It happened in Mexico City. Through the young Raul Castro, Fidel and Che met and talked all night. We will never know the content of this intense and determined exchange of ideas.

The origin and trajectory of the interlocutors were different. Che came from Argentina and attended a high school steeped in a strong tradition of humanistic disciplines. A doctor by profession, he learned about America by sharing the conditions of life of those below, never ceasing to appreciate the heritage of the Incas, Quechua and Maya.

Fidel, the son of a landowner, was born in Biran and from early childhood he knew the sad situation of the most destitute. While still a university student, he devoted his life to a mandatory revolutionary transformation.

Despite differences in backgrounds and training, there were significant similarities between Fidel and Che in terms of the vision of America, the dramatic circumstances that darkened her present and her future. They also paid equal attention to the role of imperialism in alliance with the oligarchies in strengthening their forms of neo-colonial domination.

Fidel lived in Colombia during the reign of Bogotazo, when the assassination of reformist leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán sparked an armed violence that continues uninterrupted to this day. Che had an even more harrowing experience in Guatemala, a process that led to the overthrow of President Jacobo Árbenz.

At the end of this long conversation, Che was born to Ernesto Guevara de la Serna. He found in Fidel his leadership based on knowledge of the person, on the ability to formulate medium and long-term strategies with tactics that would meet the specific requirements of each situation, as well as on a clear perception of a complex situation. dialectics of historical processes.

Che abandoned his artistic vocation. Apparently, only her deep-seated love for photography survived from her. And yet, devoted to the cause of human emancipation, the artist persevered in the depths of his spirit and guided his hand more than once.

After the victory of the revolution, he occupied a very high position.
responsibilities in the government, in the military and political sphere. He devoted sleepless hours to studying the necessary materials to complete his task. From that moment on, he understood the urgent need to preserve historical memory and called on the combatants to contribute to this cause by writing their personal testimonies.

As always, he led by example. He began to publish in Verde Olivo reproductions of the recently completed insurrectionary feat. The set collected in the book was called military crossings revolutionary. On these and many other scattered pages, the acumen of the storyteller manifested itself.

Indeed, from a literary point of view, Tickets… It has a cohesive whole history. In his journey through 1957, he goes from the defeat of Alegria de Pio to the consolidation of partisans in the Sierra Maestra region. The sequence of episodes is built in strict chronological order. He relates to the facts with clarity and precision, not excluding critical and self-critical strokes. But the decisive key to this essential unity lies in the point of view adopted by the author. An accomplished reader of our rich literary tradition, Che refuses to assume the position of an omniscient storyteller. He adheres to the use of the first person, in which the truth of the facts opens the cracks for numerous questions. In this way, he establishes a complicit intimacy with the anonymous recipients of his texts, valid both for those who were then and for those who are now. It teaches to observe the world in its complex and contradictory dimension.

It consists of incidents, meetings and disagreements, failures and victories, a sudden immersion of the writer, Tickets… It is inhabited by characters, heroes famous for their careers, political figures of the time, ephemeral collaborators, as well as traitors of various levels.

None of them is a simplistic embodiment of good and evil. Each of them carries contradictions and nuances that do not violate a well-deserved judgment. The analysis of such a multifaceted human conglomerate is not yet complete, but requires research that has no place in the brief space of this column.

To point to just one example, I dare to recall the profile of Eutimio Guerra. Enticed by the offer of material goods, he relayed to the tyranny the location of a vulnerable guerrilla camp in the days following the landing of the Granma. He later intended to kill Fidel. A pistol on his belt, on a very cold night, both slept under the same blanket. He didn’t dare to do it. Having collected evidence of his treason, he admitted his guilt without hesitation, which made him worthy of capital punishment. She felt that the revolution would win, she asked for protection for the future of her children, a desire completely satisfied after the victory in January.

Under these circumstances, the execution of the informers was necessary to ensure the survival of the insurgent group. Euthymio belonged to the great exploited majority, so his conscience was alienated from greed, although in the last hour he had seen enough to belatedly realize the gravity of his crime.

Unitary process narrative, Tickets… It consists of stories that can be separated from the larger story with their own autonomy, worthy of being included in any anthology.

One of them refers to the action of Alegria de Pio. The fighters dispersed, Che, wounded, felt the proximity of death. He did not have the strength to continue the march. In that higher intention, like an illumination, arises in his memory you have to light the firea classic short story by American writer Jack London, a version of the eternal battle between life and death.

Reading these pages deeply shocked one of his compatriots, who at that time was very distant from any political action. It was the Argentine writer Julio Cortazar, one of the highest representatives of Latin American literature. It was the starting point of a radical turn that would force him to devote himself until his last breath to the cause of Cuba, Nicaraguan Sandinism and, together with the dead and disappeared under the dictatorship in his native country.

Driven by the tyranny of available space, I must stop. In conclusion, I will mention Killed cubanother nuanced and touching version of the battle between life and death.

In this 2023, which has just begun, Ernesto Che Guevara would have turned 95 years old. Let us return to his life and work, to the ethical status of his actions and his significant contribution to the construction of a liberating thought aimed at the formation of a socialist society based on the views of countries bearing the legacy of colonialism in Asia, Africa and Latin America and in the proposal of a new civilizational model.

These themes are gaining new relevance on a planet that, as Fidel warned, is moving towards self-destruction.

Source: Juventud Rebelde