CUBA: Che Guevara – A Vanishing Ideal

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Oct 6 1996 (IPS) - Every day, in all schools in Cuba, children sing the national anthem, salute the Cuban flag, and cry out “We will be like Che!” at the top of their lungs.

That is the way things have been for the past 29 years. The death of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, on Oct. 8, 1967 in the Bolivian jungle, left a void among Cubans, which has persisted and gained the force of a myth.

Young people use T-shirts with the Argentinian guerrilla leader’s face, singers still write songs about him, and the majority of Cubans watch with nostalgia the images on national television that are transmitted every hour during the month of October.

But if “being like him” seemed like a dream for the youth of the 1970s, most Cubans today don’t even try to imitate him, and they feel more and more distant from the image of the “new man” that Che always talked about.

Defined by Guevara in his essay “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” the “new man” was supposed to be a synthesis of the values that the individual living under socialism should have: unselfish, altruistic, and above all, capable of placing social duties before individual interest.

It was an ideal, but it had real support during the first years of a revolution that advocated equality and gained the support of the majority of Cubans. Today, Guevara’s theory is losing its adherents in a context which is totally different from that of the 1960s.

The fall of socialism in Eastern Europe pushed Cuba towards economic crisis, cast doubts on the viability of socialism as a system, and led experts to speak of “an end of utopia” and of the paradigms of the left.

The government of Fidel Castro now finds itself between a rock and a hard place. In an attempt to hold on to its own socialist model, Castro decided to apply a series of reform measures to salvage the country, even if it had to be done at the expense of renouncing many ideals of the past.

The result has been the beginning of economic recovery, together with the increase in social inequality and the growth of the “new rich,” self-employment as an alternative to unemployment, the reemergence of female and male prostitution, and the proliferation of a philosophy of “having,” and not “being.”

There are still people who believe that the crisis can be weathered collectively, who participate in international missions, voluntary work in agriculture and 14-hour working days in scientific and production centres.

However, individualist tendencies are becoming increasingly widespread on the island, a phenomenon that Che Guevara himself had observed when the Cuban Revolution came to power.

“Making lots of money to buy the clothes that I like, to travel, in sum, to live well. That is what I want, but I know that studying is not the way to get it,” said Rolando Figueroa, a 17- year-old high-school student who is currently studying to get into the university in Havana.

Less than a decade ago, young men and women around that same age were disputing positions in the university. Today, the possibilities for admission into centres of higher learning are fewer, and even then, there are always empty spaces.

According to many people, “studying doesn’t get you anywhere” and “there are better ways of living than becoming an engineer or a doctor.”

Figueroa is part of a group of youths who have opted for “individual salvation,” for whom study and honest work do not lead anywhere. These youths are searching for a way to satisfy their aspirations for material consumption rapidly and with the least possible effort.

While the younger generations choose their own ways, those who made other choices several years back are switching professions, from professors, engineers or technicians to taxi drivers, hotel doormen, or anything else in the economy that is emerging with foreign capital investment.

“To live” is the phrase of the 90s in Cuba, and although many still remain attached to the image of Che as a symbol, the majority reacts to the crisis by concentrating on their own personal survival and that of their families, rather than on the survival of society as a whole.

A study of the Center for Psychological and Sociological Research revealed that the majority of Cuban youth occupy an intermediate position between themes, that is, between those who defend socialism and those who want to follow a consumerist way of life, the example for which is the United States.

The Union of Communist Youth (UJC) is trying to fight the phenomenon with political campaigns and patriotic messages couched in novel language, as well as the distribution of T shirts with the image of Che. But unfortunately, those items of clothing are almost always sold in dollars.

“Young people don’t feel as close to Che as my generation did,” said a university professor, who is 44 years old and who nevertheless believes that it is positive that there is beginning to be a more critical approach towards the legendary guerrilla leader.

Hilda Gadea Guevara, the eldest of Che’s five children (who died in 1995), confessed that the idealisation of the image of her father bothered her very much.

According to her, the real Che “was nothing like that perfect man” that the official version presents.

“Some considered him to be crazy, out of place and time, but all the rock and roll fans have Che as an ideal. It is something transcendental, that they cannot even explain,” says Maria Gattorno, who since 1988 has been the head of the only permanent cultural space that rock and roll has in Cuba.

Beyond the ideological tendencies, most Cubans were annoyed when at the beginning of this decade, T-shirts with Che’s face and bank notes with his signature began to be sold to tourists as prized items.

Cubans, who throughout many decades remained foreign to the idea of exploiting the memory of Che as a money-making fad, are now shocked at the idea of Aleida March — the guerrilla’s widow — organising a centre which will charge for copyrights on the use of Che’s image around the world.

Some believe that this way of filling the government’s coffers would have made Che ‘smile’, and feel lucky to “know that he has helped Cuba.”

For others, the idea of charging money for those rights is an affront against the image of a man “who is a symbol, not a commodity”.