Che Guevara: life, ideology, and revolutionary impact

Che Guevara

Book Review on Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara by Jorge G. Castaneda

Marxist, guerilla fighter, saint, murderer or a martyr are just some of the description one would say when come across with the name of Che Guevara. The life and death of Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna by Jorge G. Castaneda was very well presented in the book from the different proceedings he was involved throughout his life, his radical journey and the usual attacks from asthma, to his outstanding guidance during battles and his persistent belief in the use of armed struggle to carry out the avant-garde reasons for his actions. Jose G. Castaneda detailed with accuracy every occurrence he mentioned throughout the book and complemented it with an affinity of providing both the optimistic and pessimistic events dealings and way of life of Che Guevara.

He reveals the true "Che" in the book and it turned out to be a detailed research of Che Guevara's life from birth to death. It depicts him as a susceptible adoring person persuaded by his mother and committed to justice. The book is not a romanticized view or one compassionate of the conformist establishment. We see Che Guevara and it helps out our perception in this person who remains a symbol of the fight against cruelty.

Jose G. Castaneda starts the book in the very beginning of Argentina and meticulously archives each and every move all through his life. He mentioned Guevara's parents came from a relatively well to do Argentine family and Guevara never knew the actual meaning of poverty and had the basic self-assurance of those who are born into an elite. The severe asthma he developed early on assured him of the deep love and anxious concern of his mother and gave him the determination to overcome the difficulties in his life. Che was unsullied, youthful, virile, eyes on fire with boldness and he stares out athwart time, lively as ever in the minds and hearts of the social and political idealists.

In his adolescence, he never gave in to his bodily limitations and became a sportsman despite his asthma and as a young man he came to accept as true that mistreatment was the cause of the American and European wealth. He held fast to that analysis to the very end and by holding on to this principle could he concur himself a beneficial role in history or else, he would have to satisfy himself with boring medical practice for which he was not at all suited. The contradiction of emotions toward Che Guevara was very prominent in the description that he made on the book about the effects of Guevara's writing in his youth. Che had no reason to suspect the impact his writing would have on thousands of university students in the ensuing thirty years, as they cheerfully marched off to be massacred (Castaneda 188). Che endowed two generations of young people with the tools of that faith in revolution and the fervor of that conviction. But he must also be held responsible for the wasted blood and lives that decimated those generations (Castaneda 189).