•
Rating: I would first like to wish all the users of the site a Merry Christmas, apologizing to them if, in recent months, an uncertain and not always careful use of the Italian language, and the very characteristics of the available means, made the dialogue started with them last June faltering, sometimes arduous, and almost never fruitful.
With the approach of the Christmas Holiday and, with it, the possibility of a rebirth for Man, I would like to gift everyone a review of a book read in recent weeks, which opened up truly unexpected horizons for me.
As is evident, it is the diary of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, an Argentine doctor who, between the '50s and '60s, fiercely fought in the American Continent in the name of the Communist Ideal as a tool of Liberation and Rebirth for each individual, approaching, in his wanderings and battles, almost missionary and, in his own way, "saintly" figures, in the almost Christian meaning that can be attributed to them, and embodying the idea, advocated by intellectuals of caliber, that precisely in Communism we can glimpse a new and modern form of Theology of Liberation.
A "Che" Guevara who, in spite of appearances, was almost a new messenger of Liberation, a new savior for the oppressed peoples of the American world.
The "Che" was not of this world, indeed, as he tried to free the poor from oppression, sought to cure the illness of the body and then of the spirit, fought so that even the weak and the last could emancipate themselves from the yoke of the Powerful and the Rich, of that West capable of practicing, in the countries of Central and South America, only exploitation and oppression.
The "Che" was not of this world; and this world, like every savior, whether Prometheus, Socrates, or Christ himself, Saint Francis as alter Christus, did not know how to fully recognize him, while He was alive: treating him as a pure idealist, as a pure dreamer incapable of making a true turning point to things, if not as a danger to a preconceived order, and especially to the order of capitalist society.
The betrayal of the "Che" by the world, and of those who, although close to him, did not know how to identify in Him the messenger of a new time, is among the most gripping passages of the book, describing the pain of the warrior who, in the end, realizes he doesn't have much time at his disposal to realize his projects, feels he must abandon the people he believes in, perhaps foretelling the fact that even the people, suddenly, can abandon the Leader who aims to free them from slavery, due to his shadowy, unpredictable, elusive traits.
The solitude of "Che" Guevara at the twilight of his life is therefore one of the key passages of this book, a profound reflection on the feeling of every man who, having given his life for an Ideal, sees this Ideal moving further away due to the indifference and egoistic, irrational, self-destructive impulses of the people to whom it is directed.
This solitude would seem to herald a certain pessimism - like the pessimism of Reason - if we did not stop for a few minutes to think about the fruits of the life of "Che" Guevara, fallen far from the tree so that from this tree an entire forest could sprout: a forest that we can all see in the T-shirts, banners, murals, waving flags in every Italian - or more generally Latin - city in which the figure of the "Che" has become a symbol of antagonistic, egalitarian, alternative thought and therefore "life-giving", leaven in a changing world that faces global challenges in which the need to rebalance the gap between weak and strong is ever more pressing.
The life and death of the "Che" are therefore a message of genuine hope, even more vivid if grasped during the Christmas period.
And with this message, I wish you all a happy and serene Holiday, hoping that you can give and give yourself this book, published by Mondadori, as a message of social pacification and serenity.
PDL
NOTE: Certainly, I could start to question the sincerity of this figure, and especially of those who mythologize him, about the sense of certain revolutions followed by restorations or scleroticizations of power, the many victims of Castro, Chavez and his populism, the romantic and ultimately bourgeois nature of this subject, who perhaps believed in good faith that he was liberating the "people" (a very abstract concept) from who knows what, the ambiguity of Communism as a historical process, which ends up subjugating the people it intends to restore to new life... I could wonder whether Dr. Guevara could have been more useful to the humanitarian cause by being, indeed, a doctor. But it's Christmas for everyone, it's nice to tell and tell ourselves fairy tales from time to time.
Loading comments slowly
