Ernesto Guevara Iconic Status
Aged twenty-four, Ernesto Guevara pens a regular letter home to
Rosario, Argentina from his flat in Mexico. It concludes: "Things are
moving with tremendous speed and no one can know, or predict, where or
for what reason one will be next year"[1]. This, perhaps, is one
indication of the mans legendary appeal - not as a hero of socialism
or political ideologist, but as a free-spirited and non-fictitious
adventurer. After all, how many of us could end our letters with the
same thrilling poignancy, at any age? Further still, how many of us
manage to more then dream of exploring the sprawling sceneries of our
home-land as Guevara did in 1951 (from Buenos Aires to Venezuela)?
Those of us outside Cuba who accept the commercialization of Guevara's
legacy, in purchasing any of the posters, t-shirts or "Revolucion"
Swatch watches his dashing image adorns, are unlikely to be linked by
communist sympathy, revolutionary intention or anti-American
sentiment. More likely, it will be a fondness for the broader ideals
his face has came to encapsulate - equality, strength, moral
perfection and endless self-improvement. It is no doubt that today,
thirty-six years after his death, Che Guevara has became half
political legend, half pop-culture commodity and a complete,
world-wide icon. Yet Jean-Paul Sartre's comment - that 'his
(Guevara's) life is the story of our era's most perfect man' - fails
to consider the scale of Guevara's imperfections. Ernesto Guevara the
neglectful family man, who became a Father on Valentines Day 1956 yet
left by June to face likely death in the Cuban jungles. Ernesto
Guevara the Latin-America...
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...Life and Death of Che Guevara, " by Jorge G. Castaneda
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[1] 'Che Guevara A Revolutionary Life' Jon Lee Anderson
[2] 'Return Of The Rebel' Newsweek July21st 1997, Brook Lamer
[3] 'Return Of The Rebel' Newsweek July21st 1997, Brook Lamer
[4] 'Che Guevara A Revolutionary Life' Jon Lee Anderson
[5] 'The Motorcycle Diaries' Che Guevara
[6] Review of the Motorcycle Diaries The Scotsman
[7] 'Che Guevara A Revolutionary Life' Jon Lee Anderson
[8] 'Che Guevara A Revolutionary Life' Jon Lee Anderson
[9] 'Che Guevara A Revolutionary Life' Jon Lee Anderson
[10] 'Global Justice: Liberation & Socialism' Che Guevara
[11] 'History At Source - The Cold War' E G Rayner
[12] 'Compacero: The Life And Death Of Che Guevara' Jorge G Castaneda
Lope de Aguirre, better known as the Prince of Freedom, was a Spanish soldier who partook in not only the Spanish conquest and exploration of South America, but later on led the rebellion against Spanish rule in parts of the continent. Aguirre is not only known for his extreme acts of brutality against Spanish leaders, but for being one of the first to claim himself as an American. He played a key role in the fight for independence against the Spanish monarchy. His great acts of violence against Spanish leaders placed him in control of the Island of Margarita (Venezuela), Panama, Chile, and Peru. His betrayal to the Spanish crown was frowned upon and he was soon thought of as a symbol of cruelty and treachery in Colonial Spanish America. Lope de Aguirre payed the ultimate price for his acts of cruelty and violence and was captured and killed by the Spaniards in 1561.
Miguel Melendez’s book, “We Took the Streets” provides the reader with an insightful account into the activities of the Young Lords movement established in the latter years of the 1960s and remained active up until the early seventies. The book’s, which is essentially Melendez’s memoir, a recollection of the events, activities, and achievements of the Young Lords. The author effectively presents to the reader a fascinating account of the formation of the Young Lords which was a group of college students from Puerto Rico who came together in a bid to fight for some of the basic rights. As Melendez sums it up, “You either claim your history or lose authority over your future” (Melendez 23). The quote is in itself indicative of the book’s overall
During his lifetime Bolivar has achieved many great accomplishments. One of these is the sole liberation of the South American Continent, giving him the revered nickname “El Libertador” or “The Liberator”.
Cesar Chavez was an effective leader for many reasons, but mostly it was because he never gave up. Chavez was born on his grandfather’s farm during the Great Depression. When he was still young, his family lost their farm and became migrant workers meaning they had to move many times. Chavez attended 36 schools up until eighth grade when he dropped out of school to help his family out with the farming. While he worked in the farms, he was exposed to the hardships of farm life. Since then, Chavez decided that he did not want anyone else that was a farm worker to experience the same things he did. He wanted to follow in the steps of Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi to protest in a nonviolent way.
In 1961, Fidel Castro, Cuba’s dictator, introduced the Marxist-Leninist ideology to the Cuban people, “by grafting it onto the images, symbols, values, and concepts of Cuban nationalism” (Medin 53). This ideology was promoted through what Medin describes as a world where there are no "in-betweens," but instead only "good and evil", and any straying from that perceived norm was seen as counter-revolutionary and must be removed so they wouldn’t corrupt the process of developing a “homogenous revolutionary social consciousness” (Morales-Diaz 1). “The notion of ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and the connection to capitalist nations epitomizes the revolutionary government's contempt for anyone who is not on the side of the communist revolution" (Medin 40). In that way, Castro was creating enemies of any Cubans who weren’t up to his standards. According to Arenas, this new idea of unifying Cuba came at the expense of the persecution of a large segment of the population an...
Cesar Chavez a great man that changed the many injustices done to immigrate field workers, injustices like minimum wage, long work hours, and living conditions. We will learn how marches, strikes, and fasting help them conquer the changes they wanted. How he started the union. We will read what a great legacy he left behind, and how now a day his legacy lives on. What kind of legacy will we leave behind? That is why we have to help people we come in contact with, to show our children to help other, be humble and love each other.
In every field of endeavor, in every activity known to Man, whether sailboarding or physics, hairdressing or chipmunk catching, there are people who excel, people who go far beyond the rest. They reach the epitome while we mere mortals look up from below and marvel. So, when you have read the 526 pages of Womack Jr.'s book [not counting the appendices], you can tell yourself that you have read THE book on Zapata and his role in the Mexican Revolution. The author used every source available, he interviewed all those who were left alive to talk. I wonder if any new printed sources will ever be found ? Certainly everyone who played a role, however insignificant, in those long ago days of 1909-1920 is now dead, making new interviews extremely unlikely. This is a work of art, a work of love, and a vast labor that surely took a few years off the life of the author, not to mention breaking some relationships. It is the definitive work so far on the subject. If you want to know the story of why and how Emiliano Zapata, a once insignificant small town horse trader and farmer, became a legendary rebel whose name resounds throughout Mexico today---a man who fought unwaveringly for the rights of small farmers and villagers to the land they worked---then you have no choice but to read this volume. This is the epitome, this is the story in unbelievable detail; political, economic, social, military. And yet, Zapata himself almost disappears in the vast bulk of detailed historical and interpretive observations. It is not so much a work on an individual as on the whole period in a small area of Mexico.
"Fidel Castro(a)." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Student Resources in Context. Web. 7 Apr. 2014.
Around the time of the late 1940s, Castro had joined in a group in which one of the leaders were killed. The Group was the socialist Party of the Cuban People. Castro stole guns for the group, and had returned home later that year. He had a children the year later, with his wife Mirta Diaz Bal...
When we think about society, there is often a stark contrast between the controversy projected in the media that our society faces, and the mellow, safe view we have of our own smaller, more tangible, ‘local’ society. This leads us to believe that our way of life is protected, and our rights secured by that concept of society that has been fabricated and built upon. However, what if society were not what we perceive it to be, and the government chose to exercise its power in an oppressive manner? As a society we would like to think that we are above such cruelty, yet as The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera by J. Joaquin Fraxedas recounts the state of Cuba in the 1990’s, we must also remember that all societies and governments view the individual differently as opposed to the whole. Each group has unique expectations that are enforced upon the individual which extend beyond those expectations that are written. What this book brings to light is the extraordinary repercussions of refusing to meet the demands and expectations of those that lead our governments. When we veer from the path well-trodden and into the ‘wild’ as Juan did, we may not face death quite as often, but the possibility of those we once called our own, persecuting us for our choices is a true and often an incredibly frightening danger.
On this day 191 years ago John Quincy Adams expressed his prediction for the future of Cuban-American contact. The Cuban wars of independence were only 15 years away from his prediction when he estimated. These independence wars continue to influence Cuba’s cultural and political attitude toward Europe and the United States; This in part due to the externalities involved in the remodeling of social structure in the aftermath of the revolution. The intentions and motives of each faction: rebels, United States government, Spanish government, United States public, and the Cuban public, varied widely to an extend that caused even more concern in the future. Depending on the point of view of an outsider the situation in Cuba seemed to be a continuation of revolution...
Che Guevara attempted to have a revolution in Bolivia and Guatemala. In Mexico, he trained for his return to Cuba in 1956. The textbook also mentions how Fidel Castro formed local camps as a new revolutionary power (510). They continued to fight in urban areas. It was not until 1959 where they defeated Batista and his government. Many people were happy because Fidel Castro became the president of Cuba. The Cuban people had faith in Fidel Castro to improve the state of Cuba and benefit the people unlike Batista. The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its People state that, “In 1958 almost all Cubans agreed that a renewed Cuban nationalism would approve their future,”
... Richard. "Cesar Estrada Chavez."The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Vol 3: 1991-1993. Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001. Reproduced in History Resource Center. San Antonio College Lib., San Antonio, TX. 7 July 2014
The. Heyck, Denis Lynn Daly. Life Stories of the Nicaraguan Revolution. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print. The.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara was born on June 14th of 1928 in Argentina. His initial goal in life was to become a doctor; he studied medicine at the University of Buenos Aires in 1948. However, his life was changed by a series of trips across South America. Starting in 1951, Che began to travel across South America on his motorcycle. The widespread poverty and oppression that he saw during these trips influenced Che and sparked his interest in communism. His writings on these trips later served as the basis for the movie The Motorcycle Diaries..