It’s been fifty years since one of the heroes of the Cuban revolution died. Ernesto “Che” Guevara will killed by Bolivian soldiers as he was trying to engineer the same kind of communist revolution in that country as he had in Cuba. It had been Guevara’s ambition to export communism around Central and South America. It never happened. Cuba remains the last communist holdout in the western world.
Ironically he is nowadays honoured in Bolivia, the country that killed him and ended his revolutionary dreams. Che memorabilia is everywhere. You can buy licence plates, posters, t-shirts and any number of other items featuring his famous image. In Cuba he is seen everywhere.
But as Geoff Currier points out in today’s final word, it’s not quite as romantic as the legend would have us believe.