May 17, 1959, the Agrarian Reform Law crafted by Guevara went into effect, limiting the size of all farms to 1,000 acres (4.0 km2). Any holdings over these limits were expropriated by the government and either redistributed to peasants in 67-acre (270,000 m2) parcels or held as state run communes.[115] The law also stipulated that sugar plantations could not be owned by foreigners.[116]
Upon Guevara's return to Cuba in September 1959, it was evident that Castro now had more political power. The government had begun land seizures included in the agrarian reform law, but was hedging on compensation offers to landowners, instead offering low interest "bonds", a step which put the US on alert. At this point the affected wealthy cattlemen of Camagüey mounted a campaign against the land redistributions, and enlisted the newly disaffected rebel leader Huber Matos, who along with the anti-Communist wing of the 26th of July Movement, joined them in denouncing the "Communist encroachment".[123] During this time Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo was offering assistance to the "Anti-Communist Legion of the Caribbean" which was training in the Dominican Republic. This multi-national force, composed mostly of Spaniards and Cubans, but also of Croatians, Germans, Greeks, and right-wing mercenaries, was plotting to topple Castro's new regime.[123]
These perceived threats prompted Castro to further eliminate "counter-revolutionaries", and to utilize Guevara to drastically increase the speed of land reform. To implement this plan, a new government agency, the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA), was established to administer the new Agrarian Reform law. INRA quickly became the most important governing body in the nation, with Guevara serving as its head in his capacity as minister of industries.[116] Under Guevara's command, INRA established its own 100,000 person militia, used first to help the government seize control of the expropriated land and supervise its distribution, and later to set up cooperative farms. The land confiscated included 480,000 acres (1,900 km2) owned by US corporations.[116] Months later, as retaliation, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower sharply reduced US imports of Cuban sugar (Cuba’s main cash crop), thus leading Guevara on July 10, 1960, to address over 100,000 workers in front of the Presidential Palace at a rally called to denounce US "economic aggression".[126] Time magazine reporters who met with Guevara around this time, described him as "guid(ing) Cuba with icy calculation, vast competence, high intelligence, and a perceptive sense of humor."[11]
Along with land reform, one of the primary areas that Guevara stressed needed national improvement was in the area of literacy. Before 1959 the official literacy rate for Cuba was between 60–76%, with educational access in rural areas and a lack of instructors the main determining factors.[127] As a result, the Cuban government at Guevara's behest dubbed 1961 the "year of education", and mobilized over 100,000 volunteers into "literacy brigades", who were then sent out into the countryside to construct schools, train new educators, and teach the predominately illiterate guajiros (peasants) to read and write.[68][127] Unlike many of Guevara's later economic initiatives, this campaign was "a remarkable success".[127] By the completion of the Cuban Literacy Campaign, 707,212 adults had been taught to read and write, raising the national literacy rate to 96%.[127]
"Guevara was like a father to me ... he educated me. He taught me to
think. He taught me the most beautiful thing which is to be human."
— Urbano (aka Leonardo Tamayo),
fought with Guevara in Cuba and Bolivia[128]
fought with Guevara in Cuba and Bolivia[128]
Marxist ideological influence
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"The merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it (which would satisfy his scientific obligation), he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny."When enacting and advocating Cuban policy, Guevara cited the political philosopher Karl Marx as his ideological inspiration. In defending his political stance, Guevara confidently remarked that "There are truths so evident, so much a part of people's knowledge, that it is now useless to discuss them. One ought to be Marxist with the same naturalness with which one is "Newtonian" in physics, or "Pasteurian" in biology."[130] According to Guevara, the "practical revolutionaries" of the Cuban Revolution had the goal of "simply fulfill(ing) laws foreseen by Marx, the scientist."[130] Using Marx's predictions and system of dialectical materialism, Guevara professed that "The laws of Marxism are present in the events of the Cuban Revolution, independently of what its leaders profess or fully know of those laws from a theoretical point of view."[130]
— Che Guevara, Notes for the Study of the Ideology of the Cuban, October 1960 [130]
The "New Man", Bay of Pigs and missile crisis
Main articles: Bay of Pigs Invasion and Cuban Missile Crisis
"Man truly achieves his full human condition when he produces without being compelled by the physical necessity of selling himself as a commodity."At this stage, Guevara acquired the additional position of Finance Minister, as well as President of the National Bank. These appointments, combined with his existing position as Minister of Industries, placed Guevara at the zenith of his power, as the "virtual czar" of the Cuban economy.[126] As a consequence of his position at the head of the central bank, it was now Guevara's duty to sign the Cuban currency, which per custom would bear his signature. Instead of using his full name, he signed the bills solely "Che".[132] It was through this symbolic act, which horrified many in the Cuban financial sector, that Guevara signaled his distaste for money and the class distinctions it brought about.[132] Guevara's long time friend Ricardo Rojo later remarked that "the day he signed Che on the bills, (he) literally knocked the props from under the widespread belief that money was sacred."[133]
— Che Guevara, Man and Socialism in Cuba[131]
"There is a great difference between free-enterprise development and revolutionary development. In one of them, wealth is concentrated in the hands of a fortunate few, the friends of the government, the best wheeler-dealers. In the other, wealth is the people’s patrimony."[138]A further integral part of fostering a sense of "unity between the individual and the mass", Guevara believed, was volunteer work and will. To display this, Guevara "led by example", working "endlessly at his ministry job, in construction, and even cutting sugar cane" on his day off.[139] He was known for working 36 hours at a stretch, calling meetings after midnight, and eating on the run.[137] Such behavior was emblematic of Guevara's new program of moral incentives, where each worker was now required to meet a quota and produce a certain quantity of goods. As a replacement for the pay increases abolished by Guevara, workers who exceeded their quota now only received a certificate of commendation, while workers who failed to meet their quotas were given a pay cut.[137] Guevara unapologetically defended his personal philosophy towards motivation and work, stating:
"This is not a matter of how many pounds of meat one might be able to eat, or how many times a year someone can go to the beach, or how many ornaments from abroad one might be able to buy with his current salary. What really matters is that the individual feels more complete, with much more internal richness and much more responsibility."[140]In the face of a loss of commercial connections with Western states, Guevara tried to replace them with closer commercial relationships with Eastern Bloc states, visiting a number of Marxist states and signing trade agreements with them. At the end of 1960 he visited Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, North Korea, Hungary and East Germany and signed, for instance, a trade agreement in East Berlin on December 17, 1960.[141] Such agreements helped Cuba's economy to a certain degree but also had the disadvantage of a growing economic dependency on the Eastern Bloc. It was also in East Germany where Guevara met Tamara Bunke (later known as "Tania"), who was assigned as his interpreter, and who would years later join him and be killed with him in Bolivia.
Whatever the merits or demerits of Guevara’s economic principles, his programs were unsuccessful.[142] Guevara's program of "moral incentives" for workers caused a rapid drop in productivity and a rapid rise in absenteeism.[143] Decades later, the director of Radio Martí Ernesto Betancourt, an early ally turned Castro-critic and Che's former deputy, would accuse Guevara of being "ignorant of the most elementary economic principles."[144] In reference to the collective failings of Guevara's vision, reporter I.F. Stone who interviewed Guevara twice during this time, remarked that he was "Galahad not Robespierre", while opining that "in a sense he was, like some early saint, taking refuge in the desert. Only there could the purity of the faith be safeguarded from the unregenerate revisionism of human nature."[145]
On April 17, 1961, 1,400 US-trained Cuban exiles invaded Cuba during the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Guevara did not play a key role in the fighting, as one day before the invasion a warship carrying Marines faked an invasion off the West Coast of Pinar del Río and drew forces commanded by Guevara to that region. However, historians give him a share of credit for the victory as he was director of instruction for Cuba’s armed forces at the time.[13] Author Tad Szulc in his explanation of the Cuban victory, assigns Guevara partial credit, stating: "The revolutionaries won because Che Guevara, as the head of the Instruction Department of the Revolutionary Armed Forces in charge of the militia training program, had done so well in preparing 200,000 men and women for war."[13] It was also during this deployment that he suffered a bullet grazing to the cheek when his pistol fell out of its holster and accidentally discharged.[146]
Guevara, who was practically the architect of the Soviet-Cuban relationship,[150] then played a key role in bringing to Cuba the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.[151] A few weeks after the crisis, during an interview with the British communist newspaper the Daily Worker, Guevara was still fuming over the perceived Soviet betrayal and told correspondent Sam Russell that, if the missiles had been under Cuban control, they would have fired them off.[152] While expounding on the incident later, Guevara reiterated that the cause of socialist liberation against global "imperialist aggression" would ultimately have been worth the possibility of "millions of atomic war victims".[153] The missile crisis further convinced Guevara that the world's two superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union) used Cuba as a pawn in their own global strategies. Afterward he denounced the Soviets almost as frequently as he denounced the Americans.[154]
International diplomacy
"Those who kill their own children and discriminate daily against them because of the color of their skin; those who let the murderers of blacks remain free, protecting them, and furthermore punishing the black population because they demand their legitimate rights as free men—how can those who do this consider themselves guardians of freedom?"[155]An indignant Guevara ended his speech by reciting the Second Declaration of Havana, decreeing Latin America a "family of 200 million brothers who suffer the same miseries".[155] This "epic", Guevara declared, would be written by the "hungry Indian masses, peasants without land, exploited workers, and progressive masses". To Guevara the conflict was a struggle of masses and ideas, which would be carried forth by those "mistreated and scorned by imperialism" who were previously considered "a weak and submissive flock". With this "flock", Guevara now asserted, "Yankee monopoly capitalism" now terrifyingly saw their "gravediggers".[155] It would be during this "hour of vindication", Guevara pronounced, that the "anonymous mass" would begin to write its own history "with its own blood" and reclaim those "rights that were laughed at by one and all for 500 years". Guevara ended his remarks to the General Assembly by hypothesizing that this "wave of anger” would "sweep the lands of Latin America" and that the labor masses who "turn the wheel of history" were now, for the first time, "awakening from the long, brutalizing sleep to which they had been subjected".[155]
Guevara later learned that there were two failed attempts on his life by Cuban exiles during his stop at the UN complex.[156] The first from Molly Gonzales who tried to break through barricades upon his arrival with a seven-inch hunting knife, and later during his address by Guillermo Novo with a timer-initiated bazooka that was fired off target from a boat in the East River at the United Nations Headquarters.[156] Afterwards Guevara commented on both incidents, stating that "it is better to be killed by a woman with a knife than by a man with a gun", while adding with a languid wave of his cigar that the explosion had "given the whole thing more flavor".[156]
While in New York Guevara also appeared on the CBS Sunday news program Face the Nation and met with a range of people, from US Senator Eugene McCarthy[157] to associates of Malcolm X. The latter expressed his admiration, declaring Guevara "one of the most revolutionary men in this country right now" while reading a statement from him to a crowd at the Audubon Ballroom.[158]
During this voyage he wrote a letter to Carlos Quijano, editor of a Uruguayan weekly, which was later retitled Socialism and Man in Cuba.[136] Outlined in the treatise was Guevara's summons for the creation of a new consciousness, a new status of work, and a new role of the individual. He also laid out the reasoning behind his anti-capitalist sentiments, stating:
"The laws of capitalism, blind and invisible to the majority, act upon the individual without his thinking about it. He sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon before him. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists, who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller—whether or not it is true—about the possibilities of success. The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this."[136]Guevara ended the essay by declaring that "the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love" and beckoning on all revolutionaries to "strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into acts that serve as examples", thus becoming "a moving force".[136] The genesis for Guevara's assertions relied on the fact that he believed the example of the Cuban Revolution was "something spiritual that would transcend all borders".[33]
Algiers, the Soviets and China
In Algiers, Algeria on February 24, 1965, Guevara made what turned out to be his last public appearance on the international stage when he delivered a speech at an economic seminar on Afro-Asian solidarity.[161] He specified the moral duty of the socialist countries, accusing them of tacit complicity with the exploiting Western countries. He proceeded to outline a number of measures which he said the communist-bloc countries must implement in order to accomplish the defeat of imperialism.[162] Having criticized the Soviet Union (the primary financial backer of Cuba) in such a public manner, he returned to Cuba on March 14 to a solemn reception by Fidel and Raúl Castro, Osvaldo Dorticós and Carlos Rafael Rodríguez at the Havana airport.As revealed in his last public speech in Algiers, Guevara had come to view the Northern Hemisphere, led by the US in the West and the Soviet Union in the East, as the exploiter of the Southern Hemisphere. He strongly supported Communist North Vietnam in the Vietnam War, and urged the peoples of other developing countries to take up arms and create "many Vietnams".[163] Che's denunciations of the Soviets made him popular among intellectuals and artists of the Western European left who had lost faith in the Soviet Union, while his condemnation of imperialism inspired young radical students in the United States, who were impatient for societal change and for whom the idea of revolution was inspiring.[164]
Moreover, the coincidence of Guevara's views with those expounded by the Chinese Communist leadership under Mao Zedong was increasingly problematic for Cuba as the nation's economy became more and more dependent on the Soviet Union. Since the early days of the Cuban revolution, Guevara had been considered by many an advocate of Maoist strategy in Latin America and the originator of a plan for the rapid industrialization of Cuba that was frequently compared to China's "Great Leap Forward". Castro became weary of Guevara's opposition to Soviet conditions and recommendations: measures that Castro saw as necessary, but which Guevara described as corrupt and "pre-monopolist".[165]
"Marx characterized the psychological or philosophical manifestation of capitalist social relations as alienation and antagonism; the result of the commodification of labor and the operation of the law of value. For Guevara, the challenge was to replace the individuals' alienation from the productive process, and the antagonism generated by class relations, with integration and solidarity, developing a collective attitude to production and the concept of work as a social duty."
— Helen Yaffe, author of Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution[166]
Two weeks after his Algiers speech, Guevara dropped out of public life and then vanished altogether. His whereabouts were a great mystery in Cuba, as he was generally regarded as second in power to Castro himself. His disappearance was variously attributed to the failure of the industrialization scheme he had advocated while minister of industry, to pressure exerted on Castro by Soviet officials disapproving of Guevara's pro-Chinese Communist stance on the Sino-Soviet split, and to serious differences between Guevara and the pragmatic Castro regarding Cuba's economic development and ideological line. Pressed by international speculation regarding Guevara's fate, Castro stated on June 16, 1965 that the people would be informed when Guevara himself wished to let them know. Still, rumors spread both inside and outside Cuba. On October 3, 1965, Castro publicly revealed an undated letter purportedly written to him by Guevara some months earlier; in it, Guevara reaffirmed his enduring solidarity with the Cuban Revolution but declared his intention to leave Cuba to fight for the revolutionary cause abroad. Additionally, he resigned from all his positions in the government and party, and renounced his honorary Cuban citizenship.[167]
Congo
As an additional obstacle, white South African mercenaries, led by Mike Hoare in concert with Cuban exiles and the CIA, worked with the Congo National Army to thwart Guevara's movements from his base camp which was located in the mountains near the village of Fizi on Lake Tanganyika in southeast Congo. They were able to monitor his communications and so pre-empted his attacks and interdicted his supply lines. Despite the fact that Guevara sought to conceal his presence in the Congo, the US government was aware of his location and activities. The National Security Agency was intercepting all of his incoming and outgoing transmissions via equipment aboard the USNS Private Jose F. Valdez (T-AG-169), a floating listening post that continuously cruised the Indian Ocean off Dar es Salaam for that purpose.[176]
Guevara was reluctant to return to Cuba, because Castro had made public Guevara's "farewell letter"—a letter intended to only be revealed in the case of his death—wherein he severed all ties in order to devote himself to revolution throughout the world.[181] As a result, Guevara spent the next six months living clandestinely in Dar es Salaam and Prague.[182] During this time he compiled his memoirs of the Congo experience and wrote drafts of two more books, one on philosophy and the other on economics. He then visited several Western European countries to test his new false identity papers, created by Cuban Intelligence for his later travels to South America. As Guevara prepared for Bolivia, he secretly traveled back to Cuba to visit Castro, as well as to see his wife and to write a last letter to his five children to be read upon his death, which ended with him instructing them:
"Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary."[183]
Bolivia
Main article: Ñancahuazú Guerrilla
In late 1966, Guevara's location was still not public knowledge,
although representatives of Mozambique's independence movement, the FRELIMO,
reported that they met with Guevara in late 1966 in Dar es Salaam
regarding his offer to aid in their revolutionary project, an offer
which they ultimately rejected.[184] In a speech at the 1967 International Workers' Day rally in Havana, the acting minister of the armed forces, Major Juan Almeida, announced that Guevara was "serving the revolution somewhere in Latin America".Before he departed for Bolivia, Guevara altered his appearance by shaving off his beard and part of the top of his head as well as dyeing the rest of his hair grey so he would be unrecognizable as Che Guevara.[185] On November 3, 1966, Guevara secretly arrived in La Paz on a flight from Montevideo under the false name Adolfo Mena González, posing as a middle-aged Uruguayan businessman working for the Organization of American States.[186]
Guevara's guerrilla force, numbering about 50[189] and operating as the ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional de Bolivia; "National Liberation Army of Bolivia"), was well equipped and scored a number of early successes against Bolivian army regulars in the difficult terrain of the mountainous Camiri region during the early months of 1967. As a result of Guevara’s units' winning several skirmishes against Bolivian troops in the spring and summer of 1967, the Bolivian government began to overestimate the true size of the guerrilla force.[190] But in August 1967, the Bolivian Army managed to eliminate two guerrilla groups in a violent battle, reportedly killing one of the leaders.
Researchers hypothesize that Guevara's plan for fomenting a revolution in Bolivia failed for an array of reasons:
- He had expected to deal only with the Bolivian military, who were poorly trained and equipped, and was unaware that the US government had sent a team of the CIA's Special Activities Division commandos and other operatives into Bolivia to aid the anti-insurrection effort. The Bolivian Army would also be trained, advised, and supplied by US Army Special Forces including a recently organized elite battalion of Rangers trained in jungle warfare that set up camp in La Esperanza, a small settlement close to the location of Guevara's guerrillas.[191]
- Guevara had expected assistance and cooperation from the local dissidents that he did not receive, nor did he receive support from Bolivia's Communist Party under the leadership of Mario Monje, which was oriented toward Moscow rather than Havana. In Guevara's own diary captured after his death, he wrote about the Communist Party of Bolivia, which he characterized as "distrustful, disloyal and stupid".[192]
- He had expected to remain in radio contact with Havana. The two shortwave transmitters provided to him by Cuba were faulty; thus the guerrillas were unable to communicate and be resupplied, leaving them isolated and stranded.
The end result was that Guevara was unable to attract inhabitants of the local area to join his militia during the eleven months he attempted recruitment. Near the end of the venture Guevara wrote in his diary that "the peasants do not give us any help, and they are turning into informers."[195]
Capture and execution
"There was no person more feared by the company (CIA) than Che
Guevara because he had the capacity and charisma necessary to direct the
struggle against the political repression of the traditional
hierarchies in power in the countries of Latin America."
— Philip Agee, CIA agent, later defected to Cuba[196]
On October 7, 1967, an informant apprised the Bolivian Special Forces of the location of Guevara's guerrilla encampment in the Yuro ravine.[199] On October 8, they encircled the area with 1,800 soldiers, and Guevara was wounded and taken prisoner while leading a detachment with Simeón Cuba Sarabia. Che biographer Jon Lee Anderson reports Bolivian Sergeant Bernardino Huanca's account: that a twice-wounded Guevara, his gun rendered useless, shouted, "Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and I am worth more to you alive than dead."[200]
Guevara was tied up and taken to a dilapidated mud schoolhouse in the nearby village of La Higuera on the evening of October 8. For the next half day, Guevara refused to be interrogated by Bolivian officers and would only speak quietly to Bolivian soldiers. One of those Bolivian soldiers, a helicopter pilot named Jaime Nino de Guzman, describes Che as looking "dreadful". According to Guzman, Guevara was shot through the right calf, his hair was matted with dirt, his clothes were shredded, and his feet were covered in rough leather sheaths. Despite his haggard appearance, he recounts that "Che held his head high, looked everyone straight in the eyes and asked only for something to smoke." De Guzman states that he "took pity" and gave him a small bag of tobacco for his pipe, and that Guevara then smiled and thanked him.[201] Later on the night of October 8, Guevara—despite having his hands tied—kicked a Bolivian officer, Espinosa, into the wall after the officer entered the schoolhouse and tried to snatch Guevara's pipe from his mouth as a souvenir while he was still smoking it.[202] In another instance of defiance, Guevara literally spat in the face of Bolivian Rear Admiral Ugarteche who attempted to question Guevara a few hours before his execution.[202]
The following morning on October 9, Guevara asked to see the maestra (school teacher) of the village, 22-year-old Julia Cortez. Cortez would later state that she found Guevara to be an "agreeable looking man with a soft and ironic glance" and that during their conversation she found herself "unable to look him in the eye" because his "gaze was unbearable, piercing, and so tranquil".[202] During their short conversation, Guevara pointed out to Cortez the poor condition of the schoolhouse, stating that it was "anti-pedagogical" to expect campesino students to be educated there, while "government officials drive Mercedes cars", and declaring "that's what we are fighting against."[202]
Later that morning on October 9, Bolivian President René Barrientos ordered that Guevara be killed. The order was relayed to the unit holding Guevara by Félix Rodríguez despite the US government’s desire that Guevara be taken to Panama for further interrogation.[203] The executioner who volunteered to kill Guevara was Mario Terán, an alcoholic 31-year-old sergeant in the Bolivian army who had personally requested to shoot Guevara because three of his friends from B Company, all with the same first name of "Mario", had been killed in an earlier firefight with Guevara's band of guerrillas.[12] To make the bullet wounds appear consistent with the story that the Bolivian government planned to release to the public, Félix Rodríguez ordered Terán to aim carefully to make it appear that Guevara had been killed in action during a clash with the Bolivian army.[204] Gary Prado, the Bolivian captain in command of the army company that captured Guevara, said that the reasons Barrientos ordered the immediate execution of Guevara were so there would be no possibility for Guevara to escape from prison, and also so there would be no drama in regard to a public trial where adverse publicity might happen.[205]
About 30 minutes before Guevara was executed, Félix Rodríguez attempted to question him about the whereabouts of other guerrilla fighters who were currently at large, but Guevara continued to remain silent. Rodríguez, assisted by a few Bolivian soldiers, helped Guevara to his feet and took him outside the hut to parade him before other Bolivian soldiers where he posed with Guevara for a photo opportunity where one soldier took a photograph of Rodríguez and other soldiers standing alongside Guevara. After taking him back inside, Rodríguez then privately told Guevara that he was going to be executed. Guevara then responded by asking Rodríguez if he was an American of Mexican or Puerto Rican origin, having noted that Rodríguez did not speak Bolivian Spanish. Rodríguez replied that he was originally from Cuba but that he had emigrated to the US and was currently a member of the CIA. Guevara's only reply was a loud "ha!" and he refused to speak any more to Rodríguez, who left the hut.
A little later, a few minutes before Guevera was executed, he was asked by one of the Bolivian soldiers guarding him if he was thinking about his own immortality. "No," he replied, "I'm thinking about the immortality of the revolution."[206] A few minutes later, Sergeant Terán entered the hut and immediately ordered the other soldiers out. Alone with Terán, Che Guevara then stood up and spoke to his executioner which were his last words: "I know you've come to kill me. Shoot. Do it. Shoot me, you coward! You are only going to kill a man!"[207] As Guevara was speaking, Terán hesitated, then opened fire with his M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle, hitting him in the arms and legs. For a few seconds, Guevara writhed on the ground, apparently biting one of his wrists to avoid crying out. Terán then fired several times again, wounding him fatally in the chest. Che Guevara was pronounced dead at 1:10 pm local time according to Rodríguez.[207] In all, Guevara was shot nine times by Terán. This included five times in his legs, once in the right shoulder and arm, once in the chest, and finally in the throat.[202]
Months earlier, during his last public declaration to the Tricontinental Conference,[163] Guevara wrote his own epitaph, stating "Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this our battle cry may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons."[208]
Post-execution and memorial
Face Side angle ShoesPut on public show as hundreds of local residents filed past the body, Guevara's corpse was considered by many to represent a "Christ-like" visage, with some even surreptitiously clipping locks of his hair as divine relics.[210] Such comparisons were further extended when English art critic John Berger, two weeks later upon seeing the post-mortem photographs, observed that they resembled two famous paintings: Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp and Andrea Mantegna's Lamentation over the Dead Christ.[211] There were also four correspondents present when Guevara's body arrived in Vallegrande, including Bjorn Kumm of the Swedish Aftonbladet, who described the scene in a November 11, 1967 exclusive for The New Republic.[212]
A declassified memorandum dated October 11, 1967 to United States President Lyndon B. Johnson from his National Security Advisor Walt Whitman Rostow, called the decision to kill Guevara "stupid" but "understandable from a Bolivian standpoint".[213] After the execution Rodríguez took several of Guevara's personal items—including a Rolex GMT Master wristwatch[214] that he continued to wear many years later—often showing them to reporters during the ensuing years. After a military doctor amputated his hands, Bolivian army officers transferred Guevara's body to an undisclosed location and refused to reveal whether his remains had been buried or cremated. The hands were preserved in formaldehyde to be sent to Buenos Aires for fingerprint identification. (His fingerprints were on file with the Argentine police.) They were later sent to Cuba.
"If we wish to express what we want the men of future generations to be, we must say: Let them be like Che! If we wish to say how we want our children to be educated, we must say without hesitation: We want them to be educated in Che’s spirit! If we want the model of a man, who does not belong to our times but to the future, I say from the depths of my heart that such a model, without a single stain on his conduct, without a single stain on his action, is Che!"[217]Also removed when Guevara was captured were his 30,000-word, hand-written diary, a collection of his personal poetry, and a short story he had authored about a young Communist guerrilla who learns to overcome his fears.[218] His diary documented events of the guerrilla campaign in Bolivia,[219] with the first entry on November 7, 1966, shortly after his arrival at the farm in Ñancahuazú, and the last dated October 7, 1967, the day before his capture. The diary tells how the guerrillas were forced to begin operations prematurely because of discovery by the Bolivian Army, explains Guevara's decision to divide the column into two units that were subsequently unable to re-establish contact, and describes their overall unsuccessful venture. It also records the rift between Guevara and the Communist Party of Bolivia that resulted in Guevara having significantly fewer soldiers than originally expected, and shows that Guevara had a great deal of difficulty recruiting from the local populace, partly because the guerrilla group had learned Quechua, unaware that the local language was actually a Tupí–Guaraní language.[220] As the campaign drew to an unexpected close, Guevara became increasingly ill. He suffered from ever-worsening bouts of asthma, and most of his last offensives were carried out in an attempt to obtain medicine.[221] The Bolivian diary was quickly and crudely translated by Ramparts magazine and circulated around the world.[222] There are at least four additional diaries in existence—those of Israel Reyes Zayas (Alias "Braulio"), Harry Villegas Tamayo ("Pombo"), Eliseo Reyes Rodriguez ("Rolando")[187] and Dariel Alarcón Ramírez ("Benigno")[223]—each of which reveals additional aspects of the events.
French intellectual Régis Debray, who was captured in April 1967 while with Guevara in Bolivia, gave an interview from prison in August 1968, in which he enlarged on the circumstances of Guevara's capture. Debray, who had lived with Guevara's band of guerrillas for a short time, said that in his view they were "victims of the forest" and thus "eaten by the jungle".[224] Debray described a destitute situation where Guevara's men suffered malnutrition, lack of water, absence of shoes, and only possessed six blankets for 22 men. Debray recounts that Guevara and the others had been suffering an "illness" which caused their hands and feet to swell into "mounds of flesh" to the point where you could not discern the fingers on their hands.[224] Debray described Guevara as "optimistic about the future of Latin America" despite the futile situation, and remarked that Guevara was "resigned to die in the knowledge that his death would be a sort of renaissance", noting that Guevara perceived death "as a promise of rebirth" and "ritual of renewal".[224]
To a certain extent, this belief by Guevara of a metaphorical resurrection came true. While pictures of the dead Guevara were being circulated and the circumstances of his death were being debated, Che's legend began to spread. Demonstrations in protest against his "assassination" occurred throughout the world, and articles, tributes, and poems were written about his life and death.[225] Rallies in support of Guevara were held from "Mexico to Santiago, Algiers to Angola, and Cairo to Calcutta."[226] The population of Budapest and Prague lit candles to honor Guevara's passing; and the picture of a smiling Che appeared in London and Paris.[227] When a few months later riots broke out in Berlin, France, and Chicago, and the unrest spread to the American college campuses, young men and women wore Che Guevara T-shirts and carried his pictures during their protest marches. In the view of military historian Erik Durschmied, "In those heady months of 1968, Che Guevara was not dead. He was very much alive."[228]
Retrieval of remains
Main article: Che Guevara Mausoleum
In late 1995, the retired Bolivian General Mario Vargas revealed to Jon Lee Anderson, author of the biography Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, that Guevara's body was located near a Vallegrande
airstrip. The result was a multi-national search for the remains, which
would last more than a year. In July 1997 a team of Cuban geologists
and Argentine forensic anthropologists
discovered the remnants of seven bodies in two mass graves, including
one man with amputated hands (like Guevara). Bolivian government
officials with the Ministry of Interior later identified the body as
Guevara when the excavated teeth "perfectly matched" a plaster mold of
Che's teeth made in Cuba prior to his Congolese expedition. The
"clincher" then arrived when Argentine forensic anthropologist Alejandro
Inchaurregui inspected the inside hidden pocket of a blue jacket dug up
next to the handless cadaver and found a small bag of pipe tobacco.
Nino de Guzman, the Bolivian helicopter pilot who had given Che a small
bag of tobacco, later remarked that he "had serious doubts" at first and
"thought the Cubans would just find any old bones and call it Che"; but
"after hearing about the tobacco pouch, I have no doubts."[201]
On October 17, 1997, Guevara's remains, with those of six of his fellow
combatants, were laid to rest with military honors in a specially built
mausoleum in the Cuban city of Santa Clara, where he had commanded over the decisive military victory of the Cuban Revolution.[229]In July 2008, the Bolivian government of Evo Morales unveiled Guevara's formerly-sealed diaries composed in two frayed notebooks, along with a logbook and several black-and-white photographs. At this event Bolivia's vice-minister of culture, Pablo Groux, expressed that there were plans to publish photographs of every handwritten page later in the year.[230] Meanwhile, in August 2009 anthropologists working for Bolivia's Justice Ministry discovered and unearthed the bodies of five of Guevara's fellow guerrillas near the Bolivian town of Teoponte.[231]
Legacy
Main articles: Legacy of Che Guevara and Che Guevara in popular culture
"The discovery of Che's remains metonymically activated a series of interlinked associations—rebel, martyr, rogue figure from a picaresque adventure, savior, renegade, extremist—in which there was no fixed divide among them. The current court of opinion places Che on a continuum that teeters between viewing him as a misguided rebel, a coruscatingly brilliant guerrilla philosopher, a poet-warrior jousting at windmills, a brazen warrior who threw down the gauntlet to the bourgeoisie, the object of fervent paeans to his sainthood, or a mass murderer clothed in the guise of an avenging angel whose every action is imbricated in violence—the archetypal Fanatical Terrorist."
— Dr. Peter McLaren, author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution[232]
An array of notable individuals have lauded Guevara as a hero;[236] for example, Nelson Mandela referred to him as "an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom",[196] while Jean-Paul Sartre described him as "not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age".[237] Others who have expressed their admiration include authors Graham Greene, who remarked that Guevara "represented the idea of gallantry, chivalry, and adventure",[238] and Susan Sontag, who supposed that "[Che's] goal was nothing less than the cause of humanity itself."[239] In the black community, philosopher Frantz Fanon professed Guevara to be "the world symbol of the possibilities of one man",[240] while Black Power leader Stokely Carmichael eulogized that "Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us."[241] Praise has been reflected throughout the political spectrum, with the libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard extolling Guevara as a "heroic figure", lamenting after his death that "more than any man of our epoch or even of our century, [Che] was the living embodiment of the principle of revolution",[242] while journalist Christopher Hitchens commented that "[Che's] death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do—fought and died for his beliefs."[243] Sociologist Michael Löwy contends that the many facets of Guevara's life (i.e. doctor and economist, revolutionary and banker, military theoretician and ambassador, deep thinker and political agitator) illuminated the rise of the "Che myth", allowing him to be invariably crystallized in his many metanarrative roles as a "Red Robin Hood, Don Quixote of communism, new Garibaldi, Marxist Saint Just, Cid Campeador of the Wretched of the Earth, Sir Galahad of the beggars... and Bolshevik devil who haunts the dreams of the rich, (while) kindling braziers of subversion all over the world."[233]
Timeline
Archival media
Video footage
- Guevara addressing the United Nations General Assembly on December 11, 1964, (6:21), public domain footage uploaded by the UN, video clip
- Guevara interviewed in 1964 on a visit to Dublin, Ireland, (2:53), English translation, from RTÉ Libraries and Archives, video clip
- Guevara reciting a poem, (0:58), English subtitles, from El Che: Investigating a Legend – Kultur Video 2001, video clip
- Guevara showing support for Fidel Castro, (0:22), English subtitles, from El Che: Investigating a Legend – Kultur Video 2001, video clip
- Guevara speaking about labor, (0:28), English subtitles, from El Che: Investigating a Legend – Kultur Video 2001, video clip
- Guevara speaking about the Bay of Pigs, (0:17), English subtitles, from El Che: Investigating a Legend – Kultur Video 2001, video clip
- Guevara speaking against imperialism, (1:20), English subtitles, from El Che: Investigating a Legend – Kultur Video 2001, video clip
- Guevara interviewed in Paris and speaking French in 1964, (4:47), English subtitles, interviewed by Jean Dumur, video clip
Audio recording
- Guevara interviewed on ABC's Issues and Answers, (23:53), English translation, narrated by Lisa Howard, March 24, 1964, audio clip
MAY ALMIGHTY LORD REST HIS SOUL IN ETERNAL PEACE........................
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