One of the favorite libelous smears by right-wing hacks is that Argentine Marxist revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara (1928-1967) was RACIST against blacks. Being shameless, they usually attack where they think left-wing icons or heroes are strongest. However, when you understand the full depth to which the forces of reaction LIE, then you realize why they can’t be trusted for information generally and especially on leftist figures! Hopefully, this article will operate as a mini case study displaying that reality.

Their “evidence” for this often-parroted internet falsehood is Che’s youthful diary passage where he visits a Venezuelan slum and offensively opines that the blacks he encounters there are “indolent and lazy”, waste their money on booze, and don’t save money like Europeans. He also compares the “racial purity” of the blacks in Caracas to the Portuguese. However, these lines are always deceptively and disingenuously culled from the larger historical context of his later life … so what is the truth?

That quote was written by Guevara in 1952 when he was 24 and encountered blacks for basically the first time in his life, during his Motorcycle trip around South America (as told in his memoir ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’). ** The full context of this statement is addressed by biographer Jon Lee Anderson on page 92 of ‘Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life’, and Anderson notes they were “stereotypical of white Argentine arrogance and condescension.” ** However, months later at the end of his continental trip, Guevara announced himself a transformed man and even denounced the racism he encountered while living in Miami, USA for a month, while awaiting his return to Argentina. Essentially, the quote was before he was “Che”, in both literal nickname and political beliefs.

From then on and throughout his life, Che showed he was ANTI-RACIST through his ACTIONS:

– The following year in 1953, while travelling through Bolivia with his friend Carlos “Calica” Ferrer, Guevara became indignant when he observed that all the dark-skinned indigenous Indians had to be sprayed with DDT (ostensibly to kill lice) before being allowed to enter the Ministry of Peasant Affairs.

– Che’s very first student in 1957 as a guerrilla fighter was a 45-year-old illiterate black guajiro named Julio Zenon Acosta, whom he was teaching the alphabet. After Acosta was killed in an ambush by Batista’s forces, Che exalted him as “my first pupil” and the kind of “noble peasant” that made up the heart of the Cuban Revolution.

– During the Cuban guerrilla campaign, Che’s girlfriend (for all intents and purposes) for the first half of 1958 was Zoila Rodríguez García, a black/mulatto woman. Moreover, his first wife Hilda Gadea whom he married in 1955 was a dark-skinned indigenous Peruvian.

– In 1959, Che pushed for racially integrating the schools and universities in Cuba, years before they were racially integrated in the southern United States. For context, the Alabama National Guard was needed to force Governor George Wallace aside at the University of Alabama in 1963 and forced school busing wasn’t enacted in the U.S. until 1971.