Ever wonder what it would be like to be able to visit other timelines? Or just be able to go to other places/dimensions with the press of a button? Stuff they did on Quest World or inside the Matrix? Maybe I could deep freeze myself like Phil Fry in Futurama and wake up in 3013. "Welcome to the World of Tomorrow!", a booming voice would boom at me.
What if we could take it a step further and visit alternate universes? What if we could just side-step into a parallel universe? Maybe someone could come up with a portal device that serves as a time-machine - if you stepped forward or backward, you'd literally go back in time or back to the future - and as a inter-dimensional wormhole of sorts - side-step into an alternate reality. Only problem is the randomness and chance laws of the universe/multiverse system would probably mean your probability of getting back to where you started from reduces dramatically with every side-step you take. Now what wouldn't a traveling salesman give to be able to do that forever if we only had a multi-dimensional, multiversal credit system - a UniVisa or a MultiverseCard.
The best, coolest thing would be to meet yourself in different universes. You could organize an online Hangout with yourself, belay that, with yourselves! You could literally form your own football team. Every single team on the English Premier League could have the same line-up. Manchester United have Rooney? No problem, lets buy Rooney from another universe. Another cool thing would be that there would exist a parallel universe where politicians are incorruptible. No. I think I'm pushing my imagination here.
Politicians are scum wherever... My cellphone's ringing - let me get that. I pick up my phone and stare at the screen. The ringing continues. I stare. I stare because the screen is lit up with my portrait on it. It says in bright white letters, "Incoming call from" and below it is a very familiar name - my own! I begin trembling with excitement. My hand is shaking as I reach out to touch the screen with my thumb to push the slider back. I put the phone to my ear and say, "H-Hello?".
Back(B)log
April 23, 2013
A Study on a Most-interesting Leader
History has given us records of innumerable number of great leaders - ones who stood for what they believed was right; ones who fought against insurmountable odds to realize a new, better tomorrow; and others who promised the moon and then kept it for themselves. The following account happens to be about one of the most intriguing and exciting studies in leadership.
Che Guevara (1928 –
1967) was a South American Marxist revolutionary, physician, author,
guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist.
He was born Ernesto
“Che” Guevara de la Serna on the 14th of June, 1928 in
the town of Rosario, Argentina as one of five children of a wealthy
couple with leftist leanings. From a young age, Che was moved by
scenes of suffering and, being well-to-do himself, was able to
clearly demarcate the range of standards of living of people in Latin
America.
Early
life
Even as a boy, he showed
a thirst for excellence. The fact that he suffered from chronic
asthma did not deter him from being “very good” and “quite
dependable”, according to his classmates, at sports that demanded
fitness like football, rugby, shooting and cycling. From an early
age, Che showed an interest in diverse fields of study –
mathematics, political science, archaeology, engineering, sociology
and history were among his favorite subjects at school. What he
couldn't get in school, he got out of books in the vast library of
his parents.
By the time he was in
high school, he could recite from memory, entire verses by poets such
as Rudyard Kipling, Robert Frost and Pablo Neruda. He enjoyed reading
anything he could lay his hands on and mentions being enamored by the
thoughts of Karl Marx, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jules Verne, Franz Kafka,
Vladimir Lenin and William Faulkner. As a medical student, Che began
putting his analysis of the world he saw and read into words and
penned commentaries on various topics such as the life of the Buddha,
Aristotle's philosophy, Bertrand Russell's idea of patriotism, Jack
London's view of society, Nietzsche's take on the concept of death
and Sigmund Freud's interpretation of dreams. A now-declassified CIA
dossier on Guevara states that the organization regarded him as one
among eight most well-educated South Americans during the Cold War
days.
The Motorcycle Diaries
While studying medicine
at the University of Beunos Aires, Che took time off from studies to
travel the continent. He made two trips during this period that left
an indelible impression on him and shaped his future – the first
was a solo 2800-mile bicycle ride across Argentina in 1950; and the
second, a cross-continental motorcycle journey with his friend
Alberto Granado that spanned over 5000 miles, spread over 9 months.
Throughout his life, from this time on, Guevara maintained diaries in
which he wrote almost daily detailing his experiences and his
learning from them. The diaries pertaining to his motorcycle trip
were posthumously published as “The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a
Latin American Journey” and also made into a film in 2004. During
his travels, Che recounts several happenings that “tore at his
soul” and made him wonder “where this was going”. In Chile, Che
saw the pathetic living conditions of the miners in the copper mines.
The two friends also happened upon a communist couple who had fled
into the Atacama desert, with only the clothes they were dressed in,
to escape persecution for their political views.
Throughout their
journey, at Che's insistence, the two offered their medical and
monetary services to the poor and the needy. As a result, halfway
through the trip, they were left penniless themselves. This forced
them to mingle with the poorest sections of Latin America and allowed
them to see the suffering of the people. While crossing the Andes
mountains, they came across poverty-stricken villages almost
completely cut-off from civilization. In his diary, Che expresses
guilt and regret at not being able to treat a sick child due to lack
of money (neither he nor the child's father had enough to buy the
required medicines). When the boy subsequently died, the father
hardly grieved and instead told Che he was relieved, for he could
take better care of his remaining family. In Peru, Granado and
Guevara volunteered at the San Pablo Leper Colony where Che was
amazed at the solidarity shown by the lepers as a community. Unwanted
and uncared for by civilized society, the lepers had formed their own
society where everyone was treated equally and respected. The lepers
displayed a typical “out-group” behavior. Guevara closed his
account of the journey concluding that “Latin America is not a
collection of separate nations but a single entity requiring a
continent-wide liberation strategy”.
Guatemalan Coup
After completing his
medical training, Guevara refused his father's offer for setting him
up with a clinic in Buenos Aires as he felt a restless desire to
work with the poor. He became a wandering physician for a while
before finally settling down in Guatemala. Around the same time, in
Guatemala, President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman had just introduced several
social reform plans which greatly impressed Guevara. Che immediately
became involved in the medical and literacy campaigns and grew to
admire Arbenz's vision.
One of the policies that
Arbenz initiated was a Land Reforms Act which limited the quantity of
uncultivated land owned by private corporations or citizens. As a
result, several U.S. companies which had invested heavily in
South American real estate lost huge tracts of land to the Guatemalan
government. At the same time, the CIA had most of the South American
governments under surveillence as a precaution against Soviet
involvement. At the behest of the United Fruit Company, which lost
225,000 acres to Arbenz's reforms, the CIA began taking greater
interest in Guatemalan politics and were able to track a shipment of
German World War II weapons arriving into Guatemala. In May 1954, the
CIA declared the country to be a communist threat and helped a
section of the Guatemalan military in the orchestration of a coup
d'etat.
Che openly supported
Arbenz and upon the successful completion of the coup, had to escape
to Mexico in order to avoid being jailed. Guevara was disgusted with
what he termed to be “capitalist exploitation of South America by
the U.S.A.” and adopted Marxist principles.
26th of
July Movement
By 1955, Guevara
established a successful practice as a doctor and lectured in the
university in Mexico City. Through some exiled Cubans he had
befriended during the coup in Guatemala, Che Guevara met Raul Castro
who, along with his brother Fidel, was also in exile for his part in fomenting and participating in the 26th of July Movement
– a failed attack on the Moncado Barracks in Santiago, Cuba on July
26th, 1953. Raul managed to interest Che with his
anti-imperialist talk and invited him to meet Fidel Castro, the
leader of the exiled Cubans. Che met with Fidel and spoke with him
over dinner, the intense discussions between the two regarding the
Castros' plan for overthrowing Cuban dictator Batista lasted through
the night; and by dawn, Che had signed up with them as a military
doctor.
One of the exiled Cubans
was General Alberto Bayo who imparted military training to all the
members of the Movement. Che undertook the full training regimen even
though he never planned to take part in the actual battles and by the
end of the training period, General Bayo acknowledged him to be the
“best guerrilla of them all”. Regarding the 26th of
July Movement, Che remarked in his diary that he felt needed for the
first time in his life.
Cuban Revolution
On November 25th,
1956, the 82-strong force led by Fidel Castro set foot on Cuban soil.
While still unloading their equipment from the boat, they were
surprised by the Cuban military. While some returned fire, several
laid down their weapons and surrendered. Guevara, despite being
injured, was treating some of the wounded, and was shocked when the
soldiers shot even those that had their hands raised above them.
Angered by their callousness, Che picked up a gun thrown down by one
of his comrades and completed his “symbolic transition from a
physician to combatant”.
The survivors of the
first wave of attack managed to escape into the surrounding hills and
split into two groups to avoid capture before arranging to meet at a
stronghold of the Cuban partisans deep in the Sierra Maestras
mountains. Fighting off ambushes along the way, only 22 members,
including the Castros and Che, finally made it to the rendezvous
point. There, Fidel Castro began reorganizing his campaign, mustering
support from the urban partisans led by Frank Pais and the mountain
villagers who had been ignored by the Cuban government.
Soon, the Movement had a
large gathering of newly recruited soldiers and their families and it
fell upon Guevara to convert a rag-tag military camp into a
self-sustaining society. His participation in the Guatemalan reforms
held Che in good stead; in little over a year, he managed to
transform the backward mountain region into a thriving
country-within-a-country. Che organized the construction of weapons
factories to arm the new recruits, large-scale bakeries to feed the
entire population, schools for the children of the villages and
health clinics. When a sufficiently large army was formed, he took on
the responsibility of training the soldiers. Due to his “convincing
competence, diplomacy and patience”, Che was soon promoted to Fidel
Castro's second-in-command.
The rebels successfully
hid themselves and were presumed dead by the Batista government until
early 1957 when Herbert Matthews, a reporter for The New York Times,
managed to interview Fidel Castro. His article portrayed the
guerrillas as mythical warriors fighting for justice and made a
highly favorable impression on the Cuban public and the world at
large. Che realized the importance of media support for any political
campaign and started a clandestine newspaper to disseminate
information about the Cause and, in February 1958, a radio station
called “Radio Rebelde” to allow communication with distant rebel
groups that had begun cropping up in various parts of the country. In
August 1958, he managed to convert a defeat in the Battle of Las
Mercedes into a victory by demoralizing the Cuban army through
propaganda that focused on poor judgments made by the Cuban
military command.
Che Guevara gained a
reputation of being a harsh disciplinarian. He demanded loyalty to
the rebel cause and publicly executed defectors, informers and spies
after announcing their crimes. He authorized the formation of a squad
to track down deserters and eliminate them. He states in his diary
that such finality was essential when dealing with informers as the
Cuban army would retaliate by using any data they could obtain on the
Castros' movements, even burning down entire villages they suspected
of harboring rebels. Guevara viewed leadership as that of a teacher
and held regular sessions with his troops where he would read out
passages from famous books followed by discussions and debates. He
started a camp-wide “Battle Against Ignorance” campaign where he
entreated everyone that could read and write to teach and assist
those that couldn't. Fidel Castro noted that “Che had great moral
authority over his troops.”
Guevara realized the
importance of leading from the front and often took great risks
“tending to foolhardiness” to show his courage so as to gain
loyalty and respect of his men. His bravery even incited respect from
the enemy – on one occasion, seeing his lieutenant Joel Iglesias,
then still a teenager, fall down badly wounded, Che ran to him
unarmed, picked him up and got him to safety. The enemy soldiers saw
his act of bravery and stopped firing briefly, allowing him to reach
cover. Thomas Alba, who fought under Guevara's command explained in a
later interview that “Che was loved in spite of being stern and
demanding. We would have given our lives for him anytime.”
While the ability to
show detachment to violence allowed Guevara to think logically during
battles and allowed him to formulate brilliant strategies under
trying circumstances – his diary shows the use of medical
terminology and logical sequencing even while describing wounds or
making a report just after a skirmish – his acts of valor inspired
his troops to give more than what was physically possible whenever he
asked them to – he led a group of guerrillas on a 7-week trek
through the mountains, travelling constantly and often without food
for days, in order to reach a strategic location in central Cuba in
time for the final push of the revolution.
In December 1958, Che
gained a series of vital victories winning complete control of the
central regions and splitting up Batista's forces. His squad was
often outnumbered 10:1 and became reputed among the enemy as “The
Suicide Squad”. By this time, several Cuban generals sued for peace
and surrendered unconditionally to Guevara. Batista fled and Che
entered Havana, the capital, with no resistance on January 1st,
1959, signifying the end of the revolution.
Che, the Politician
Following the successful
revolution, Guevara spent a few months recuperating in the
countryside in Tarara. While there, he invited many Cuban
politicians, economists and thinkers to form the Tarara Group to plan
Cuba's future. He spent his time writing a well-received book on
guerrilla tactics. Soon after his return to Havana, Fidel Castro,
with support from 93% of the Cuban population, approved the meting
out of “revolutionary justice” to those responsible for the worst
of the oppression – supporters, and most of the top generals, of
Batista.
Che was made the Warden
of the La Cabana Fortress which housed the war criminals and was
responsible for hearing appeals and awarding sentences. He tried to
introduce a justice system wherein each case was heard by a jury
comprising of 3 military officers, a judge and a representative of
the citizens of Cuba who was chosen randomly. He exhibited
totalitarian tendencies in order to pacify the public and ordered the
summary executions of hundreds – including pro-democratic
politicians, dissidents and fervent followers of Batista – noting
that the Cuban people were in a lynching mood during this period and
“the executions by firing squads are not only a necessity for the
people of Cuba, but also an imposition of the people”. Che was
forced to found incarceration camps for gays and AIDS victims. This
period, according to his diary, was the only time, since he became
involved in the revolution, Che felt his idealist nature being
shaken.
After the purge, Castro
promoted Che to Minister for Industries. Using knowledge gained
during his stay in Guatemala, Che introduced several reforms,
including nationalization of banks and businesses, that proved to be
very successful while ensuring affordable housing, healthcare and
employment for all. His land reforms act limited the size of all land
holdings to a maximum of 1,000 acres. Any larger holdings were seized
by the government and redistributed among the poor. Castro advised
Guevara to tour newly-independent nations as an ambassador in order
to establish economic ties. Actually, it was in order to separate the
Cuban public from their growing affinity for Che's extreme Marxism.
In September 1959, upon
his return, Che found that Castro had spent the time endearing
himself in the political scene while reneging on several policies
that the two had planned previously. Che was pacified with promises
of the Soviet Union's “helping hand”. Meanwhile, several cattle
ranchers showed dissatisfaction with the land reforms and began secretly funding terrorism to destabilize Castro. On March 4th,
1960, a ship carrying weapons exploded while docked in Havana harbor.
Che was immediately dispensed on site to prevent the situation from
spinning out of control. He organized teams of the public to rescue
victims, salvage from the rubble and fight the fires that had broken
out. He himself joined the rescue efforts providing first aid to many
victims. These threats to his nascent government forced Castro to
speed up the land reforms. U.S.-based companies lost 480,000 acres in
a matter of weeks, inciting President Eisenhower to place an embargo
on import of Cuban sugar. On July 10th, 1960, in his
first-ever media-covered public address, Guevara called upon the
Cuban people to denounce “economic aggression” by the U.S.A.
In late 1960, Guevara
took on the additional responsibilities of Finance Minister and
President of the National Bank. He declared 1961 “The Year of
Education” and toured the country visiting universities while
insisting to the public that literacy was no longer a privilege of
the rich. The campaign raised the nation's literacy rate from 60% to
96%. In order to supplement the lack of exports to U.S.A., he
fostered treaties with the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc and North
Korea. Che signed newly issued currency notes with just “Che”
instead of his full name symbolizing his distaste for material
possessions. He started youth groups, community centers and labor
parties completing Cuba's embrace of socialism. Guevara inspired
a socio-cultural reform - “The New Man”, who was “selfless and
cooperative, obedient and hard-working, gender-blind, incorruptible,
non-materialistic and anti-imperialistic” – and called upon the
masses to favor moral incentives over material ones.
He continued working
part-time for the Cuban military and imparted training to 200,000
soldiers on newly-acquired Soviet arms. On April 17th,
1961, 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at Playa Giron, Bay
of Pigs, while a warship drew off a majority of the army led by
Guevara to the west coast. The Cuban forces were successful in
beating back the invaders with Castro personally taking command of
the troops left to guard the beach. In retaliation to the failed Bay
of Pigs invasion, Che secured nuclear-armed ballistic missiles from
the U.S.S.R., a move which started the Cuban Missile Crisis – a
13-day stand-off of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) with both U.S.A.
and Cuba threatening to fire at each other. However, U.S.A. and
U.S.S.R. secretly held talks without including Cuba and formally
ended the crisis on November 20th, 1962. The silver lining
of this event was the establishment of a direct hotline between the
governments of the two most powerful nations at the time.
Che, the Diplomat
Guevara used the results
of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis to further
his anti-U.S. propaganda. At the same time, he felt betrayed at the
Soviet Union's handling of the events. By the end of 1964, he had
risen to global prominence and Castro, being pressurized by the
Soviet Union, “awarded” a more public role to Che – as
representative of Cuba, he was kept away from the country for long
periods of time – allowing Castro to govern the nation under
guidance from the Kremlin. In December of the same year, Guevara
addressed the United Nations in New York regarding issues such as its
failure to curb apartheid in South Africa and the treatment of the
black population in U.S.A. During his stay there, he made various
television appearances and met with many important figures, among
them were U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy and civil rights leader
Malcolm X, making a great impression on radical groups in the U.S.
On February 24th,
1965, while in Algiers, Algeria, Guevara publicly accused the Soviet
Union of tacit complicity with the “exploiting Westerners” and
averred that he had lost faith in the Soviet way but instead favored
Mao's “Great Leap Forward” as true socialism. On his return to
Cuba, Che found that he and Castro, who continued to receive support
from the U.S.S.R., had reached a parting of ways. He renounced his
Cuban citizenship on 3rd October of that year to “fight
for the revolutionary cause abroad”.
Immortality of the
Revolution
Guevara moved to Africa
after leaving Cuba and began helping a rebellion in Congo against the
advice of his friends – Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella and
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser – who warned him of failure.
Within seven months, Che wrote in his diary of being disillusioned
due to infighting between the rebels and the power-hungry nature of
the leaders. He then left for Bolivia in hopes of assisting the
rebels there. He began building up an army along the lines of the one
used in the Cuban revolution and even though he only commanded 50
soldiers, his guerrilla tactics caused the Bolivian government to
greatly overestimate his force. However, Che's revolution was, again,
unsuccessful due to the following factors:
- He failed to communicate effectively due to the difference in languages
- By now, the CIA had studied his methods and were able to train the Bolivian military to effectively thwart him
- The Bolivian Communist Party refused to aid him on the advice of the Soviet Union
- Faulty communications equipment cut off his troops from one another
Guevara was eventually
captured and taken for interrogation. He showed no signs of fear and
held his head high. Upon continued refusal to answer any questions,
his death was ordered. On October 9th, 1967, while being
led to his execution, one of the soldiers guarding him asked him if
he was worried for his own immortality. He replied, “I'm thinking
about the immortality of the Revolution”. His last words were to
his executioner - “Do it. Shoot me, you coward! You are only going
to kill a man!”
Leadership Summary
Che Guevara was a
staunch believer of socialism – Marxism and Leninism. He was an
idealist in the beginning. Leadership traits associated with him are
intelligence, masculinity and bravery – there are numerous displays
of these traits throughout his military career. He was a Servant
leader – placed greatest importance in developing his followers and enabling them to become the best they could be – and also a Transformational leader – he wanted to help out
the poorer classes of society and aimed at equality for all and he
was able to transform a remote mountain region in Cuba and later, the
entire nation into adopting a new way of life. He used his career
experiences to good effect as seen by his adoption of reforms
policies initially used by the Arbenz government in Guatemala and his
use of the radio as a means of communication which he noticed had
been very effective against his side in the Guatemalan coup. Che was
very authoritarian as a military commander but was regarded with
respect by his own troops and his enemies – he appeared to have the
most credibility as seen by the fact that the Cuban military generals
surrendered to him and not Castro. He preferred confrontation to
compromise as seen by his acts during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
During the post-revolution purge, he faltered as a leader by being
“agreeable” and consenting to the public demands rather than follow his principles. He led by example, performing acts of valor in
battle; and later, even though he was a minister, by assisting in the
rescue activities after the explosion at the Havana Harbor. Che
appealed to the people to adopt moral incentives. He was successful
in ensuring the adoption of the “New Man” policy in Cuba.
Above all, Che Guevara
was a Trasformational leader. He was charismatic and motivational,
while providing intellectual stimulation and individualized
consideration. Time magazine claimed Che was Castro's brain and was
“guiding Cuba with icy calculation, vast competence, high
intelligence and a perceptive sense of humor.”
Legacy
Che Guevara is
considered by many to be a martyr of socialism and proletarian
internationalism who stayed true to his ideals and died before he
could see the decline of his cause. Even to the end, his refusal to
compromise his beliefs have left a very messiah-like impression on
many who supported him. His views on the continuity of the revolution
even after his death have inspired radical movements in Europe and
U.S.A. When his body was kept on public display in Bolivia after his
execution there were several hundreds of people mourning him, some
even snipping off pieces of his hair as divine relics.
Guevara remains, to this
day, a national hero in Cuba where school-children take a daily
pledge of “We will be like Che!” His countenance is still seen on
a Cuban 3 Peso note. Public buildings ranging from schools to museums
across Argentina continue to be named after him. In 2008, his
birth-city of Rosario, Argentina unveiled a 12-foot bronze statue of
him. Even today, in certain parts of Bolivia, Che Guevara is worshiped as a saint. Alberto Korda's photograph of Guevara titled
“Guerrillero Heroico” is the “Most Famous Photograph in the
World” according to Maryland Institute College of Art. The monochromatic version of the photograph has inspired a slew of merchandise ranging from bags to cups; from t-shirts to banners.
Che Guevara has been
titled “Red Robin Hood”, “New Garibaldi”, “Don Quixote of
Communism” by one group, while others accuse him of being a
“ruthless executioner”, a “headstrong messiah” and a
“cold-blooded killing machine”. Nelson Mandela called him “an
inspiration for every human being who loves freedom”. His
detractors, such as author Paul Berman, however, say the cult
following that Che has inspired is an “episode of moral callousness
of our time.” British historian Hugh Thomas sums up Che Guevara's
life quite succinctly, “As in the case of Marti or Lawrence of
Arabia, failure has brightened, not dimmed the legend.”
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