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

244 reframing latin america
captured. He was brought to a nearby town where he was left on the fl oor
of a schoolhouse overnight, bleeding and in pain. The following morning, a
low-ranking officer entered the room and shot Che to death. When Guevara
wrote the afterword entry, he was still just Ernesto Guevara, an unknown
young medical student from Córdoba, Argentina. But it suggests the revolutionary
life upon which he would embark and which would turn him into
Che, which is Argentine slang for “guy” or “friend”—the name Guevara
adopted as a sort of leveling appeal to the everyday person. Even if this afterword
were excluded, The Motorcycle Diaries shows the steady politicization
of a young man. Guevara may have been aware of social injustice prior
to his journey, but not until after his return did he know that his life would
somehow be dedicated to eradicating it.
As a committed socialist, an adherent of Marxism-Leninism, and a modernist,
Che believed wholeheartedly in an ontological reality, and he subsequently
viewed the world through an essentialistic or hermeneutic lens.
Therefore, an equally essentialist or hermeneutic reading of his life and
writings would share his belief in an objective world and would then either
agree or disagree with his interpretation of it. Most leftist essentialists are
inclined to agree with Che. They view The Motorcycle Diaries as a formative
stage in the evolution of his thinking, when the objective reality of
Latin America led him to see the light of Marxism-Leninism. Modernist
essentialists who are procapitalism and anti-Communist disagree with Che
and say that his interpretation of the world was wrong, or at least that his
chosen method to solve its problems was misguided.
Semioticians, of course, do not concern themselves with whether Che
was right or wrong. They look for the discursive constitution of his thinking.
One semiotic approach to Che begins by defi ning him as a lettered citizen.
Che, like any other good socialist, saw himself as a man of the people and
a defender of the proletariat. Thus, in his eyes he was the antithesis—even
the sworn enemy—of elite intellectuals, the lettered citizens like Sarmiento
or Gallegos. In fact, Che and many socialist leaders like him did resemble
lettered citizens. They thought they knew what was best for other people,
especially for the uneducated proletarian masses. They believed they possessed
enlightened knowledge that would improve society and that people
should agree with them and accept their leadership. Che’s realm of knowledge
was guerrilla warfare and Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialism. In
fact, part of the reason he was invited to join the Cuban Revolution as an
Argentine was because of his abilities and training as a doctor. His knowledge
certainly looked different than that of Sarmiento’s liberal positivism,
but both Che and Sarmiento promoted their platforms in similar ways,