He's an icon and, like most icons, the legend of his life has
overtaken the facts. In Bolivia, the site of his execution has become a
tourist mecca. In college dorm rooms, his image (defiant gaze, beret
adorned with a red star) remains a perennial favorite among wannabe
revolutionaries. Sartre called him "the most complete human being of our
age." Journalist Daniel Wolf, in a recent issue of England's Spectator
magazine, labeled him "one of the most oversold figures of the past half century."
Thirty-seven years after he was executed in Bolivia, Che Guevara lives
- and then some. The man who helped Fidel Castro spearhead the Cuban
revolution remains a potent and divisive figure, even though most North Americans today know him only as an image, an
abstract radical.
