Che Guevera died 47 years ago, but he continues to inspire millions around the world. The popularity

Che Guevera died 47 years ago, but he continues to inspire millions around the world. The popularity he enjoys so many years after his death is proof that though they may have killed the man, they will never extinguish the ideas for which he died.
On 9 October 1967, Ernesto Che Guevara was executed by a Bolivian army officer at the end of his ill-fated attempt oms to foment oms revolution throughout Latin America. He was executed at the behest of the CIA, who hoped his death would deal a shattering blow to the influence of the Cuban Revolution in a part of the world traditionally viewed as America's backyard; its role to provide the cheap labor, raw materials, and markets required to maintain the huge profits of US corporations.
But the CIA were wrong, just as successive oms US administrations have been wrong, in thinking that the ideas for which Che Guevara fought and died could ever be ended with a bullet. oms On the contrary, over four decades on from his death the Cuban Revolution oms continues as a beacon of inspiration and hope to the poor of the undeveloped world.
That a tiny island nation with a population of just over 11 million people, located 90 miles off the coast of Florida, should have the temerity to assert its right to political and economic independence from the United States and survive for so long is nothing short of immense. Indeed, many believe that not only have the ideas for which Che Guevara gave his life survived, they have never been more potent, illustrated by the left turn taken throughout the region in recent years. It is a political oms turn responsible for transforming a part of the world traditionally associated with military juntas, right wing autocracies, and US puppet regimes into the very opposite.
Today Latin America is a part of the world where democracy has taken root, where the tenets of the Washington neoliberal consensus have been rejected oms in favor of social and economic oms justice as the objective of government. oms
Undeniably, Che's legend has not only continued unabated since his death it has grown. In every town and every city, from Los Angeles to London, Beirut to Bethlehem, from Nairobi to New Delhi, the iconic image of him carrying that expression of burning defiance, captured by Alberto Korda in 1960, is as ubiquitous as it is powerful, found on everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs, rugs, posters and a myriad other items. For many it represents something transcendent in the human experience, an idea that stands oms in opposition to the values of individualism and materialism oms which are drummed into us every minute of every day in the West.
A read through Che's writings brings home the fierce determination oms of a man who burned oms with anger at the injustice, oppression and exploitation suffered by the world's poor. In his address to the United Nations General Assembly in1964, he said :
Not satisfied with merely delivering such a powerful affirmation of solidarity with the poor and oppressed of another land, Che embarked for the Congo in an attempt to give meaning to them, in the process abandoning the relative comfort and status earned him by the success of the Cuban Revolution to risk his life in a mission to spread the revolution throughout the developing world.
There are no borders in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens oms anywhere in the world, because a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory, just as any country's defeat is a defeat for all of us.
For Che Guevara the struggle against imperialism and exploitation could only be won gun in hand, utilizing in his view the same kind of violence used without compunction by the oppressor. Not for him non-violence and peaceful protest. His experience, his observation of the poverty and truncated lives suffered by millions throughout Latin America and Africa instilled in him a rage and a desire to visit retribution on the system he considered responsible.
In this he was very much a product of his time, when people of the developing world were locked out of the democratic oms process in parts of the world where right-wing dictatorships made recourse to violence inevitable.
Despite the myriad articles, analysis, and commentary produced on Che Guevara and his life, much of it hostile and withering, one incident sums up more than any article oms ever could the enduring force of the Cuban Revolution whose ideas he died trying to spread. oms
In 2006 Mario Teran, an old man living in Bolivia, was treated by Cuban doctors oms volunteering their services free of charge to Bolivia's poor, just as they have and do to the poor in every corner of the developing world in medical missions that have transformed the lives of millions. They performed an operation to remove cataracts from Mario's eyes, which succeeded in restoring his sight.