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Che Guevara: The Poster Boy of Revisionist History
He’s not just that guy on the T-shirt
Revisionist history is something we grapple with every day, and in the past few years it’s something we’ve witnessed in real-time. There is, however, one man who is the literal poster boy of this revisionist phenomenon, and I say literal because if you are of a certain age, it’s likely you had a poster of him on your wall in college. Even today, you may have a T-shirt with his picture on it regardless of your age, he is that ubiquitous. I’m talking about Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, known to the world simply as “Che.”
Che Guevara was an Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, political theorist, and diplomat. Along with Fidel and Raul Castro, he was a key figure in the Cuban Revolution of the late 1950s. Because of an iconic photograph by Alberto Korda (above) he’s best known in the West today “as that guy on the T-shirt.” At various times I have heard people, especially younger people, identify him as Benicio Del Toro, Jesus, and the third baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals. He was obviously none of those, but before getting into why he is the poster boy for revisionist history, here are a few facts about his life that everyone agrees on.
Ernesto Guevara was born in Rosario, Argentina, on June 14, 1928. His parents came from the cream of Argentine society, and though they were never particularly wealthy he grew up solidly middle class. When he was 20, Ernesto entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine; four years later, in 1952, he took a year off to travel across South America with his friend Alberto Granado. They visited Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and finally Florida in the United States.
For most college-age kids this would have just been a fun road trip, but for Che it turned out to be a pivotal moment in his life. It was during this motorcycle journey that he witnessed for the first time the poverty, sickness, and injustice suffered by the peasants who made up the majority of the population of South America. He ultimately blamed neo-colonialism, imperialism, and monopoly capitalism for these injustices, and he documented his experiences in a book released after his death titled The Motorcycle Diaries.
