Cuba: What you didn't know about Che Guevara.

The image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara on the MININIT building in the Plaz de la Revolucion comes from a snapshot by the Cuban photographer Korda. Taken on March 5, 1960, during the funeral procession for those killed in the explosion of the freighter La Coubre in Havana Harbor, it shows the Argentine wearing his trademark beret and gazing off into the distance, a fierce, compassionate look in his dark eyes. if the look is familiar, it's because you recognize it from posters hung in college dormitories around the world.
After his death in 1967, he became not ust a revolutionary martyr but a hippie. Time magazine named him one of the "One Hundred Most Important People of the Century." citing that "he remains the potent symbol of rebellion and the alluring zeal of revolution." Posthumously, he eclipsed Castro, who did not make the list. The only other latin American chosen was Brazillian soccer god Pele.
Korda's photograph of Guevara in his beret remained pristine and untouched. It has little political relevance today, but it's used to sell t-shirts, coffee mugs, and baseball caps.
The Web site Chestore.com, which claims to satisfy "all your revolutionary needs," lists among its top seller "an authentic Che beret" and a Zippo lighter, similar to the one he used in Sierra Maestra to light his pipe.
Guevara's elevated status was complete with Motorcycle Diaries, a movie that recieved standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004. It's a romantic, idealized version of a motorcycle trip Guevara took in his youth through South America. Portrayed by the Mexican hearthrob Gael Garcia Bernal, a young Ernesto appears as a carefree, somewhat callow medical student whose social conciousness is awakened during the journey. It ends with Guevara swimming across a river at a leper colony in the Peruvian jungle, presumably to start a revolution of his own.
In fact, he would have to wait only a few more years. Guevara returned home to Argentina in 1952 to finish his degree. But rather than practise medicine, he hit the road once again, going from Bolivia to Ecuador to Guatemala. It was here he witnessed the CIA-sponsored ouster of Jacob Arbenz's leftist government in 1954. This hardened Guevara's political views, and when he fled to Mexico, he looked up a young Cuban he had met named Nico Lopez. From him, Guevara recieved a primer on Cuba as well as a famous nickname. Che is a Guarani used often in Argentina, meaning something to the effect of ''hey, you.'' Apparently Guevara addressed everyone this way, and so Lopez called him Che. It stuck.
Lopez also introduced him to the Castro brothers after they had been freed from prison and arrived in Mexico. Guevara met Fidel in July 1955. The had dinner in a nearby restaurant and, after a conversation lasting several hours, Castro invited him to join the movement. Guevara was impressed with Fidel's audacity. He agreed instantly.
Guevara was perhaps the most gifted military leader. Always in the thick of the fighting, he was famous for physical bravery, undergoing any hardship suffered by his men despite his frail physique and frequent asthma attacks.
A law was passed for Guevara's benefit in February 1959, making him a Cuban citizen by birth.
It would appear that Guevara did little more than mug for the cameras. At the museum in La Cabana, we see photographs of Guevara happily posing with Castro, playing Chess, and grinning with a cigar in his mouth. The during the early months of 1959, Guevara was in charge of the military tribunals, stlying himself as the "Supreme Prosecutor. He was unremorseful of his role in these executions that took place in La Cabana and wrote to a friend they they were ''a necessity or the people of Cuba."
American outrage at the summary trials may have prompted Castro to send Guevara abroad for an extended goodwill tour to Africa and Asia. After his return, Guevara recieved a new assignment, as president of Cuba's National Bank. Guevara himself liked to tell the oft-repeated joke about how he was picked. At a cabinet meeting, Castro announced that he was looking for a good economista. Guevara raised his hand and got the job. Later Castro expressed his surprise that he was an economist. "Economista?" said Guevara. "I thought you said communista."
Following the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1062, Guevara deeply mistrusted the Soviets and had suggested an alliance with their bitter rivals, the Chinese. And after the Revolution had triumphed, there was little left for him to do in Cuba, which increasingly was being rub by the petty, ideologically rigid bureaucrats he despised.
Guevara died on October 9, 1967, hunted down by Bolivian commandos and a Cuban-American CIA operative named Felix Rodriguez.
He was the among the last to see Guevara alive and wrote: "His moment of truth had come, and he was conducting himself like a man. He was facing his death with courage and grace." Che's last words were, " Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man."
Guevara's remains were believed lost but in 1997 were found in a mass grave at an abandoned airstrip in Bolivia. They were returned not to Argentina but Cuba. The man known to the world as Che recieved a hero's burial in Santa Clara, the site of his greatest victory.