Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

the socialist utopia 243
in a squalid state, and his sense of helplessness caused him to turn on the
system that would allow such suffering.
It is in cases like this, when a doctor knows he is powerless in such
circumstances, that he longs for change; a change which would prevent
the injustice of a system in which until a month ago this poor old
woman had had to earn her living as a waitress, wheezing and panting
but facing life with dignity. In these circumstances people in poor families
who can’t pay their way are surrounded by an atmosphere of barely
disguised acrimony; they stop being father, mother, sister or brother and
become a purely negative factor in the struggle for life. . . . How long
this present order, based on an absurd idea of caste, will last I can’t say,
but it’s time governments spent less time publicizing their own virtues
and more money, much more money, funding socially useful projects. 6
This is not yet Che’s revolutionary call to arms. Such thoughts could have
been offered by any reformer who believes in capitalism but wants increased
state spending and aid to the poor. Nonetheless, Che’s awareness is taking
shape. It is not until the latter third of the Diaries that explicit politics becomes
more common. An afterthought, which Che apparently wrote after
returning to Argentina, contains one of his earliest and most romanticized
commitments to the life of a revolutionary:
I now knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into
two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people. And I know it
because I see it imprinted on the night that I, the eclectic dissector of
doctrines and psychoanalyst of dogmas, howling like a man possessed,
will assail the barricades and trenches, will stain my weapon with
blood and, consumed with rage, will slaughter any enemy I lay hands
on. And then, as if an immense weariness were consuming my recent
exhilaration, I see myself being sacrifi ced to the authentic revolution,
the great leveller of individual will, pronouncing the exemplary mea
culpa. I feel my nostrils dilate, savoring the acrid smell of gunpowder
and blood, of the enemy’s death; I brace my body, ready for combat, and
prepare myself to be a sacred precinct within which the bestial howl of
the victorious proletariat can resound with new vigor and hope. 7
This entry eerily predicts Che’s death in Bolivia in 1967. Trapped in a gulch
by the Bolivian army, he and his few remaining comrades tried to fi ght
their way to freedom. Most of them were killed, and Che was wounded and