Paolo Cugini
October 9th marks the anniversary of the death of Ernesto
"Che" Guevara, a figure who, decades after his execution in Bolivia,
continues to occupy a central place in the global collective imagination.
Remembering Che today means not simply celebrating an icon printed on T-shirts
or flags, but engaging with the complexity of a man who radically embodied the
tensions, hopes, and contradictions of the twentieth century.
The enduring power of his message lies primarily in his profound
sensitivity to social inequality. A trained physician, Guevara discovered his
calling not within the confines of a bourgeois clinic, but while traveling
across Latin America on a motorcycle as a youth. It was his direct impact with
the poverty of Chilean miners, the desperation of leprosy sufferers, and the
exploitation of indigenous peasants that transformed the young doctor into a
revolutionary. That journey sparked his visceral passion for the rights of the
most vulnerable and the conviction that the status quo was not an inevitable
fate, but an injustice to be fought.
Among his most significant actions, in addition to his crucial role in
the Cuban revolution that overthrew the Batista dictatorship, is his concrete
commitment to literacy and public healthcare. Guevara firmly believed that the
emancipation of a people depended on culture and healthcare, fundamental
pillars for restoring dignity to those who had always been marginalized by
history. His humanity often emerged in his correspondence with his family and
in his diaries, which portray a man driven by a profound love for humanity—the
same love that, according to him, should be the driving force of every
authentic revolutionary.
However, Che's memory cannot be separated from a profound reflection on
the theme of violence. His choice to embrace armed struggle and guerrilla
warfare as the only effective means of overthrowing oppression represents the
most problematic and divisive aspect of his legacy. It is a doctrine that, with
today's democratic and pacifist sensibilities, cannot be shared. History has
taught us that the use of force, even when motivated by the best intentions of
social justice, brings with it a legacy of pain and authoritarianism that risks
contaminating the very ideals of freedom from which it originates.
Yet, rejecting the method of violence does not mean nullifying the value
of his moral testimony. Remembering Ernesto Guevara on the anniversary of his
death is a necessary exercise precisely to separate the nobility of his
goals—the end of human exploitation, equality, international solidarity—from
the tragic means of his time. In a contemporary world still plagued by profound
economic inequalities and indifference, his intransigence against injustice
remains a powerful warning not to give up.
Guevara's historical and intellectual importance lies in his ability to
combine guerrilla warfare with profound reflection on the economic structure of
society, uniting action on the ground with a utopian yet rigorous vision of a
new world. To understand Che's relevance today, it is necessary to analyze the
context in which he operated. Twentieth-century Latin America was considered
the United States' backyard, a vast, fragmented region subjected to an
extractive economic system. Large US multinationals, such as the United Fruit
Company, dictated the policies of local governments, keeping populations in a
state of poverty and illiteracy. Guevara understood that political liberation
could not exist without economic sovereignty. The American model, based on the
free market and private profit, could not be exported to underdeveloped
contexts without generating further inequality and subordination. His critique
of capitalism was not merely ideological, but was based on a material
observation: global financial capitalism inherently tended to impoverish the
world's periphery in order to enrich the center.
Appointed Minister of Industry and Director of the National Bank of Cuba
after the 1959 revolution, Che faced the daunting task of translating Marxist
theory into managerial practice. He rejected predefined economic models, even
openly criticizing the Soviet Union, which he considered too inclined to employ
capitalist concepts (such as the law of value and material incentives) in the
transition to socialism.
Guevara proposed and implemented the Budgetary Financing System ( Sistema
de Financiamiento Presupuestario ). This economic vision was based on
pillars radically opposed to those of the West: businesses should not compete
for profit, but rather operate as subsidiaries of a single, large state-owned
enterprise, coordinated to meet the collective needs of the population. The
goal was to break the sugar monoculture, imposed by the colonial market, and
create a self-sufficient and technologically advanced economy. Money was to
cease being a commodity and return to being a mere tool of accounting and
exchange.
The most revolutionary aspect of Guevara's proposal, however, lies not
in the mathematical formulas of planning, but in its ethical dimension. In his
famous essay "Socialism and Man in Cuba ," Che argued that an
economic revolution would not succeed unless it were accompanied by a spiritual
and cultural transformation of the individual.
While capitalism thrives on individualism, selfishness, and competition,
Che's alternative proposal was based on the creation of the "New
Man." This new citizen was to be guided by feelings of solidarity,
empathy, and social duty. For this reason, Guevara strongly advocated the
adoption of moral incentives over material ones. Workers were not to produce
more to accumulate personal wealth (the logic of the capitalist bonus), but for
the good of the community, finding gratification in collective progress. Volunteer
work, of which Che himself constantly exemplified in the sugar cane fields or
on construction sites, was the primary tool for forging this new consciousness.
Today, in a world facing systemic global crises, from extreme economic
inequality to climate change, accelerated by hypertrophic consumption, the
search for an alternative to capitalism is no longer merely an ideological
debate, but a necessity for survival. Guevara's proposal demonstrates that the
Western economic order is not the only possible natural order, but a historical
construct that can be renegotiated. Its long-term practical failure, due both
to the suffocating US embargo and internal bureaucratic rigidities, does not
erase the value of his insight: the economy must be subordinated to human
dignity, and not vice versa. Ernesto Che Guevara remains immortal not for how
he died, but for how he lived and what he dared to dream. His greatest legacy is
the invitation not to resign ourselves to single-minded thought and to continue
seeking a path where the value of a society is measured by the well-being of
its most vulnerable, and not by the balance sheets of large corporations.
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