Che Guevara: Revolutionary Icon Draws Tourists To Cuba

SANTA CLARA, Cuba — His face has become an icon of the turbulent 1960s, an emblem alongside love beads and long hair of a generation that questioned authority and took to the streets to protest war, racism and corporate greed.

Now, curiously, Cuba's second most-famous revolutionary, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, has become the stuff of packaged tourist tours, a popular draw for an island that in the past decade has begun to transform itself from a drab Communist backwater into a tropical vacation mecca.

An average of about 800 visitors each day make the trek to this sweltering colonial-era city about 150 miles east of Havana to visit a museum and memorial dedicated to the fallen Argentine who fought alongside Fidel Castro in Cuba's 1958-59 revolution.

The remains of Guevara, who died in 1967 while attempting to foment another communist revolution in Bolivia, are also interred at the site.

Parked tour buses line a tree-shaded plaza fronting the sprawling complex, which sits high atop a hill on the outskirts of the city. A 30-foot tall bronze statue of the bearded, beret-wearing Guevara stands on a huge white stone pedestal, the fatigue-clad figure striding forward, a rifle dangling from his right hand.

"He's very famous in Italy," said Cristina Fabrizio, 34, of Genoa, who made a special point of including a stop at Santa Clara on her packaged Cuban vacation. "We didn't want to just go to the beach. We wanted to learn about Cuba's history. Che is a symbol for the idea of freedom for poor people around the world."

Guevara's story has long fascinated leftists and historians, much as his popularity outrages many Cuban-American exiles and conservatives.

His middle class roots in Argentina, his background as a medical doctor who dabbled in philosophy and poetry and his conversion to radical politics and guerilla warfare have combined with his dashing good looks and violent death at the early age of 39 to create a potent legend.

"He's very popular because he is a wonderful example of the ideals of the Cuban people," said Jacqueline Alfonso Marrero, who works at a shop in downtown Santa Clara that sells souvenirs, including Che posters, T-shirts and books. "Women also find him very handsome."

The legend has been burnished by a recent movie, "The Motorcycle Diaries," which recreates a vagabond-style tour of Latin America Guevara took in the early 1950s, a trip he documented with photos and journal entries that reveal his increasing radicalization as he met the region's poorest campesinos.

Abandoning his medical career, Guevara moved to Mexico in 1954, inspired partly by the CIA-backed overthrow of a newly elected socialist government in Guatemala. He soon met Castro, a fiery young Cuban lawyer who was living in Mexico in exile after barely surviving an impetuous assault on a Cuban army barracks, the opening salvo in the revolution to overthrow Cuba's corrupt dictator, Fulgencio Batista.

The two quickly became revolutionary soul mates, bonded by their commitment to helping Latin Americans throw off the vestiges of centuries of colonialism and the rigid class divisions separating the rich and poor.

In 1956, Guevara accompanied Castro and a small band of rebels who sailed to Cuba aboard the motor yacht, Granma. Batista's troops nearly wiped out the force when it landed near Cuba's far southern tip, but Castro, Guevara and a handful of others escaped into the nearby Sierra Maestra mountains.

Rapidly rebuilding their insurgency, the revolutionaries mounted a series of surprisingly successful attacks. Guevara became a commander leading his own force, quickly establishing a reputation for daring and bravery under fire.

Late in 1958 he led a small column of rebels into Santa Clara, where they derailed an armored train filled with weapons for Batista's army. The successful raid was a turning point in the revolution, with Batista fleeing days later, opening the way for Guevara to march triumphantly into Havana, followed shortly by Castro.

When Castro set up his new government, Guevara quickly switched hats from guerrilla commander to bureaucrat, supervising the break-up of Cuba's plantations, running the National Bank and traveling the world to negotiate trade agreements with sympathetic countries.

Like Castro, he polished his revolutionary image by wearing rugged combat fatigues, even during a 1964 address at the United Nations. His handsome face, long hair, thick beard, ever-present Cuban cigar and jaunty black beret festooned with a single red star quickly became an symbol for rebellions led by students and leftists around the world.

In 1965, Guevara resigned his posts in the Cuban government, with some historians speculating that he and Castro had something of a falling-out. Guevara may also have tired of the bureaucracy and longed for the romantic days of leading a small band of rebels against overwhelming odds.

He turned up in Bolivia, where he hid out in the jungles and mountains, trying to duplicate his Cuban revolutionary success. He was captured and killed by the Bolivian army — aided by the CIA — in 1967.

The Che legend — the nickname is an Argentine expression roughly translating as "mate" or "pal" — mushroomed almost immediately. Curiously, it hasn't seemed to wane despite the tide of historical events of the last two decades that have seen most Communist regimes give way to free-market democracies.

Bolivian officials have also capitalized on Guevara's popularity, creating a "Che Trail," in which tourists tromp up muddy hillsides and visit the isolated spot where the rebel legend died.

Guevara's remains were returned to Cuba in 1997, interred at the Santa Clara memorial in an elaborate ceremony presided over by Castro.

He remains a powerful symbol the world over, but especially for Cubans, his face plastered on billboards around the country, usually accompanied by defiant exhortations such as "Always toward victory," and "Socialism or death."

While Che souvenirs are available everywhere in Cuba, there are no shops or stands at the memorial and grave, which include an eternal flame and displays documenting Guevara's childhood and revolutionary career.

"Che is the world's greatest symbol of the fight against imperialism," said Carlo Manuel Martinez, 50, a Cuban who took a recent holiday to again visit the memorial that he, like most Cubans, first saw as an elementary school student. "He was not a Cuban, but he came here and fought for our freedom and then took the fight for the poor to other countries."