General Strike Comics » 2009

From an asthmatic but adventurous boy to an international symbol for revolution, the story of Ernesto “Che” Guevara is one that has moved oppressed people all over the world to the struggle against imperialism.

My eyes first opened as a young activist and university student reading Che’s, On Socialism and Man. My admiration for Che’s idea’s and the Cuban revolution has never waned. For the past few months an important book has been making its way around the world being published in many languages and recently I was fortunate to have been sent a copy of Che: A Graphic Biography published in October 2008.

This graphic biography created by legendary underground comic artist Spain Rodriguez truly channels the selfless revolutionary life of Che. In some ways it feels like a superhero comic book and it is hard to believe that one person could make such a significant impact. However, Che is far from the lone moralistic Ayn Rand type superhero that seems ubiquitous in the comic book world. With Che it is the power of the collective that helps him as he battles the capitalist ideology.

Rodriguez gets deep into the story of Guevara and seems to have internalized the details. From growing up in Argentina to his life as a revolutionary the book finally culminates with Guevara’s murder in Bolivia by CIA trained soldiers in 1967. The story refuses to end without mentioning how Guevara’s example has inspired the masses of working people all over Latin America.

The revolution in Cuba has always been threatened by U.S. capitalism and the island’s resilience seems inconceivable when considering its size. Rodriguez’s artwork is overflowing with scenes from a revolution that organized a society based on the needs of all people instead of the profits of a few. From page to page the reader is actively engaged in learning not only how the struggle developed but how Che came to develop his understanding of imperialism.

As a young doctor Ernesto Guevara sets out across South America on a road trip where he witnesses the horrific role that U.S. corporations play in subjugating the workers and peasants of South America. This adventure eventually leads him through the C.I.A. backed coup of the Jacob Arbenz Guzmán government in Guatemala and finally to Mexico where he meets Fidel Castro and the Cuban July 26^th movement that would become the group of insurgents who would take that fateful voyage on the Granma to their eventual guerilla camps in the Sierra Maestra.

This book unlike the popular movie, The Motorcycle Diaries that also chronicles this period of Guevara’s life, has the ability to go in depth and make clear the revolutionaries transition from Ernesto to Che. In other words, Guevara goes from a partial observer to an active partisan in the struggle against capitalism. This was a time when the Spanish interjection “che” would come to be synonymous with revolution.

When someone makes the decision to become a revolutionary based on their convictions fight for the liberation of humankind it is a profound transition. When Marxism is the weapon we use to understand the system that we are struggling against it is then possible, as we have seen in the case of Che, to deal a great many strikes to the capitalist class.

In an afterword to Che: A Graphic Biography, Sarah Seidman and Editor Paul Buhle write, “Che lived by his own ideal of the “new man,” the modern human being freed from the oppression of the class system, who was ready to love, live and if necessary die for emancipation of humanity.”

As youth around the world struggle with the current economic crisis and see first hand the contradictions of capitalism this book will be more than just beautiful illustrations of a time no longer relevant. Instead, they will find that it embodies the revolutionary who, in spirit, marches with us defiantly through the streets all over the world. It is safe to say that future generations who pick up this book will have a better understanding of what it means to be a socialist revolutionary.