"The truly revolutionary Che would not consider the Arab riots"
It is a day of fighting in Sierra Maestra. Ernesto Guevara is alone and flee when spotted by guards of the dictator Batista. That same night, the partisan recounts what happened in his campaign book and concludes: "I felt something I never felt: the need to survive. I have to correct that next time." The episode appears in small notebooks that Che wrote during his stay in Sierra Maestra, which until now had full access only reporter to write Jon Lee Anderson Che Guevara. A revolutionary life, considered the best biography of the legendary revolutionary leader. Today, coinciding with the official celebration of 83 anniversary of his birth was actually born a month earlier, but his family misrepresented the date because it was conceived before his parents to marry, "was first published in full with title Diary of a fighter. "They are revealing, although much was already known through other texts. They can see how Guevara Ernesto Che became," said Anderson over the phone, holding the declassification of the notes.
Newspapers are an unprecedented glimpse of how it shapes the guerrilla. His obsession with being someone who is not afraid of death, to overcome human nature. "An enlightening story that tells how the person running the first traitor in the second month of revolution, which was not known until they met these notes. Dryly explains how he did the last words of the dead and a single observation: asthma felt that night, "says Anderson. The writing is rough, there is no intention literary passages are not historical juice, but it is fascinating reading, says the biographer. "Notebooks are the raw material used to publish Che years later his famous passages of the Revolutionary War, a book which produced a very conscious, as a parable of the revolution, to establish the chronicle of events. And is very interesting to the notes to the book to see how it goes and filing extracting the raw material. "
There is no doubt that the direct experience of Che in the Sierra Maestra arouse interest beyond its value as a historical document. Where there is an attempt to challenge the status quo, there is the famous photograph that Korda took in 1960, whatever the origin of the movement and location of the world they occur. "But the world is not as white or as black as it was in the days of Che and his position would be very complex. For example, consider truly revolutionary uprisings in the Arab world would be lacking because of ideology. On the other hand, public would have to be at the official criticism of U.S. imperialism and intervention in Libya, but privately they feel uncomfortable with the corruption and the modus operandi of those governments, "muses Jon Lee Anderson.
Apart from an approach to the figure of Che, notebooks offer a fascinating chronicle of how to forge a revolution in two years. "The Sierra Maestra stage was crucial. At that time the guerrilla revolution caught on, he adopted an ideology and took the course on the left," says Anderson. A process that is reflected in the papers through their comments on the day to day battle, stories of skirmishes, comrades observations and misgivings about some of them, including Fidel Castro. "Some of these notes are politically incorrect and caused outrage in some people in Cuba when they appeared in my book," recalls Anderson. Is that why you have spent so many years hidden in the archives of Che Guevara Studies Center in Havana? According to the editors, misspellings and inaccuracies, which, coupled with the lack of important sites, had determined that there had been published in full. Now, after a "comprehensive review", many have been rectified.
