"Che — Defeat and Victory" — Review of "The Bolivian Diary"
Author: Ludwik Stomma. Source: Tygodnik Powszechny, no. 18, 1970. Date of publication: 3 May 1970.
Who is Che, really? For Americans — a terrible travelling salesman of revolution, with a reward of 50,000 pesos placed on his head. For most French people — a photogenic playboy, a demon of adventure, of which so many young people dream. For the inhabitants of the Third World — friend number one, a fascinating symbol, the embodiment of a myth. For the entire world — a romantic Don Quixote. (Albert-Paul Lentin, “Guevara’s Challenge,” Le Nouvel Observateur)
On 8 October, in the Yuro ravine, Ernesto Guevara was surrounded by superior forces, taken prisoner, and subsequently executed. Of the people who took part in his partisan movement, nine are alive today: three deserters who entered the service of CITE (the Special Unit Training Centre for Counter-Insurgency), three who managed to escape to Cuba, and three who are held in Bolivian prisons. Rarely is a defeat so complete.
And yet the defeat was transformed into a different kind of victory. From the moment of his death, Guevara’s image spread with extraordinary speed across the world — across the walls of universities, the covers of underground publications, the manifestos of groups with the most varied political orientations. This is a paradox typical of the age: the man who failed militarily became the universal symbol of a generation in revolt.
The Bolivian Diary is the most honest document of that defeat. Guevara does not mythologise himself. He records setbacks methodically — the distrust of the local peasant population, the illnesses that decimated the unit, the desertions, the growing despair of the final months. He notes on 7 October, the day before his capture: “Today completes the 11th month of our guerrilla inauguration. The day passed in an idyllic fashion.”
This sobriety — this capacity to observe even one’s own defeat with the eye of a historian — is what makes the document exceptional. The defeat was total. The victory consisted in the fact that the defeated man became, in death, more powerful than in life.
Where to go next
Three ways to keep going — read a sample, pick the next book, or meet the author.
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