He says he has given up his concept of self to become part of the group. He writes to his mother that he hates moderation and self-interest. He talks now about dying for the cause, an idea that he seems to find glorious.
Not me. Maybe because I have never been there, never walked in those revolutionary shoes. It always seems to me that there is good and bad in everyone, and in most political systems. I can't imagine dying for Che's ideals. Or dying for Fidel Castro.
Maybe I am too old to feel the way Che felt at 24 or 25. I am on Page 204 of Jon Lee Anderson's bio of Che. And 1956 is the year I graduated from high school. Che was ten years older than me.
I am not him, and he is not me. If I was there, then, with what I know now, and I had to choose a side, I think I'd go to New York and become a poet.
If I had to choose an Argentine to admire, I'd choose Jorge Luis Borges, a writer, not a fighter, as far as I know.
But I didn't see the things that Che saw. I have never seen brutal injustice up close. So I don't condemn him or vilify him. All I can say is that he isn't me, and I am not him.
-- Roger
© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle
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