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6:07
Transcript
0:06
His face is recognized all over the world.
0:09
The young medical student
who became a revolutionary icon.
0:13
But was Che Guevara
a heroic champion of the poor
0:16
or a ruthless warlord
who left a legacy of repression?
0:21
Order, order.
0:22
Hey, where have I seen that guy before?
0:25
Ahem, your Honor, this is Ernesto Che Guevara.
0:29
In the early 1950s,
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0:30
he left behind a privileged life
as a medical student in Argentina
0:35
to travel through rural Latin America.
0:38
The poverty and misery he witnessed
convinced him that saving lives
0:41
required more than medicine.
0:44
So he became a terrorist
0:45
seeking to violently overthrow
the region's governments.
0:48
What?
0:50
The region's governments
were brutal oligarchies.
0:52
Colonialism may have formally ended,
0:54
but elites still controlled
all the wealth.
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0:57
American corporations bought up land
originally seized from indigenous people
1:02
and used it for profit and export,
1:04
even keeping most of it uncultivated
while locals starved.
1:09
Couldn't they vote to change that?
1:11
Oh, they tried, your Honor.
1:12
In 1953, Che came to Guatemala
1:15
under the democratically-elected
government of President Árbenz.
1:19
Árbenz passed reforms to redistribute
1:22
some of this uncultivated
land back to the people
1:25
while compensating the landowners.
1:27
But he was overthrown
in a CIA-sponsored coup.
1:31
The military was protecting against
the seizure of private property
1:34
and communist takeover.
1:36
They were protecting corporate profits
1:38
and Che saw that they would use
the fear of communism
1:41
to overthrow any government
that threatened those profits.
1:45
So he took the lessons of Guatemala
with him to Mexico.
1:48
There, he met exiled Cuban revolutionaries
1:51
and decided to help them
liberate their country.
1:53
You mean help Fidel Castro
turn a vibrant Cuba into a dictatorship.
1:58
Dictatorship was what Cuba
had before the revolution.
2:01
Fulgencio Batista was a tyrant
who came to power in a military coup.
2:05
He turned Havana into a luxury playground
for foreigners
2:09
while keeping Cubans mired in poverty and
killing thousands in police crackdowns.
2:15
Even President Kennedy called it
the worst example
2:17
of "economic colonization, humiliation,
and exploitation in the world."
2:23
Whatever Batista's faults,
2:25
it can't compare to the totalitarian
nightmare Castro would create.
2:29
Forced labor camps, torture of prisoners,
no freedom to speak or to leave.
2:35
But this isn't the trial
of Fidel Castro, is it?
2:38
Che Guevara was instrumental in helping
Castro seize power.
2:42
As a commander in his guerilla army,
2:44
he unleashed a reign of terror
across the countryside,
2:48
killing any suspected spies or dissenters.
2:51
He also helped peasants build
health clinics and schools,
2:55
taught them to read,
2:56
and even recited poetry to them.
2:58
His harsh discipline was necessary
against a much stronger enemy
3:01
who didn't hesitate to burn entire
villages suspected of aiding the rebels.
3:06
Let's not forget that the new regime
held mass executions
3:09
and killed hundreds
of people without trial
3:12
as soon as they took power in 1959.
3:15
The executed were officials
and collaborators
3:18
who had tormented
the masses under Batista.
3:21
The people supported
this revolutionary justice.
3:24
Which people?
3:25
An angry mob crying for blood
does not a democracy make.
3:29
And that's not even mentioning
the forced labor camps,
3:32
arbitrary arrests,
3:34
and repression of LGBT people
that continued long after the revolution.
3:39
There's a reason people kept
risking their lives to flee,
3:42
often with nothing but the clothes
on their backs.
3:45
So was that all this Che brought to Cuba?
3:47
Just another violent dictatorship?
3:49
Not at all.
3:50
He oversaw land redistribution,
3:52
helped established universal education,
3:54
and organized volunteer literacy brigades
that raised Cuba's literacy rate to 96%,
4:01
still one of the highest in the world.
4:03
Which allowed the government to control
what information everyone received.
4:07
Guevara's idealistic incompetence
as Finance Minister
4:10
caused massive drops in productivity
4:13
when he replaced worker pay raises
with moral certificates.
4:18
He suppressed all press freedom,
4:19
declaring that newspapers
were instruments of the oligarchy.
4:23
And it was he who urged Castro
to host Soviet nuclear weapons,
4:27
leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis
4:30
that brought the world
to the brink of destruction.
4:33
He was a leader, not a bureaucrat.
4:35
That's why he eventually left to spread
the revolution abroad.
4:38
Which didn't go well.
4:40
He failed to rally rebels in the Congo
4:42
and went to Bolivia
even when the Soviets disapproved.
4:45
The Bolivian Government,
with the help of the CIA,
4:48
was able to capture and neutralize
this terrorist in 1967,
4:53
before he could do much damage.
4:55
While doing plenty of damage themselves
in the process.
4:58
So that was the end of it?
4:59
Not at all. As Che said,
the revolution is immortal.
5:03
He was publicly mourned in cities
all over the world.
5:06
Not by the Cubans who managed to escape.
5:08
And his story would inspire
young activists for generations to come.
5:12
Ha. A trendy symbol of rebellion for those
who never had to live under his regime.
5:18
Symbols of revolution
may become commodified,
5:20
but the idea of a more just world remains.
5:24
Maybe, but I'm not sharing my coffee.
5:27
Che Guevara was captured and
executed by government forces in Bolivia.
5:32
His remains would not be found
for another 30 years.
5:35
But did he die a hero
or had he already become a villain?
5:39
And should revolutions be judged
by their ideals or their outcomes?
5:44
These are the questions we face
when we put history on trial.
— end of transcript —
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