As It Happened: Ernesto Che Guevara: Bolivian Diary — SBS, Thursday, October 9 — 8.30pm (8pm in SA)
Review by Neville Spencer
October 9 is the 30th anniversary of the capture and execution in the jungles of Bolivia of Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
Che's death coincided with the beginning of the 1960s radicalisation, and he has since become an inspiration for revolutionaries around the world. One of the many qualities for which Che is widely admired was his internationalist spirit which heeded no borders in the struggle for the liberation of oppressed peoples.
Born in Argentina, Che met up with Cuban revolutionaries, including Fidel Castro, in Mexico and joined their campaign to overthrow the dictator Fulgencio Batista. After the success of the Cuban revolution in 1959, Che became minister for industry.
In 1965, however, he resigned his post, reappearing soon after in liberation struggles, first in the Belgian Congo and then leading a small band of guerrillas fighting the military dictatorship in Bolivia.
The diary Che kept during his campaign in Bolivia has since been published in many languages. It is the primary information source for this documentary. After brief coverage of Che's involvement in the Cuban revolution, the film follows Che's trail through Bolivia.
Readings from Â鶹´«Ã½ of the diary are interspersed with commentary, photographs of the campaign, footage of the trail the guerrillas followed through the jungle and the sites of Che's skirmishes with the Bolivian army. Also included are interviews with some of those involved in the campaign, peasants whom Che's band of guerrillas met along the way and one of the soldiers involved in Che's capture.
For the most part, the documentary is limited to the story of Che's Bolivian campaign. Largely absent is the fact that Che, as well as being a guerrilla fighter, was an important theoretician who contributed much to the economic and political debates about how to construct a socialist society.
The first part of the documentary, which gives the background to the Bolivian campaign, is also the shoddiest. It tries to ascribe Che's departure for the Congo and Bolivia as the result of Castro forcing him to resign for publicly criticising the Soviet Union after a visit there.
This rewriting of history is something of a trend which is attempting to transform Che from a revolutionary into a semi-mainstream pop icon. In the latter scenario, Che is the compassionate, selfless liberation fighter and Fidel the Soviet stooge and dictator.
Now that Che is safely dead the qualities which made him such an inspiration for revolutionaries are being reappropriated by Â鶹´«Ã½ of the establishment, which had no time for him when alive. It is an attempt to divorce the new-found reverence for this dead revolutionary from what ought to be its direct consequence: support for the living revolution which he created.
Portraying Che's decision to give up his post in the Cuban government and launch the Congo and Bolivia campaigns as a consequence of unfortunate circumstance, rather than the result of his internationalist spirit, does Che a disservice. It is also somewhat improbable.
The fighters, and the military and financial support that Cuba gave Che's campaigns were clearly not a spur-of-the-moment thing. More likely, they were planned by Che and Fidel. The correspondence between the two reflects their continued friendship and the unity of their goals.
Anyone with some sympathy for, or curiosity about, Che will enjoy this film. Compared to reading his diary, it is a low energy way to find out about Che's last campaign. For anyone already familiar with the story, the footage of the terrain helps bring it to life. The interviews with local peasants who met Che also give an insight into his personality and the guerrillas' efforts to win them to the struggle.