The Death of Che Guevara [antikvár]

Dates 1927 The Communist Party of China leads an uprising in Shanghai, a general strike, an assault on the police station to gain arms for the rebels. The uprising —badly coordinated, poorly armed—misfires, is put down, is . . . (but what word for political error, historical misfortune might make vivid so many deaths?) by Kuomintang troops. Thirty-five years later. Regis Debray, a French theoretician, gathers up the dead from the streets of Shanghai, orders them into the cunning of history, draws a lesson, a moral: "But the blood shed in Shanghai must not be inscribed in the deficit column of the Revolution, as though it were the result of an error of judgment. . . the theoretical proof that an isolated urban insurrection cannot achieve victory in a semi-colonial country had to be made in practice." (The country surrounds the city.) 1928 Profitable outlets cannot be found for the reinvestment of profits made by the industrial monopolies. Money is drained from the economy or wagered point-lessly. Inventories build. These manufactured things, things that too few can buy, stand against their makers, menace them. 1929 Panic on Wall Street, and in the City of London. Argentina, whose wealth is beef sold to the industrialized countries, discovers again that it does not make history, but, like a terrified dreamer, merely suffers events. 1930 Irigoyen, the blind, now unpopular President of Argentina, sits alone in an unlit room. He is overthrown by the Army under General Uriburu. In China, Chiang's troops move against the Communist bases in Kiangsi, Fukien, Hopeh. Gandhi gaily walks two hundred miles across India to the Arabian Sea. In defiance of British law, he picks up some salt from the shore. His gesture enters the imagination of the Indian masses, is completed by them, becomes an action. Thousands join Gandhi in defiance, illegally dry seawater on the rooftops for salt, hawk it openly in the streets. Nonviolent marchers move towards the Dharasana Salt Works, the British monopoly. (Their chests are naked, their ribs exposed.) Native policemen, goaded on by their British officers, shatter the marchers' heads with steel lathes. The marchers do not even raise their arms against the blows. Enraged by this passivity, this restraint, the police fracture men's skulls.