What political influences did Che Guevara have on Latin American countries?

Answer 1

An October 2007 article in The Wall Street Journal intended to deprecate Ernesto "Che" Guevara on the 40th anniversary of his assassination in Bolivia. Instead, the article was an unintentionally eloquent description of his significance in the Americas.

The article, headlined "Forty years after, the shadow of Che still falls over Latin America," reveals why the empire pursued Che with so much malice and assassinated him with so much hatred. Che was construed as the "ideologue of communism and the armed revolution against the West in the Third World," too revolutionary even for Cuba, thus motivating Fidel Castro to send his great revolutionary collaborator abroad to promote the revolution in other countries.

"In his life, Che had scarce direct influence outside of Cuba, but his legend has done much more than sell t-shirts to discontented rich young people," the WSJ article ironically noted.

"Che's paranoid, anticapitalist economic doctrines have considerable appeal for Latin Americans. Many countries in the region have elected governments headed by Che sympathizers-from Salvador Allende's Chile in 1970 to Evo Morales' Bolivia and Rafael Correa's Ecuador of today," deplored the publication.

The article pointed out the supposedly negative effects for the region deriving from ideas inculcated during Che's time. The article also expressed its concern for the wellbeing of the overall continent because of the example Che had set for Latin America.

"When Che was killed in 1967, the growth of productivity in Latin America was average compared to other countries, according to global estimates. But, from then on, it has fallen beneath the other regions. Only Brazil and Chile have had adequate developments, basically thanks to the extensive periods of rightist military governments, in which Cheismo was repressed."

Then, the article conjectures: "Without Che's legend, the annual growth rate would have been one percent higher. From there, it seems that the revolutionary has cost the region around 1.3 trillions of yearly internal development." And the article emphatically concludes: "The shirts are cheap, but Che has been an expensive icon.

--Manuel E. Yepe--