Legacy of Che Guevara - Martyrdom and Sanctification

Martyrdom and Sanctification

Further information: Saint Ernesto

"Che was not only a heroic fighter, but a revolutionary thinker, with a political and moral project and a system of ideas and values for which he fought and gave his life. The philosophy which gave his political and ideological choices their coherence, colour, and taste was a deep revolutionary humanism. For Che, the true Communist, the true revolutionary was one who felt that the great problems of all humanity were his or her personal problems, one who was capable of "feeling anguish whenever someone was assassinated, no matter where it was in the world, and of feeling exultation whenever a new banner of liberty was raised somewhere else. Che’s internationalism -a way of life, a secular faith, a categorical imperative, and a spiritual "nationality"- was the living and concrete expression of this revolutionary Marxist humanism."

— Michael Löwy, author of The Marxism of Che Guevara: Philosophy, Economics, Revolutionary Warfare

In 1967, while pictures of Guevara's dead body were being circulated and the circumstances of his death debated, his legend began to spread. Demonstrations in protest against his execution occurred throughout the world, and articles, tributes, songs and poems were written about his life and death. Latin America specialists advising the U.S. State Department immediately recognized the significance in the demise of "the most glamorous and reportedly most successful revolutionary", noting that Guevara would be eulogized by communists and other leftists as a "model revolutionary who met a heroic death."

British politician George Galloway has remarked that "one of the greatest mistakes the US state ever made was to create those pictures of Che's corpse. Its Christ-like poise in death ensured that his appeal would reach way beyond the turbulent university campus and into the hearts of the faithful, flocking to the worldly, fiery sermons of the liberation theologists." The Economist magazine has also pointed out how Che's post death photos resemble Andrea Mantegna's The Lamentation over the Dead Christ. Thus fixing Guevara as a modern saint, the man who risked his life twice in countries that were not his own before giving it in a third, and whose invocation of the "new man", driven by moral rather than material incentives, smacked of Saint Ignatius of Loyola more than Marx.

This rung true the following year in 1968 when among Italy's emerging new breed of Roman Catholic militants, named the Jacques Maritain Circle arranged a memorial mass in Che's honor and Catholic services were held for him in several other countries. In addition, in Brazil, mythmakers began to circulate thousands of photograph copies of a dead Che captioned "A Saint of Our Time". Italian students took up a similar tone and christened Guevara an "Angela della Pace" – "Angel of Peace." Regardless of Che's non-sanctifying failures and contradictions, or the obsolescence of his methods and ideology, the potency of his "messianic image", with its "symbolic" and "religious quality", continues to inspire many throughout the World.