Guevara was always
left-leaning, of a socialist redistributionist stamp but his ideas as to
ultimate preferred mode of governance were still raw and unformed when he first
met up with the Cuban exiles - I don't think he could properly described as "a
hard-core communist" even at this stage.
Apart from Marx and Lenin, his reading was eclectic; the classic French novelists and poets, Zola, Ibsen, Steinbeck, Sartre and a host of others but the biggest influences early on were probably Cuban liberal democrat, José Martí, who opposed regional US expansionism, and Simon Bolivar's Pan-American social justice imperatives which for Guevara clearly embraced ALL Latin Americans, not just the criollo patrician class from which he descended.
This is the key point for me - the 'motorcycle journeys' stand out above all else for the increased sympathy he develops for the racism and cruel exploitations being visited upon the aboriginal populations of Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Columbia etc. under successive, often US-backed military dictatorships.
It has been said that Argentina probably has the lowest proportion of native Indians; smallpox and the brutality of colonial Spanish rule having wreaked especial damage there not seen elsewhere - so that the scales truly fell from his eyes when he ventured to the likes of Peru and Chile for the first time.
In addition to which, because he was 'white', educated, and clearly belonged to the old Basque aristocracy his views were assumed to be consonant with the many large landholding hosts (often family friends) with whom he briefly stayed - one of whom boasted that in order to clear jungle growth from his property he would shunt the native Indians in so they could hack it down to sow crops only to shift them into another patch of forest when they'd completed, and so on ... until the entire area had been cleared free of charge.
Then there was the exploitation of the mines, the sprawling latifundios, the need for land redistribution clearly seen everywhere. The MNR who came to power in Bolivia in 1952 done all the right things; they nationalised the tin mines, redistributed land, dissolved the army but even still didn't win his approval on account of their demeaning treatment of the Quechua and Aymara Indians - spraying them with DDT as they queued to receive land grants.
Later, he would be drawn to Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui who sympathetically incorporated indigenous thought with international Marxism (a rare breed), a thinker introduced to him via the Peruvian Communist, Dr. Hugo Pesce (a leprosy expert for whom he had a letter of introduction), whose own work Latitudes of Silence, he dismissed to his face on account of its shoddy treatment of native Indian mentalities - saying he could not imagine how any Marxist could write such a negative account.
So, the primary radicalising agency is clearly his travels and his observation of the secondary status and dispirited condition of the native Indians throughout Latin America and a desire for root and branch democratic reforms of the type that clearly weren't forthcoming from the various strong-arm caudillos that dominated the region; Odría, Stroessner, Pinilla, Trujillo, Somoza, Batista, Pérez-Jimenez .... and Péron.
Argentina's "Infamous Decade" kickstarted with the collapse of the Yrigoyen government in 1930, itself a function of the worldwide economic collapse which had a disastrous effect on all of Latin America - and so its overall condition in the 40's and 50's can hardly be blamed on Péronism per se, which was in any case, far from classical fascism (it was non-totalitarian, allowing separate parties for one thing).
Guevara was first of all a Pan-American of the Bolivarian mould not a parochialist enthralled by the domestic politics of any single country; his interest was world politics and decolonisation and as such he deplored British and US "neo-colonial" influence on the continent.
What cannot be discounted I think is Eva Peron's positive reputation among the poor all over Latin America at this time, something to which many indigenous whom Guevara met drew attention to ... perhaps her standing in their eyes gave him, a medical doctor, some kind of passport to their affections, who knows? He himself, from an anti-Peronist family, would be bound to look a lot more critically on the evolving mythology of Eva as "Spiritual Leader of the Nation".
Referring to Che's "restless" nature, his father declared "the first thing to note is that in my son's veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels" Ana Lynch, Che's paternal grandmother, named the family ranch "San Patricio" - I've often wondered whether this was simply an affectionate reference to the "old sod" or perhaps a more politicised nod towards the Irish Batallion (the San Patricios) who fought in the Mexican-American War of 1846-8?
Either way, the connotations could scarcely be lost on the extended Guevara clan who would ritually spend the summers there. Che was very close to her, spending 17 days at her bedside before she passed away; her death in fact has been credited as the reason he decided to become a doctor.
Apart from Marx and Lenin, his reading was eclectic; the classic French novelists and poets, Zola, Ibsen, Steinbeck, Sartre and a host of others but the biggest influences early on were probably Cuban liberal democrat, José Martí, who opposed regional US expansionism, and Simon Bolivar's Pan-American social justice imperatives which for Guevara clearly embraced ALL Latin Americans, not just the criollo patrician class from which he descended.
This is the key point for me - the 'motorcycle journeys' stand out above all else for the increased sympathy he develops for the racism and cruel exploitations being visited upon the aboriginal populations of Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Columbia etc. under successive, often US-backed military dictatorships.
It has been said that Argentina probably has the lowest proportion of native Indians; smallpox and the brutality of colonial Spanish rule having wreaked especial damage there not seen elsewhere - so that the scales truly fell from his eyes when he ventured to the likes of Peru and Chile for the first time.
In addition to which, because he was 'white', educated, and clearly belonged to the old Basque aristocracy his views were assumed to be consonant with the many large landholding hosts (often family friends) with whom he briefly stayed - one of whom boasted that in order to clear jungle growth from his property he would shunt the native Indians in so they could hack it down to sow crops only to shift them into another patch of forest when they'd completed, and so on ... until the entire area had been cleared free of charge.
Then there was the exploitation of the mines, the sprawling latifundios, the need for land redistribution clearly seen everywhere. The MNR who came to power in Bolivia in 1952 done all the right things; they nationalised the tin mines, redistributed land, dissolved the army but even still didn't win his approval on account of their demeaning treatment of the Quechua and Aymara Indians - spraying them with DDT as they queued to receive land grants.
Later, he would be drawn to Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui who sympathetically incorporated indigenous thought with international Marxism (a rare breed), a thinker introduced to him via the Peruvian Communist, Dr. Hugo Pesce (a leprosy expert for whom he had a letter of introduction), whose own work Latitudes of Silence, he dismissed to his face on account of its shoddy treatment of native Indian mentalities - saying he could not imagine how any Marxist could write such a negative account.
So, the primary radicalising agency is clearly his travels and his observation of the secondary status and dispirited condition of the native Indians throughout Latin America and a desire for root and branch democratic reforms of the type that clearly weren't forthcoming from the various strong-arm caudillos that dominated the region; Odría, Stroessner, Pinilla, Trujillo, Somoza, Batista, Pérez-Jimenez .... and Péron.
Argentina's "Infamous Decade" kickstarted with the collapse of the Yrigoyen government in 1930, itself a function of the worldwide economic collapse which had a disastrous effect on all of Latin America - and so its overall condition in the 40's and 50's can hardly be blamed on Péronism per se, which was in any case, far from classical fascism (it was non-totalitarian, allowing separate parties for one thing).
Guevara was first of all a Pan-American of the Bolivarian mould not a parochialist enthralled by the domestic politics of any single country; his interest was world politics and decolonisation and as such he deplored British and US "neo-colonial" influence on the continent.
What cannot be discounted I think is Eva Peron's positive reputation among the poor all over Latin America at this time, something to which many indigenous whom Guevara met drew attention to ... perhaps her standing in their eyes gave him, a medical doctor, some kind of passport to their affections, who knows? He himself, from an anti-Peronist family, would be bound to look a lot more critically on the evolving mythology of Eva as "Spiritual Leader of the Nation".
Referring to Che's "restless" nature, his father declared "the first thing to note is that in my son's veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels" Ana Lynch, Che's paternal grandmother, named the family ranch "San Patricio" - I've often wondered whether this was simply an affectionate reference to the "old sod" or perhaps a more politicised nod towards the Irish Batallion (the San Patricios) who fought in the Mexican-American War of 1846-8?
Either way, the connotations could scarcely be lost on the extended Guevara clan who would ritually spend the summers there. Che was very close to her, spending 17 days at her bedside before she passed away; her death in fact has been credited as the reason he decided to become a doctor.
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