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CRACKING THE MALE CODE: THE POLITICIZATION OF GENDER IN LATIN
AMERICAN GUERRILLA LITERATURE

By

Brianne E. Orr

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Hispanic Cultural Studies

2009

ABSTRACT

CRACKING THE MALE CODE: THE POLITICIZATION OF GENDER IN LATIN
AMERICAN GUERRILLA LITERATURE

By
Brianne E. Orr

This doctoral dissertation explores how and why a new masculinity emerges in
five rebel narratives that represent different phases in the history of Latin American
revolutions: Ernesto ‘Che‘ Guevara’s Pascy‘es de la guerra revolucioncn'ia (1963). and El
dial-1'0 d6] Che en Bolivia (1968), Omar Cabezas‘ La montaﬁa es alga mcis que una
inmensa estepa verde (1982), Gioconda Belli’s El par’s bajo mi pie] (2003) and
Subcomandante Marcos’ Nuestra arma es nuestra palabra (2001).

By using theories by Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek, and Elizabeth Grosz, who
propose gender as a category in ﬂux, this dissertation shows how a male code struggles to
break with traditional mac/vista praxis dominant in bourgeois societies. For Guevara and
Cabezas, the mountain, the domain in which the rebels experience theideological limits
of the bourgeois self, becomes the geography for such a change to take place. For
Marcos, it is a Zapatz'sta territory; a peripheral zone in which peasants, indigenous and
other marginalized citizens that the Mexican State has consistently ignored come together
to construct a plan for a more inclusive democracy.

From these standpoints, I propose a “politics of gender” that combines gender and
class as two complementary categories of analysis to evaluate the construction of
Guevara’s model of a non—bourgeois masculinity. The dependence of the narratives on

Cold War and post-Cold War rhetoric helps track the changes made to Che‘s vision on

rebels and revolution. point out the visibility (or invisibility) of Che in other guerrilla
narratives and address why and how (he's model changes and the effects such
modifications have on his view of the relationship between man and the successful
carrying out of the revolution.

Chapter one first provides a biographical analysis of Che that highlights qualities
that come up during his childhood and adolescence that later appear in his model ofthe
guerrilla rebel and second explores how others have “used.“ “read” and mythified Che by
labeling him as a mac/7mm, a heroic guerrillero. and a C hrist-like ﬁgure. Chapter two
evaluates the construction of Che’s new masculinity by analyzing three main issues: the
guerrilla rebels’ wavering between the dominant bourgeois male code and Che’s model;
the revision of bourgeois loci in the mountain. and Che‘s construction of a masculinity
that embeds the feminine through a focus on the body. Chapter three traces how the
Sandinista Revolution rewrites Che through an evaluation of Nicaraguan rebel Omar
Cabezas” bildﬁngsroman that was both written and published during the Cold War. and in
which Cabezas traces his quest to be like Che.

Chapters four and ﬁve represent a shift in the trajectory of previous guerrilla
narratives for Che either appears as a name or as a depoliticized ﬁgure but not as a model
of the guerrilla rebel for the post-Cold War rebel to follow. In chapter four I evaluate
what happens when gender becomes a form of doing politics and love replaces revolution
as the core motivating force in Gioconda Belli’s memoir. Chapter ﬁve examines
Subcomandante Marcos as the final icon of the Latin American revolution that emerges
in a post-Cold War period and explores how revolution and class are replaced by an

identity politics that seeks to give a voice to those historically ignored by the government.

Copyﬁghtby
BRIANNE E. OR

2009

To Raul and Bret

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank those who, in one way or another, made the completion of
this dissertation possible. First and foremost, I would like to extend my most profound
gratitude to my director and mentor, Professor Maria E. Mudrovcic, whose dedication,
devoted guidance, and patience know no bounds and have proven invaluable to me
throughout the dissertation process. Professor Mudrovcic not only taught me to listen to
the “symptoms of the texts” and to think critically about the works that I read and the
words that I write, but her intense enthusiasm for this project and our numerous
conversations, which both challenged and stimulated me intellectually, resulted in my
view of the writing of the dissertation and of the learning process as a collaborative effort
that leads to unremitting self and intellectual growth.

I would also like to thank the other members of my committee, Professors
Eduardo Guizar-Alvarez, Peter Beattie, and Rocio Quispe-Agnoli, for their support,
expertise in Latin American literature, history and culture, and insights both in and
outside of the classroom, which sparked ideas for the dissertation. Professor Quispe-
Agnoli was particularly helpful for her commitment to my studies and encouragement
since my time as an undergraduate student and throughout my graduate career. She was
also the ﬁrst professor to spark my interest in Latin American and gender studies. Other
professors and faculty members from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at MSU
also made my graduate experience and dissertation process a rewarding one. Professor
Doug Noverr, whose frequent words of encouragement proved crucial to the successful
completion of this project, Professor Nancy Marino, who encouraged me to pursue a

degree in higher education and helped me take the necessary steps to embark on such a

vi

journey, and Professor (Emeritus) Joe T. Snow, who has served as a constant source of
support since the beginning of my days at MSU, all deserve a very special mention. My
friend and teaching mentor, Professor Eve Zyzik, taught me through her example to face
my challenges head on and to zealously carry out my professional and personal goals. .
Finally, Spanish Language Coordinator, Carmen Albaladejo also indirectly contributed to
this project for her support, conﬁdence in me and guidance in all things related to
teaching.

I would like also like to thank my family for their ongoing support and
encouragement throughout the process. My parents, Marilyn and Dale Orr, though no
longer with us, taught me to believe in myself and my capacity to set and reach goals.
My dear friend Timmy has always been a very positive force in my life and cheered me
on in some of the toughest moments of the process. My grandma, Mary Wilcox, always
provided pointed advice and encouraging words and demonstrated through her example
that no matter how difﬁcult things get, a woman never loses her “spark” or her drive to
achieve her goals, even at 82 years of age!

I dedicate this dissertation to my husband Raul and my brother Bret. Raul, who
often served as a sounding board for ideas, and as a source of support, energy, and
motivation, and Bret, who much more than a brother is a role model that has oﬁen
provided practical, intellectual, and professional advice, both proved fundamental to this
process. Their unconditional and continual love and support and unwavering faith in me
gave me the conﬁdence and determination necessary to see the last phase of my doctoral

studies through to the end.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

A Politics of Gender in Latin American Guerrilla Narratives ................................ 1
CHAPTER ONE

Che Guevara: The Man, the Myth ............................................................... 19
CHAPTER TWO

Contesting Masculinities, Reforming Spaces: The Emergence of a New Male Code in
the Mountains in Cuba and Bolivia .............................................................. 51
CHAPTER THREE

From Machista to New Man?: Omar Cabezas Negotiates Manhood from the Mountain in
Nicaragua ............................................................................................. 89
CHAPTER F OUR

Gioconda Belli: the Dichotomy of the Female “Guerrilla” Rebel in Nicaragua ......... 124
CHAPTER FIVE

Citizens for Change: Subcomandante Marcos, the EZLN and their Cultural War on
Democracy ......................................................................................... 15]
CONCLUSIONS

From Revolution to Reform: Democracy and Culture as Politics, the Future of the
Revolution in Latin America? ........................................................................................ 188
WORKS CITED ................................................................................... 193

viii

KEYWORDS
Latin America
Cuba
Nicaragua
Mexico
Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara
Omar Cabezas
Gioconda Belli
Subcomandante Marcos
Twentieth century
Masculinity
Gender
Revolution
Class
Guerrilla Narratives
Ideology
Sandinismo

Zapatismo

ix

Introduction: A Politics of Gender in Latin American Guerrilla Narratives

How does one read Che Guevara today? Critics in the ﬁeld of gender studies
have often read Che from a feminist point of view. These analyses highlight Che’s
purported “ﬂaws,” portray him as a “macho” (Guillermoprieto, “The Harsh Angel” 79),
describe him as a man that seeks to exemplify an egotistical “model of the masculine
desire for manliness” (Rodriguez, Women, Guerrillas & Love 50) and claim that beneath
his thought and actions lie a desire not only to propose himself as a hero, but to demand
that others “follow his impossible example” (Guillermoprieto, “The Harsh Angel” 86).

One of the most striking evaluations of Che is Alma Guillermoprieto’s depiction
of him as a man that after his participation in the triumphant Cuban Revolution (1959)
believed he had the “remedy for every form of social disease” and was “inescapably
committed to a certain deﬁnition of virility and to the code of conduct it implied: a macho
deﬁnition [. . .] [a]s a result, he found it unbearably humiliating ever to lose face, back
down, admit defeat” (79). Guillermoprieto’s description of Che as an ego-driven man
that flaunted his victory in Cuba and acted according to a machista code of conduct,
especially when faced with defeat, eschews a discussion of him as a guerrilla rebel leader
that fought and died for his ideals.

The evaluations of Che as a machista, a self-perpetuated myth, and an
unreachable masculine model seem essentialist and synchronic. They “forget” to
mention that class antagonism (and not gender) was the central issue for Che. This “slip”
or moving away from “what really matters” for Che results in the embrace of an

ostensibly “inauthentic” vision of the guerrilla ﬁghter that aims to discount his political

value and ﬁx him in a discourse that centers on identity rather than class politics (Zizek,
The Ticklish Subject 354).

Such readings of Che seemed like a false start to me and I was not interested in
further contributing to what appeared to be a series of unjust evaluations of Che. My
dissertation sets out to “correct” such misinterpretations by reading Che as a discourse
that appears in different forms in the guerrilla narratives of the 20th century in Latin
America. In my analysis, I do not seek to analyze Che according to a limiting gender
binary that differentiates the “feminine” from the “masculine,” nor do I aim to
depoliticize Che by examining his life according to a set of values that simply did not
apply for him (Butler, Gender Trouble 22-23). The questions that arose for me were:
how does Che change? What changes in Che? And when do such changes occur?

“Guerrillero” or “hombre nuevo”?

One of the misreadings of Che I strive to correct is the view of the guerrilla rebel
(guerrillero) and the new man (hombre nuevo) as synonymous. Many have mistakenly
interpreted these two “models” as transposable but my proposal marks a clear difference
between them. To begin, I do not view the new man as a model. It is the ideological
product of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution that arose out of Che’s desire to promote
Cuba (post-1959) as a political, aesthetic, social, and institutional vanguard. Che
believed that in order to reinvent society in a post-revolutionary context, one had to
reinvent man. The only way, then, to create a new society was to construct a social
vanguard; a new man that would act as the motor of the new socialist system proposed by

the revolution.

Contrary to prior evaluations of the new man, this ﬁgure was not individualist but
rather stressed the necessity of collective unity under the banner of socialism.1 In order
to achieve shared values, the new man was to undergo a continual process of self-
transformation that would begin after the triumph of the revolution and continue
throughout the remainder of his life. In his compilation of theoretical essays on
revolution and man, El socialismo y el hombre nuevo (1979), Che delineates the
importance of self-awareness and progress in the construction of the new man: “En este
periodo de construccion del socialismo podemos ver el hombre nuevo que va naciendo.
Su imagen no esta todavia acabada; no podria estarlo nunca [. . .] lo importante es que los
hombres van adquiriendo cada dia mas conciencia de la necesidad de su incorporacion a
la sociedad y, a] mismo tiempo, de su importancia como motores de la misma” (9).

If the new man is the result of the successful revolutionary movement in Cuba,
then the model of the guerrilla rebel that is formed on the mountain, a laboratory for the
rebel during the guerrilla phase of the insurgency, is the vanguard of the new man. The
guerrilla ﬁghter, a dynamic model of man that is in a constant state of transition, created
the possibility for the revolution from this geography. For Che, the revolution would not
exist without the mountain for it was in this space that the rebel consciously worked to
build himself up in relation to the harsh living conditions and other rebels as well as
gained access to and the support of the masses through the implementation of agrarian

reforms and literacy campaigns.

 

l Ileana Rodriguez, a canonical theorist on gender and revolutionary studies in Latin America that
has written extensively on Che, views the new man as a model. She deﬁnes this ﬁgure as a “sujeto sexuado
[...] un sujeto masculino individual” that fails to incorporate other social groups (i.e. women and the
indigenous) in its scope (“Conservadurismo y disension” 771).

In his fundamental text on the foco theory, Guerra de guerrillas (1961), Che
deﬁnes the guerrilla rebel as “un reformador social” that ﬁghts to “[romper] con todo el
vigor que las circunstancias perrnitan, los moldes de esa institucionalidad” (34). The idea
that the guerrilla rebel’s main duty is to “break” with established governmental
institutions means that this task is carried out during the revolution, a quality of the model
that sharply distinguishes it from the new man that emerges in a post-revolutionary
society.

Because of his fundamental role in carrying out the revolution from the mountain,
the guerrilla rebel also comes forth as a protagonist in the rebel narratives that I examine
in this dissertation. For this reason, I am interested in working with Che’s model of the
guerrilla ﬁghter and not the idea of the new man. My study traces the changes and
adjustments that the guerrilla ﬁghter experiments beginning with Che’s proposal for a
new code of manhood outlined in his Cuban and Bolivian rebel narratives and ending
with Subcomandante Marcos’ political texts. My analysis highlights a shift from a view
of the revolution as a class-based radical political act that seeks to replace the existing
hegemonic system with a new socialist society to indigenous-led social movements that
aim to gain recognition from the neoliberal State and to construct a more inclusive form
of democracy.

Literary Corpus

The corpus of the 20‘h century guerrilla literature in Latin America is vast and

incorporates narratives from Central America, the Southern Cone and the Caribbean and

from men and women alike.2 Since the pool of titles is extensive, I took three factors into

 

2 Some examples of guerrilla narratives include, but are not limited to: Guatemalan guerrilla rebel
Mario Payeras’ Dias de la selva (198]), Nicaraguan rebel ﬁghter Doris Tijerino’s “Somos mil/ones ": la

account while choosing the rebel narratives I analyze in this dissertation. 1) If previous
readings of Che had been done synchronically, I wanted to read Che historically to see
how he appears as either a point or a silence in the texts representative of distinct
revolutionary movements of the 20th century. 2) In Che’s narratives, Pasajes de la
guerra revolucionaria (1963) and El diario del Che en Bolivia (1968), the mountain and
the guerrilla rebel emerge as two intricately related and fundamental aspects of the
revolutionary process. I wanted to trace any modiﬁcations made to the foundational
features in Che’s texts in response to the shifting historical needs and demands of the
rebel movements after the Cuban Revolution. 3) As I was selecting the corpus for this
study, I realized that there was a clear difference among works that were written and
published in a Cold War and works that were published and evaluated revolutionary
movements that emerged in a post-Cold War setting. The dependence of these texts on
these distinct periods seemed useful to me. This frame would help me track the changes
. that were made to Che’s vision on man and revolution, point out the visibility (or
invisibility) of Che in other rebel narratives and allow me to address why and how
changes were made to Che’s model and the effects such modiﬁcations had on his view of
the intricate relationship between the guerrilla rebel and the successful carrying out of the
revolution.

The model of the guerrilla ﬁghter came forth in response to Che’s conscious
desire to build up a new code of manhood from the mountain that would break from the
patriarchal male code both prior to and during the Cuban Revolution, one of the most

controversial stages of the Cold War, if not the hottest period of this ideological war on

 

vida de Doris Maria combatiente nicaragﬁense (I977), Chilean Mirista Marcia Alejandra Merino Vega’s
Mi verdad: “mas allci del horror yo acuso... " (I993), and Claribel Alegria and DJ. Flakoll’s No me
agarran viva: la mujer salvadoreﬁa en lucha (1983) and Para romper el silencio (I984).

“values” (Franco, The Decline & Fall 1). In Nicaraguan Omar Cabezas” narrative on the
Sandinista Revolution, La montaﬁa es alga mas que una inmensa estepa verde (1982), a
bildﬁngsroman that was both written and published during the Cold War, I noticed that
Che visibly appears as a model for Cabezas — the narrative traces his quest to be like Che
— and as the vanguard of the Sandinista, the model of man proposed by Carlos Fonseca,
one of the co-founders of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), during the
Nicaraguan Revolution (Cabezas 129). Yet how would the rebel authors that write in a
post-Cold War context view Che?

If in Cabezas’ work, Che continued to appear as a viable model to follow for the
construction of the rebel during the revolution, in Gioconda Belli’s memoir on love and
revolution, El pais bajo mi piel (2003), Che does not come up at all, at least not as an
example to follow. For Belli, who writes about the Nicaraguan Revolution from a post-
Cold War perspective, Che only appears twice: ﬁrst, as one of the guerrilla rebels that
fought alongside Fidel Castro or, later on, in her description of Henry Ruiz (“Modesto”),
leader of the Prolonged People‘s War (GPP) from the mountain, as a “Nicaraguan Che
Guevara” for his apparent bourgeois features and intellectual capacity (Belli 244).

In Subcomandante Marcos’ anthology, Nuestra arma es nuestra palabra (2001), a
compilation of political texts written about the Contemporary Zapatista Movement, an
indigenous-based movement that began in 1994 (roughly ﬁve years after the fall of the
Berlin Wall), something much different occurs. In his writings, Marcos employs a
multicultural discourse that ignores class politics and emphasizes gender and other
aspects of identity politics (i.e. ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation) as valid categories

of analysis. As a consequence, rather than portray Che as a class-conscious guerrilla

rebel, Marcos depicts Che as a “ciudadano del mundo,” a worldly citizen, a ﬁgure Slavoj
Zizek calls the “subject of democracy” (Looking Awry 165). Che’s appearance as a mere
name in Belli’s memoir and Marcos’ democratization of Che marks a signiﬁcant shift
from previous rebel narratives in which he remained present as a model. Such a change
raised more questions for me: why was Che’s political value invisible or changed for
Belli and Marcos but present as a model for Omar Cabezas? What had changed? What
was the (missing) link among the Cold War and post-Cold War narratives?

A “Politics of Gender”

The answer to these questions appeared to be gender. Yet, if previous studies on
Che within the ﬁeld of gender studies proved problematic because he was evaluated
according to a limited gender binary that marked his point of View as machista and
avoided a discussion of class politics, then what type of gender was of interest to me?
How could I conceive a gender-based analysis of Che while at the same time
incorporating and addressing “what really matters” as Zizek would say?

It seemed to me that if Che is detached from his political actions and ideological
beliefs when gender alone comes to the fore as a viable analytical tool, a possible solution
was to move beyond a purportedly ﬁxed gender binary by creating a “politics of gender”
that connects gender and class and evaluates how these categories of analysis enter into
dialogue with one another in a study of Che’s proposal for a new code of manhood on the
mountain. This crucial step has allowed me to move forward by providing an analysis of
Che within the ﬁeld of gender studies that does not “forget” to recognize class

antagonism as a core issue in Che’s proposal for his model of the guerrilla rebel.

This dissertation is theoretically indebted to Judith Butler’s deﬁnition of gender as
performative and as such, as a category in flux.3 This view of gender emerged as a
proposal of how to “break with patriarchy” in Butler’s study Gender Trouble (1990).

The idea of gender as a category that is not ﬁxed, but rather in a constant state of motion
has helped me explain why Che’s proposal for a new standard for man begins as a
contradictory male code that both incorporates and moves away from the hegemonic
vision of man in patriarchal societies and only succeeds in “breaking” with such a model
when the body, a locus typically associated with the feminine, emerges as a protagonist in
his Bolivian diary.

Prior to explaining how I have arrived at a “politics of gender” that seeks to
clarify how class and gender enter into dialogue with one another in Che’s writings and
in subsequent guerrilla narratives, perhaps it would be helpful to begin with a deﬁnition
of the vision of “gender as a binary” that others have used to evaluate Che (Butler,
Gender Trouble 22). A dichotomous perception of gender stems from the hierarchical
patriarchal family structure, an institution that requires “both a stable and oppositional
heterosexuality” to function and in which men not only appear different from but superior
to women (22).

This organization deﬁnes men and women according to their difference to one
another in the making up and securing of “masculine” and “feminine” identities. Because

the family is a system that has historically structured the relationships between men and

 

3 Butler’s theorization of gender as “performative” is based on her inversion of the discursive
concepts of “cause” and “effect” (Butler, Gender Trouble 25). She contends that the “doer” of an action is
a ﬁction — the subject believes that he is acting on his own desires but he is really simply complying to a
pre-established norm — and the “result” (the idea that I am man or woman and thus must act in a certain
way) of this norm rather than the “cause” of one’s actions motivates the “doer” to act (25). The act of
blindly acting within a naturalized gender binary does not lead to “agency”; one only becomes an “agent”
of his own actions when he consciously moves beyond a normative vision of gender.

women, this institution has ﬁxed the “masculine” and the “feminine” in opposition to one
another and as a consequence, has produced what Butler calls “normative gender”. This
type of gender is: “[d]eﬁned by difference — it is a mutual process by which different
genders, and even subjects within gender, deﬁne themselves by their differences in
others” (Butler, Bodies that Matter 7).

Normative gender, then, is based and relies on the division of the “masculine” and
the “feminine”. Due to men’s and women’s incessant repetition and ostensible
internalization of the hierarchical family structure and their assigned roles within this
paradigm, such a View of gender has been widely accepted as the “core gender identity”
in patriarchal societies (Ingham 66).4 If the limiting gender binary strives to lock men
and women into a system that deﬁnes them by their difference to one another, then the
question that arose for me was how can one make a clean “break” with the binary and
fracture the seemingly resolute nature of the gender norm in a patriarchal setting?

Butler submits that in order to “break” with the norm, one must ﬁrst repeat it (and
prove unable to reproduce it) to excess for it is only through the continuous reiteration of
such an unreachable standard that traditional codes of gender are reiﬁed. The conscious
questioning of a gender binary results in what Butler calls a “political genealogy of
gender ontologies,” a process that if successful “will deconstruct the substantive
appearance of gender into its constitutive acts and locate and account for those acts
within the compulsory frames set by the various forces that police the social appearance

of gender” (33 [emphasis mine]). It is only through the problematization of the mere

 

4 John M. lngham deﬁnes core gender identity as a “central element of self-representation [...] a
basic sense of being a male or female” that “comprises not only a personal sense of one’s bodily self and
sexual orientation but, also, a social identity and social role” (66). Thus, “core gender identity” is the
normative gender for it is only through “proper” socialization that men and women begin to view
themselves according to the limiting binary vision of gender.

existence of a naturalized gender hierarchy that the subject achieves “agency” and
succeeds in creating “new possibilities for gender that contest the rigid codes of
hierarchical binarisms” (147, 145).

If, as Butler suggests, the only way to propose a new way of doing gender is to
move beyond the standard view of gender as a binary, then it seemed to me that Che
would only succeed in creating a new code of manhood from the mountain by breaking
from the patriarchal male code. This means that another effect of considering the
relationship between class and gender was to think of the standard for men in patriarchal
societies as a bourgeois model of manhood. In Che’s writing, there is no doubt that the
patriarchal standard is “the” bourgeois model of man. Argentine Marxist Anibal Ponce’s
theories on the bourgeois man and the new man outlined in Humanismo burgués y
humanismo proletario (1935) proved instrumental in Che’s rethinking of gender as a
class-based difference. But more inﬂuential than Ponce, from my point of view was,
perhaps, Karl Marx’s deﬁnition of the city, the family, education, and the future
according to a bourgeois logic.5

The Bourgeois Model of Society and Man

In Marx, the city becomes a bourgeois space related to the idea of civil society
and the rights of the citizens that make up this social body. In a civil society, all citizens
or “free individuals” are bound to one another by their right to vote and ostensibly share
other universal rights (Marx, “On the Jewish Question” 17). Yet for Marx, political

emancipation and the recognition of civil rights and liberties did not address the main

 

5 Apart from following Anibal Ponce’s and Karl Marx’s thought, Che also most likely borrowed
from Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariategui, who united his thoughts on what he called the “Indian
condition”, land reform, and Marxist-Leninist tendencies in his compilation of essays, Siete ensayos de
interpretacio'n de la Realidad Peruana (I959).

10

problem he noted in capitalist society: the State’s tendency to align itself with the owner
of the “means of production” (i.e. land, factories, and capital) and the “means of
coercion” (i.e. the police and the military) and the subsequent antagonism between the
bourgeois (the modern capitalists) and the proletariat (the laborers) classes (The
Communist Manifesto 225). The conﬂict of interests between classes has historically
framed the construction of a hierarchical society.

The focal point of Marx’s class-based model and at the center of capitalism rests
the family, an institution headed off by the (capital-seeking) bourgeois male. The family,
similar to bourgeois society, is driven by “capital,” “private gain” (Marx, The Communist
Manifesto 239), individual interests (237), and reproduction (239). All other institutions
in bourgeois society cater to the family, particularly those involving education, which
serve, only to circulate the values and discourse of the ruling class (239).

In this type of society in which, according to Marx, the family takes precedence
over all, the man, the working man, who depends on the means of production of the
bourgeoisie for his livelihood, is exploited and is vulnerable to all shifts in the expanding
market caused by the privileged class’s incessant quest to acquire capital and knowledge
and the resulting social, economic and eventual political centralization. To rely on
Ponce’s words, in a capitalist society, “el hombre pasa a ser asi un valor mas de la Bolsa,
una cifra mas, friamente calculada” (112). The only way, then, to destabilize the
foundation of a capitalist driven society was to repoliticize the idea of public power by
proposing a new type of society that was future-oriented and utopian-aimed. This new
type of society erected in direct opposition to the bourgeois standard would seek to

abolish class antagonism, address the immediate needs of the people, reforrnulate familial

ll

and educational institutions to incorporate all and promote the deprivatization of land
(Marx, The Communist Manifesto 237).

Marx’s criticism of the self-interested hegemonic class that serves as the motor of
patriarchal societies serves to outline the bourgeois loci Che seeks to consciously
reformulate in his rebel narratives from the mountain. Yet, Anibal Ponce’s vision of the
individualistic humanism adopted by the bourgeois man and proposal for a new model of
man, the “new man” that would “break” with patriarchy and serve as the motor of a new
socialist society provides the platform from which Che, in response to his class
awareness, will rethink gender through his proposal for a new male code constructed in
opposition to the dominant bourgeois model of man.6

Ponce describes the bourgeois man, the center of this urban-based class, as
money-driven (43) and self-interested — “[a] los ojos del “hombre singular” que el
Renacimiento inicia, las relaciones sociales son un simple medio a1 servicio de sus
aspiraciones privadas. Ellas son su ﬁn y su ley” — (82). If the bourgeoisie uses the
working class as a tool to proﬁt as a class, the intellectuals, according to Ponce, act as
accomplices to the ruling class by promoting a vision of culture as a monopoly of the
“bourgeois” man rather than of the “hombre todo,” all men (86). With this, Ponce
suggests that the bourgeoisie and the intellectuals work together to maintain the masses in
ignorance by denying them access to the means of production and to knowledge:

“[i]deologos ﬁeles de la gran burguesia, los humanistas no 3610 no se interesaron en lo

 

6 Many scholars have pointed out Che’s recognition of Anibal Ponce as a theoretical precursor to
his ideas on the revolution and man. See Michael Lowy’s The Marxism of Che Guevara (I973), Roberto
Fernandez Retamar’s “Caliban: Notes towards a Discussion of Culture in Our America” cited in
Theoretical Debates in Spanish American Literature (1997), Jon Lee Anderson’s Che Guevara: A
Revolutionary Life (I997), Néstor Kohan’s De lngenieras a1 Che: ensayas sobre el marxisma argentina y
latianamericano (2000), and Julio Woscoboinik’s Anibal Ponce en la mochila del Che: vida y abra de
Anibal Ponce (2007).

12

mas minimo por la suerte de los trabajadores, sino que contribuyeron a mantener su
ignorancia y prolongar su mansedumbre” (50).

Following Marx, Ponce believes that the only way to successfully “break” with a
bourgeois status quo is to develop a new type of society led by what he calls “proletariat
humanism,” a society that will provide the platform for the rise of a “new man” through
revolution.7 Ponce outlines three major components in proletariat humanism: 1) the
necessity of the union of theory and practice, intelligence and will, and culture and
productive work (113-114); 2) the accessibility of culture to all sectors of society (115);
and 3) the self-elevation of the masses through participation in the revolution and the
importance of combining a desire to study with a need to live according to and act on
socio-political and intellectual aspirations (119). The three elements in proletariat
humanism would allow the members of the working class to experience the culture that
up until this point had been reserved solely for the bourgeois elite, to become more self-
aware through the combination of physical and intellectual labor and to actively
contribute to the development of their own class-based political consciousness. All of
these factors combine to create what Ponce calls a “new man”; a man that seeks to
recuperate the rights denied him from the Renaissance to the 20th century and that could
only be made possible through the coming to power of the marginalized masses by

capitalism (Lowy l7).8

 

7 Anibal Ponce’s proposal for a “new man” or a new human being — “el hombre todo”, and Che’s
later adaptation and application of it to a Cuban context was not gender-biased; it was an ideal that
incorporated men and women alike (86).

8 If the Industrial Revolution made the revision of the idea of man possible, according to Marx,
the “New Russia” that emerged as a product of the successful Bolshevik Revolution (1917), the second
movement in the Russian Revolution of 19 l 7 that was carried out from the mountain and eventually
overtook the Russian Provisional Government and formed the Soviet Union under the leadership of
Vladmir Lenin, became the platform from which the “new man” would actively contribute to the
transformation of society through the implementation of proletariat humanism. Post-Revolutionary Russia

13

The bourgeois standard of man and society outlined by Anibal Ponce and Karl
Marx constitute the model that Che and then his followers seek to revise in their rebel
narratives. This seems to conﬁrm, as I mentioned above, that the only way to evaluate
Che’s proposal is by creating a political nucleus, a “politics of gender” that incorporates
gender and class as two primary and necessary categories of analysis.

It is this very idea of a “politics of gender” that allows me to ﬁrst examine how
Che constructs a contradictory code of manhood in his Cuban and Bolivian narratives and
then to chart how such a model is interpreted, negotiated, and implemented (or not) in
subsequent revolutionary projects in Nicaragua and Mexico. Each chapter of the
dissertation serves to mark how Che’s dynamic gender and class-based model shifts
according to the different historical needs and demands of the revolutionary period of the
20th century in Latin America.

The Outline of the Chapters

The most appropriate beginning for this project is Che Guevara as he is the prism
through which I have read the revolutionary texts I included in this study, yet this
dissertation could very easily be read from end to beginning for it was only through my
analysis of the (post)politica1 texts of Zapatista spokesman Subcomandante Marcos and
his proposal for a new democratic society in Mexico that I came to a complete
understanding of the visions of man and revolution that Che had previously outlined in

his works.

 

enjoyed the beneﬁts of the dissipation of class differences and a politically conscious proletariat, new
generations of workers that were, in Ponce’s words: “las mas limpias, las que nada o casi nada conservan
del pasado” (Ponce l6] ). The vision of the revolution as a puriﬁcation process of man that cleanses the
youth of a bourgeois past and paves the way for the new vocabulary that shapes the rise of the proletariat:
“construir,” “crear”, and “superar” (161) is one that ﬁrst Che adopts: “la revolucién limpia a los hombres
[...] los mejora [...] corrige los defectos” and that Cabezas later employs in his bildtlngsroman to reﬂect
the dichotomy between the “pristine” bourgeois man and the “dirty” rebel of the mountain (Pasajes 124).

14

Chapter one explores how others used, read, and mythiﬁed Che. First, I provide a
biographical analysis of Che in which I highlight qualities that come up during his
childhood and adolescence that later appear in the guerrilla rebel (i.e., self-discipline,
education, change through self-awareness). Then, in a second part, I use Roland Barthes’
deﬁnition of the myth as a bourgeois discourse that “does not want to die” and that seeks
to stop history from taking its natural course, to explore how others have constructed Che
as a myth by labeling him as a heroic guerrillero, a machista, a Christ-like ﬁgure, a Saint,
and as the embodiment of his “model” of the new man (“Myth Today” 120). The
mythiﬁcation of Che is perhaps most clearly evidenced in the recent consumption of hism
as a cultural icon whose political meaning is changed in a post-Cold War context.

If Chapter one outlines how others’ read Che, in Chapter two, I seek to restitute
Che’s voice by exploring how he proposes a contradictory code of manhood from the
mountains in Cuba and Bolivia in two of his guerrilla narratives, Pasajes de la guerra
revalucianaria (1963) and El diaria del Che en Bolivia (1968). These rebel narratives
conﬁrm that the guerrilla ﬁghter in Che’s writings is not a “product” of the revolution
like the new man. It is a dynamic model that is in a constant state of construction that
suffers setbacks and advances and incorporates qualities akin to both a bourgeois code of
manhood and the new male code formed on the mountain during revolution.

I am particularly interested in analyzing three different components in Che’s
proposed new code of manhood: 1) the contradictory male code evidenced in the guerrilla
rebel’s constant wavering between the bourgeois standard for man as established by
Anibal Ponce and Karl Marx and the new way of being a man on the mountain; 2) Che’s

revision of prior bourgeois visions of the family, education and the future on the

15

mountain; and 3) his creation of a masculinity through an overwhelming focus on the
body and its needs (food and drink) and functions. While Che consciously develops the
ﬁrst two elements of his male code in Pasajes, a text that was revised and rewritten for
publication after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and thus after the rise of the
proletariat, the third factor of his proposal unintentionally surfaces in El diaria, a work
that was published without further revisions after Che’s death.

In chapter three I question how the Sandinista revolutionary, Omar Cabezas
rewrites Che. In this chapter it becomes clear that Che persists as a viable model for
Omar Cabezas but his proposal for a new male code from the mountain is changed to ﬁt
the needs and demands of the Nicaraguan revolutionary project. Different from Che’s
writings that only describe the process of construction of the guerrilla rebel from the
mountain, Omar Cabezas provides a more complete trajectory of the process by
describing three distinct phases in his formation as a revolutionary: his time as a student
in the city, the guerrilla phase of the mountain and his return to the city after spending
one year there. The circuit of the new model allows Cabezas to trace the changes he
experiments at different stages of the ﬁght.

Cabezas’ descriptions of life on the mountain also expose some of the aspects of
the revolution that Che silences in his works. Cabezas sexualizes Che’s model of the
guerrilla rebel, highlights loneliness as an effect of living there and if Che only succeeds
in breaking with the bourgeois male code when the body unexpectedly surfaces in his
texts, Cabezas marks the changes of the bourgeois standard for man by using the

contrasting images of “clean” and “dirty”.

16

Chapters four and ﬁve represent a shift in the trajectory of the guerrilla narratives
outlined above for Che either appears as a name or as a depoliticized subject and not as a
suitable model for the rebel. In chapter four, I evaluate what happens when gender
becomes a form of doing politics and love replaces revolution as the core motivating
force in Gioconda Belli’s memoir El pais bajo mi pic] (2003). Belli’s text is an anomaly,
a work that is in between the narratives of the Cold War and the writings characteristic of
a post-Cold War period. This conditions her rewriting of the Sandinista Revolution. If
the crux of Cabezas’ narrative is his quest to be like Che, Belli seems to want to forget
about Che or to simply reference him in association with the names of leaders of the
Cuban (Fidel Castro) and Sandinista Revolutions (Henry Ruiz).

Furthermore, Belli only mentions the revolution when it forms part of her feminist
agenda. This suggests that the only form of doing politics for Belli is through gender. As
a consequence, her search for love during the revolution dictates her actions. Such a shift
in focus disorganizes the relationships between comrades in the book and affects the
vision of politics Belli promotes in her memoirs. Thus, Belli’s work, rather than a
guerrilla narrative, provides an example of how to write an autobiography from a
gender(ed) perspective and does not continue to revise Che’s male code.

In Chapter ﬁve I closely examine Subcomandante Marcos as-the ﬁnal icon of the
Latin American revolution that emerges in a post-Cold War period. I evaluate the
consequences of Marcos’ shift from the “political act proper” or revolutionary action, to
an emphasis on an identity politics that excludes class as a category of identiﬁcation of
the subject and that aims instead to incorporate the voices historically ignored by the

government into a plan for a new, more inclusive democracy (Zizek, The Ticklish Sub/”ect

17

199). This plan not only alters Che’s entire revolutionary package —- the guerrilla rebel,
the mountain, and socialism -— but in prying open and aiming to address all of the
different (cultural) battles that come forth as a result of Marcos’ disregard for class
antagonism (the only category that seemed to matter for Che) he, ironically, depoliticizes
the idea of the revolution.

This suggests that rather than carry out a movement that seeks change from
outside of and in opposition to organized governmental institutions, Marcos adopts a
democratic plan for Mexico that strives for recognition from the State that he puts into
question in his writings. The change from Che’s utopian-aimed revolution to Marcos’
new form of democracy results in an implosion of identities rather than progress and
political action, and is indicative of what happens when gender is detached from class.

In conclusion, in this dissertation, I set out to create a “politics of gender” that
links gender and class as two complementary and necessary tools of analysis when
dealing with Che’s new code of manhood that is formed in opposition to a bourgeois
male code. Then, I trace the interpretations, adjustments, and silences of Che’s new
standard in other rebel narratives characteristic of the distinct revolutionary movements

of the 20th century in Latin America.

18

Chapter 1: Che Guevara: The Man, The Myth
In this chapter, I seek to provide a biographical approach to Che Guevara’s life
that focuses on the aspects of his formative years prior to his involvement in the Cuban
Revolution (1928-1953) that later appear as core qualities in the model of the rebel in his
own writings. Following my biographical analysis of Che, I will evaluate the “machine
of discourses” that emerges with his corpse from 1967 to present day that contribute to
his process of mythiﬁcation.l Departing from Roland Barthes’ deﬁnition of myth as a
type of speech “which does not want to die” and that is appropriated and “naturalized” by
the various needs and demands of a bourgeois discourse, I will examine the signiﬁcance
of Che’s corpse in death, as well as explore the various “narratives” of Che past-martem
— public, private, popular — that contribute to the myth of Che Guevara (Barthes, “Myth
Today” 120).
The Formation of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara
Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was born on June 14, 1928 in Rosario, Argentina to
parents Celia de la Sema and Ernesto Guevara Lynch, two educated, politically involved,
and cultured people that valued education and often strayed away from the values of their
bourgeois upbringing (Taibo II, Guevara 3).2 Just two years after his birth, Che was
diagnosed with asthma, an illness that would become one of the most deﬁning aspects in

his life.

 

I The years of Che’s life that I do not address, at least explicitly in the present chapter, will be
considered along with Che’s writings on his experiences as a revolutionary in Cuba and Bolivia in the
following chapter. Also, since this chapter focuses primarily on others’ representations of Che Guevara,
his voice, per se, will not appear here but in Chapter 2, wherein l incorporate his perspective through an
analysis of his Cuban and Bolivian rebel narratives.

2 The values I refer to here are in line with Marx’s vision of the bourgeois man as the core of the
family and as such, is driven by reproduction, capital, and individual interests (The Communist Manifesto
239).

19

In what follows, I trace how this condition awakened his desire to surpass the conﬁnes of
his physical limitations, shaped core characteristics of his personality, fomented his
passion for education and provided the basis for Che’s relationships with others.

From an early age and because of his asthmatic condition, Che developed a
particularly special relationship with his mother (Castaneda, C ampanera 5). Celia was,
at once, Che’s mother, primary conﬁdant, and teacher. As Che’s principal educator,
Celia instructed him on the signiﬁcance of historical and familial tradition, taught him
basic social skills, and instilled in him a profound respect for other individuals, especially
women. Also, while Celia disavowed her bourgeois background —- she came from a fairly
prosperous family of Spanish and Peruvian descent — she would not sacriﬁce Che’s
formal traditional education for the sake of her own socio-political beliefs. She taught
him French and other European languages and cultures and exposed him to an extensive
collection of literary, historical, and philosophical works: “Celia [. . .] que no podia
desligarse de esa obligacion subconsciente de darle una proteccion preferencial, empezo a
ensei‘larle francés. Ella lo hablaba muy bien (habia sido “eI idioma de las clases cultas”;
como se decia en Buenos Aires a principios de siglo) y él lo aprendia a gusto” (Gambini
» 44-45).

What is more, in their household, the Guevara’s practiced what Hans Konings
calls an “open door policy” in which they allowed kids from distinct backgrounds to
interact with Che and his siblings. This guiding principle demonstrated the Guevara’s,

66

and especially Celia’s respect for social justice and for learning, and disrespect for the
holy pursuit of money” (Konings 14). Celia was the ﬁrst to point out the effects of a

capitalist system on Latin American society as well as presented Che with options on

20

how to question social norms through her example. Since she played such an elemental
role in Che’s education, it should not come as a surprise that he later adopts her anti-
capitalist beliefs as principles that become the driving force behind his political action,
embrace of a socialist ideology, and utopian impetus as a guerrilla rebel in the 19503 and
603.

Celia’s resolution to encourage Che to interact with people from different social
upbringings without signaling any difference besides that of their distinct backgrounds
most certainly impacted his world view. Later in his revolutionary period, instead of
promoting a vision of the guerrilla ﬁghter based on the inclusion of diverse categories of
social distinction (i.e., gender, class, age, and ethnicity) as observed in Zapatista
spokesman Subcomandante Marcos’ writings, Che emphasized social class and political
action as two key components of his socialist project and as core qualities of the guen'illa
rebel.

Celia’s inﬂuence on Che far surpassed his educational and human needs. For her
resolve to put into question the social norms for women prevalent in the Argentine
society of her day, which would limit her roles to wife and mother, Daniel James
describes Celia as a “ﬂaming rebel through and through” and contends that she combined
with her rebelliousness a “ﬁerce independence, an unwavering stubbornness, a keen
intelligence, and a sharp tongue” (29). Celia’s bold social stance and unwavering self-
conﬁdence also impacted Che’s development.

From a young age, he demonstrated fervor for education and an impetus to defy
the norm, two qualities Celia possessed and that allowed Che to act through intellect as a

means to compensate for his corporal concerns: “Indeed, by the age of ﬁve, Ernesto had

21

begun to reveal a personality that echoed his mother’s in many ways. Both enjoyed
courting danger, were naturally rebellious, decisive, and opinionated” (Anderson 17).
Ernesto Guevara Lynch also contributed to Che’s formation by inculcating in his son an
enthusiasm for literature and exposing him to a hands-on approach to learning. Guevara
Lynch taught Che certain aspects of being a man in Argentine society — shooting a pistol,
playing chess and talking about women — (Taibo II, Guevara 5). Taibo II contends that
when his father would “let him win” at chess, Che would get angry; he did not want to
win that way (5). Guevara Lynch, Che’s most direct masculine role model at that point in
his life, provided the platform from which Che could surpass the limits his asthmatic
condition imposed on his body and demonstrate success through thought-provoking
games.

Apart from these activities, when Che was conﬁned to bed because of his asthma,
Guevara Lynch often sat with him to keep him company and to bond with him. During
such times, Guevara Lynch shared his oral family history with Che. Che’s father told
him stories of his adventurous grandfather and iconoclast grandmother and their
experiences abroad in Spain, the United States, and Latin America (Gambini 46-47).
Additionally, the two read works on war, revolution, and nation-formation from Guevara
Lynch’s extensive personal library (Anderson 18). As a result, reading became one of
Che’s preferred pastimes: “The asthmatic boy [. . .] spent long hours in bed, developing an
intense love of books and literature. He devoured the children’s classics of the time [. . .]
but he also explored Cervantes [. . .] Pablo Neruda and Horacio Quiroga and the Spanish
poets Machado and Garcia Lorca” (l2). Che’s exposure to literature and the oral history

of his family would not only motivate him as a learner, but as a guerrilla ﬁghter and rebel

author as well. From a very young age, Che realized the power of the written word to
move people to act. But it was only through his personal writings that Che began to put
his view of literature as an ideological and motivational tool into practice. Jean Franco
conﬁrms that Che “who was particularly interested in literature [. . .] was conscious of the
fact that form itself constituted an ideological question” (Critical Passions 290). Che’s
use of literature as a pedagogical tool will become evident in my analysis of his writings
in the following chapter.

During the initial years of his childhood, Che, perhaps out of necessity, preferred
reading and studying to any other extracurricular activities and consequently lived his life
vicariously through the books he read. Through books and the stories of others, he
- converted his bodily awareness into a growing and active desire to supersede his physical
challenges with a deﬁant temperament: “A 105 diez aﬁos,” Paco Ignacio Taibo II relates,
Che “no basta con resistir y leer en cama. Comienza entonces su personal guerra contra
las limitaciones del asma: paseos sin permiso, juegos violentos [. . .] desarrolla una cierta
fascinacién por el peligro” (Taibo II, Guevara 20).

Such behavior was typical of someone living with a chronic condition according
to Freud. One of the ways in which man gains awareness of the limits of his body is
through bodily pain, or in Che’s case, symptoms of his illness such as asthma attacks:
“pain seems to play a part in the process, and the way in which we gain new knowledge
of our organs during painful illnesses is perhaps a model of the way by which in general
we arrive at the idea of our own body” (25-26). In line with what Freud submits here,
Che’s over-awareness of his body led him to overcompensate for his corporal anxieties

with the development of a keen intellectual capacity and mindﬁilness that knew no

23

boundaries. This skill that Che developed out of necessity and as a means to change as a
child will also prove fundamental for his self-construction as a guerrilla rebel, a political
agent that is rooted in and whose livelihood on the mountain depends on self-discipline,
conﬁdence, and a physical and emotional alertness.

In her most recent study on Che Guevara, Diana Sorensen makes this connection
as well in stating that Che’s frequent bouts with asthma, both before and during the
revolution “offered an opportunity for mastery through sacriﬁce” (A Turbulent Decade
26). If Che’s “sacriﬁce” was his capacity to withstand bodily pain and to control his
discomfort and asthma-related symptoms, it is ironic, then, that though he learned to
command his body as a child, after having undergone years of training as a rebel and
playing a key role as a leading participant in the Cuban Revolution, his body will surface
as an uncontrollable force, as a “self-moving machine” that demands his utmost attention
on the mountain in Bolivia (Grosz, Volatile Bodies 6).

Che’s asthmatic condition also inspired him to develop an adamant nature. When
he had the opportunity, he acted as the leader of the group: “Parece ser que a pesar de la
enfermedad Ernesto se convierte en el jefe de un pequeﬁo grupo de niﬁos que se reﬁne en
los terrenos del fondo de su casa [. . .] lo que el asma le niega se lo dara la tenacidad”
(Taibo II, Guevara 20; 22). It is clear how Che shifted his focus from his body to
succeed at virtually any task he set his mind to, thus proving that his desire to surpass his
bodily limits was “active” and therefore fundamental in the construction of his reality

(Cohen, Weiss 4).

24

 

Pushing the Limits of the Body: Che Embraces Sports and Travel

As I suggested above, though Che’s illness limited him in some ways, it also
allowed him to excel in others as well as taught him to test consistently the importance of
his body. This is precisely why during his adolescent years, Che, against his parents’
will, insisted on escaping the conﬁnes of his house by attending public school. This
decision granted him independence from his parents and expanded his social and
intellectual horizons. It also presented him with the opportunity to meet others and to put
his physical capacities on display through his participation in sports. In front of his peers,
Che acted as though he were “normal” or perhaps abnormal in the sense that he always
seemed to exceed his own and others’ expectations of him.

Che’s “acting out” of his body would usually suggest that he performed according
to a normalized masculine ideal that requires men to use physical strength as a means to
gain the approval of other men (Kimmel, The Gender of Desire 33). Yet, I submit that
for Che, the test of his physical capacity was more related to his attentiveness to his own
body and need to prove his capacity to exercise self-discipline and control.

Che’s participation in sports not only provided the platform from which he would
test himself, but it also proved fundamental for his socialization as a male for it allowed
him to take part in male bonding with other men besides his father. Through team sports,
Che met Alberto Granado, a medical student at the University of Buenos Aires. Granado
sparked Che’s interest and integrated him in rugby, travels, and medicine, all activities
that proved of utmost importance in Che’s physical and professional growth as well as

the development of a keen socio-cultural awareness.

25

Perhaps the most signiﬁcant impact Granado had on Che, however, was the trip
the two took on a motorcycle through South America in 1952 when Che was twenty-four
years of age, an experience that would later be represented in Walter Salles’ The
Motorcycle Diaries (2004). During this journey, as is romantically portrayed in the ﬁlm,
Che, a bourgeois male, came face to face for the ﬁrst time with some of the most
impoverished and disease-stricken communities in the region and accordingly used his
skills as a doctor to help others survive in spite of their illnesses and the poor economic
conditions they lived in.3 It may be true that Che’s exposure to the indigenous
communities and leprosy colonies in the regions surrounding the Andes opened his eyes
to class-based issues prevalent at the time and thus may have served as a precursor for his
later embrace of a socialist ideology as the ﬁlm Motorcycle Diaries suggests. Yet, at that
point in his life, Che was not a socialist nor had he been exposed to the prospect of
carrying out a revolution in Latin America.

What Che’s trip through South America did seem to awaken in him was a desire
to link his interest in medicine to a study of the socio-cultural conditions that contributed
to the poor health he observed in the communities be visited. He tackled this goal in his
ambitious thesis project for the completion of medical school. In his study, Che
concluded that “social medicine,” an evaluation of the geographical, economic, and social
conditions of speciﬁc regions during key transitional periods (i.e., from a totalitarian
regime to a democracy-aimed one) as a means to explain the pejorative living conditions

and illnesses that emerge in the people, could improve the socio-cultural conditions in

 

3 For Diana Sorensen, this ﬁlm, rather than highlight Che’s political activities and achievements,
depicts a quijotesque ﬁgure “[t]he youthful romantic who undertakes the continental exploration with his
Sancho-like friend” (5 l ). The romanticization and consequent depoliticization of Che in the ﬁlm is akin to
a post-Cold War rhetoric.

26

which people lived (Anderson 135). Che’s desire to test his thesis in a Central American
context eventually led him to “revolutionary Guatemala” in 1953, a period of his life that
would prove crucial for his theoretical, social, and political preparation for the revolution
(136).
The Shaping of a Revolutionary

In the early 19505, Guatemala became the ﬁrst battleground of the Cold War in
Latin America prior to the Cuban revolution.4 At the time, the CIA decried the country
as an “immediate and direct threat” to the United States because of elected president
Jacobo Arbenz’s focus on social justice and national interests and expropriation of the
properties of United Fruit, a United States-backed corporation that monopolized large
portions of land in Central America (Franco, The Decline 23).5 The mistrust in Arbenz’s
plan for Guatemala, which Jean Franco contends “unleashed a monster” as
“[a]nticommunism became an alibi for slaughter, torture, and censorship — often in the

9939

name of “stability” in opposition to “chaos, resulted in the invasion of the CIA in
Guatemala, the same model applied in the Bay of Pigs‘years later, and Jacobo Arbenz’s
forced resignation from the presidency by Carlos Enrique Diaz de Leon under the

direction of the CIA (23). Diaz de Leon was shortly thereafter replaced by Guatemalan

military dictator Elefegio Monzon and Arbenz sought protection in the Mexican embassy

in June of 1954.

 

4 Jean Franco contends that “it can be argued that the Cold War in Latin America actually began
with the Cuban Revolution, although the 1954 intervention in Guatemala served as a prelude” (3).

5 Other sources that evaluate the coup that resulted in Arbenz’s forced resignation from the
presidency include Scott D. Breckinridge’s The CIA and the Cold War: A Memoir (1993), p.47, Rhodri
Jeffreys-Jones’ CIA and American Democracy (1998), p.90, Michael J Hogan’s The Ambiguous Legacy
US. Foreign Policy in the American Century (1999), p. I70, and Greg Grandin’s Empire ’5 Workshop:
Latin America, the United States, and the Rise ofthe New Imperialism (2006), p. 42.

27

It was in this atmosphere that reﬂected the effects of the ideological war between
the United States and USSR during Arbenz’s presidency that Che arrived to Guatemala.
His presence there would prove essential to the formation of key relations with members
of the Latin American radical Left. Apart from meeting Arbenz, Che was also introduced
to Edelberto Torres Rivas Jr., secretary general of the Communist Youth in Guatemala,
and Nico Lopez, a participant in the attack on the Moncada barracks in 1953, an event
that Fidel Castro and others would later recognize as the start of the Cuban Revolution
(Dosal, Doing Business with Dictators 36-37). However, according to some, Che only
gained access to these and other men through Peruvian Hilda Gadea, a Marxist and self-
proclaimed radical who would later become Che’s ﬁrst wife (37).

Like Che’s mother, Gadea was nonconforming to the norms proposed by a
capitalist society and acted on her political beliefs as a means to gain the respect and
support of fellow Marxists and intellectuals. Gadea provided Che with a theoretical,
political, and pragmatic base that was in line with the ensuing focus on the revolution in
Guatemala. Che and Gadea shared a passion for politics, culture, and literature and
discussed at great length Marxist-Leninist and Maoist ideologies. The combination of
class and agrarian-based ideologies provided Che with the ideological frame that guided
him in his practices as a socially conscious doctor as well as opened his eyes to the
necessary imminence of revolution as the sole means for implementing change in Latin
America. For Che “Marxism was not simply a political agenda derived solely from The
Communist Manifesto” it was “a means of interpreting and changing reality” (Dosal,
Doing Business with Dictators 39). As a result of Che’s stay in Guatemala, a time in

which the looming effects of the Cold War on Latin America dictated both the inﬂection

28

of existing social systems and the absolute need to catalyze the conditions necessary for a
revolution to take place, Che developed much mistrust in the government of the United
States and consequently viewed socialism as intervention as the only path for the future.

At the time, Mexico had become a safe-haven for left-wing intellectuals and
political exiles. When presented with the opportunity to go there at Gadea’s request, Che
jumped at the chance. This decision, apart from his previous experiences in Guatemala,
was the political move that would jumpstart Guevara’s ﬁrsthand involvement in the
Cuban revolution. It was there that Che met Fidel Castro just two years after the assault
on the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953, Castro’s ﬁrst attempt to publicly decry the
Batista Regime. This historical occurrence resulted in Castro’s incarceration and
subsequent writing of his own defense, La histaria me absalvera (l 953), on why he was
unjustly imprisoned and should thus be liberated (Gott 147).

The Moncada assault, though recognized as an “aborted” mission, stressed for
Castro the urgent need to carry out a revolution in Cuba that would recognize as its
ultimate goal the abrogation of the Batista Regime and the implementation of a new
socialist society in its place. Che’s relationship with Fidel during such a crucial moment
in his life and Latin American history would convince him that the armed path was the
only and most effective way to social justice and socialism in Latin America.

At the time of their ﬁrst meeting, Che had only recently begun to comprehend the
signiﬁcance of revolution from a theoretical standpoint and was unsure of his physical
capacity to endure the training. Yet Castro persuaded Che to participate in the Cuban
Revolution not as a guerrilla rebel (at least not at ﬁrst) but as a “revolutionary doctor” or

a “revolutionary,” two terms Che would later link to the armed process and explain in

29

terms of the “social medicine” he began to practice years prior in South America and
Guatemala in his work El socialismo y el hombre nuevo (1979) (19). With this status,
Che, a doctor with some theoretical knowledge and little training in rebel praxis, opens
his text Pasajes de la guerra revalucianaria (1963) and thus, initiates his participation in
the revolution, a task that he took on HAS TA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE, as he would later
state in his farewell letter to Fidel Castro in 1965.

It is apparent at this point that the factors in Che’s life that shaped his upbringing
and that will later appear in his writings as key components in the construction of the
model of the guerrilla ﬁghter formed on the mountain include the perpetual testing of the
limits of his body, an emphasis on education, his relationships with others, and constant
change through self-evaluation and discipline. Che’s illness and desire to control his
consequent corporal anxieties proved central in the development of his personality, self-
determination, and intellectual competence. To complement such skills, the relationships
he formed with others — especially his mother and Hilda Gadea — supplied him with the
means to question social norms through education, action, and politicization. Che’s
closeness and reliance on these women suggest that gender was not an issue during his
formative years, nor will it present itself as a central factor in his building up of a model
of the guerrilla ﬁghter as will become evident in the following chapter. What did prove
of utmost importance to Che, however, was a capacity to change through self-awareness,
education, and by undergoing a continuous process of politicization that emerges out of a
desire to implement a form of humanist socialism through his participation in and

implementation of a socialist revolution.

30

Myth in a Cadaver: Che Guevara’s “Speaking Corpse”

“Dispara hombre, despue’s de todo solo vas
a matar a un hombre”.

- Ernesto “Che” Guevara

On October 7, 1967 after dedicating the previous fourteen years of his life to the
revolution, thirty-nine year old international rebel Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was captured
by ofﬁcials of the CIA, one of which was Cuban exile Félix Rodriguez, and by Bolivian
counterinsurgents called the Green Berets trained by the US. Special forces of the CIA in
La Higuera, Bolivia (Gambini 23-29). After enduring two days of intense interrogations
(during which time Guevara refused to reveal his strategic plan to carry out an armed
revolutionary insurgency that would begin in Bolivia and spread to neighboring South
American countries) Bolivian president Rene' Barrientos ordered Guevara’s execution.
On October 9, 1967 in a rundown schoolhouse in La Higuera, Che Guevara was shot to
death, but he would not utter his last words. His death unpacked the various ways in
which others speak of Che and seek to make Che speak. In their quest to locate the
essence of Che Guevara in his corpse, however, those that write about Che often make
him express words and ideas that he never considered important.

As Che’s purported last words suggest in the epilogue to the present section,
though with his execution, Che Guevara “the man” would die, his ideas would live on.
Che would “continue to shine” through his example and inspire others to act on an
impetus to challenge the status quo as Nicolas Guille’n so clearly expresses in these lines
from his poem “Che Comandante”: “No porque hayas caido tu luz es menos alta [. . .] No

por callado eres silencio. Y no porque te quemen, porque te disimulen bajo tierra, porque

31

te escondan en cementerios, bosques paramos, van a impedir que te encontremos, Che
Comandante, amigo” (Lightfoot 196).6

Guevara, a revolutionary who had ranked high on the CIA’s most wanted list
because of his embrace of a communist ideology after his time in Guatemala in 1953 and
central role in the socialist revolutions of the 19605 in Latin America, was unable to rest
even in death. After his corpse was placed on display for all to see in Bolivia, an action
that conjured up visions of him in association with Christ, assigned him a saintly status,
and deemed him the savior of the Latin American radical Left, his hands were cut off and
shipped to Cuba to prove to his family and fellow comrades that they were his. Then, his
body was vanished only to reappear or rather be dug up thirty years later in Bolivia.

Che’s “absent body” (Sorensen, A Turbulent Decade 25) coupled with the fact
that he was executed at the young age of thirty-nine for standing up for his ideals, an
action that placed him at the center of the ideological war between the United States and
the USSR, immediately catapulted him into a mythical status. Che biographer Hugo
Gambini explains “Al comprobarse la identidad de Ernesto Guevara y desaparecer
misteriosamente su cadaver, la ﬁgura del Che se convirtio automaticamente en mito [. . .]

Realmente el simbolo de la época nueva; distinta” (309).7 For Gambini, in death Che

 

6 Other poems and songs that pay homage to Che after his death include, but are not limited to
Carlos Puebla’s “Hasta Siempre Comandante” (in Fontalvo 265) Miguel Bamet’s “Che,” “Yo tuve un
hermano” by Julio Cortazar, “Che” by Samuel Feijoo, Mario Benedetti’s “Che” and Pablo Neruda’s
“Tristeza en la muerte de un héroe” (see
http://www.patriagrandenet/cuba/ernesto.che.guevara/poemashtm). Also, in remembrance of Che’s
passion for poetry, Paco Ignacio Taibo II recently compiled several of his favorite poems by Pablo Neruda,
Nicolas Guillén, César Vallejo, Ledn Felipe and others in El cuaa’erno verde del Che (2007). Taibo ll’s
anthology was conveniently released on the fortieth anniversary of Che’s death.

7 For other analyses of the events leading up to and surrounding Che’s death see Richard Harris’
Death of a Revolutionary: Che Guevara ’s Last Mission (1970), F élix Femandez-Madrid’s Che Guevara
and the Incurable Disease (1997), Mike Gonzalez’s essay, “The Resurrections of Che Guevara” (I997),
Hanno Hardt’s “The Death and Resurrection of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara” (1998), Peter McLaren’s Che
Guevara, Paula Freire, and the Pedagogy of the Revolution (2000), Jose Yglesias’ “Che Guevara; “The

32

 

came to embody the “energy of reinvention” and the new, though contradictory era that
Sorensen contends deﬁned the 605 in Latin America (A Turbulent Decade 4).8

Bolivian photographer Freddy Alborta was the ﬁrst to photograph Che’s corpse in
the schoolhouse that day. In doing this, he explains: “I had the impression that I was
photographing a Christ [. . .] I had in fact entered that [mythical] dimension. It was not a
cadaver that I was photographing but something extraordinary” (qtd. in Dosal, “San
Ernesto” 332). In death, the human body becomes something “extraordinary” (Kristeva
109). Precisely because of his death, Che enters the ineffable realm, and Alborta’s
photograph, Jean Franco contends “gave rise to an intense postmortem mythology” (The
Decline 108). As a consequence, rather than view Che in relation to his political actions
and" the time period and circumstances under which he was killed, the desire is that Che
will stop being Che and transform instead into Che in his many distorted forms.

Alborta would not be the only man to view Che as a martyr and to refer to his
“Christ-like” qualities in death. Ariel Dorfman also comments on Che’s “saintly” and
“Christ-like” status post-mortem: “That Christ—like ﬁgure laid out on a bed of death with
his uncanny eyes almost about to open: those fearless last words [. . .] the anonymous
burial and the hacked-off hands, as if his killers feared him more after he was dead than
when he had been alive: all of it is scalded into the mind and memory of those deﬁant
times” (2). For Dorfman, Che becomes a metonymy for “those deﬁant times,” an

emblem of the ﬁght between capitalist and communist ideologies and his sacriﬁce — one

 

Best Way to Die’”’ (1967), Tony Sanouis’ “Che Guevara: simbolo de lucha” (1997), and the Swedish
documentary Sacriﬁcia: Who Betrayed Che Guevara (2001).

Though precisely because of the recent triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the sixties
begins with a bang, so to speak, for the Latin American radical Left, Sorensen deﬁnes the decade as one
built upon the contradiction between “euphoria” and “despair”: “Latin America in the sixties encapsulates
its predicament: a moment of hope and celebration produced a sense of multiple possibilities, only to reach
closure and despair in its culmination” (A Turbulent Decade 3).

33

that is not to be underestimated — comes to signify the struggle of the Left to erect a new
time for Latin America, again best summed up by Gambini as “el simbolo de la época
nueva; distinta” (309).

Late Salvadorian revolutionary and poet Roque Dalton also compares Che to
Christ by referring to him as a “Che’ Jesucristo” and “Cristo Guevara” (37). Dalton bases
this parallel between Che and Christ not solely on the visual resemblance of their corpses,
but also on the fact that Che, though dead, would return for “centuries and centuries” to
urge men to move forward towards his idea of the “new man,” most certainly through
constant self-evaluation and the changes that subsequently take place: “En vista de lo
cual no le ha quedado al Ché otro camino que el de resucitar y quedarse a la izquierda de
los hombres exigiéndoles que apresuren el paso por los siglos de los siglos” (3 7).
Dalton’s parallel of Christ and Che is evident in his juxtaposition of the image of Christ,
who is “seated at the right-hand of the father” and is resurrected so that all men will be
washed of their sins for all eternity and Che, the rebel savior who remains on the “Left”
of all men to assure that the revolution lives on through man’s constant movement,
progress, and change.9

Che’s almost instantaneous shift from man to myth in the form of a Christ-like
ﬁgure is signiﬁcant, especially when examined in relation to the revolution and Che’s
role as a guerrilla rebel. For Barthes, the revolution “a cathartic act meant to reveal the
political load of the world” and the revolutionary, a man that “links language to the
making of things” should, in theory, escape a mythical discourse precisely for their tie to

political speech, the only form of speech that accurately reﬂects “action” (“Myth Today”

 

9 See “The Apostle’s Creed” http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/creeds/apostles.htm.

34

134, 135). In claiming, then, that after his death Che automatically became a myth is to
attempt to describe him through the myth, a “depoliticized speech” that rather than
emphasize the meaning he had for those that believed in him as a living example,
minimizes Che’s status as a political actor (134).

Apart from the intents to explain the signiﬁcance of Che’s body in death, the
corpse conjures up a multitude of other representations of his public persona. When
grouped together, such depictions of Che restitute images of him that instead of reﬂecting
his thoughts, actions, role as a guerrilla ﬁghter and place in history, seek to detach Che
from the politics of the revolution and to lock him in a mythical discourse that rather than
“make” things, ﬁxes them in their place (135). By dint of this need to deﬁne the
“essence” of Che Guevara according to the various needs and demands of the public, a
recognizable quality of mythical discourse, Che is often depoliticized and de-historicized.

The Public Persona

In the years following or perhaps even prior to his execution in Bolivia, many
viewed Che as the personiﬁcation of revolutionary idealism and practice in Latin
America as he united in his public persona the roles of guerrilla, writer, intellectual,
leader, and ideologue. Che’s purported multidimensionality and high level of
exportability was ﬁrst noted after the success of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 when “the
romance of Che Guevara, the kind of revolutionary whose refusal to believe in the
impossible [. . .] crossed class, ethnic, and political lines” (Mallon 211). Yet the “heroic”
and “universal” nature of Guevara became evident particularly after his death when
supposedly: “for the Radical Left, Che ha[d] become the uber-guerrillero, the all-purpose

Saint” (McLaren 7).

35

Other political agents interpreted Che and the successful Cuban Revolution as a
“sign of things to come” (Sorensen, A Turbulent Decade 3). Fidel Castro sums up his
vision of Che as an image of human and revolutionary perfection in the prologue to El I
diaria del Che en Bolivia (1968), Guevara’s last written account of his participation as a
guerrilla ﬁghter in a revolution: “[Che] constituyé el unico caso de un hombre
extraordinario capaz de unir en su personalidad no 3610 las caracteristicas de un hombre
de accién, sino que también las de un hombre intelectual [. . .] Che se ha convertido en un
modelo de lo que debe ser un hombre de verdad, no 5610 para nuestra gente, sino que
también, para la gente de toda Latinoame'rica (25). After Che’s death, Castro not only
describes Che as an ideal warrior that unites revolutionary thought and action in his
example, but he implies that every man or every real man should strive to be like Che.l0
Such words also seem to implicitly encourage all men to aspire to reach the status of Che
Guevara’s vision of the new man, the ideological product of the Cuban Revolution and
the only masculine ideal, according to Che, that seemed capable of facing the challenges
that lie ahead in the future not because he strove for perfection, but because he welcomed
and sought to promote change in a post-revolutionary society (El socialismo y el hombre

nuevo 21).ll

 

10 In El Che Guevara (I968), Hubo Gambini includes key parts of the speech in which Castro
coins the phrase to be like Che: “Si queremos expresar cbmo aspiramos a que sean nuestros combatientes
revolucionarios, nuestros militantes, nuestros hombres, debemos decir sin vacilacic’m de ninguna indole:
gQue sean como el Che! Si queremos expresar c6mo queremos decir como deseamos que se eduquen
nuestros niiios, digamos sin vacilacién: gQueremos que se eduquen en el espiritu del Che! Si queremos un
modelo de hombre que no pertenece a este tiempo sino al futuro, gde corazén digo que ese modelo sin una
sola mancha en su conducta, sin una sola mancha en su actitud, sin una sola mancha en su actuacion, ese
modelo es El Che! Y cuando se hable de intemacionalismo proletario y se busque un ejemplo, iese
ejemplo, For encima de cualquier otro, es el ejemplo del Che” (310)!

I In El socialismo y el hombre nuevo (I979), Che outlines the steps necessary for man to take in
order to move towards the ideal of the new man “Se trata, precisamente, de que el individuo se sienta mas
pleno, con mucha mas riqueza interior y con mucha mas responsabilidad. El individuo de nuestro pais sabe
que la época gloriosa que le toca vivir es de sacriﬁcio; conoce el sacriﬁcio” (21).

36

Castro’s view of Che as a pristine model of human and revolutionary excellence
seemed to inspire the production of other testimonies of Che’s life and achievements. In
1977, the editorial Genie Nueva published a biographical magazine on Che titled
“Seremos como el Che,” a phrase also popularized by Castro after Che’s death. In it, Che
Guevara appears again as the embodiment of the new man, an ideal that Che would argue
was unreachable. For Che, the new man was an inspiration to undergo a continual
process of change that would begin with the revolution and be carried out in a conscious
way throughout life.

Another writer that portrayed Che as an embodiment of the new man was Cuban
revolutionary Haydée Santamaria. In a letter she wrote to Che following his
assassination in Bolivia, she laments his unexpected death and contends that even though
he is dead, the new “human being” Che imagined will live on through his legacy:
“Everything you [Che] created was perfect, but you made a unique creation; you made
yourself. You demonstrated that the new human being is possible, all of us could see that
the new human being is a reality, because he exists, he is you” (l 9).‘2

Not less emphatically, Michael Lowy equates Che’s mythical status to the
combination of his “extraordinary character” and his distinctive interpretation of
Marxism-based ideologies through the prism of Latin America: “[w]ithout precedent in
the history of the twentieth century, accounts for and illuminates the rise of the Che myth:
Che the romantic adventurer, the Red Robin Hood, the Don Quixote of communism [. . .]

the secular Christ of San Ernesto de la Hi guera revered by the Bolivian peasants” (7).

 

'2 Santamaria’s letter was ﬁrst published by Casa de las Américas in 1968, however, I reference
the version entitled “Hasta la Victoria Siempre, Dear Che” included in the volume of Santamaria’s works
edited by Betsy Maclean. Hayde'e Santamaria (2003). Also see Bolivian revolutionary lnti Peredo’s Mi
campar’ia con el Che, speciﬁcally his chapter titled “El hombre del S. XXI” (I971).

37

For Lowy, Che’s heroism is rooted in his political and revolutionary ideologies,
discourses that since they aspire to change the status quo, escape the realm of the myth
(Barthes, “Myth Today” 135). Yet in calling Che a “romantic adventurer” and
associating him with hopeless dreamers, Lowy feeds the machine of mythical discourses.

Such views of Che as the quintessence of revolutionary excellence in the 20th
century and as the ultimate masculine guerrilla rebel (Castro), “the new man” (Peredo,
Konings, Santamaria), a romantic hero (Gambini), a saint (James) a C hrist—like ﬁgure
(McLaren), a dreamer (Sinclair), the “century’s ﬁrst Latin American” (Guillermoprieto)
and a “Don Quijote of Communism” (Lowy) are just some of the interpretations released
in the years following his execution. The universalization of Che, yet another symptom
of mythical discourse, and the reduction of his life to a chain of virtues, future-oriented
utopias, roles and identities suggests that rather than emphasize the political value he
gained through his revolutionary endeavors as a guerrilla rebel, his image in death is
deﬁned by the intentions of others “much more than by its literal sense” (110).

In keeping with these representations of Che, there are photographs that capture
him in moments that have come to represent for some his “larger-than-life” qualities and
the various roles he occupied throughout his career. Victor Casaus’ anthology, Self
Portrait Che Guevara (2006) depicts Che as a versatile rebel as he unites images of Che
working alongside members of the proletariat during the Cuban Revolution, cutting
sugarcane, thinking alone in a hotel room, sitting in his personal library in Havana

reading while surrounded by bookshelves full of books, teaching and reading during the

38

revolution and ﬁghting as a guerrilla rebel in both the Cuban and Bolivian insurgencies
(152,153,160,161).‘3

Casaus’ apparent “well-rounded” picture of Che aims to foreground his actions as
a rebel, ideological beliefs, and emphasis on education. Yet one photograph in particular
promotes Che as the personiﬁcation of the guerrilla ﬁghter of the 20th century: Alberto
Diaz Gutierrez, or Alberto Korda’s “Guerrillero Heroico” (1960). After Korda took this
photograph, he tucked it away in his apartment for seven years and released it to the press
after Che’s death with the title “Heroic Guerrilla”. Why, one may ask, did Korda hold
onto his photograph for so long only to publish it shortly after Che’s death? Korda’s
explanation was that on the day that he took his snapshot, March 5, 1960, he was
assigned to photograph Fidel Castro while he gave a speech in which he recognized the
deaths (which surpassed eighty) caused by the tragic explosion of the French vessel Le
Coubre in Havana, Cuba, an action that Castro associated with the CIA (Sorensen, A
Turbulent Decade 25). However, the “immediate impression” that Korda’s photograph
would have and perhaps even sought to have on the public cannot be ignored (Barthes,
“Myth Today” 117).

To add to the title and image presented with Korda’s Che that were, most likely,
meant to intrigue the viewer, in the caption Korda claims that such an image captures
“Che’s true character —— the ﬁrmness, stoicism, resoluteness” (Ziff 33). Can one deduce a
human being’s true character from a simple two-dimensional snapshot, a text that for

Barthes is one without a code or a hidden message? Korda clearly marks the picture with

 

'3 Other anthologies that contain photographs of Che Guevara include Trisha Ziffs Che Guevara:
Revolutionary and [can (2006), Che: Images of a Revolutionary (2000) compiled by F emando Diego
Garcia and Oscar Sola, Osvaldo Salas, Roberto Salas and Jon Lee Anderson’s Fidel ’3 Cuba: Revolution in
Pictures (1998) and Christophe Loviny’s Cuba by Korda (2006).

39

his own interpretation of who Che was thus achieving what Barthes describes as the
impossible: “The description of a photograph is literally impossible; to describe [. . .] is

[. . .] not simply to be imprecise or incomplete, it is to change structures, to signify
something different to what is shown” (Image, Music, Text 18-19). Thus, in highlighting
what he believes Che represents in the title and caption of the photograph, Korda
converts “Guerrillero Heroico” into the most widely circulated visual “myth” of Che
Guevara.

Phyllis Passariello approaches Korda’s photograph in a similar way, only for her
it ﬁxes Che in that historical moment — 1960 — a year that represented one of the most
controversial periods of the Cold War as it was sandwiched by the Cuban Revolution
(1959) and the Bay of Pigs (1961): “The photographic image of the “messianic gaze” of a
noble, young, handsome, uniformed Che moves us emotionally but impresses us
rationally because we know that the very moment of that gaze existed; it really
happened” (87).14 Though Passariello does not omit the historical moment in which
Korda took this photograph, she assigns an aesthetic importance to his “messianic gaze”

99 66

in using the adjectives “noble, young,” and “handsome” to describe Che and assumes
that these qualities move the public “emotionally”. For Passariello, the photograph

becomes what Barthes deﬁnes as: “a mad image, chafed by reality” or an image that is

“false on the level of perception and true on a level of time” (Camera lucida 115).

 

'4 The Bay of Pigs was a mission of the CIA approved by President Eisenhower in 1960 and
carried out during the Kennedy Administration led by Cuban exiles trained by the United States military on
April 17, 1961. It served as a prequel to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October of 1962 that involved the
United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba and is considered as another evidence of the intervention of the
United States in political and military affairs in Latin America during the Cold War (Fidel Castro: My Life
257).

40

In my analysis of the written and visual representations of Che, I described how
though some relate the guerrilla rebel to the revolution, his political value is often
minimized and he is often depicted as “Christ-like”, “superhuman” or simply associated
with his “appealing” physical qualities. Such evaluations of Che seek to universalize his
image (Barthes, “Myth Today” 108). If in this section I have examined the mythical
interpretations of Che’s public persona, the following works published around the
thirtieth anniversary of Che’s death in 1997 respond to the demands of historiography
concerned with the private life and the “petite history” of Che Guevara.

Getting Intimate: Che’s “Petite History”

One of the deﬁning characteristics of a post-Cold War world is the desired
inﬂection of political ideologies, especially Marxist-oriented discourses and ideologies.
As a result, there is a renewed interest on origins and identity politics and the question of
why people are the way that they are serve as elemental analytical frames (Goldmann 2-
4). Such a change in emphasis, as one might imagine, affects the way in which others
examine the life of Che, for whom politics, ideology and revolution surfaced as deﬁning
factors in his life.

In order to appeal to the needs and demands of the public towards the close of the
20th century, those that wrote about Che view him through the prism of his personal life
and relationships with others. Between the years of 1997 and 2007, the years that mark
the thirtieth and fortieth anniversaries of Che’s death, there was a revived interest in

Guevara.15 The attention to Che was not a coincidence, for it coincided with the

 

'5 Other biographical studies that incorporate a vision of Che through the prism of the personal
include: Ricardo Rojo’s Mi amigo el Che (i968), Ernesto Guevara Lynch’s Mi hijo el Che (1985), and
Hilda Gadea’s Che Guevara: las arias decisivos (1972). Also see the ﬁlms, Mi hijo el Che (1985), based
on Guevara Lynch’s biography of Che and A leida Guevara Remembers her Father (2006). The studies

41

exhumation of his corpse in Bolivia in 1997, which had mysteriously disappeared thirty
years prior, and the succeeding transportation of his remains to Cuba.

If in the Cold War context in which he is executed Che, though mythiﬁed, is often
unavoidably associated with his political actions and belief in a class-based ideology,
during the post-Cold War, he is brought back to life in a different form. Unlike the works
released shortly following his death, the texts that surface with the “resurfacing” of Che’s
corpse focus on the intimate details of his life — his childhood, adolescence, relationships
with others, and pre-revolutionary years — in the hopes of revealing the man behind the
myth.16 Paradoxically, in doing this, his biographers assign a new meaning to Che by
superseding the political with the personal.

Three exhaustive biographical studies initiated the resurgence of interest in Che:
Paco Ignacio Taibo II’s Guevara: tambie’n conocido coma el Che (1996), Jorge
Castaﬁeda’s La Vida en raja: una biogra/ia del Che Guevara (1997) and his English
translation of it, C ompaﬁero: the Life and Death of Che Guevara (1997), and Jon Lee
Anderson’s Che Guevara, A Revolutionary Life (1997). In a comparative study of these
three biographies, Richard Harris contends that “Anderson, Castaneda, and Taibo piece
together Che’s plans, decisions, and actions from his writings and from the

remembrances, observations, and opinions of the people who were closest to him”

 

carried out by Che’s close friend and members of his family analyze Che in the context of the relationships
he had with these individuals. Each seems to evaluate the ways in which they contributed to Che’s
formation or remembered him as a friend, a son, a father, or a husband and thus not unlike other
biographical studies of Che included in this chapter, present biased views of his life.

16 My biographical analysis of Che Guevara in the ﬁrst part of this chapter does. without a doubt,
contribute to his process of mythiﬁcation as well. It is almost impossible to talk about Che today without
contributing to a vision of him as a myth. However, I sought to use my evaluation of Che’s life towards a
political end by highlighting the qualities that he develops during his childhood and adolescence that later
appear as core aspects in his model of the guerrilla rebel formed on the mountain.

42

(“‘Reﬂections” 2). Yet in the biographies, one observes an inﬂection from the political
and a newfound interest in the private.

Spanish born Taibo II’s heads off the recent series of biographies on Che with its
publication in 1996 in seeming anticipation for the boom of interest in Guevara that
would surface one year later. Taibo II restitutes Che’s voice through the inclusion of
several of his personal and political letters, diaries and handwritten notes to friends,
family members and girlfriends — both published and unpublished. He also interviewed
several of Che’s family members, friends, and neighbors to provide multiple perspectives
of Che’s formative process and to gain objectivity in his very personalized examination
of Che.

Taibo II emphasizes the aspects of Che’s childhood and adolescence that he
suspects contributed to his decision to lead the life of a revolutionary: his asthmatic
condition, relationships, and ostensibly innate desire to question the norm. He also
focuses on Che’s pre—revolutionary period to represent Che as a product of his time and
not simply as the mythical ﬁgure he became in the latter half of the 20th and beginning of
the 21St centuries.

Ironically, precisely because of his desire to bypass Che’s myth and to rectify his
weaknesses, struggles, family life and origins, all of which he believes are hidden behind
Guevara’s public persona as a revolutionary and thus his myth, Taibo II emphasizes
Che’s personal life over his political actions.

One year after Taibo II’s biography came out, Jorge Castaneda released La vida
en rojo: una biagraﬁa del Che Guevara (1997) and Compaﬁera: the Life and Death of

Che Guevara (1997). The title of the Spanish version is much more provocative ——“la

43

vida en rojo” is a clear reference to Che’s connection to communism — which may lead
the reader to believe that Castaneda will evaluate Che in such a context. Yet he views
Che through the lens of the neo-conservative ideology that emerges with the neoliberal
hegemony in the last decade of the 20th century. Castaneda talks about Cuba as Che’s
“revolutionary adventure” (237) and seems to condemn him from the start for his
bourgeois upbringing; his “blue-blooded” lineage (3), political actions and link to
Communism. What is more, Castaneda raises suspicions regarding Che’s relationship to
the Soviet Union and Fidel Castro prior to his execution, suggesting that he was caught
and captured largely because he was betrayed by both due to his extreme radicalization
(l 86, 262-264). This rhetoric seems to prove the shift from the Cold War to the post-
Cold War rhetoric. Castaﬁeda’s “tribute” to Che is best expressed in the following
statement: “Che Guevara is a cultural icon today largely because the era he typiﬁed left
cultural tracks more than political ones” (C ompaﬁero 497).'7

It is in this same spirit that Jon Lee Anderson writes Che Guevara: A
Revolutionary Life (1997). Anderson divides his study into three parts that focus on
Che’s formation (“Unquiet Youth”), pre—revolutionary adolescent years (“Becoming
Che”) and his experiences post-Cuban revolution (“Making the New Man”). In his
evaluation of the different phases of Guevara’s life that he proposes, Anderson too
highlights his asthma as a central aspect in his formative years, outlines key relationships
for Guevara’s formation as a child and revolutionary, and offers the perspective of those
that knew Che while he was growing up in an attempt to expose who Che was at distinct

moments in his life.

 

'7 For similar analyses of the shift from the political to the cultural evidenced in a post-Cold War
context see Jorge Castar’leda’s Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War (1993).

44

What is unique about Anderson’s biographical study of Che, however; is that
even though he spent ﬁve years compiling information for his biography and for three of
those ﬁve years actually lived in Cuba where he had quick and consistent access to a
wealth of personal testimonies on Che and ofﬁcial documents — his former wife, Aleida
March, friends and other family members, as well as secured government documents —
parts of Anderson’s biography seek to call into question aspects of Che’s and his family’s
lives through what seem to be unfounded rumors about them. One such statement claims
that Che Guevara was not born on June 14, 1928, but actually one month earlier.
Anderson believes that this date was falsiﬁed on his birth certiﬁcate to cover up the fact
that his mother had become pregnant prior to marrying Che’s father.18

It was common knowledge that Che had a close relationship with his mother; she
was, after all, his primary educator, conﬁdant, and caregiver. Yet Anderson links this
closeness to Che’s anger and ensuing estrangement from his father for openly running
around on Celia with other women. He also associates his father’s machista behavior
with Che’s apparent tendency to act in a similar way later in life. According to
Anderson’s account, in a conversation with Che’s second wife, Aleida March, she states
“Che was a ‘machista ’, like most Latins” (762).

Anderson further draws on Che’s life in his commentary in a propagandistic ﬁlm
released by the History Channel in 2007 titled, quite ironically, The True Story of Che

Guevara. Similar to his book, the video talks about “key” moments in Guevara’s life and

 

'8 The “evidence” that Anderson provides for such a statement is that one of Celia’s friends, who
was an astrologer, read Che’s horoscope and realized that despite his “headstrong and decisive” nature,
traits common to the Taurus, his birth date in the middle of June categorized him as a Gemini. Upon
learning of her friend’s ﬁnding, Celia confessed, according to Anderson, that Che was, in fact, a Taurus
because he had been born one month earlier than the date stated on his birth certiﬁcate. Basing his view of
Che’s birthday on this “evidence”, Anderson deduces that his actual birthday was May 14, 1928 (3).

45

compiles a multitude of testimonies from childhood friends, ofﬁcers in the Bolivian
Army, ofﬁcials of the CIA and the son of former secretary of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, in order to convey “objectivity”. Accordingly, the ﬁrst
line of this “propaganda” seems to sum up both extremes of the Che Guevara myth: “Che
Guevara, a hero to some, a monster to others” (The True Story 2007).

Again, towards the end of the movie, Anderson calls Che a paradox, a bourgeois
man turned revolutionary that combined in his being a “cold logic” and a capacity to “kill
in cold blood” and that of a humanitarian whose. aspirations were “to change the world
and stopped at nothing to achieve his goal” (The True Story 2007). The ﬁlm also
portrays Che as a machista, and a Marxist—Leninist who believed that the solution to
“man kind’s ills was the destruction of Capitalism” (The True Story 2007).'9

Anderson’s description of Che as a “bourgeois man” and a “womanizer” is
framed by a set of values conditioned by the ideology prevalent during the post-Cold
War. In evaluating Che in such terms, Anderson seeks to stray from the actions that gave
Che his initial (political) sustenance (Barthes, “Myth Today” 120). The consequence of
such a shift is clearly described by Argentine Che biographer Pacho O’Donnell: “El mito
del Che ha crecido alimentado por la sociedad en la que vivimos, frivola y materialista,

que esta justo en las antipodas de los valores que él representa [. . .] la caida del regimen

comunista 10 ha desposeido ademas de su condicion ideologica, con lo que ha quedado de

 

‘9 For related studies on Che see Daniel James’ Che' Guevara (1969), Martin Ebon’s Che: The
Making of a Legend( 1 969), Alvaro Vargas Llosa’s The Che Guevara Myth and the Future of Liberty
(2006), Humberto Fontova’s Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots who ldalize Him (2007)
and Alma Guillermoprieto’s “The Harsh Angel”, published in Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin
America (2001). In, “The Death and Resurrection of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara: US Media and the
Deconstruction of a Revolutionary Life” (1998), Hanno Hardt examines other such representations of Che
Guevara that come out within North American culture and scholarship towards the close of the 20th century.

46

él su idealismo y su fuerza de personaje épica. Mientras mas crezca la carencia de
valores, mas va a crecer su mito”.20

In my discussion on the biographical studies above, I pointed out that the
transition from the Cold War to a post-Cold War period affects the way in which people
approach Che. Instead of viewing him through the prism of his political actions and ideas
as seems to occur in the texts that focus on his public persona, in the biographies that
seek to restitute a personalized vision of Che, his involvement in politics and revolution
becomes a secondary narrative that is explained through his upbringing, asthmatic
condition, and relationships with others.

Che Today

Today, in a global era in which the Internet and web-based materials provide easy
access to historical information, archival materials and video-clips on youtube, Che
Guevara, a man that understood Marxism as the key to the new future in socialism, has
paradoxically become one of the most reproduced myths and inﬂuential icons. If for
Barthes, as I state above, the myth is a form of speech that is detached from its original
meaning and oftentimes context, manipulated and changed to ﬁt the needs and demands
of a bourgeois discourse, different from the myth, an icon is a sign that (visually)
resembles the original object it represents and often becomes a metonymy for the time
and place in which it originated (Garlick 21). This means that Che’s iconic status could
be and is often used today to represent the 603, a time in which the “spirit of liberation
went hand in hand with the critique of what existed: old forms were to be superseded and

even destroyed in order to inaugurate the new” (Sorensen. A Turbulent Decade 3).

 

20 See Jaume Bauza’s
http://www.elpais.corrﬂarticulo/sociedad/Che/ambiguo/vende/elpepisoc/200809l lelpepisoc_ l /Tes.

47

If the hyper-production of the “myth of Che” in a global era is yet another neo-
conservative aspiration to dissociate him from his political value, thus stripping him of
his ideas and declaring the “end of utopia,” the radical Left converts Che into an icon of
the 605 and thus as an example of a new wave of political activism that disavows
neoliberalism (Gardner 27).

Nowadays, Che’s face appears on T-shirts, posters, underwear, and even in the
form of tattoos. For the neo-conservative sectors that aspire to depoliticize Che, he has
become something to be purchased, consumed, and controlled by the general public. It

should not come as a surprise either that entire websites exist that both buy and sell Che

 

paraphernalia. At wwwthechestorecom one ﬁnds “all [your] revolutionary needs” as
this website sells everything from clocks that display Che to hooded sweatshirts and belt
buckles with Korda’s “Guerrillero Heroico”.

It is not only “hip” to buy items with Che’s face on them, but it is also becoming
more popular to display Che “on your person” as Adrian Perez contends, in the form of
tattoos.2| North American rap sensation Jay-Z, known for his explicit lyrics and
relationship with fellow pop star Beyoncé, and former boxing champion Mike Tyson,
more recognized for his cases of domestic violence and for biting off the tip of his
competitor Evander Holyﬁeld’s ear in their match on June 28, 1997 than for his athletic
ability, “sport” tattoos of Che. Former Argentine soccer player Maradona also has a

tattoo of “Guerrillero Heroico” on his right arm and another one of Fidel on his right leg.

 

2' See Adrian Perez’s article, “Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara: From Guerrilla to Madison Avenue,”
published in The Latino Journal <http:r’lthelatirrojournal.blogspot.com/2008l0Siemesto-che-guevara-from-
guerilla-to.html>.

48

The renewed interest in Che Guevara seems to ﬁnd its roots in the conﬂicting desires of
both the conservative and radical Left sectors. If the neo-conservative point of view
seeks to mythify Che as a means to change or even nullify his political worth through a
mass production of his image, for the radical Left, which expresses a desire to remember
who Che was and what he stood for, Che is used — even in the form of a T-shirt — to make
a political statement.

In the United States, Che’s image is used in political demonstrations to recuperate
the spirit of the 19605, a decade in which the American people dreamt of a politically,
socially and sexually liberated era (Dosal, “San Ernesto” 318-319). In the sectors of the
Left in Latin America, Che’s picture is present whenever there is a political protest.
During the controversial 2006 elections in Mexico between current president Felipe
Calderon Hinojosa and Andre's Manuel Lopez Obrador, Che T-shirts, posters, coffee
mugs and ﬂags were sold alongside images of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata
and current spokesman for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN),
Subcomandante Marcos. C he’s image in these examples is not displaced, but is used to
reﬂect a period in which he died in exchange for or in the hope that change would be
enforced in Latin America.

Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, for whom the
idea of Che serves to revive an interest in a new form of socialism, “21St century
socialism,” in the Latin American people as a means to combat neoliberalism, have also
restituted Che’s ideals and voice in political discourses. At the close of the 20th and the
beginning of the 21St centuries, Aleida March, along with C he’s son C amilo, founded the

C entro de Estudios Che Guevara, the largest web-based information center on Che. The

49

website includes texts, pictures, speeches, letters, diaries and videos of Che. Together
with the University of La Habana, the Center strives to document Che’s life, works,
ideologies and revolutionary achievements.

In sum, one cannot deny that an aspiration to erase any traces of Che’s political
agency and revolutionary status by globalizing his image as just another pretty face or
associating him with non-democratic acts exists. Yet Che’s reappearance as an emblem
of the hope for change under neoliberalism suggests that, perhaps, utopia and ideology
are not dead and that Che’s reincarnation this time around is in response to a necessity to

combat the longtime political injustice in Latin America.

50

Chapter 2: Contesting Masculinities, Reforming Spaces: The Emergence of a New Male
Code in the Mountains in Cuba and Bolivia

“Revolutions are the only political events which
confront us directly and inevitably with the problem
of beginning” (0n Revolution 21).
-Hannah Arendt
Che’s qualities analyzed thus far are signiﬁcant because in his works they appear
as the foundation of the guerrilla rebel. This leads me to believe that the model that Che
proposed in his own writings emerged out of the combination of his life experiences and
practices during revolution. Through an analysis of two of his guerrilla narratives
Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria (1963), and El diaria del Che en Bolivia (1968), I
outline how Che constructs a new code of manhood through his evaluation of the
revolutionary project and the formation and changes the guerrilla rebel undergoes during
such a process from the mountain.l If in Marx’s vision of the bourgeois society, man
views himself in relation to concepts such as the city, the family, knowledge, and a future
rooted in the past, Che proposes a male code that begins to form on the mountain, the
domain in which the rebels experience the ideological limits of these core aspects of the
bourgeois standard for man.
In Pasajes, a teleological text that was originally written during the Cuban

Revolution but rewritten for publication after its triumph, Che’s model of the rebel

wavers between the bourgeois paradigm of manhood and the new male code of the

 

I I use the term “guerrilla literature” to refer to texts that are written during and/or about the
revolution. This genre of literature, according to Juan Duchesne, emerged in the 19605 alter the triumph of
the Cuban Revolution in an effort to record the happenings during revolution and to provide a model for
future guerrilla ﬁghters (82).

51

mountain.2 In Pasajes, Che i5 mindful of the example he seeks to construct, yet in El
diaria, a journal that was published in an almost brute form after Che’s execution in
Bolivia, something much different occurs. Though Che opens his diary with an emphasis
on political action and ideology, shifts occur in his discourse and in the mission that
permit the body and its necessities, an entity Elizabeth Grosz describes as capable of
generating “what is new, surprising, unpredictable” to surface (Volatile Bodies xi). The
overwhelming presence of the body in his journal exposes aspects of the revolution that
Che omits (consciously or not) from Pasajes and that are typically associated with the
feminine in patriarchal societies, thus affecting the way one views Che’s code of
manhood (Grosz, Volatile Bodies 14).3

The result of the combination of different components in Che’s male code - the
wavering between the two models of manhood (bourgeois and revolutionary), the
revision of bourgeois loci, and a masculinity that incorporates the feminine — promotes a
heterogeneous vision of masculinity. The construction of such a model suggests that

“gender is not static — it is always subject to redeﬁnition and renegotiation” (Brittan 37).

 

2 In her article, “Montaﬂas con aroma de mujer: reﬂexiones postinsurgentes sobre el feminismo
revolucionario” (2003), Ileana Rodriguez criticizes Che for his contradictory nature and questions the
validity of his model of the guerrillero for following a military model of man and for excluding woman
(145). On the surface, Rodriguez is right. In Guerra de guerrillas (1961), text in which Che outlines the
foco theory he began to develop during the Cuban Revolution as well as mentions the speciﬁc roles of the
insurgents - men and women alike - he highlights women for their ability to aid in communication (122-
123), act as teachers (123) skillfulness in all things related to health care on the mountain (124) and role as
the chefs of the insurgency ( l 23). Che does not assign such roles to women to exclude them from the
armed action of the insurgency, but rather to recognize them as ﬁindamental actors in the revolution. For
Che, as I mentioned in my biographical analysis of him in the previous chapter, gender was not an issue; all
were included in his model under the name of the “guerrillero” and after the revolution as “the new man”.

3 Elizabeth Grosz asserts that “[p]atriarchal oppression [...] justiﬁes itself, at least in part, by
connecting women much more closely than men to the body” (14). Thus, Che’s attention to the body and
its various needs and functions in his diary, though unconscious, allows for the emergence of the feminine
in an analysis of the overwhelming presence of the body of the male guerrilla rebel in the diary.

52

The Mountain
The only possible starting point for this chapter is the mountain, a “masculine”
space, according to Ileana Rodriguez in which the guerrilla insurgency is carried out by

3”,

men that “engendran la “patria (“Montaﬁas con aroma de mujer” 144). The mountain
is a foundational geography upon which men, by dint of their demonstration of self-
control, rigidity, austerity and intransigency, advance from this status to that of the
guerrillero, a political agent that occupies a central space in revolutionary discourse as
the driving force for change that assures a necessary transition to socialism (145).

This means that Fidel Castro’s choice to carry out the mission from the Sierra
Maestra was not a coincidence. Apart from its transformative capacities, strategic being
the most important, several other reasons contributed to the Cuban rebels’ decision to use
the mountain both as a training camp and as a space from which they would perform the
revolution. First of all, the mountain was conveniently isolated from the city. This was
signiﬁcant for both symbolic and practical reasons. The geographical distance between
the territories, one bourgeois and one rebel, facilitated a vision of the mountain as a
symbol of change or the possibility of change; an alternative space of authority from
which the rebels would carry out their revolutionary project (Duchesne 145). The
mountain was also ideal for practical reasons. Due to harsh living conditions, the rebels,
out of necessity, developed survival skills, communicated with, politicized, educated and
gained the support of and worked in collaboration with the peasant communities to learn

to use the mountain as a combative and strategic tool (Guevara, Guerra de guerrillas 53).

Because of the qualities it possesses, Che presents the mountain as the foundational

53

geography upon which the rebels will build themselves up in isolation from and in
opposition to the bourgeois loci in the city.4
Che’s Contradictory Code of Manhood

On December 2, 1956, after three years of clandestine preparation in Mexico
followed by the Moncada assault in Santiago, Cuba in 1953, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara,
Camilo Cienfuegos and several others arrived to the region surrounding the Sierra
Maestra in Cuba on the yacht El Granma.5 The ultimate goal of their mission was to
abrogate the regime of military dictator Fulgencio Batista for his consistent reliance on
the United States for economic, political and military matters and to supersede it with a
new government rooted in socialism (Gott 154). Precisely because the Cuban Revolution
found its roots in the class-based ideologies of Karl Marx and anti-totalitarian and
imperialist aims, the movement seemed to encapsulate the spirit of Communism so

harshly criticized by the United States during the Cold War.6 If the ofﬁcial beginning of

 

4 In La guerra de guerrillas (I961), Che suggests that without the mountain, the revolution would
not have occurred in Cuba. This space provides the revolutionaries with the platform from which to
undergo change in the most difﬁcult of living conditions, an action that would demonstrate conviction, self-
discipline, and a capacity to move forward, as well as puts the rebels in close contact with the masses so
that they could feasibly gain the support of the inhabitants through the implementation of land and
education reforms in a space that is completely isolated from society: “el guerrillero ejercera su accion en
lugares agrestes y poco poblados. Y, en los lugares agrestes y poco poblados, la lucha del pueblo por sus
reivindicaciones se situa preferentemente y hasta casi exclusivamente en el plano del cambio de la
composicion social de la tenencia de la tierra, es decir, el guerrillero e5, fundamentalmente y antes que
nada, un revolucionario agrario” (182).

5 The reasons for their opposition to Batista’s regime were clear. After staging the military coup
that would oust Dictator Gerardo Machado, Batista assumed control of the military and the government in
Cuba. Under his leadership, the relations between the United States and Cuba tightened for Batista sought
out the support of American investors to strengthen the tourism industry (i.e. prostitution and gambling) as
well as relied on the US military to train the members of the Cuban National Guard. Cuba suffered as a
result. Twelve years, two presidential terms and one extended stay to the United States later, in 1952,
Batista led a coup and assumed the presidency again (Scheina 441). This same year, Fidel Castro, at the
time a lawyer, decided to run for congress. Batista’s coup not only eliminated Castro’s chance for election,
but it would convince him that armed insurgency was the only means to overthrow the Batista Regime that
had ruled in Cuba for so long. This is precisely why Castro and other rebels carried out the armed attack on
the Moncada Barracks that would serve as the initial event of the Cuban Revolution.

6 This would also make Cuba one of the few “real” battlegrounds of the Cold War in the 19605
and would solidify Cuban relations with the Soviet Union until the end of the Cold War in the 19905.

54

the Cuban Revolution was the armed attack on the Moncada Barracks, the arrival of the
rebels to Cuba in El Granma three years later marked the start of the revolutionary
insurgency from the Sierra Maestra. This date also signiﬁes the initiation of Che
Guevara’s participation in the revolution and career as a guerrilla ﬁghter.

A5 I pointed out, Che agreed to participate in the Cuban Revolution as a doctor
whose main role was to cure the ailments of the rebels. Yet upon his arrival, when
immersed in battle, he faced the difﬁcult decision of whether to leave his medical bag —
symbol of his dedication to medicine — or his box of bullets - a badge of his future role as
a guerrilla rebel — behind. Che chose his bullets (Pasajes 9). The signiﬁcance of his
decision is great for it is the ﬁrst time in Che’s career as a revolutionary that he made a
conscious choice to actively put his theoretical knowledge on the revolution into practice
through his participation in an event linked to a political act, a type of act that Slavoj
Zizek contends breaks with an existing structure and thus ultimately leads to change:
“[the political act is] is not simply something that works well within the framework of the
existing relations, but something that changes the very framework that determines how
1 things wor ” (The Ticklish Subject 199).

This decision is fundamental for Che’s initiation to the revolution on the
mountain, but it does not come without consequences for the rebel. In the moment that
Che picks up his gun and his box of bullets for the ﬁrst time, he is shot. Instead of
reacting to his ﬁrst gunshot wound by shooting back at the enemy soldiers, Che thinks of
how the heroic male protagonist in one of American author Jack London’s short stories
resigned to die a heroic death when faced with no other option, an obvious link to his fear

that death is near: “Inmediatamente, me puse a pensar en la mejor manera de morir en ese

55

minuto en que parecia todo perdido. Recordé un viejo cuento de Jack London donde el
protagonista, apoyado en un tronco de arbol, se dispone a acabar con dignidad, su vida, al
saberse condenado a muerte por congelacion, en las zonas heladas de Alaska. E5 la unica
imagen que recuerdo” (Pasajes 10).7 Moments prior, Che arrived on the mountain as a
doctor only to ﬁnd himself in a life-threatening situation spurred by the enemy army’s
surprise attack on the rebels. Yet his recurrence to a heroic (literary) representation of
man is signiﬁcant for it suggests that in his confusion, Che seems to almost innately recur
to masculine models that promote heroism over pragmatism.

Just as Che consciously decides to temporarily abandon his medical duties in
order to give himself the proper start as a guerrilla rebel, he also instinctively reacts to the
new revolutionary circumstances according to the very ideological model he will seek to
replace. Che’s action illustrates what Zizek identiﬁes as the numbing effects of ideology,
speciﬁcally a dominant ideology: “The concept of ideology,” he states, “implies a kind of
basic, constitutive naiveté [. . .] a divergence between so-called social reality and our
distorted representation, our false consciousness of it” (The Sublime Object 28). Che’s
decision to become a rebel is conscious, yet his ﬁrst “performance” as a guerrilla rebel is
in line with the model of the “heroic bourgeoisie” Frederic Jameson ties to the French
Enlightenment, which automatically deems men in combative situations as heroes
whether they act or not (3).

One could relate Che’s ﬁrst scare to his swift and perhaps necessary decision to

take up arms, a move he was not yet physically or mentally prepared for. Yet when faced

 

7 As Pasajes was not only well thought out, but rewritten and organized for publication, Che’s
reference to Jack London’s story “To Build a Fire” (1908) was probably not a coincidence. London,
similar to Che’s writing and the guerrilla literature of male authors in general, often centered his stories on
male protagonists that found themselves in situations in which they needed to prove their ability to survive
life-threatening situations and prevail, despite the circumstances.

56

with death again, instead of recurring to the heroic models prescribed for him in
literature, Che shoots his gun, only to ﬁnd that he has a non-functioning weapon. In this
moment Che, though unprotected, runs to avoid being shot: “Fallé la primera bala y
quedé indefenso [. . .] corri con velocidad que nunca he vuelto a alcanzar y pasé, ya en el
aire, doblando la esquina para caer en la calle transversal y arreglar ahi la ametralladora”
(Pasajes 112). When Che ﬁnds himself defenseless in the midst of another possibly
deadly situation, instead of facing his fears he ﬂees from them. In revealing his “gut
instinct” to run from his enemy Che allows his vulnerability, a “threat to [his] male
identity” to reach the page (Seidler, “Men, Sex, Relationships” 13). This move indicates
a break from the bourgeois male code, which would view masculinity in relation to man’s
capacity to perform heroic actions.

The new standard for men also surfaces when Che, torn again between his duties
as a physician and role as a rebel, resigns to leave two injured men behind in the hands of
the Batista Army’s medical team in order to continue to advance up the mountain. In
parting from Cilleros, the worse off of the two, Che, overwhelmed with guilt because this
decision would most deﬁnitely result in his comrade’s painful death, seeks to comfort
him with his words and is even inclined to show him his affection by giving him a kiss on
his forehead: “estuve tentado en aquel momento de depositar en su frente un beso de
despedida [. . .] pero el deber me indicaba que no debia amargar mas sus ultimos
momentos con la conﬁrmacion de algo de lo que él ya tenia casi absoluta certeza”
(Pasajes 28). Instead of sealing what he knew Cilleros would recognize as his death

sentence with a kiss, Che leaves him behind and justiﬁes his decision in stating that he

57

and the others had the duty of continuing to ﬁght for their lives, a statement that gives
precedence to his role as a guerrilla ﬁghter.

This example represents the ﬁrst hint of the relationship of camaraderie between
men, a bond that Eve Sedgwick calls “homosocial” in nature, which will eventually
replace the bourgeois locus of the family that is founded on a heterosexual ontology (6).
The compassion Che shows for his fellow comrade is representative of a new type of love
between men, a fraternal love that Rodriguez calls “rarisimo, otro, ajeno a la
masculinidad” and that emerges out of men’s participation in combat and collective
desire to realize a common socio-political goal (“Montaﬁa con aroma de mujer” '147). As
I will point out shortly, the love between the guerrilla rebels on the mountain in this
instance is not “weird,” “queer” (147) or akin to “feminine tendresse,” as Rodriguez
submits, but is related to a desire to build themselves up in terms unreﬂective of the
bourgeois code of manhood from the city.

In contrast to the moments in which Che reveals his seemingly innate inclination
to ﬂee from danger and his compassion for others, he acts according to a bourgeois male
code when he takes on the responsibility as primary dentist. When faced with an
overabundance of patients and not enough medicine and anesthesia to go around, Che or
“Fernando Sacamuelas,” as he humorously calls himself, employs what he calls
“psychological anesthesia”: “Se sumaba a mi poca pericia la falta de <<carpules>>, de tal
manera que habia que ahorrar mucho la anestesia y usaba bastante la <<anestesia
psicologica>>, llamando a la gente con epitetos duros cuando se quejaban demasiado por
los trabajos en su boca” (94). Che discourages the rebels from vocalizing their pain by

appealing to their machista background, knowing that in doing this, he would save

58

 

 

medicine by forcing them to conceal their pain. Che’s move to address the guerrilla
rebels’ inner machista ﬁts in a traditional (bourgeois) vein of masculinity in which men
are expected to withstand all types of pain — physical, emotional and psychological — in
order to save face in front of their peers: “We [men] learn to minimize pain we have
suffered [. . .] we learn to tell ourselves ‘it didn’t hurt’ and ‘it was nothing really’ [. . .] and
prove that we could ‘take it’” (Seidler, Man Enough 60).

Ironically, when Che proves unable to climb up the Maestra at the same rate as
the others Crespo, a peasant and member of the group of guerrilla ﬁghters on the
mountain, motivates him to move forward by using a similar tactic that highlights one of
Che’s professed insecurities: “cuando yo no podia mas y pedia que me dejaran, el
<<guajiro>>, con el léxico especial de nuestras tropas, me decia: <<Argentino de. .. vas a
caminar o te llevo a culatazos>>” (Pasajes 44—45). Che only acts when Crespo appeals
to his inner machista by touching on an insecurity that forces him to doubt his right to
assume a leadership position, even when he is later granted permission from Fidel to lead
a quadrant of rebels (“yo sentia mi complejo de extranjero, y no quise extremar las
medidas, aunque 5e veia un malestar muy grande en la tropa”) (49).

This form of “stimulus,” which Che also used as a dentist, promotes a bourgeois
vision of manhood that encourages men to disregard or mask any anxieties related to their
physical and emotional capacity in front of others. Such a vision of masculinity is in line
with what Roger Horrocks calls the cryptic message of conventional masculinity, which
states that men must at once conceal their weaknesses, fears and impotence and dominate

others as a means to demonstrate the resolute foundation of their manhood (25).

59

Che’s asthma, which often makes it difﬁcult for him to perform as a guerrilla
rebel, appears in other instances as a condition that both gains him special treatment —
Fidel allows him to sleep on the ground instead of a cloth hammock like the others
(Pasajes 55) — and forces him to carry out his duties under special circumstances: “Dado
mi estado asmatico que me obligaba a caminar a la cola de la Columna y no permitia
esfuerzos extras se me quito la ametralladora que portaba, la Thompson, ya que yo no
podia ir al tiroteo” (62). If the primary role of the guerrilla ﬁghter is to actively
participate in armed action, Che’s difﬁculty in bearing the weight of his weapon because
of his asthma weighs heavy on his conscience and his vision of himself in relation to
other rebels. In his struggle to combat what Sorensen calls his “double condition of
estrangement” represented in his complex related to his foreign status and asthmatic
condition, one ﬁnds Che’s “frustrated desire” and “the kind of masculinity he represents,
less epic in its actual achievements than in the nobility of his efforts and the longing to
reach them” (A Turbulent Decade 37, 38).

The truth is that such scenes divulge the early development of a masculinity that
instead of promoting heroism during revolution allows Che’s body-centered anxieties to
reach the page through a discussion of his bodily ﬁrnctions and needs and illness. Yet
perhaps because of his consciousness of the limitations his asthma places on his body, a
mindfulness he developed as a child out of necessity as, he seems to appreciate even
more his personal and combat-related victories.

When Che is immediately thrust into battle — prepared or not — he consciously and
perhaps theoretically more than practically assumes a new identity as a guerrilla rebel.

The moment he associates with his self-recognition as an actor in the revolution and as

60

such, as an agent of change, is when he receives his ﬁrst weapon. Che links this
acquisition to the start of a new phase for him: “Siempre recuerdo el momento en que me
fue entregado este fusil ametralladora, de muy mala calidad y viejo, pero que en aquel
momento signiﬁcaba una verdadera adquisicion” (Pasajes 72). Che’s description of his
ﬁrst weapon, though old (and defective) in relation to a new beginning for him, suggests
that it becomes a symbol of his right to act as a guerrilla rebel, thus solidifying his change
in status from doctor to political agent. What is more, Che’s gun also signiﬁes his
belonging to a community of men that serve as catalysts for change through their
participation in the revolution. Thus, it is “loaded” with signiﬁcance for Che and comes
to represent the combination of a “sense of community, solidarity, and of male pride”
(Mallon 197).

Che’s delight in the combative aspects of the revolution becomes clear when after
the rebel army’s victory in the battle of La Plata, the second of the insurgency; he wears a
helmet he stole from one of the members of the Batista Army as a “trophy” symbolic of
this triumph (Pasajes 19). Che’s prideful behavior almost gets him killed, for in seeing
the enemy helmet and hearing Che approach the rebel army’s camp, Camilo Cienfuegos,
a man Che later describes as one of the best guerrilla ﬁghters in the rebel army, shoots at
him and luckily misses because his weapon misﬁred due to his recent cleaning of it (19).
Che seems to describe such experiences as personal milestones that boost his conﬁdence
and reassure him of his “right” to participate in the revolution as well as mark his
individualistic approach to revolution. A view of the revolution as a performance and as

a sequence of personal gains is a central aspect of bourgeois masculinity.

61

Obviously, such scenes emphasize Che’s ostensible internalization of the
bourgeois ideas and practices that formed him. Nevertheless, as I will point out shortly,
the “internalization” of ideology never fully succeeds for there is always, according to
Zizek, a kernel of the real — the present reality — left over which allows the opportunity
for the subversion of the hegemonic norm for masculine conduct (The Sublime Object
43).

The most signiﬁcant personal victory for Che is when Fidel, the omnipresent
leader in his rebel narrative, names him C omandante in recognition of his leadership
skills. Although prior to this, Fidel had given Che permission over other members in the
rebel army to act as leader of a quadrant on the mountain, this new title concretizes his
shift from guerrilla ﬁghter to rebel leader: “La dosis de vanidad que tenemos dentro, hizo
que me sintiera el hombre mas orgulloso de la tierra ese dia. El simbolo de mi
nombramiento, una pequer’ra estrella, me fue dada por Celia junto con uno de los relojes
de pulsera que habian encargado a Manzanillo” (Pasajes 106).

Perhaps more than the star that Che wears on his beret, now a symbol of his status
as Comandante, is Fidel’s public recognition of his noteworthy qualities and capacities to
help him to lead the rebel army to victory and what Che’s change in status from an
Argentine doctor to an international rebel leader, a Comandante, implies for the
impression others within the group have of him. Beneath Che’s insecurities lies a desire
to perform (triumphantly) as a guerrilla rebel in part for his own satisfaction but mostly to
gain the respect and recognition of others. If in its conventional form “manhood is

demonstrated for other men’s approval” in taking pride in the symbols associated with his

62

right to act as guerrilla ﬁghter and leader on the mountain, Che seems to align himself
with such a paradigm in this instance (Kimmel, “Masculinity as Homophobia” 61).

Che also mentions the rebel army’s initial habit of viewing the revolution
according to a bourgeois code of manhood and the consequences such an approach,
which promotes a false sense of security in the group’s combat-related capacities, has for
the rebels. This vision is observed in the contradiction between the heroic aspirations
that stem from the guerrilla ﬁghters’ immediate victories in the battles of Alegria de Pio
and La Plata, the ﬁrst two conﬂicts of the insurgency, and their realization that such
triumphs do not exemplify their skills in armed combat but emphasize instead a need to
build themselves up in a different way that incorporates survival “an emotionally driven
force” that places basic human needs and self-protection at its center in place of heroic
actions, as a key component in the construction of the guerrilla rebel (Seidler,
Transforming Masculinities 127).

The rebels’ initial instinct to act according to a bourgeois male code that views
masculinity as a performance, blinds them to the reality of their situation on the
mountain, the fact that the “hombres de ciudad, no estaban acostumbrados a verse frente

a las penas del monte y no sabian veneerlas” (Pasajes 87). Such a reality becomes clear
When the raw recruits directly face the harsh nature of life on the mountain (i.e.
insufﬁcient food, drink, and tools necessary to maintain proper health and hygiene), and
accordingly their combat-related anxieties begin to surface: “las condiciones de la lucha
eran muy duras, pero las condiciones morales lo eran mucho mas todavia y se vivia bajo
la impresic’m del continuo asedio” (42). What this “duro aprendizaje del hombre de

Ciudad” seems to point out is that key to a rebel victory is not to win a couple of battles

63

by chance, but to demonstrate a capacity to survive in spite of the harshness of the
mountain and to work together as a group to develop the skills necessary for their
livelihood in this space (Pogolotti 153). Only those that realized this would see the ﬁght
through to the end, according to Che, an awareness that would also eventually earn them
a spot in the revolutionary vanguard: “los que quedaran y resistieran las primeras pruebas
se acostumbrarian a la suciedad, a la falta de agua, de comida, de techo, de seguridad y a
vivir continuamente conﬁando 3610 en el fusil y amparados en la cohesion y resistencia
del pequeflo nr'rcleo guerrillero” (Pasajes 30).

The rebel army’s understanding that in order to triumph, men must ﬁrst build
themselves up in a different way that instead of pushing men to deﬁne themselves
according to a traditional view of manhood that only seems to ﬁnd merit in victory and
heroic acts, promotes change through revolution, the only path to the construction of a
better future. This realization exposes the ﬁssures that exist within the bourgeois male
code as well as provides the platform for change for, as Judith Butler contends,
transformations only occur when the norms are “insistently constituted, contested, and
negotiated” (Bodies that Matter 76).

As observed until now, the rebel army wavers between a bourgeois code of
manhood that tempted men to strive to become heroes and a new model from the
mountain that encouraged the guerrilla rebels to focus on their roles as part of a collective
group carrying out a signiﬁcant mission. Che employs what Diana Sorensen calls a
“pedagogy of mistakes” by showing the ups and downs, the “instability between gain and
loss, belonging and alienation” of the revolutionary process to prove how men change

through the combination of their participation in the revolution and development of a

64

keen self-awareness (A Turbulent Decade 32, 37). In what follows, I evaluate how Che
and the rebel army put the new self-awareness and resultant collective aspirations they
begin to acquire on the mountain to work by revising the bourgeois ideas of the family,
knowledge, and the future to ﬁt the new socialist society in formation. They do this by
replacing the family, which is ﬁrmly rooted in the bourgeois concepts of heterosexuality
and reproduction, with a brotherhood of men that uses education as a tool to ensure not a
future based on the past, but one that will aim to construct a horizontal society ﬁxed upon
the idea of equality for all (Sorensen, “Masculinidades ansiosas” 135).
The Brotherhood of Men

If in the initial phase of the ﬁght from the mountain, the guerrilla rebels
experience a series of ups and downs related to their coincidental “triumphs” and ensuing
realization of an urgent need for change, the next phase of their experience is deﬁned by
a constructive self-awareness catalyzed by the cohesion of individuals into a collective
body of men: “A1 cumplirse dos meses del desembarco del <<Granma>>, estaba un
grupo homogéneo reunido [. . .] nos sentiamos mas fuertes y con mejor animo que nunca”
(Pasajes 27). Such a shift is not only evidenced in the union of the members of the
group, but also in Che’s embrace of the ﬁrst person plural in his description of the rebel

€61”

army, which seems to indicate a break with the individual authoritative typical of the
bourgeois subject. The change in the position from which Che speaks is signiﬁcant, for
as Ileana Rodriguez submits, the “I” in revolutionary texts is representative of bourgeois

authority and individualism while the collective “we” represents an attempt to break

away from the bourgeois model (“Conservadurismo y disensién” 773).

65

More in tune to one another and to the needs of the peasant communities on the
mountain (i.e., education and healthcare) the rebels develop strong fraternal bonds with
one another. The view of the rebel army as a collective contra-hegemonic force also
facilitates the recruitment of some peasants for the revolution: “La guerrilla y el
campesinado 5e iban fundiendo en una sola masa, sin que nadie pueda decir en qué
momento del largo camino se produjo, en que’ momento se hizo intimamente veridico lo
proclarnado y fuimos parte del campesinado” (Pasajes 65). The rebel group, now larger
and more disciplined, not only possesses the look of a capable guerrilla force but
performs it as well.

Che and the other rebels do not realize how much they have changed since their
arrival several months prior until a group of ﬁfty replacement revolutionaries led by
Jorge Sott'rs, an inexperienced rebel leader that Che identiﬁes as his direct nemesis on the
mountain for his harsh criticism of Che for his Argentine nationality, arrive on the
Maestra to ﬁght alongside them.8 The original group of rebels that arrived in El Granma
was quickly humbled by the harshness of the mountain, yet a double challenge lie ahead
for the new recruits. They are not only required to build themselves up in relation to the
mountain, but are compared to the already experienced “barbudos” as well (63).
Likewise, upon observing the pristine condition of the replacement revolutionaries, Che

notices stunning differences between the two groups: “Era notable la diferencia entre la

 

8 Che, through his climbing of the revolutionary hierarchy (i.e. doctor to Comandante) and
demonstration of a capacity to adapt to the conditions on the mountain in spite of his asthmatic condition
and little practical experience as a guerrilla rebel, presents himself as a man that is capable of change and
worthy of his status as an exemplary leader for others. Quite the opposite, Jorge Sotus epitomizes the
antithesis of the model of the guerrilla rebel Che seeks to promote in his text. Though Fidel Castro places
Sott’rs in charge of a group of rebels on the mountain, said “rebel leader” struggles to walk up the mountain
— Che explains that he was “uno de los que peor lo hacia y se quedaba constantemente atras” — he has a
poor attitude, and what is more, he ends up becoming a traitor to the revolution when he travels to Miami
where he reveals crucial information regarding the ﬁght from the mountain (Pasajes 49-50).

66

gente barbuda, con sus mochilas hechas de cualquier cosa y atadas como pudieran y los
nuevos soldados, con sus uniformes todavia limpios, mochilas iguales y pulcras y las
caras rasuradas” (63 -64).

Che’s comparison of the cleanly shaven men with their unsoiled clothing and
perfectly proportioned backpacks to the dirty, bearded and rugged rebel army from the
mountain should be understood both in visual and symbolic terms. The dirt of the
mountain for Che seems to have washed him and the other members of the original group
of the pristine bourgeois male code of which the new recruits will now have to cleanse
themselves. Che’s idea that on the mountain, men come together to “purify” themselves
of their former bourgeois ways culminates in Che’s assertion that “la revolucion limpia a
los hombres, los mejora como el agricultor experimentado corrige los defectos de la
planta e intensiﬁca las buenas cualidades” (124). The idea of revolution as a process of
puriﬁcation would be in line with the guerrilla rebel’s gradual conversion into an iron-
willed example, a masculine ideal that other men would strive to live up to and that
would replace the bourgeois standard of man.

If the rebels arrive on the Maestra facing physical, emotional and ideological
challenges, through their participation in the revolution they have consciously and
consistently built themselves and their bodies up into sources of physical and moral
strength. They have, ironically, attempted to rid themselves of the pure, a “defect” of the
past, and in its place have embraced the impure, which becomes a symbol of the
destabilized bourgeois norm. In Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982), Julia

Kristeva establishes a connection between the pure (the norm) and the impure or abject,

67

that which destabilizes the norm for it both attracts and repulses the subject (77-87).9 For
Che, the inverse is true in Cuba for the pure takes the place of the abject and the impure
as a catalyst for change becomes the key to his building himself up according to a
different code of manhood from the mountain.

Another way that Che addresses the changes the rebel army has undergone while
on the mountain is by distancing this group, which has thus far demonstrated a constant
moving forward, to the stagnancy and arrogance of theBatista Army. If at the start of the
revolution, despite their initial victories in Alegria de Pio and La Plata, the opponent
intimidates the anxiety-ridden guerrillas because of the large number of soldiers and their
experience in combat, as the rebel army gains force through their newly erected
brotherhood of men, the roles of the two groups become inverted.

Che foregrounds the lazy, disloyal and uninterested nature of the Batista Army.
Instead of preparing themselves for the ﬁght - they seem blinded by their ostensible force
as a military group and thus eschew the possibility of a rebel army victory — they eat,
gossip, and wait motionless and unconscious of their actions for the rebel army to attack.
“Los guardias,” Che comments, “se lo pasaban en el cuartel, que solamente comian sin
actuar, que hacian recorridos sin importancia; maniﬁesto que enfaticamente que habia
que liquidar a todos los rebeldes” (Pasajes 16). The inactivity of the Batista Army
would, without a doubt, allow for the eventual triumph of the rebel army, and sharply
contrasts the three key components in Che’sfoco theory that he develops after the Cuban
Revolution based on his experiences on the Sierra Maestra that appear in the closing

chapter of Pasajes: constant mobility, constant mistrust, and constant vigilance (124).

 

9 In my analysis of Che’s Bolivian diary, the juxtaposition of pure and impure recuperates its
traditional value - the pure (norm) the impure (abject) as Che realizes that the abject manifests itself in him
in the form of physical, moral. and emotional demands, resulting in his self-interpreted “fall”.

68

In clearly marking the fundamental differences between the rebel army, which has
demonstrated a capacity and willingness to embrace change, and the Batista Army’s
over-conﬁdent nature and immobility (both literal and symbolic), Che puts into question
the stability of the bourgeois code of manhood that on the surface is strict and “clearly
out of reach for most men,” yet is paradoxically weak and unstable for it allows for a
rebel victory (Alsop 143). The comparison between the Army and the rebels is not
merely military, it is also a difference in the code of male conduct: “Siempre contrastaba
nuestra actitud con los heridos y la del Ejército, que no 5610 asesinaba a nuestros heridos
sino que abandonaba a los suyos” (Pasajes 14). If the Batista Army exhibits indifference
in matters related to the lives of others, the rebel army serves the people and approaches
change in a caring, protective and productive manner. In outlining these core political
and ideological differences between his and the enemy group, Che suggests that while the
bourgeois State acts only when commanded and as a means to protect private property,
socialism protects, serves, and acts according to the needs of the people.10

The model of manhood that comes out of the rebel army is a collective model of
male camaraderie that rather than ﬁnd its core in the bourgeois family is linked to “un
espiritu de compaﬁerismo y fusion de los ideales socialistas de la revolucic’m con un
imaginario politico-simbolico fundado en nociones de liberacion y de impugnacion del
orden existente” (Sorensen, “Masculinidades ansiosas” 35). The mountain, then,
becomes the site where bourgeois ideas are broken down and tested by the experiences of
the guerrillas. Such a view of said geography affects the relationship that develops

between men. Rather than build themselves up in relation to women or the competition

 

10 Such an approach to the revolution is rooted in what Ileana Rodriguez calls “patriotic love” or
“the homosocial love of men for men and of men for their country” (Women, Guerrillas & Love 19).

69

between men for a woman as observed in the city, the rebels on the mountain unite their
forces and work together towards a common socio-political goal.
Education

Key to the building up of a future rooted in socialism is education through self,
community and political awareness. C he’s use for learning on the mountain is double-
aimed. It not only serves as a tool to educate the rebel army and peasant masses on the
Maestra, but also provides the platform from which he will outline his revolutionary
project based on agrarian reform, literacy campaigns, and plans for the future by
providing concrete examples of individuals that change as a result of their involvement in
the revolution.H

Che educates the guerrilla rebels through the implementation of tertulias. Viewed
as discussion meetings, the tertulias focus on avant-garde theory and praxis aimed at
strategizing and improving revolutionary tactics. In initiating such discussions, Che
hopes to encourage rebels to think critically about the responsibility of the guerrilla
ﬁghter and the rebel army in carrying out the revolution. Self-criticism is necessary for
change to take place during the revolution as well as becomes a central quality in the new
man after the triumph of the revolution.

Ironically, the tertulia also provides some men with the opportunity to embellish
the truth in order to appear more valiant in front of their peers. Che, who meticulously
records the number of deaths for both the enemy and rebel groups, is quick to point out
that the only means to combat the macho tendency to overemphasize heroic deeds is to

appoint people in the rebel army to act as scribes that record facts. occurrences, deaths

 

H See “Se gesta una traicion.” chapter in which Che outlines the various components of his
revolutionary project (Pasajes 100-106).

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and other details of signiﬁcance: “aprendimos claramente que los datos deben ser
avalados por varias personas [. . .] ya que la preocupacion por la verdad fue Siempre tema
central de las inforrnaciones del Ejército Rebelde y se trataba de infundir en los
compaﬁeros e1 respeto profundo por ella y el sentido de lo necesario que era anteponerla
a cualquier ventaja transitoria” (Pasajes 84).

This is not the ﬁrst instance 'in which Che stresses the importance of self-criticism
and truth-telling as critical components in narrating the revolution. In the prologue to
Pasajes, Che, aware that he provides a ﬁrst-person account of the Cuban Revolution in
the context of a triumphant revolution, states that in writing his text, he consciously
sought objectivity. Only in such terms does Che invite others to complement his text
with different perspectives: “que se haga una autocritica lo mas seria posible para quitar
de alli toda palabra que no se reﬁera a un hecho estrictamente cierto, 0 en cuya certeza no
tenga el autor una plena conﬁanza” (6). With such statements, Che expresses a desire to
convert the individual-centered heroic discourse of the bourgeois man that “ﬂaunts [his]
subjectivity” simply to gain the approval of others into a group of men that is conscious
of this human ﬂaw and that seeks to correct it by employing a “will to truth that is
forward looking and vigilant” (Sorensen, A Turbulent Decade 36, 31).

With the help of fellow revolutionary Camilo Cienfuegos, Che also addresses the
educational needs of the peasant communities on the Maestra by creating C iudad
Escalar. Unlike educational institutions in the city that are saturated with bourgeois
ideology and cater only to the ruling class, Ciudad Escolar does not exclude anyone.
Che even allows Eutimio Guerra’s children, a peasant that he frequently points to in

Pasajes as a counter-example of a revolutionary for his attempts to kill Fidel Castro and

71

failure to comply with the revolutionary code of conduct, to attend his revolutionary
institution.12 Thus, the mountain not only serves as a type of training camp for the
guerrilla rebel, but it becomes a school for the guerrilla ﬁghters and peasants living there.
At the core of Che’s educational message lies his development of a type of socialist
humanism that suggests that the “progress of humanity” depends on self-criticism,
knowledge and an awareness of the need for change (Novack 123).

Learning is not only found in books in Pasajes; Che also provides concrete
examples of men — “los retratos de los combatientes” — that have embraced the
fundamental values mentioned above as a platform for change and thus earn Che’s
mention of them in his historical text (Iznaga Beira 155). '3 Let me take Banderas as a
ﬁrst example. When Che met this peasant, he was an undisciplined and stubborn
revolutionary that demonstrated little capacity to alter his ways and to share his land for
the sake of the revolution. Yet through his discussions with Che on the importance of
land reform and communal land ownership, Banderas eventually realized his errors and
became what Che calls an “agrarian revolutionary” (Pasajes 90). After Banderas died in

combat, Che contends that had he lived, he would have accepted the revolution’s goal of

 

'2 Eutimio Guerra was a peasant that initially acted as a guide for the rebel army on the Sierra
Maestra and pretended to support the goals of the revolution, but was actually hired as a spy for the Batista
Army. His task during the revolution was clear: to exterminate Fidel Castro and to give up the location of
the rebels on the mountain. While Guerra never succeeded in killing Castro and the location of the rebel
army remained a secret, he was eventually executed and shamed in Che’s account of the Cuban Revolution.
Nevertheless, when asked if the revolution, or the main actors in this insurgency, would grant him one
dying wish, he requested that the members of the rebel army care for his children. That is exactly what this
group pledged to do, according to C he’s analysis of the situation: “La revolucion cumplio. El de Eutimio
Guerra es un nombre que ahora resurge al recuerdo de estas notas, pero que ya ha sido olvidado quizas
hasta por sus hijos; éstos van con otro nombre a una de las tantas escuelas y reciben el tratamiento de todos
los hijos del pueblo, preparandose para una vida mejor, pero algr’m dia tendran que saber que su padre fue
ajusticiado por el poder revolucionario debido a su traicion” (40).

Other men that Che mentions as exemplary guerrilla rebels include Frank Pals, a rebel leader
from the city that he describes as a national hero and martyr for his dedication to the revolution, and
Camilo Cienfuegos, a diehard revolutionary, quality that is best portrayed in his afﬁrrnation “aqui no se
rinde nadie” when he and the other rebels ﬁnd themselves in a life-threatening situation on the Maestra and
some threaten to abandon the ﬁght (Pasajes 38. IO).

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land reform and served as an ambassador for change on the mountain. Banderas was “un
luchador de vanguardia en el campo de la produccion agricola [. . .] Era un campesino
despierto que sabia del valor de contribuir con su propio esfuerzo a escribir un pedazo de
historia” (90).

Julio Zenon Acosta, an illiterate peasant that was Che’s ﬁrst pupil on the
mountain, is another example of an agrarian revolutionary. Che depicts Acosta as an
exemplary man that exercises self-discipline and is driven by his passion for learning.
Despite his age — Acosta was forty-ﬁve years old when Che met him — Che describes him
as “uno de los que mas insistian en la teoria de la iluminacion [. . .] con mucho empeﬁo,
sin considerar los aﬁos pasados sino lo que quedaba por hacer, Julio Zenon se habia dado
a la tarea de alfabetizarse” (32). In his embrace for education and change, Julio Zenon
Acosta becomes for Che “un hombre orquesta de aquellos tiempos” (3 2). In other words,
Zenon Acosta as a guerrilla rebel and social reformist is one of the many individuals that
contribute to the building up of a new future through socialism.l4

Another such rebel is Che Guevara’s friend Guatemalan Julio Roberto Caceres
Valle, or “E1 Patojo,” as Che refers to him, to whom Che dedicates the ﬁnal chapter of
Pasajes. In his retelling of “El Patojo’s” experiences as a revolutionary and drive and
determination to participate in the restructuring of Latin American societies through

political action, Che pinpoints the aspects of what will also represent the crux of hisfoca

 

‘4 In Guerra de guerrillas, Che comments on the signiﬁcant role of the guerrilla not only as a
model man as evidenced in his own experiences as a guerrilla rebel, but also as an ideologically mature
subject: “El guerrillero, como reformador social, no 5610 debe constituir un ejemplo en cuanto a su vida,
sino que también debe orientar constantemente en los problemas ideologicos, con lo que sabe 0 con lo que
pretende hacer en determinado momento y, ademas, con lo que va aprendiendo en el transcurso de los
meses o aflos de la guerra” (69).

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theory. '5 Also, through El Patojo’s example, Che highlights some of the qualities in
individuals that could act as barriers in the carrying out of the revolution.

El Patojo, similar to Che, had not been trained in the tactics of guerrilla warfare
and possessed little theoretical knowledge on revolution. Yet his desire to take part in the
construction of a new Latin America moved him to join the revolutionary ﬁght ﬁrst from
Guatemala and later in Cuba. In order to maintain the predominantly national status of
the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, who had allowed Che to participate in the
insurgency, denied El Patojo such a right (123).16 After Castro’s rejection, El Patojo
returned to his native Guatemala to realize his revolutionary goals. Before his departure,
Che, by now a rebel leader, outlined three strict rules of the guerrilla ﬁght he learned
through his experiences on the Maestra and that in their combination would establish the
basis of his face theory. Back in Guatemala, El Patojo violated each and every one of the

three rules of clandestine life and died as a consequence (125).l7

 

'5 The foca theory, as Che establishes in Guerra de guerrillas (1963), describes the central role of
the fast-moving informal politico-military groups formed on the mountain during revolution in isolation
from society and outside of and in opposition to the State. The main duties of this group were to create the
conditions necessary for revolution, to form relationships with and to gain the support of the peasant and
indigenous populations on the mountain, and to serve as an engine for change during revolution by
implementing agrarian reforms, can'ying out education campaigns, and working consciously to construct a
new future in socialism.

'6 Che comments: “Ya he dicho que Fidel no quiso traerlo, no por ninguna cualidad negativa suya
sino por no hacer de nuestro Eje'rcito un mosaico de nacionalidades” (123). Fidel Castro seems to apply a
double standard when faced with the question of intemationalizing the revolutionary ﬁght. He justiﬁes
Che’s participation by appointing him as the doctor of the rebel army, even though it becomes clear from
the onset that Che was a guerrilla rebel from the start. Though Che ends up gaining more recognition after
the success of the revolution than any of the national insurgents, Castro stands by his plan to leave the
armed action on the mountain in the hands of the Cuban rebels. ‘

‘7 Che’s ﬁnal moments as a revolutionary would not come until years later during his participation
in the Bolivian insurgency of the late 19605 as observed in my analysis of Che’s Bolivian diary, yet one
could assume that such characteristics may have contributed to his difﬁculties in the high mountain region
of Bolivia. In his attempt to apply theories based on his experiences on the Sierra Maestra in Cuba to such a
distinct geographical region, Che faced many of the same difﬁculties he outlines here in his reference to
“El Patojo’s” demise.

74

What Che foregrounds with men that for him represent the catalysts of the new
future in socialism (and this point too is one that will be central to his faco theory) is that
the revolution is a process of social change that reﬂects the dynamics of the socialist
society (El socialismo y el hombre nuevo 9). The revolution (and consequently its
participants) then, has two main responsibilities: to correct the errors of the past and to
construct a new future (Sorensen, A Turbulent Decade 136).

In Pasajes there is an aspiration to change — on individual and collective levels —
and the guerrilla rebel plays a crucial role in the process. In the push to construct the
rebel army in isolation from society, the guerrilla rebels simultaneously disrupt the
previously established standard of a bourgeois masculinity and gain agency through a
collective experience on the mountain. They “intervene in the name of transformation”
and convert “what has become settled knowledge and knowable reality” through self-
awareness, mobility and change into the beginning of a new male code reﬂective of the
ﬁght for survival, the relationships between men, and the project of the revolution that
come together on the mountain (Butler, Undoing Gender 27). What the conscious yet
contradictory drive to change seems to imply is that gender codes are “ﬂuid, malleable”
and thus vulnerable to change (McDowell 24).

Such a point becomes particularly evident when Che continues to form a new
standard for rebels on the mountain in El diaria del Che en Bolivia. If in Pasajes Che
embraces a transitional model that both incorporates and refutes bourgeois practices and
ideals, in El diaria, a journal that recounts the rebel army’s futile efforts to implement
Che’sfaco theory in the high mountain region of the Andes in Bolivia, Che

unconsciously proposes a code of masculinity that embeds the feminine by gradually

75

substituting the teleological and political aims of Pasajes with an emphasis on the body
and its functions, needs, and ailments (i.e., food, the scatological, sickness).
The Arrival in Bolivia

On November 7, 1966, Che Guevara alongside Cuban guerrilla rebels Harry
Villegas (“Pombo”), Carlos Coello (“Tuma”), Alberto Fernandez de cha (“Pacho”) and
approximately thirteen others arrived in Bolivia. Che’s decision to travel to Bolivia, a
country conveniently located at the heart of South America, is clearly outlined in his
“Mensaje a la Tricontinental” (1966). In it Che attacked North American domination and
afﬁrrned that the only weapon against capitalism was an intercontinental revolution; the
creation of two or three Vietnams: “El imperialismo es un sistema mundial, ultima etapa
del capitalismo, y [. . .] hay que batirlo en una gran confrontacion mundial. La ﬁnalidad
estrate'gica de esa lucha debe ser la destruccion del imperialismo [. . .] el elemento
fundamental de esa ﬁnalidad estratégica sera [. . .] una Revolucion Socialista”. '8 Che’s
“Mensaje” disproves rumors that imply that he traveled to Bolivia to satisfy his
adventurous spirit by participating in yet another revolution and suggests instead that
Bolivia was the ﬁrst step in his plan to arm a continental war against imperialism.19

Prior to traveling to Bolivia, Che had established contact with rebels aligned at the
time with the Communist Party of Bolivia (PCB) that seemed willing to support his plan.
Yet, upon his arrival there, several issues affected his ability to build up a collective unity
of guerrilla rebels (El diaria 40). Apart from his unfamiliarity with the region, the harsh

weather conditions, bad maps and his difﬁculty in gaining the support of the already

 

18 See http:/.-"www.ﬁ losoﬁa.org/hemr’deplcri/ri 12094.htm.
'9 See Martin Ebon’s Che: The Making of a Legend (1969), Richard Harris’, Death of a

Revolutionary: Che Guevara 's Last Mission (1970), Alma Guillermoprieto’s “The Harsh Angel” (2001 ),
and Jon Lee Anderson’s Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (1997).

 

76

politicized Bolivian peasant mass, Che and Mario Monje, the current head of the PCB,
had irreconcilable political differences that resulted in Che’s taking over as leader of the
ﬁght and Monje’s abandonment of the revolutionary project.20 What is more, and Che
was aware of this as well, he was not only up against the US trained Bolivian army, but
US. Special Forces that were formed and trained by the CIA also came in “to provide on
the spot training in counter-guerrilla operations to a hand-picked group of Bolivian
Rangers” (Klare 178). It was under these less than favorable conditions that Che initiated
the ﬁght in Bolivia. How will such conditions affect the way Che writes revolution from
Bolivia and what will this imply for the code of manhood from the mountain?

C he’s Bolivian diary shows a desire to pick up where Pasajes left off. Once in
Bolivia, Che continued to hold tertulias with pedagogic aims in which be outlined key

components of his establishedfoca theory as well as pointed to the qualities that the

 

20 If Che hoped to build up the revolutionary vanguard with this same international spirit,
beginning with the Cubans that followed him there and later incorporating Bolivians, Peruvians, and rebels
of other nationalities in the ﬁght, Monje sought to create a national movement and he envisioned a
revolutionary vanguard comprised primarily of Bolivian guerrilla rebels and peasants (El diaria 59). As a
result of their conﬂicting views, Monje ceded his leadership position and returned to La Paz where he
actively worked to sabotage C he’s movement from the mountain (Peredo 31). Monje hardly had a choice
for Che concluded his initial conversation with the Bolivian leader in afﬁrming: “El jefe militar seria yo y
no aceptaba ambigtledades en esto” (EI diaria 60).

Bolivian lnti Peredo’s recollection of this conversation is even more detailed than Che’s. In his
synopsis of the words exchanged between the leaders that day, Peredo recalls that Che justiﬁed his decision
to assume leadership of the movement by bringing to the fore his former experience as a rebel leader and
the historical circumstances that led him there: “Las circunstancias hist6ricas me han situado en
determinado lugar. Tengo una experiencia militar que tu no tienes. Tu no has participado en ninguna
accion [...] yo ya estoy aqui y de aqui 5610 me sacan muerto [...] la falsa modestia no nos conduce a nada”
(31-32).

Although a reading of these statements attune to a bourgeois code of manhood would link Che’s
unwavering determination to lead the revolution in Bolivia to his overconﬁdence and unwillingness to
cooperate with others, when observed in the context in which they were said, it seems to make sense. C he,
an international rebel leader in the successful Cuban insurgency that had developed a seemingly stable
theory (foco theory) on how to carry out a revolutionary insurgency implementing a revolutionary vanguard
that appealed to the peasant masses on the mountain, sought to apply his former experience as a guerrilla
rebel and leader in Bolivia. This is not a question of machismo, but rather Che’s desire to address the
historical needs and demands that presented themselves in Bolivia at such a crucial moment of the Cold
War in which the United States had created ideological battleﬁelds in other countries as witnessed with the
Bay of Pigs (1961) in Cuba and the ongoing support of the Vietnam War (1959-1975).

77

guerrilla rebels should aspire to acquire — self-discipline, unity, an appreciation for
education and constant mobility. In such meetings, Che also assigned speciﬁc tasks to
the participants, although they often failed to comply, and strove to outline a plan of
action for the days to follow (51, 65, 66).

Despite Che’s plan for Bolivia, he could not ignore the problems that surfaced on
a political level and as a consequence, the teleological end he initially sought to carry
over from Pasajes is replaced with an inner monologue that reveals his anxieties related
to the ﬁght and the group, which never achieves the unity observed in the Cuban rebel
army towards the end of Pasajes. On April 22, 1967, the day that Che realized that the
Bolivian Army knew of their location, knowledge that eventually resulted in the death
and capture of several rebels, Che wrote the following: “El balance de la accion es
negativo, indisciplina e imprevision por un lado, la pérdida (aunque espero transitoria) de
un hombre, por otro; mercancia que pagamos y no llevamos y, por ultimo, la pérdida de
un paquete de dolares que se me cayo de la bolsa de Pombo, son los resultados de la
accion [. . .] falta mucho para hacer de esto una ﬁierza combatiente aunque la moral es
bastante alta” (131).

Six months into the ﬁght, in spite of Che’s ultimate goal to “format el nucleo
ejemplo que sea de acero,” he and the guerrilla rebels had not entered the combative
phase of the revolution and had yet to prove their exemplary status (65). To add to their
immobility, which should not be associated with the persistent self-imposed idleness of
Batista’s Army in Pasajes, but to their unfamiliarity with the region, lack of
communication with the peasants and bad maps, Che and his men become perpetually

lost (67, 163, 173). The feeling of being lost dictates every aspect of their mission in

78

Bolivia from where they sleep at night to what they eat and drink. If in Pasajes, learning
to survive on the mountain was only one aspect of the revolution, in Bolivia it emerges as
the central focus precisely because of the rebel army’s difﬁculty in applying Che’sfaco
theory to the high mountain region of the Andes. Thus, what begins as a revolutionary
project transforms into a mission for survival.

Such a change in the initial plan shifts the focus of Che’s writing as well. The
activities of the day, which are seldom related to a political act that aims to alter the
socio-political and economic structures through revolution, begin to center on the body
and as a result, the politics of revolution presented in Pasajes is minimized. Why is the
surfacing of the body signiﬁcant and how will Che’s shift from a discourse centered on
political action to one that is preoccupied with the body, an entity that is bound up with
questions of “emotions, sensations [and] experiences” affect Che’s revision of the code of
manhood that he began to construct in the Sierra Maestra (Grosz, “Reﬁguring Bodies”
50)?

The Body: the Threshold of Politics

The combination of the rebel army’s unpreparedness, the callous conditions of life
on the mountain and the lack of discipline of the group contributed to the issues that
began to come forth from the start in Bolivia and that culminated in an overwhelming
feeling of being lost on the mountain. The rebels’ inconsistent access to sustenance
oftentimes determines the course of the mission, for the rebels’ quest to satisfy their
physiological needs overtakes the combat—related aspects of the ﬁght. Che covers up his
anxiety related to the scarcity of food and drink with repetitive “small talk” centered on

what the rebels eat (or not) on each particular day: “La comida: 3 paj aritos y '/2 y el resto

79

del palmito, a partir de maﬁana, lata pelada, a un tercio por cabeza” (El diaria 95),
“queda comida para 5 dias, pero muy escasa” (140), “se mato un caballo y se comio su
came generosarnente” (109-110), and “se comio la penultima comida, muy pobre, 5610 se
cazé una perdiz” (141).

It appears that Che’s mention of the “menu del dia” in the examples above is
intentional. Yet these lines, which serve as the concluding words to Che’s journal
entries, are surrounded by other statements that signal a need to uncover the meaning
behind Che’s food-centered discourse: “la gente esta cada vez mas desanimada” (95),
“murieron dos guerrilleros” (109), and “estamos pues en el arroyo del Congri, que no
ﬁgura en el mapa” (141). Che’s dissociation of the gastronomy of the mountain and his
frustrations related to what he appears afraid to reveal leads me to believe that his
emphasis on food, more than his mere superﬁcial reference to it, serves to divert attention
away from the real (repressed) “noticias del dia” or “news of the day”: the men’s morale
is low, guerrilla rebels are dying. and the vanguard continues to struggle with inaccurate
maps (1 10).

By allowing his preoccupations with food to dominate the diary, Che seeks to
“offer us the social reality itself as an escape from some traumatic, real kernel” (Zizek,
The Sublime Object 45). What is the “traumatic, real kernel” or the repressed topic that
Che tries to cover up? His discussion of basic human needs — survival versus the
strengthening of the body witnessed in Pasajes — seeks to conceal the absence of politics;
Che’s drifting away from the utopian-centered discourse that he develops in Pasajes and

the way in which such a change affects him and the other guerrilla rebels.

80

The rebels’ overwhelming preoccupation with food is clearly evidenced when the
Bolivian Army interrupts one of their routine hunts for food with an air raid. Rather than
pick up their weapons, the guerrilla ﬁghters continue their search and consume their
ﬁndings prior to moving on: “Cuando estabamos fuera del camino, ocupados en recoger
frijoles, sonaron descargas cerca y, poco después, vimos la aviacion <<bombardeandonos
ferozmente>>, pero como a 2 o 3 Kms.” (El diaria 146). Instead of addressing the issue
at hand — the enemy Army’s knowledge of the rebels’ approximate location and ensuing
attempt to wipe them out —, a turn of events certainly worthy of the rebel leader’s
attention, Che recognizes the guerrilla rebels’ search for food as the important action of
the day. This means that the needs of the body take precedence over a “political act
proper” that consciously ﬁghts to derail existing bourgeois institutions (Zizek, The
Ticklish Subject 199).

The shift to a non-ideological food-centered discourse is a signiﬁcant one for it
allows the body, and not political action, to determine rebel actions in Bolivia. The only
common thread that seems to keep the relationships between men intact (or push them
apart) is their collective obsession with serving the needs of their bodies, necessities they
are scarcely able to address due to the lack of sustenance on the mountain.

Che addresses such a shift and seeks to correct it in a pseudo-tertulia he leads in
which he addresses men’s obsession with ﬁnding and consuming food not only as the
motivating force behind their actions but as the root of the growing antagonism among
the members of the group: “Reuni a todo el mundo y les tiré una descarga sobre Ios
problemas confrontados; fundamentalmente el de la comida, haciendo criticas a Benigno

por comerse una lata y negarlo; Urbano por comerse un charqui a escondidas y Aniceto

81

 

por su afan de colaborar en todo lo que sea comida y renuncia a hacerlo cuando se trata
de otra cosa” (El diaria 146). The signiﬁcant point here is not the fact that food has
transformed into an internal enemy that foments dishonesty and underhanded behavior in
men, thus resulting in the gradual deterioration of the rebel army. Che’s use of the
tertulia, a meeting previously used to educate the rebel army on the goals of the
revolution to scold men for their food-related “crimes” represents an unwanted moving
away from the desired political focus of the mission.

In realizing this, Che recurs to a tactic he used during his days as Fernando
Sacamuelas on the Maestra — “psychological anesthesia” — to regain control of the
mission and his men. He publicly humiliates e1 Moro by denying him a place in the
revolutionary vanguard for his food-related weaknesses (116) and calls Benigno’s actions
dishonorable in front of the entire group, a statement that results in the rebel’s “crisis de
llanto” (212). While such a tactic may have worked in Cuba, Che’s stripping Moro of his
title and shaming of Benigno in front of peers only seems to further pry open their
insecurities and stress their overall frustration with the ﬁght and with themselves.

Due to the rebels’ long periods of starvation, when they do ﬁnally have the
opportunity to eat, they tend to gorge themselves and often suffer severe corporal
consequences. On one particular day, after feasting on pork, rice, butter, and other food
items they received from a peasant in the area, Che and the others experience what he
humorously describes as “un dia de eruptos, pedos y vomitos y diarreas; un verdadero
concierto de organo” (145). Though Che seeks to make light of the situation by calling it
a true “concert of the organs,” a move that Butler calls “parody” as a “politics of despair”

(Butler, Gender Trouble 146) the result of Che’s overindulgence is particularly

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humiliating: he soils his pants and his fellow comrades have to medicate, change, and
carry him up the mountain: “Se me inicié un colico fortisimo con vomitos y diarrea. Me
10 cortaron con demerol y perdi la nocion de todo mientras me llevaban en hamaca;
cuando desperté estaba muy aliviado pero cagado como un niﬁo de pecho. Me prestaron
un pantalon, pero sin agua, hiedo a mierda a una legua” (El diaria 146).

The juxtaposition of food, that which is pure and nourishing, and feces, the
impure or contaminated, what Rene Prieto calls a “kinship of contraries,” is signiﬁcant
(108). Che’s violent purging of the very food that ensures his livelihood on the mountain
is not only representative of his consequent dependency on others — a realization that he
indicates by comparing himself to a “niﬁo de pecho,” an infant — but also implies the
breaking down of the vision of his body as an autonomous fortress as well as his
cleansing himself of the former bourgeois code of manhood. If for Kristeva, fecal matter
“signiﬁes [. . .] what never ceases to separate a body in a state of permanent loss in order
to become autonomous, distinct from the mixtures, alterations, and decay that run
through it” then for Che, food, the only means for survival on the mountain, also exposes
his deepest anxieties and consequently forces the surfacing of an aspect of the revolution
he silenced in Pasajes (108).

In this moment, Che’s body becomes the host upon which the “impossibilities”
the feminine characteristics he consciously left out of the model of manhood outlined in
Pasajes manifest themselves in his body and thus seep through the cracks of his unedited
journal. Che’s body as a contact zone of the “good” and the “bad,” the “masculine” and

the “feminine,” the “real” and the “illusionary,” divulges other political ontologies of the

83

body (i.e. male vulnerability, dependence on others, the scatological) during the
revolution (146).

If in Pasajes, Che associates the revolution with a self-induced process of
puriﬁcation that facilitates the guerrilla rebel’s shedding of his bourgeois baggage
(although this never completely occurs) and his building up of himself according to a
different male code, the process of puriﬁcation evidenced in the diary is much different.
Che’s purging of the feasts of food that nourish him in the form of fecal matter is,
ironically, both self-imposed and involuntary and seems to emphasize Che’s lack of
control of his body on two levels: what he puts into it and what comes out of it.

What Che describes above as a temporary lapse in control of his body, a slip that
results in his portrayal of himself as a “fallen object” (El diaria 99), becomes chronic and
thus unavoidable when in addition to his food-related illnesses, his asthmatic condition
continues to persist in Bolivia and begins to dictate what he can or cannot do on the
mountain — sleep, eat, move on his own, search for medicines — (170, 172, 189). When
Che realizes that his asthma and not his actions control his body, the “impossible kernel”
that he has, for the most part, effectively concealed is manifested in the form of physical
aggression and emotional volatility (Zizek, The Sublime Object I63).

Che’s ambiguous vision of himself through his body begins to deteriorate the
authoritative “I” observed in parts of Pasajes. The man that coined the phrase “Until
Victory or Dea ” starts to question his right to continue participating in the revolution:
“[h]e Ilegado a los 39 y se acerca inexporablemente una edad que da que pensar sobre mi
futuro guerrillero; por ahoar estoy <<entero>>” (El diaria 159). Though this statement,

which appears in Che’s journal on June 14, 1967, his 39th birthday, most certainly relates

84

to his turning one year older, it also, I submit, is a symptom of his ensuing awareness of
the frail state of his body and the consequent destabilization of his former self-perception
as an autonomous and authoritative rebel leader.

Che’s vision of himself as incapable of controlling his own body is also evident
when he takes his own corporal frustrations out on one of the tired mares that
accompanies the group: “Caminamos algo asi como una hora efectiva, que para mi fueron
dos por el cansancio de la yegiiita; en una de ésas, le meti un cuchillazo en el cuello
abriéndole una buena herida” (187). C he’s impulse to harm the weak horse, in one way,
is an acting out against his own fragile body, a fact ﬁrst evidenced in the questioning of
his capacity to see the ﬁght through to the end and revealed again in his critical
description of himself after this scene as “[yo soy] una piltrafa humana” (Pasajes 186).

Che’s choice of words is deliberate and seems to solidify the connection I
established above between his own physical challenges and those of the horse.
According to the dictionary of the Real Academia Espaﬁala, the word “piltrafa” can refer
to the part of the meat on an animal that contains barely more than the skin, the leftovers
of food, or a person that is physically and morally depleted.2| Che, at this point in the
insurgency, not only shows the physical signs of malnutrition (i.e., he is weak, skinny,
and unable to eat because of his asthmatic condition) but emotional volatility as well, as
evidenced in the episode with the horse.

After making this pejorative statement about himself, Che realizes and afﬁrms
that his outward aggression towards the horse was a symptom: “en algunos momentos he

Ilegado a perder el control” (188). What is more, he tries to recuperate the ideological

 

2] See httpzllbuscon.rae.es/drael/SrvltConsulta?TlPO_BUS=3&LEMA=piltrafa.

85

discourse that he gradually loses sight of throughout his diary in linking the revolution to
the creation of the revolutionary, the highest species of man: “Este tipo de lucha nos da la
oportunidad de convertirnos en revolucionarios, el escalon mas alto de la especie
humana, pero tambie'n nos perrnite graduamos de hombre; los que no puedan alcanzar
ninguno de estos dos estadios deben decirlo y dejar la lucha” (188). With this statement,
Che sums up, both directly and indirectly, his two main preoccupations with the
revolution in Bolivia: his incapacity to control his physical and emotional needs -— a
problem that never even came up in Pasajes — and the loss of focus on politics.

Ironically, it appears that only when Che reaches the physical and emotional limits of his
own body does he attempt to recuperate the desired track of the mission. In a last attempt
to get the mission back on course, Che makes one ﬁnal plea to the revolutionary inside of
the men to take advantage of the opportunity to either embrace their revolutionary
identity or to leave the ﬁght (188).

More signiﬁcant and perhaps tragic still is the fact that Che, less than a week
later, resigns to a life of suffering, thus ceding control to his “unpredictable and
uncontrollable” body (Grosz, Volatile Bodies xi): “Ahora estoy condenado a padecer
asma por un tiempo no deﬁnible” (El diaria 191). In Che’s statement lies the paradox of
his life: the very illness he learned to control during his childhood becomes his biggest
obstacle on the mountain in Bolivia. The overwhelming presence of Che’s body in the
diary reveals crucial aspects of the struggle that he silenced in Pasajes — the scatological,
illness-related, and emotional. As a result, Che, though perhaps unknowingly, moves
beyond the contradictory code of manhood be constructed on the Sierra Maestra and

proposes a masculinity that incorporates aspects typically associated with the feminine in

86

a bourgeois context — emotions, physical weakness, and a lack of control — from the
mountain in Bolivia.

Che’s time as a guerrilla ﬁghter comes to a close on October 7, 1967, exactly
eleven months after his arrival to Bolivia and consequently the day that he was captured
by the Bolivian Army and the Bolivian Rangers. Che’s journal entry reﬂects a positive
start to the day: “Se cumplieron 11 meses de nuestra inauguracion guerrillera sin
complicaciones, bucolicamente” (El diaria 226). Yet, he quickly follows his almost
surreal initiation to this statement with “hasta las 12.30 hora en que una viej a,
pastoreando sus chivas entro en el canon en que habiamos acampado y hubo que
apresarla. La mujer no ha dado ninguna noticia ﬁdedigna sobre los soldados, contestando
a todo que no sabe [. . .] solo dio inforrnacion sobre los caminos” (226). Che’s use of the
word chivas, “goats” could also be used to refer to chivato, a word that in a revolutionary
context means “informer” or in this speciﬁc case, a spy for the Bolivian Army.

The old woman promises to maintain the secrecy of the rebels’ location after Che
and the others offer her ﬁfty pesos, but Che has “pocas esperanzas de que cumpla a pesar
de sus promesas” (226). Shortly after Che and ﬁve of the six rebels that accompanied
him reinitiate their climb up the mountain, he hears what he calls a peculiar
announcement from the Bolivian Army over the radio. Che’s reaction would be his last
written words: “El Ejército dio una rara informacion sobre la presencia de 250 hombres
en Serrano para impedir el paso de los cercados en m’rmero de 27 dando la zona de
nuestro refugio entre el rio Acero y el Oro. La noticia parece diversionista” (226). Che
silences his anxiety — the enemy’s knowledge of his whereabouts and the real possibility

of his capture and death — yet he openly recognizes the tactics of the Bolivian Army that

87

would lead to his capture and ultimate execution on October 9, 1967 in an old
schoolhouse in La Higuera, Bolivia.

In this chapter, I showed how Che builds up a code of manhood from the
mountains in Cuba and Bolivia in his guerrilla narratives, Pasajes de la guerra
revolucionaria and El diaria del Che en Bolivia. Che’s model emerged as a
contradictory male code that incorporated aspects of the bourgeois man and the guerrilla
rebel in formation. Yet through his conscious revision of bourgeois loci from the Sierra
Maestra in Cuba — the family, knowledge, and the future — he sought to propose a new
male code.

In El diaria, Che continued to reformulate his new standard for the guerrilla
ﬁghter, although unknowingly. In this work, one observes an absence of the political
discourse characteristic of Pasajes and in its place, the aspects of the revolution that Che
had previously silenced — the body, the scatological, and emotions — surfaced. The
overwhelming presence of the body as the host in which the impossibilities or silences of
the revolution manifest themselves allowed for the further revision of Che’s male code.
In centering his discourse on the body, Che moved beyond a contradictory code of

manhood to propose a masculinity that implants the feminine (Grosz, Volatile Bodies 14).

88

Chapter 3: From Machista to New Man?: Omar Cabezas Negotiates Manhood from the
Mountain in Nicaragua

In the present chapter, I will evaluate how Nicaraguan rebel author Omar Cabezas
reformulates the comprehensive male code that Che proposed in Pasajes de [a guerra
revolucionaria and El diaria del Che en Bolivia in response to the historical needs and
demands of the Sandinista Revolution (1979) in his political bildi‘rngsroman, La montana
es alga mds que una inmensa estepa verde (1982).l Cabezas writes this text, which was
published three years after the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution of 1979, primarily to
promote revolutionary consciousness, to endorse the Sandinista movement and to bring to
light several factors that contributed to the changes he underwent during the revolution.

My analysis traces Cabezas’ self-construction as a man and rebel during three
distinct phases of his participation in the revolution that he outlines in La montaiia: his
time as a student and clandestine revolutionary in Leon, Nicaragua, his actions during the
guerrilla phase of the revolution from the mountain and a third stage in which he
demonstrates his continued service to the insurgency through his role as an educator of
future rebels after coming down from the mountain. Cabezas, despite his working class
origin, initially builds up his identity as a man according to the “pristine” image of the
bourgeois male that deﬁnes men in relation to women, emphasizes the competitive nature
of the relationships between men and requires that men demonstrate extreme physical and

emotional vigor in front of others (Izenberg 6-8).2 Yet upon his arrival to the mountain

 

l Nydia Palacios Vivas deﬁnes the bildﬁngsroman as a bourgeois narrative that highlights
signiﬁcant experiences in the protagonist’s life — typically a male protagonist — as a means to demonstrate
his process of transformation; “the teleology of an individual, from one period of his life to another” ( 191).

Some analyses of patriarchal masculinities include Gerald N. Izenberg’s Modernism and
Masculinity (2000), Ellen Bayuk Rosenman’s Unauthorized Pleasures: Accounts of Victorian Erotic
Experience (2003), Michael Kimmel’s Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural, and Historical
Encyclopedia (2004), and the second edition of Robert Connell’s Masculinities (2005).

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where he meets head on several aspects of the revolution that are unmentionable in an
urban setting — the scatological, emotions, self-doubt, loneliness, and the (real) origin of
his sexual desires - he begins to act both unconsciously and out of necessity according to
a new way of being a man in Nicaragua embodied by the Sandinista. This code of
masculinity, akin to Che’s complete code of manhood, disputes traditional machista
praxis — self-interested actions, the sexist relationships between men and women and the
competition between men — and emphasizes instead the guerrilla rebel’s capacity to
survive and change in relation to the space, the relations with other men, and the
Sandinista revolutionary projects.3
The City: From Bourgeois Space to Revolutionary Inferno

Cabezas opens La montaﬁa in the spring of 1968, just months after the massacre
of countless unarmed demonstrators in January 1967 by Somoza’s National Guard and
the subsequent battle of Pancasan, one of the ﬁrst military encounters between the
socialist-aimed Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and the National Guard
(Randall, Sandino ’s Daughters 71). This moment not only ended with the second
coming to power of Anastasio Somoza Debayle as the 76th president of Nicaragua but
also resulted in the National Guard’s elimination of several leaders of the FSLN, among
which was Silvio Mayorga, a revolutionary that together with Carlos Fonseca and Tomas

Borge founded this revolutionary organization.

 

3 Despite the revolutionary context, machismo still prevailed in Nicaragua. Machismo, Roger
Lancaster contends, similar to capitalism, is a system that is not only supported by hegemonic ideological
structures, but it is reinforced through what he calls a “ﬁeld of productive relations” between men, women
and children in a seemingly stable and standard way: “Machismo, no less than capitalism, is a system. Like
racism, homophobia, and other forms of arbitrary power, arbitrary stigma, machismo is resilient because it
constitutes not simply a form of “consciousness,” not “ideology” in the classical understanding of the
concept, but a ﬁeld of productive relations” (19).

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1967 stands out for other reasons as well. In Bolivia in October of 1967, as I
pointed out in previous chapters, U.S. trained Green Berets and CIA operatives executed
Che Guevara, a move that would, ironically, result in increased Soviet attention and
economic aid to ostensibly progressive Latin American governments in an attempt to
combat North American imperialism (Spenser 104). Also, on October 2, 1968, just one
week short of the ﬁrst anniversary of Che’s death, Mexican Army and secret police
forces brutally massacred 350 university students in La Plaza de las T res Culturas in the
Tlatelolco district of Mexico City to end what began as a peaceful protest for the
undemocratic practices of the government under the leadership of President Gustavo Diaz
Ordaz.

Cabezas consciously frames his political bildﬁngsroman between these years —
1968 and 1979 — that represent very distinct moments in the history of Nicaragua and of
Latin America. The ﬁrst, a time in Latin American history deﬁned by much mistrust in
United States backed governmental institutions and counterrevolutionary activity, which
culminated in the early 19805 with President Reagan’s support of the US. trained anti-
communist Nicaraguan Contras and the latter, the year in which the Sandinistas declared
their triumph in Nicaragua, a victory that resulted in Somoza’s ﬂeeing from the country

and eventual assassination one year later in Paraguay.4

 

4 The Sandinistas succeeded in overthrowing the Somoza Regime on July 19, 1979 but this date
would not end the North American intervention in Nicaragua so evident during the Somoza years. After
the Sandinista triumph, the United States, threatened by Nicaragua’s increasing relations with Cuba and the
Soviet Union, consciously worked to overtake the new government by using US. Special Forces and
counter-guerrilla activities. In the 1984 presidential elections in Nicaragua, the ﬁrst held since the triumph
of the revolution, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was elected president. Though this representative of
Sandinismo had much of the support of the Nicaraguan people, the role of the United States in his eventual
defeat in the 1990 elections against United States backed former editor of La Prensa (a publication that
during the revolution was anti-Somocista) Violeta Chamorro, took over the presidency. Beginning with the
Carter Administration but especially during Ronald Reagan’s two-term presidency, North American
involvement in Nicaragua was great. During Ortega’s term, Reagan cut all funding to Nicaragua and

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Cabezas’ formation as a student and shaping of his revolutionary identity in
relation to such signiﬁcant moments in history allows him to deﬁne himself according to
two of the models of masculinity in Nicaragua at the time: the bourgeois male embodied
by the members of the National Guard (the Somocistas) and the revolutionary code of
manhood represented by the Sandinistas. At the onset, Cabezas acts according to a
bourgeois code of masculinity but his desires to rebel against his father and to participate
in the formation of a clandestine revolutionary base in the city, an action that would
eventually lead him to the mountain, result in his gradual detachment from such a model
and the later embrace of a new way of being a man through Sandinismo.

Cabezas initially presents himself as an exaggeratingly typical macho college
student that drinks, smokes, philanders with women, and gambles to pass the time. In a
normal weekend, he visits the bar, steals condoms from neighborhood drugstores,
frequents brothels, and makes trips to local hot spots with his friends from the university.
One of his favorite diversions is to provoke the bourgeois girls, the burguesitas, that he
spots during routine cruises around town in a car by sticking his tongue out at them and
following them around: “A nosotros nos gustaba verles el cutis, la forma de mover los
labios, les mirabamos las uﬁas cuando hacian los cambios, las manos eran bien bonitas,

dan ganas como de que te acaricien unas manos asi; y cuando las ventanas iban abiertas y

 

ordered the US military training and governmental ﬁnance of “the Contras,” a counterrevolutionary group
comprised of former members of Somoza’s National Guard. Due to Reagan’s pressuring of the Honduran
government for use of territories to train the counter-guerrilla groups, Honduras became a “training camp”
for the Contras and it was also through this country that Reagan acquired mass amounts of weapons to use
against the Sandinistas (Wright 175). The United States support of Chamorro — the US created systems
that “monitored” the 1990 elections and provided economic support for her presidential campaign - also
led to Ortega’s “loss” of the presidential elections of 1990. For more information on the Nicaraguan
Contras and United States involvement in Nicaragua see Odd Arne Westad’s The Global Cold War: Third
World Interventions and the Making of our Times (2005) p. 345, Don Oberdorfer’s From the C old War to a
New Era: The United States and the Soviet Union 1983-199] (1998) p. 268-271, Andrew Battista’s The
Revival of Labor Liberalism (2008) p. 123-125, and Roger Miranda and William Ratliff‘s The Civil War in
Nicaragua: Inside the Sandinistas (1993) p. 77-78.

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el viento soplaba se les agitaba el pelo y quedaban sus cabelleras frente a nosotros, sobre
el espaldar del asiento” (30).

Cabezas describes such infantile games as a way to merely pass the time during
the weekends. Yet his detailed description of the coveted lips, nails, hair, and hands and
ensuing desire to be touched by girls suggests that a key aspect in his identity as a man at
this point centers on the sexist (heterosexual) nature of the relations between men and
women, a type of relationship that, according to Judith Butler, in patriarchal societies
operates as a regulatory gender norm (Gender Trouble 136). Such a scene also reveals
Cabezas’ class consciousness — one was either bourgeois or not and he was of the
working class — an awareness that will contribute to his eventual decision to participate in
the revolution as becomes clear in what follows.

At the time, though Cabezas begins to “hear and hear” of the revolution and even
helps to promote it by handing out pamphlets, participating in manifestations and
speaking to other revolutionaries from the city, he continues to see it as a mere pastime
(10). Cabezas’ body-centered anxieties and his inexperience in revolutionary praxis
played a part in his indifference to the movement: “yo era joven, débil ﬁsicamente, sin
ninguna preparacion militar [y] sin posibilidad de pasar algr'rn curso de entrenamiento”
(34). His wavering opinion of Marxism (the theoretical basis of the F SLN) and
confusion on what organization to support largely contributed to his passive attitude

towards the cause as well (16, 11).5 Yet, one of his main conce‘ms, if not the main one, lie

 

5 Cabezas does not explicitly name the different factions that emerged within the FSLN — the
Proletarians (Proletarios) led by Jaime Wheelock Roman, the Prolonged Popular War (GPP- Guerra
Popular Prolongada) led by Henry Ruiz (“Modesto”) and Tomas Borge after Carlos F onseca’s
assassination, and the lnsurrectionals (Terceristas), a group that was primarily led by Daniel and Humberto
Ortega that practiced “ideological pluralism” as it sought the involvement of members of the bourgeois
class in the ﬁght. During his time as a university student in the city Cabezas seems to identify with the

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in the fact that his father was a member of the Conservative Party; he was a Samocista:
“yo sabia que a mi papa le ganaba la Guardia [..] [m]i padre era de familia opositora,
militaba en el Partido Conservador” (12). Cabezas’ participation in the Sandinista cause,
then, would force him to go against his father’s political beliefs and the very ideological
structures he supported as a member of the Conservative Party.6

Implicit in Cabezas’ description of his father as a guard in Somoza’s Army is his
perception of a powerful man, a quality that Cabezas both fears and takes pride in. Such
contradictory feelings become evident when he watches his father direct a secret meeting
of other Somacistas in Leon. At that moment, Cabezas states “tuve la sensacion de ser
hijo de una persona muy importante” (8). Yet, on the other hand, Cabezas had always
associated the National Guard, Somoza’s Army, with unnecessary violence, blood, and
injustice done unto people for simply drinking and brawling outside of the bar (7).7

Another component of his father’s power that Cabezas silences in his narrative
but mentions in a 1984 interview with Margaret Randall was his race, and more
importantly, what this meant for Cabezas, a self-described physically weak boy of
mestizo origin: “[w]hen I was small, I was a runt of a kid, a skinny child, and the ugly

duckling of the family. All of my brothers were fair [. . .] [m]y father was fair, too. But

 

Proletarios, a Marxist-oriented group that sought to organize the working class and poor neighborhoods
(Bras). Yet, because of his participation in the formation of clandestine cadres in Le6n and role as a main
contact with the peasant populations and subsequent time on the mountain under the leadership of René
Tejada and Henry Ruiz, among others, Cabezas’ view of the revolution comes to reﬂect that of the
Prolonged Popular War as the organization and role of the peasantry comes to the fore as an essential factor
in the successful carrying out of the revolution (Bras).

6 In his article, “Omar Cabezas y el testimonio de aprendizaje,” Thomas Ward describes Cabezas’
father as a puppet of the United States: “Al padre, 1e gustaba mas hablar en inglés que en castellano. , Era un
muﬁeco de los Estados Unidos. Representa un ejemplo tipico de las elites latinoamericanas que dejan
seducirse por el poderio angloamericano” (305).

The National Guard in Nicaragua emerged as a militia group during the North American
occupation in Nicaragua in the early 20th century (before Augusto Sandino waged a guerrilla war to combat
United States imperialism from the mountain) and during the Nicaraguan Revolution, acted as the
oppressive military force that supported and was controlled by the Somoza Regime and the United States
and sought to put a stop to guerrilla activity (Chasteen 295).

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my mother wasn’t. My mama is Indian, mestiza. And my father was white. I came out
like my mama. I was skinny, physically weak. Physical weakness gives you a certain
sense of fragility, on the outside” (124). If, as Roger Lancaster contends, the question of
race in Nicaragua is not necessarily related to an established racial structure, but rather
reﬂective of “discursive gestures that are contingent and contextual and whose motives
are eminently logical and self-interested” then Cabezas consciously uses the terms
“mestizo” and “fair” to distinguish his racial and ethnic background. It indicates that he
inscribes his family into an understood, but not an established, racial hierarchy in which
“mestizo” is clearly different from and most likely inferior to “fair” (225).8

Apart from his awareness of his weaknesses — both physical and ideological — and
his racial and ethnic background, all qualities that, in Cabezas’ mind, categorize him as a
subaltem when compared to his “fair” Samacista father, he is conscious of his social
class. This implies, but does not necessarily concretize his alignment with the
Proletarias: “yo estaba muy consciente de que era de familia proletaria y, entonces,
cuando se hablaba en la Universidad de la injusticia, de la pobreza, yo me acordaba de mi
barrio que era un barrio pobre” (Cabezas 10).9 Though Cabezas initially questions his
belief in a class-based Marxist ideology, such a consciousness would soon condition his

view of the revolution as a way to surpass the boundaries he established above — physical,

 

8 Though Cabezas makes this comment that suggests his consciousness of the implied racial
hierarchy in Nicaragua in an interview. and not in his rebel narrative, it is signiﬁcant. It is the ﬁrst time
that a rebel author studied in this project talks about race as a quality that contributes to one’s self-
perception during revolution.

The term “subaltem” was coined by Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks (I use I. A.
Buttigieg’s 1992 edition of this work) (1992). “Subaltem,” which in this case refers to the peasants but
varies with each socio-political and historical context, is not to be thought apart from “hegemonic,” a term
often associated with the ruling class. Gramsci would argue that the relationship between the hegemonic
and the subaltem, which was purely ideological but affected the political, would remain intact until the
latter developed the tools and political consciousness necessary to change the order of things in the existing
social, economic and political systems (353).

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ideological, racial, class-related and most importantly, that of his father, who, for
Cabezas, not only epitomizes the bourgeois code of manhood but represents patriarchy —:
“Me gusta o atrae eso porque es contra la dictadura, contra Somoza, contra la Guardia, y
por otro lado viene la cuestion clasista” (10).

Up to this point, Cabezas has reﬂexively deﬁned himself according to and thus
aspired to his father’s individualistic and militaristic model and accordingly adopts a
machista lifestyle.l0 One could assume, for instance, that Cabezas’ vision of the
revolution as a way to prove himself to others (especially his father) and to surpass
barriers of race, class, and gender in moving from machista to Sandinista are all related
to a seemingly inherent vision of himself in relation to a traditional model of manhood.
Cabezas’ participation in the revolution would deﬁnitively dissociate him from his
father’s political afﬁliation as well as the teachings of the University where the message
was clear: “los del Frente [. . .] eran comunistas y venian de Rusia y de Cuba y que solo
mandaban a la gente a morir como pendeja a la montar’fa” (12).

As a ﬁrst step towards his embrace of Sandinismo, Cabezas agrees to take
theoretical courses on the revolution, attend local meetings of several different student
revolutionary organizations and eventually participates in the formation of clandestine
cadres in the city. Cabezas’ actions, at least on the surface, demonstrate a growing
interest in the revolution, but his hambria, or masculine pride is what drives him to

commit completely to the movement: “Me imagine’ tantas cosas. . .y entre mas cosas me

 

‘0 Although he doesn’t mention it in this work, Omar Cabezas later reveals in an interview with
Margaret Randall that when he was thirteen years old, his father left his mother for another woman; a
decision that left her alone to raise seven children. Such an act, Cabezas contends, awakened his need to
“change the world” for in noting the harsh conditions of life for his family and the economic consequences
of his father’s abandonment of them, he made a conscious decision to do something to break with the
individualistic example his father set for him (122-123).

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imaginaba el miedo era mayor pero, por supuesto, yo estaba de lo mas serio y sereno
delante de Juan Jose’ [Quezada], porque delante de e’l yo no podia aparentar ser un
miedoso [. . .] porque ahi habia una cuestion de hombria (15-16). Cabezas covers up his
anxieties by appearing “manly” in front of his ostensibly more qualiﬁed friend. His
conﬁdent facade and desire to show his convictions would categorize him within a
patriarchal code of manhood that according to Alexandra Shepard “endorsed a gender
hierarchy that exalted maleness as a cultural category by ranking men generically above
women” and was also “rooted in prodigality, transience, violence, bravado, and
debauchery” (246, 248).

When Quezada asks Cabezas to accept his historical responsibility by actively
participating in the movement, he responds “Si, hombre, perfectamente,” rather than
reveal his disbelief in his ability (or illusion) to see the process through to the end,
something that he openly expresses to his reader: “Yo tenia miedo a perder la vida [. . .]
Recorda que estaba recién pasada la masacre de Pancasan” (Cabezas 12-13). Cabezas’
instinct to perform his masculinity in front of his seemingly more qualiﬁed friend, to
“ﬂout the codes of behavior expected of [him]” conﬁrms his internalization of a
bourgeois code of masculinity that judges men on their capacity to appear strong and
unwavering in front of others (Shepard 248).

It seems that Cabezas associates his purportedly stable (manly) facade and
political agency, similar to what Che does when he picks up his box of bullets and gun
and leaves his medical bag behind. It is only as a result of Cabezas’ persistent failure to
live up to this impossible masculine standard that he will succeed in opening up a new

possibility, a “variation on that repetition,” as I will point out below (Butler, Gender

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Trouble 145). Cabezas eventually participates in Sandinismo not necessarily because of
his beliefs, but as a means to surpass the insecurities related to his male identity. While
the revolution will provide Cabezas with the platform from which he will build himself
up in different, more inclusive terms, the only possible starting point for his disavowal of
his father, an embodiment of “patriarchy,” is to act within the very “normative
injunction” of the bourgeois code of manhood as a means to permit the surfacing of other
alternatives (Butler, Gender Trouble 148).

Cabezas’ interaction with Quezada and his subtle participation in the movement
inspire his superﬁcial shift from a machista living according to the rules established by
the ruling party and his Somocista father to a ﬁiture Sandinista. Yet his reencounter with
longtime friend and revolutionary Leonel Rugama, a self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist
aligned with the Prolonged Popular War (GPP) and intransigent revolutionary from the
mountain, forces the impressionable college student to pursue a new way of being a man:
“Leonel te planteaba 1a cuestion de ser hombre, pero no ya en el caso del macho, sino del
hombre que adquiere responsabilidad historica, un compromiso para con los demas, de
quien 10 da todo para felicidad de los demas” (23). The new standard of manhood that
Cabezas’ friend persuades him to live by, and that is akin to the model of humanity that
pervades through Che Guevara’s writings, proves central to the ideology of the GPP.

It should not come as a surprise that Che Guevara serves as an example for Omar
Cabezas in his process of building up his identity as a revolutionary for he not only
redeﬁned the vision of the revolutionary man, but also sought to change the homogenous
vision of the family that has historically dominated Latin American patriarchal societies.

Che also gave priority to the working class, a sector that Cabezas identiﬁes with for

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reasons outlined above, and by naming this group as the impetus for change during the
Cuban Revolution (Rodriguez, Women, Guerrillas & Love 148).
In Nicaragua to be like Che is to be a Sandinista

In Nicaragua the idea of striving to be like Che was most readily embraced by the
Sandinista on the mountain. First outlined by former Nicaraguan revolutionary and co-
founder of FSLN, Carlos F onseca, and then used by Leonel Rugama to entice Cabezas to
further commit to the Sandinista Revolution, such a model eschews several of the
components embedded in the patriarchal male and embodies instead man’s historical
responsibility and the capacity to demonstrate the complementary nature of words and
actions in a revolutionary context through respect, sincerity and fraternity. In his essay
“(gQue' es un Sandinista?,” Fonseca states that in order to assume this title, rebels are not
only expected to promote the revolution through words, but they must also demonstrate
their belief in the cause through actions as well. Such militants, he continues, should be
aware of their own physical and emotional limits and make a conscious effort to
transform themselves as human beings and as members of a collective group.

Fonseca’s deﬁnition of a Sandinista adopts several qualities of Che’s model of the
guerrilla rebel and idea of the new man. In his famous programmatic text of 1965, “El
hombre nuevo,” Che states that “the new man” is a self-aware and socially conscious
actor that undergoes a constant process of change that begins during the revolution and
continues through his implementation of socialism. For Che, men should not strive to
become new men (such a goal would undoubtedly prove impossible to reach), but rather
continue to improve through a growing consciousness of the necessity for social justice:

“Lo importante es que los hombres van adquiriendo cada dia mas conciencia de la

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necesidad de su incorporacion a la sociedad, y al mismo tiempo, de su importancia como
motores de la misma” (12).

At this point, Cabezas, still concerned with preserving his male pride in front of
others than his embracing of the Sandinista code, hesitates to purge himself completely of
his old machista ways while dedicating himself fully to the revolution. He fantasizes,
however, about what it would be like to meet the illustrious bearded men from the
mountain and seems eager to reach the “heart of the Sandinista Front”: “Iba a conocer
personalmente a esos famosos hombres, a los guerrilleros, a la gente como el Che. Como
serian las barbas, como hacian la comida [. . .] iba a estar en el corazon del F rente
Sandinista, en lo mas oculto, en lo mas virgen del Frente, en lo mas delicado” (32).

In providing a vivid picture of both the mountain and “heroic” bearded guerrilla
rebels formed there, Cabezas’ comrades reveal what Renata Salecl calls the “trick” of a
successful political discourse (33). They supply him with images with which to identify
as well as construct a symbolic space from which he could feasibly move beyond his
identity as a “normal” man from the city and convert himself into a noteworthy rebel
despite his self-perceived deﬁciencies and traditional tendencies. With such a shift,
Cabezas advances from a student whose participation in the revolution consisted of the
simple (non-political) act of passing out pamphlets to view himself as a future guerrilla
rebel; a political man who could be like Che.

The link between rebels and peasants that proves crucial to Che’s vision of the
overall success of any revolutionary movement is also central for Leonel Rugama’s
ideological beliefs. Thus, in alignment with the OFF, one of Cabezas’ ﬁrst missions as a

clandestine revolutionary is to gain support of the indigenous communities in the cities

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surrounding Leon. At ﬁrst, the students struggle to communicate with the natives due to
the combination of mistrust, fear of the revolutionaries and deﬁcient exposure to the
Sandinista movement. Yet Cabezas gradually succeeds in gaining the peasantry’s trust
by combining a use of history and language that crosses class and race lines to explain the
terms of the insurgency. He relates former revolutionary hero and peasant Augusto
Sandino’s role in the rebellion against the United States in the ﬁrst half of the 20th
century to Adiac, a key ﬁgure in the formation of the indigenous practices and culture in
Subtiava. Cabezas also links Sandino to Marxism and the importance of the struggle
between social classes: “Nosotros proyectamos a Sandino como continuador de Adiac, y
entonces encamamos a Sandino en Adiac, pero a Sandino con la proyeccion del
Manifiesto comunista” (52). In linking such historical ﬁgures and introducing the core
components of Marxist ideology, Cabezas gains the trust of the people of Subtiava and
explains the signiﬁcance of a class-based revolution in terms relevant to their history and
culture.

Another way to disseminate the revolution among the natives of Subtiava is the
use of “unmarked” (or non-hegemonic) colloquial language, what Cabezas calls “malas
palabras” or bad words. In doing so, he talks of the revolution in a humorous and
entertaining way that facilitates communication and understanding: “ellos entendian,
entendian, entendian, y como que luego del cerebro se volvia a los ojos y por la expresion
de la mirada yo sabia que estaban dando la vuelta al mundo” (54). Cabezas is very
careful in his selection of words: “No es lo mismo ir a hablar de la coyuntura historica a

un barrio, que decirles que los ricos con los reales que explotan se van a putear a Europa,

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(gte das cuenta? Entonces [. . .] el pueblo se empieza a identiﬁcar con eso, con ese
planteamiento. Se empieza a identiﬁcar con esa mala palabra” (59).

In utilizing this tactic, which brings to the fore questions of class, economics and
history, C abezas “dirties” the ostensibly pristine bourgeois image and derides the illusive
rhetoric common to the Somoza dictatorship. Such an observation goes along with Laura
Barbas Rhoden’s afﬁrmation that “[e]n La montaﬁa el uso del habla popular representa
un rechazo de las pretensiones del regimen anterior [...] [Y] al emplear el habla popular
en su libro, Cabezas distingue a los sandinistas del gobiemo derrotado” (66).ll The fact
that Cabezas’ work was published after the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution suggests
that his distancing himself from the Somoza Regime and fervent embrace of the language
and ideological forces of the movement is deliberate and symbolic of the shifting of
power in Nicaragua at the time.

C abezas’ contact with the people of Subtiava ignites a revolutionary ﬁre that
spreads to the neighboring villages. Such an effect talks both of growing interest and
support and Cabezas’ capacity to build up and lead a strong clandestine base from the
city (Ward 306). With the combination of his self-interpreted (yet perhaps illusive)
revolutionary competence and a well-built up politicized indigenous base to back the

movement up, Cabezas takes Rugama’s initial advice and travels to the mountain to meet

 

H Cabezas employs colloquial language throughout his narrative as a tool to communicate with
his diverse audience. He often uses language tags and directly requests his reader’s attention with
comprehension checks: “Entendés,” (La montaﬁa 26), “éte das cuenta?,” (92), “gte vas resignando?,” (96),
“(',me explico?,” (215), and “no sé si la he contado ya,” (80). This foments a close relationship with his
reader as well as brings forth the oral quality of his narrative (Rivero 72). He also poses questions to his
audience: “(;como se llaman estos huesos de aqui?,” (87), “(gnunca te has ﬁjado en las fotograﬁas del
comienzo de la victoria?,” (2 l 8). and “(gquizas vos te acordaras de la cancién?,” (86). Apart from the
proximity that the discursive strategies Cabezas employs create with his reader, his use of language
dissociated with the illusive rhetoric of the Somoza Regime, a tactic that M. Bakhtin calls a “[v]erbal-
ideological decentering.” should be understood as another demonstration of his embrace of the anti-
Somocista ideology of the Sandinistas (370).

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Henry Ruiz (“Modesto”) and René Tejada (“Tello”), two of the most inﬂuential leaders
of the guerrilla groups on the mountain. Upon leaving his comfort zone (the city),
Cabezas’ anxieties resurface: “Yo iba pensando como serian los campamentos, como sera
Modesto, de qué tamaﬁo sera Modesto [. . .] y toda esa cuestion, es decir la idea de llegar
al campamento y develar, ésa es la palabra, develar para Siempre, conocer y las
interioridades, todo por lo que yo habia pasado trabajando” (Cabezas 89).

In Che’s texts, the mountain assumes a foundational role as the authority on the
revolution; the geography upon which men change as a result of the successful
implementation of guerrilla tactics and self-awareness. Following Che’s model, Cabezas
centers his participation in the guerrilla phase of the revolution in “1a estepa verde”. For
a man from the city like Cabezas, the mountain is an idealized space where men go to
transform themselves into Sandinistas, men with a purpose: “La Montana en la ciudad era
un mito, la montaﬁa era un simbolo, como ya dije anteriormente. . .en funcion de esa
montaﬁa, en ﬁlncio'n del FSLN, de ese misterio, que cada dia se hacia mas grande ese
misterio” (Cabezas 89). It will not be long before Cabezas realizes that his quest to be
like Che becomes a mere mission for survival. Cabezas’ experiences on the mountain
force him to deconstruct his previous fantasy construction of revolution and to build
himself up according to a different code of manhood speciﬁc to the isolation
characteristic of such a space. As Cabezas works towards surviving in this geography, he
continues to act according to a machista code that deﬁnes man in relation to women, the
competition between men and his individual approach to the revolution. Yet his mission
to become a Sandinista allows aspects of the revolution that appear unmentionable in an

urban setting to surface.

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“Dirty” Machista or New Man?: Cabezas and the Mountain

During his college days, C abezas’ body was the vehicle through which he acted
on his rebellious and sexual desires. On the mountain, it becomes an instrument essential
for the completion of basic tasks such as carrying his heavy backpack during routine
climbs; an action Cabezas is hardly capable of doing with ease at the onset. Aware of the
fragile state of his body Cabezas faces duties like these and others that require him to rely
on his physical competence in the presence of other revolutionaries and peasants. He
hides his flaws and instead strives to perform his role as a guerrilla ﬁghter with an
unwavering conﬁdence in order to show off in front of his fellow comrades as well as to
trick himself into believing that he possesses the capacity to survive on the mountain.‘2

In his ﬁrst description of the guerrilla phase of the revolution, Cabezas compares
such a process to a series of golpes or hits: “Ese camino de ser un solo hombre es la
composicion de un monton de pequeﬁos golpecitos me daba horror pensar que me podian
estar viendo, entonces, yo le hacia huevo para que ese golpe fuera un golpe elegante [. . .]
un golpe guerrillero, un golpe valiente, un golpe dominante [...] aunque no me estuvieran
viendo” (92). Cabezas’ recognition of his efforts in front of others suggests that he
continues to identify with a conventional male code that, as Roger Horrocks asserts,
requires men to always be on guard, to be vigilant about their own and other’s masculine
image, even in moments of weakness, one of Che’s principles outlined in Pasajes (98).

The facade of competent guerrilla rebel that Cabezas uses to protect his self-

image reveals the theatricality of his actions. Soon after his arrival, Cabezas mentions his

improved capacity to perform in front of others: “De repente siento que voy caminando

 

'2 Cabezas’ capacity to perform precedes his experiences as a guerrilla on the mountain for in his
interview with Randall, he afﬁrms: “1 always had a certain talent for histrionics. For theater. For acting.
People believed I was doing something real. And it was a lie; it was pure imagination” (I24).

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bien [...] siento que las piemas como que se van acostumbrando y que se me van
amacizando un poquito, Siempre, claro, con debilidades, con poca experiencia, pero yo
siento que ya no es lo mismo” (103). Cabezas’ anxiety to cover up his debilities in the
presence of others has resonances of Slavoj Zizek’s deﬁnition of the cynical subject; one
that though aware of the distance between the ideological mask — in Cabezas’ case, a
vision of himself as a competent rebel — and the social reality — his incapacity to live up
to such a standard — still insists upon the mask (The Sublime Object 29). Cabezas’ initial
tendency to act according to a bourgeois paradigm of manhood is evident in his desire to
show of in front of his peers while at the same time he highlights “noticeable”
improvements early on in his stay on the mountain.

But on the mountain “los golpes” are also literal: “Nos deslizabamos, y gpum! Te
caes de culo y te levantas y se ensucia el saco; entonces uno viene trata de limpiar el saco
porque el saco se ensucio y era nuevo, pero luego que le limpias el lodo al saco (gadonde
limpias las manos? {en un palo. . .? Das otro paso mas y te escapas de caer y metés la
mano, y te volvés a embarrar el lodo” (72). Cabezas’ initial repulsion of the dirt of the
mountain is symbolic of his continual identiﬁcation with the pristine bourgeois ideal, for,
as Mary Douglas understands it, impurity is, “that which departs from symbolic order,”
which, for Cabezas, is the Somoza Regime (91). But, there is also another element to it:
Cabezas associates his inability to avoid “dirtying” himself and his personal belongings
with his inexperience and loss of authority. This is clearly noted when he realizes that
whereas he and the other rebels are characterized by their dirty uniforms, hands, and
bags, the peasant that leads them through the path maintains an impeccably clean

appearance: “Nosotros mirabamos que el campesino [. . .] ni iba lodoso, solo las botas

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llevaba lodosas. Saco un paﬁuelo limpio y se limpio el sudor de la cara, mientras mi
paﬁuelo ya estaba hecho lodo” (Cabezas 74). The mountain appears to be el mundo al
reve’s for Cabezas, for it is a space in which the theoretically sound students from the city
are “dirtied” and guided and taught by peasants.

Cabezas left the city as one of the leaders of the clandestine cadres that worked to
politicize the peasant masses. Yet on the mountain, the peasants seem more capable to
carry out the revolution. This realization puts into question the validity of the texts
Cabezas read on revolutionary theory and practice in preparation for the guerrilla phase
of the insurgency: “a pesar de que habiamos leido el Diario del Che, escritos sobre
Vietnam, sobre la Revolucion china, una serie de relatos, de trabajos sobre los
movimientos guerrilleros de América Latina y de otros lugares. .. la idea que teniamos
era muy general... no sabiamos lo que era en concreto esto” (69). Furthermore, it causes
him to accredit his initial difﬁculties on the mountain to his machista “crimes” in an
effort to salvage his male pride: “Recorda de donde venia, bebiendo, desvelandome,
fumando, mal comido, sin hacer ej ercicios, de repente, pum, a esas cuestiones que eran
para hombres” (77).

Cabezas’ need to validate his shortcomings by highlighting his lack of preparation
on all levels — practical, theoretical, and ideological — underscores his ostensible
“internalization” of a machista norm. His exacerbated impulse to pose as a veritable
rebel is even further emphasized when, in facing the perils of life in this indomitable
space, Cabezas summons images of Claudia, his love interest from the city and the family
he desires to build with her as inspiration to perform at his utmost capacity. Claudia “era

motor, era seguridad, era conﬁanza, era balas, era ver por sobre la oscuridad de la noche,

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era mas aire en los pulmones, mas fortaleza en las piemas, era sentido de orientacion, era
fuego, nuestro amor era ropa seca y calientita, nuestro amor era champa, Victoria,
tranquilidad, era todo. .. futuro. .. hijos. .. era todo lo computable para mi cerebro” (256).

In using the family, a typically bourgeois locus based on a “naturalized
heterosexuality that requires and regulates gender as a binary relation in which the
masculine term is differentiated from a feminine term” to comfort and motivate him to
act heroically on the mountain (an aspect of bourgeois life that Che never recurred to)
Cabezas further demonstrates his acting according to a patriarchal mandate that deﬁnes
man in relation to such an institution (Butler, Gender Trouble 22-23). Cabezas’ impulse
to recur to the bourgeois standard for men is normal, for as Butler states as well, the ﬁrst
step in refuting a “naturalized” view of gender is to repeat it (unsuccessfully) until the
boundary between the “real” and the “phantasmatic” constructions, the “illusions of
substance [. . .] that bodies are compelled to approximate, but never can” expose the
prospect of a new gender code (146).

Despite the centrality of the family in a bourgeois discourse, the ﬁssures of this
institution are later exposed when the reader learns that during his absence, Claudia
leaves Cabezas for one of his revolutionary comrades even though she is pregnant with
their ﬁrst child. Such an event, without a doubt, has negative repercussions for Cabezas’
self-perception as I will point out at a later point in this chapter.

If Cabezas fools himself into believing that he can “be like Che,” “Tello,” a
peasant that serves as his direct leader and that would become his primary role model on
the mountain until members of the National Guard assassinate him, quickly points to the

students’ weaknesses when he realizes their difﬁculty in carrying out what he views as

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even the most basic tasks: “Hijueputas, aprendan a cargar la comida que se hartan [. . .]
son unas mujercitas. .. son unos maricas, estudiantes de mierda que para nada sirven. . .”
(105). Ileana Rodriguez evaluates such a process within the paradigm of patriarchal
masculinity: “To keep pushing oneself, to be resilient and strong, giving more than the
body’s physical strength and endurance allow, always giving a little bit more” (Women,
Guerrillas, & Love 45). '3 Yet I submit that Tello, a man that Cabezas describes as
physically and mentally tough but capable of crying when faced with deception and
disappointment, feminizes the men — a tactic that bears a striking resemblance to Che’s
use of “psychological anesthesia” — to force them to act by appealing to their inner
machista (Cabezas 106).

The examples above serve to foreground how Cabezas initially constructs his
identity as a rebel according to a limiting paradigm that deﬁnes man in relation to his
capacity to perform in front of others and his role within the family unit. The question
that arises is, when certain aspects of life on the mountain not typically addressed by men
in a traditional setting seep through the cracks of such an identity, will Cabezas succeed
in ﬁnally breaking with the limiting patriarchal norm?

Initially sheltered by an ostensible capacity to perform (or lie) in front of others,
Cabezas realizes that in order to survive on the mountain he must depend on the other
guerrillas, even at the risk of revealing the falsehood of his masculine pride. This
becomes particularly evident when, after three straight days of marching, he feels the

sudden urge to go to the bathroom. In noting the novice guerrilla’s difﬁculty in carrying

 

'3 Rodriguez’s feminist approach to Cabezas’ text is evident in her association of the (machista)
male code of the mountain in Nicaragua and Cabezas’ quest to be like Che to “having balls”: “[T]he new
subjectivity has been predicated on the basis of the male sexual gender: to be like Che, or to have “balls””
(House, Garden & Nation 175).

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out such a basic bodily function, a fellow compaﬁero guides Cabezas through the process
and instructs him to ﬁrst dig a hole, then grab some leaves, and ﬁnally, clean himself off
with them. Cabezas complies, but the end result is quite unsettling: he ﬁlls his entire
hand with his own feces and in a hurried effort to “sterilize” himself; he almost
instinctively sticks his ﬁngers in the dirt: “Me voy con todos mis chimones, el pobrecito,
abri e1 hueco, me llené toda la mano limpiandome, no podia [. . .] todo me lleno alli, las
uﬁas, entonces hundo la uﬁa en la tierra, asi, para limpiarme, entonces me limpio con mas
hojas” (86).

If upon his arrival to the mountain, Cabezas views the dirt and mud that cover him
when he falls down and tries to wipe himself off as representative of his failure to live up
to the pristine code of manhood, his reaction now is much different for it appears as
though his vision of what is “clean” and what is “dirty” have changed. This shift is
normal, according to Mary Douglas, who afﬁrms that the rules of what is “clean” and
“dirty” change according to the circumstances and knowledge structures of each situation
(7). When Cabezas realizes after countless attempts and failures to “be a man on the
mountain” according to the bourgeois code of manhood from the city that he is incapable
of living up to, his “injunction to be” something he isn’t allows for a new possibility to
emerge (Butler, Gender Trouble 145).

This awareness affects Cabezas” view of the revolution and his role in the process.
Instead of seeing his clandestine revolutionary experience as a series of golpes or
competition as he did at the onset; he now views it as a quest for change through survival
in “la estepa verde”. Cabezas’ shifting perspective also affects the way in which he

interprets Tello’s earlier feminization of him and the others. Whereas before, Cabezas

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views Tello’s ostensible discursive violence on the rebels as his promotion of yet another
unreachable military-type masculine ideal, he now understands it as a strategy Tello used
to urge the guerrilla rebels to build themselves up in relation to the mountain: “Tello
parece que el jodido nos habia querido hacer de piedra fisicamente y luego también a
nivel psiquico, a nivel de voluntad, de la conciencia, hacemos indestructibles la voluntad
y la conciencia” (130).l4

The changes in Cabezas’ view of the dirt, Tello’s teachings and the revolution
from the mountain also allow him to see that his experience is not any different than that
of his fellow comrades, a realization that will eventually condition him to employ the
collective “we” rather than the individual “I” dominant in the ﬁrst part of his narrative
(215). Consequently, Cabezas actively works to rid himself of all of the socio-political
and materialistic baggage of patriarchal society and begins to act according to the
standard of the new man. If for Che, the new man was the ideological product of the
Cuban Revolution, for Cabezas, it is the guerrilla rebel who, in training on the mountain,
suffers, learns, and builds himself up according to the new code of manhood: “Para ser el
hombre nuevo tenemos que pasar un monton de penalidades, para matar a1 hombre viejo
y que vaya naciendo el hombre nuevo [. . .] El hombre que da mas a los hombres que lo
que el hombre normal puede dar a los hombres, pero a costa de sacriﬁcios, a costa de
destruccion de sus taras, de sus vicios [. . .] ser como el Che, ser como el Che” (129).

Now, different from the romanticized version that Cabezas coined back in the

city, to be like Che means to adapt to the mountain, to show emotions, to form part of a

 

'4 When Cabezas first meets Tello, he aligns his instruction of he and the other rebels with a
military model: “La forma de Tello para tratar de adaptamos a nosotros, era una forma grosera, era una
forma de academia militar, o bien e1 tipo de entrenamiento que dan los palestinos que es un entrenamiento
sumamente pesado; entonces su formacién militar era una mezcla de las dos cosas y las quiso implementar
de sopeton con nosotros que éramos unas <<gualdarapas>>” (90).

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brotherhood of men, to demonstrate self-awareness and to shed (either consciously or
not) layers of the bourgeois code of manhood. The mountain is, as one of the Sandinistas
calls it “una gran escuela.” In the following lines, I will outline how Cabezas’ physical
challenges, emotional needs and “cleansing” himself of his “old” machista ways combine
and consequently enable him to encounter a tender side of manhood that he did not even
realize existed prior to living in the harshness of the mountain.

Cabezas distances himself from his machista facade when certain sentimental
needs begin to emerge. His anger for the loss of what our consumerist society considers
as small or big pleasures is apparent in the mountains: “Se cocina con poca higiene, casi
no te baﬁas, o lo hacés sin jabon, la comida es el mayor aliciente, pero te das cuenta que
Siempre es la misma mierda [. . .] y luego con esa hambre tenés que ir a hacer trabajo
politico con los campesinos y te vas. .. te mojas. .. y estas tiritando de frio y con
hambre. .. y no hay caricias y no hay risas” (115). It is not a coincidence, I suspect, that
Cabezas juxtaposes or even intermixes the men’s need to ﬁnd and cook their own food —
a task that in a patriarchal context is typically assigned to the woman — and the fact that in
this harsh environment, there is no one to touch him or laugh with: “Nosotros no
podiamos acariciarnos, éramos puros hombres, no podiamos recibir palabras dulces;
entonces, esa soledad, esa ausencia del mimo, que nadie te mima, y que a nadie pode’s
mimar [. . .] y lo peor era que no sabiamos cuanto tiempo ibamos a pasar asi” (115).

The uncertainty of when he will be touched, pampered and be in a position to
pamper someone else again causes his feelings of loneliness and despair to surface.
Cabezas’ unconscious disclosure of his feelings represents a break, though most likely

unintentional at this point, with the unreachable machista standard of manhood that

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requires man to maintain his tough exterior and to resist all opportunities to openly
express emotions. In doing this, Cabezas reveals that the purported “foundational and
ﬁxed” patriarchal norm is not stable at all, but rather allows for the reiﬁcation of
standardized gender codes as well as permits the opening up of other possibilities: “The
loss of gender norms would have the effect of proliferating gender conﬁgurations,
destabilizing substantive identity, and depriving the naturalizing narratives” (Butler,
Gender Trouble 146-147).

After several months Cabezas begins to adapt to the dampness, hunger, and dirt of
the mountain — the dirt even comes to serve as his protective armor —. Yet an astonishing
feeling of loneliness that overcomes him erodes his vision of himself as an autonomous
being, a factor that further contributes to his moving away from a bourgeois code of
manhood. Out of mere necessity, Cabezas and his peers come together to form a
brotherhood of men that replaces the norm of the bourgeois family, an institution that
heavily relies on the distinction of men from women (Butler, Gender Trouble 22). As
Cabezas now describes the homosocial relations, the reader notices a signiﬁcant change:
“Esa soledad nosotros la tradujimos en fratemidad entre nosotros mismos [. . .] Entre
nosotros, no habia egoismo. Como que la montaﬁa y el lodo, e1 lodo y la lluvia también,
la soledad, como que nos fueron lavando un monton de taras de la sociedad burguesa.
Nos fueron lavando una serie de vicios [. . .] Alli, aprendimos a ser humildes” (118-119).

On the mountain that is void of the luxuries and vices of the city, men bond in
their questioning of the faultless patriarchal code of manhood that deﬁnes masculinity in
relation to the family unit, material possessions and the independence of man (Sorensen,

A Turbulent Decade 27). As an alternative to the bourgeois norm, the guerrillas use the

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ﬁlth, dirt, and seclusion they sift through to build themselves up according to a new sense
of manhood — a new man that Cabezas now sees as free of competition — that is speciﬁc
to this place. This typically male-dominated sphere foments what Diana Sorensen
recognizes as an “imagined community of men,” a type of brotherhood that incorporates
Che Guevara’s vision of compaﬁerismo and that, she asserts “espouses the grammar of
fraternity [. . .] while fostering the conditions for utopian growth” (27). Thus, only
through his experiences during the guerrilla phase of the revolution, does Cabezas come
to view the relationships between men as a catalyst for the personal changes he undergoes
in his working towards a different man embodied by the Sandinista.

Cabezas’ experiences as a rebel not only urge him to revise his view of the
homosocial bonds on the mountain, but they expose the origin of his alleged sexual
desires as well. If he initially describes himself as a man with a powerful sexual drive
and an irrepressible lust for women, after spending months living in solitude, he realizes
that what he previously perceives as an innate need to be with a woman is not necessarily
related to his sexual impulses at all, but emerges as an effect of his initial incapacity to
perform even the most basic duties of the guerrilla on the mountain (i.e. carrying his
backpack, marching up the mountain, and tending to his bodily functions) and his
loneliness (Cabezas 114). When such anxieties creep up, Cabezas reactively alleviates
them through masturbation: “Un principio asi de ideas eroticas, sexuales, me empezo la
idea y la cabeza se me sexualizo también, cuando me di cuenta es que ya habia terminado
de masturbarme y me senti tranquilo, suave, reposado” (138). Despite the sexual
undertones in Cabezas’ description of how man “relieves” the pressures of quotidian life

on the mountain (an aspect of the revolution Che never mentions in his texts) this action

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is not representative of Cabezas’ desire to be with a woman or to restore his position
within a heterosexual episteme. What it reveals instead is the fact that when this very
structure that is based on the illusive differences between the male and female genders is
displaced or located outside of its original constrictive site, it appears to have little to do
with sexual desire and surfaces instead in response to other concerns unrelated to sex
(Butler Gender Trouble, 22-23). Yet how will Cabezas react when the “brotherly bond”
he forms with the other rebels on the mountain is juxtaposed with a key component of his
former identity as a heterosexual male from the city?

In the initial stages of his stay on the mountain, when faced with the difﬁculty of
completing routine tasks, Cabezas summoned images of Claudia and the family he hoped
to create with her upon his return to Leon as a means to inspire him to act heroically in
spite of the obstacles he confronts. The fantasy ends when Claudia confesses that she has
fallen in love with another Sandinista as a result of his long absence. In the closing of her
letter, Claudia discloses her feelings: “Siempre te querré, o que Siempre te respetaré y te
admiraré, fratema” (25 7). Ironically, Claudia’s now “brotherly” bond with Cabezas
forces him to embrace a different type of masculinity that rather than ﬁnd its roots in the
family unit, core of a bourgeois society, is deﬁned by a fraternal bond with his comrades
in arms.

Such a change is clearly evident in Cabezas’ reunion with his longtime friend
from the city El Gato (Ventura), a meeting that is not void of anxieties for Cabezas. Prior
to his reencounter with Ventura, who seems to epitomize both the machista and the

Sandinista, Cabezas worries about how his old (and more qualiﬁed friend) will receive

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him after months without seeing one another.'5 The reunion is joyful and thus highlights
the mutual respect and love that these two continue to have for one another, even if they
now meet under different circumstances: “[El Gato] me abraza y entonces yo lo abrazo y
el Gato se cae en el suelo. Y entonces quedamos los dos acostados en el suelo [. . .] Y
entonces, nos quedamos asi un rato medio caidos los dos en el suelo, y abrazados y
entonces nos levantamos, y el Gato se sienta en su hamaca y yo me siento frente a él y
eran tantas cosas que decir, y no sabiamos que’ decir” (183). Cabezas’ reunion with El
Gato demonstrates his shedding of yet another layer of the machista standard for man as
he seeks comfort in the company of his old friend and takes pride in his position as a
member of a community of men that ﬁghts towards a common socio-political goal.

What I tried to demonstrate with such examples is how ﬁrst through his body and
then through his emotions and relationships with others Cabezas reaches the limits of his
machista identity. When this occurs, he consciously begins to reformulate his vision of
the revolutionary process and of himself as a Sandinista that forms part of a larger group
of rebels. If, according to Judith Butler, in a traditional context “[g]ender is [. . .] a set of
repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the
appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being,” then it is only through the constant
repetition of and failure to achieve the limiting norm — the compulsory machista
paradigm — that other (gender) possibilities become possible (Butler, Gender Trouble 33).
Thus, Cabezas’ (unsuccessful) attempts to act according to a bourgeois code of manhood

on the mountain pry open the possibilities that lie beneath such an unstable model.

 

'5 Prior to going to the mountain, Cabezas remembers that El Galo was the “ultimate” machista
because of his large collections of shirts. shoes, and many girlfriends. Cabezas also suspects that this
revolutionary, who had been in Cuba, served as a student leader and had spent the last two years of the
revolution on the mountain, is a Sandinista leader in this space (181).

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Clashing Codes of Manhood: The New Man Confronts his Machista Past

Upon learning from El Gato of his imminent return to the city, Cabezas protests
and states that he has since proven his right to carry out his duties on the mountain. But
what most perturbs him about Sandinista leader Rodri go’s decision to send him back to
the city is that his mission there was not complete; there was still one aspect of his former
machista identity that the mountain had not yet “dirtied”:

Las ilusiones que yo Siempre anduve en forma egoista desde que

entre' de la ciudad a la montaﬁa y que nunca se las transmiti a

nadie; me fui entre e1 lodo, me harté lodo, me embadurne' de lodo,

me cagué en lodo, llore' dentro del lodo [. . .] en el pene andaba

lodo; pero es que yo andaba algo en la montaﬁa que a nadie se lo

dije, que nadie lo supo [...] y es que yo queria vivir, porque yo

subi a la montaﬁa llevando entre los puﬁos aferrado un puﬁo de

ilusiones que nunca solté, que nunca se me ensucio, y que nunca se

me perdio [. . .] Yo andaba con una rabia de combatir, con una

rabia de morirme contra la Guardia (166).

While the dirt of the mountain served to cleanse Cabezas, for the most part, of any
traces of the bourgeois code of manhood, the only aspect of his previous identity left in
its original form was his illusion to participate in combat. If Che’s guerrilla narratives —
from start to ﬁnish — centered on the combative aspects of the revolution from the
mountain, Cabezas never reaches that phase of the ﬁght. If he returns to the city, what
stories will he tell others? How will he explain his experiences? In terms of the contrast

between what is “dirty” and what is “clean”? Herein lay Cabezas’ innermost anxiety:

116

after spending almost a year on the mountain, he had yet to contribute to the combative
phase of the revolution, or even pick up a gun for that matter. His early return to the city
represents the fact that he will never have a chance to “dirty” this quality of his machista
identity.

It is for this reason that Cabezas’ anxieties related to his return to Leon creep up
when Rodrigo tells him that he will, in fact, go down from the mountain. Rodrigo’s
afﬁrmation would, at once, close the door to Cabezas’ participation in combat and send
him back to the city to face his machista past without the protection of the dirt, mud, and
community of Sandinistas: “La topograﬁa en la montaﬁa viene a ser en alguna medida,
como vestido para uno, como proteccion para uno, y se me ocurrio que si no me iria a
pasar o sentir lo que senti cuando subi la a montaﬁa, pero ahora en otra direccion” (197).

The ﬁlth of the mountain is, for the most part, void of machista preoccupations.
Yet, when Cabezas falls ill ﬁrst with leprosy and later with appendicitis and is forced to
return to the city sooner than expected, he has to face the difﬁcult task of reinserting
himself into a context deﬁned by the admonitory machista code. Cabezas’ return to Leon
is his reencounter with the “old,” what he knew before, though a space somehow
different now since his experiences on the mountain had changed him. Out from under
the shelter of the mountain, Cabezas, a new man in formation, struggles to reacquaint
himself with the city in his new role as educator of future Sandinista rebels.

Almost one year later, he realizes that his house, his family and his friends have
all remained unaltered (Cabezas 228). This suggests that while for Cabezas, the
mountain represents change and a moving towards the future, the traditional symbols that

deﬁne his past stay the same. The image of the city, the University and even the people

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as stagnant, unmoving, ﬁxed in place is not only signiﬁcant for its obvious symbolism of
the purportedly “stable” nature of the bourgeois social code, but it also begs the question
of how Cabezas, who learned to purge himself of the traces of his former machista
identity on the mountain, will face the task of reinserting himself as changed, but
“normal” at the same time.

Soon enough, his friends seek to thrust him back into the sexist relations Cabezas
covered up with the protective layer of dirt he acquired on the mountain. They do this by
convincing his nurse to touch him in what Cabezas deems a “sexual way” while he awaits
his emergency appendectomy (206). When Cabezas ﬁnds it hard to resist such a
temptation, he calls upon the dirt, mud, feces and hardships of the mountain as a means to
neutralize his sexual impulses: “Yo sentia lo que me estaba haciendo y sentia y me
imaginaba sus manos con las uﬁas pintadas, y sentia su piel, sobre mi came, sobre mi
pene, sobandolo, restregandolo, moviéndolo y entonces, volvia rapido a pensar en la
montaﬁa (206). Regardless of his conscious efforts, Cabezas eventually gives in as his
desire to come together with a woman and to prove his manhood in front of his friends
takes over.

Cabezas’ difﬁculty in acting as a new man in an urban context is further
evidenced when shortly after his surgery, still struggling to walk on his own, he gets the
sudden urge to have his ﬁrst post-operative bowel movement during the march he leads
through one of the peasant villages surrounding Leon. Unable to ﬁnd a restroom or a
latrine, Cabezas recurs to the skills he learned on the mountain to deal with similar
situations and proceeds to dig a hole, cover up the evidence with dirt, and clean himself

with some leaves he ﬁnds on the ground nearby. This time, however, surrounded by a

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“pristine” context, Cabezas views his action as vulgar and inhumane: “Yo a duras penas
podia caminar, y asi fue la primera vez; me tuvieron que llevar entre dos compaﬁeros, me
bajaron e1 pantalon y luego, yo agarrado de los hombres de ellos, tuve que cargar de pie.
Era una cuestion de lo mas incomoda y engorrosa. .. te sentias animal 0 vegetal, pero no
te pode’s sentir gente en esas condiciones” (172). Cabezas’ afﬁrmation that one could not
possibly feel human in a situation like this one seems to resemble a duplication of the ﬁrst
experience with feces, dirt and mud in which “ﬁlth” was taken as a “boundary” between
his “pristine” machista identity and his other Sandinista side (Kristeva 69). The
resurfacing of a view of “dirt” as repulsive and impure breaks from the code of manhood
from the mountain and proves that the scrupulous machista standard that teaches men to
censure their thoughts, words, and actions continues to prevail in the city.

The examples above conﬁrm that regardless of the seemingly transformative
changes Cabezas undergoes throughout the revolutionary process, when confronted with
the symbols of the bourgeois norm that deﬁne his past, he initially fails to perform
according to the standard of the new man. Instead, he reverts back to the limiting vision
of men he seeks to refute through his participation in the revolution. Whereas Zizek
would afﬁrm that this proves that Cabezas’ internalization of ideology — whether
bourgeois or revolutionary — never fully succeeds, at least on a subconscious level (The
Sublime Object 43), Judith Butler would interpret such a failure or relapse as a necessary
starting point for the creation of the conditions for a new gender-related episteme (Butler,
Gender Trouble 146). It is not until Cabezas vows to make a conscious decision upon his
coming down from the mountain to build a new life in the city that incorporates the dirt,

feces and hardships as well as the physical, emotional, and sentimental needs that he

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succeeds in proposing another option of masculinity that is based on the new man from
the mountain that strives to be like Che.

Cabezas’ primary duty as a leader from the city now, similar to his role prior to
going to the mountain, is to teach others to relate to the peasant and indigenous
populations of Leon. Before, Cabezas won the trust of the group by ﬁrst associating
major ﬁgures in their culture to Sandino’s role as a peasant and revolutionary and then by
employing “malas palabras,” as an effective means to transmit the message of the
revolution. Now, well aware of the difﬁculties he faces in establishing strong ties with
the indigenous peasants due to the government’s propaganda and the resultant fear of the
Sandinistas, rather than approach them as revolutionaries, Cabezas and his comrades
present themselves as salesmen as they move from town to town “selling” medicines to
different Nicaraguan towns (Cabezas 203).

In the process, Cabezas comes into contact with Don Leandro, a peasant that is
not only familiar with the Sandinistas and their commitment to the revolution, but had
participated in the revolutionary ﬁght alongside former revolutionary Augusto Sandino.
Don Leandro’s personal story opens Cabezas’ eyes to the link between Sandino’s ﬁght
and the contemporary Sandinista movement: the peasant and indigenous populations’
struggle for land and basic civil rights: “Yo era un joven estudiante que habia conocido a
Sandino a través de los libros, habia Ilegado a Sandino por el estudio del sandinismo,
pero ar'rn no habia Ilegado a la raiz, a la patemidad verdadera de toda nuestra historia.
Entonces, cuando yo encuentro a ese hombre [. . .] comprendo mi propio pasado, me

ubico, tengo Patria, reconozco mi identidad historica (235).

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The dialogue between men that serve as symbols of the two faces of Sandinismo —
the old (nationalism) and the new (internationalism) — is essential for Cabezas’
understanding of the movement and the building up of his own identity and duties as a
revolutionary rebel: “Encontré mi fuente de alimentacion, que no lo conocia, yo estaba
siendo alimentado por Sandino, pero no habia logrado ver materialmente mi cordon
umbilical, a eso mi nacion, lo descubrr' en ese momento” (236). Through his contact with
Don Leandro, Cabezas realizes that to be a Sandinista in Nicaragua is not necessarily to
aspire to be like Che, but it is to return to the land; to Sandino, the root of Sandinismo in
Nicaragua. As Thomas Ward puts it “[l]a epopeya oral de Leandro es valiosa porque [. . .]
[a]hora [Cabezas] tiene mayor concepto de la patria, el terruﬁo, la dignidad, el valor y la
rebeldia” (Ward 309).

From this point on, rather than relay the message of the revolution in Marxist
terms, Cabezas uses the words of the old Sandinista that had a problem with his land and
decided to do something about it (Cabezas 203). Even more signiﬁcant still is that apart
from his newfound desire to reach the people of Nicaragua in a different way that is
speciﬁc to their past, present, and future — the new socialist hegemony that eventually
came out of the triumph of the Sandinismo — his exposure to Nicaragua’s past through
Don Leandro uncovers his need to rebuild his own identity in a new way that reﬂects his
needs, desires and mestizo origin: “Yo voy a hacer una vida y voy a pintar la historia de
mi vida del color que mas me guste y aqui cada quie’n que pinte la historieta de su vida
del color que le parezca; yo voy a pintar la mia y la voy a pintar de los mejores colores”
(221). Hence it is only when Cabezas makes a conscious decision to construct his

identity as a Sandinista revolutionary in terms speciﬁc to his own experiences and those

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of his country that he succeeds in revising Che’s model both as gender code and socio-
political vanguard.

In this chapter, I sought to trace how Omar Cabezas revises the code of manhood
that emerged out of Che Guevara’s guerrilla narratives according to the needs and
demands of the Sandinista Revolution in his bildﬁngsroman La montaﬁa es algo mas que
una inmensa estepa verde. In his narrative, Cabezas offered a complete view of his
process of formation as a revolutionary from his time as a university student in Leon to
the mountain and his return to the city. By narrating three distinct phases of his
formation as a revolutionary, Cabezas allowed aspects that Che leaves out from his texts
— his machista past, relationships with women (both real and illusive), sexual desires,
apprehensions prior to his stay on the mountain and the difficulty of living up to the
standard of the new man after reintegration into the city —.

Crucial to an understanding of why Cabezas joins the revolution and what he
sought to achieve through his participation were his university days in the city. It is only
in this section of his bildﬁngsroman that he reveals the role his father played in his
joining the Front because of his afﬁliation to Somocismo. Here too, one observes how
Cabezas starts out as a typical machista soon to be a C heista when he eventually goes to
the mountain to follow the illusion of becoming a hero by helping others create change.

At the onset, C abezas seems to follow Che’s code of manhood wholeheartedly,
but some core differences exist between the practical and ideological standards Che
proposes and Cabezas’ revision of the same. For Che, the guerrilla rebel on the mountain
served as the primary catalyst in carrying out the revolution and ensuring the smooth

implementation of socialism while the new man comes as a result of the changes

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implemented by a successful revolution. For Cabezas, however, the guerrilla rebel and
the new man are virtually synonymous. The main difference between the two ﬁgures lies
in the fact that the new man is a physically, morally, and ideologically sound being that
emerges out of the combination of the harsh and tender aspects of the revolution.
Another difference between the models worth noting is that for Che the body becomes
the key to his clean break from the bourgeois code of manhood whereas for Cabezas, the
dirt and mud of the mountain serve as a boundary between the machista standard and the
new masculinity represented by the new man.

Perhaps the most important distinction between both codes is that towards the end
of his narrative, C abezas, upon realizing that the model of the new man from the
mountain does not apply to an urban context, adopts a new view of the movement from
Nicaragua that incorporates Sandino’s pre-communist ideology through the voice of Don
Leandro. Such a shift would allow the inscription of origins, particularly ethnic and

racial, into the question of a national identity.

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Chapter 4: Gioconda Belli’s El pais bajo mi piel (2003) and the Dichotomy of the Female
“Guerrilla” Rebel in Nicaragua

In the current chapter I trace Gioconda Belli’s self-construction as a woman and
revolutionary rebel through an analysis of her memoir, El pais bajo mi piel (2003).
Belli’s text outlines her attempts to propose a feminist agenda that. aims to break with a
patriarchal code of gender during the Sandinista Revolution.l Complementing my
analysis of the male code that emerged in the guerrilla narratives in previous chapters, in
my evaluation of El pais bajo mi piel it becomes clear that her intended and intentional
“moments of rupture” from patriarchy (which are framed by her relationships with men)
are not without contradictions. In her incessant quest to gain ground through her feminist
aspirations, Belli continues to waver between what she equates in her narrative as her
“feminine” (bourgeois) and “masculine” (revolutionary) tendencies (12). 1 am
particularly interested in exploring if this view enforces or suppresses a limiting gender
binary that mirrors the “imposition [. . .] of the rules of social interaction” through the
stabilization of a norm that differentiates men from women (Scott, “Gender” 1063)?

Belli locates her self-described dichotomous existence in the following lines that
serve as introductory words to her memoir:

He sido dos mujeres y he vivido dos vidas. Una de mis
mujeres queria hacerlo todo segun los anales clasicos de la
feminidad: casarse, tener hijos, ser complaciente, docil y
nutricia. La otra queria los privilegios masculinos:

independencia, valerse por si misma, tener vida publica,

 

I The two decades that act as the bookends to Belli’s narrative are the 19505 and the 19905. Thus,
in her memoir, Belli takes the reader from one of the most controversial periods of the Cold War, moment
in which the Cuban Revolution had not yet occurred, but the “spirit of utopia” was already brewing. to a
post-Cold War neoliberal context (Sorensen. A Turbulent Decade 2).

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movilidad, amantes [. . .] creo que al ﬁnal he logrado que
arnbas coexistan bajo la misma piel. Sin renunciar a ser
mujer, creo que he logrado también ser hombre (12).

With this statement, Belli makes clear that rather than create “new possibilities for
gender that contest the rigid codes of hierarchical binarisms” she interprets her actions
within the purportedly ﬁxed gender binary that she sets out to destabilize with her
feminist agenda (Butler, Gender Trouble 145). Such a vision, which reﬂects her
bourgeois upbringing, will affect how Belli approaches every aspect of her life from
marriage to her lovers’ rejections of her, as will become evident throughout my analysis
of her attempts to break with a male hegemony.

Raising Belli: The Formation of a Bourgeois Girl

Gioconda Belli was born into a family of a privileged social class. As a child,
though her parents exposed her to certain aspects of Nicaraguan high culture — dances at
the local Country Club, debutant balls and expensive dinners with friends - she received
most of her education abroad in Spain and in the United States in Philadelphia where she
studied advertising and journalism (Belli, El pais 41). In receiving most of her formal
education in Spain, a country largely deﬁned by its Catholic tradition at the time, Belli
learns from a very young age to see the world through the lens of Catholicism.

Such a view, which urges women to fulﬁll their social duties as wives and
mothers before addressing their own desires, is further solidiﬁed through her relationship
with her parents, particularly her mother, who supports a vision of the woman in relation
to the family unit, an institution that — as Lerner contends — “not merely mirrors the order

in the state and educates its children to follow it, [but] also creates and constantly

125

reinforces that order” (217). This becomes evident when Belli’s mother, aware that her
daughter was about to begin her ﬁrst menstrual cycle, a biological indication that this
bourgeois girl would soon “become a woman” and thus require the proper socialization,
responds to such a situation by relaying her romantic vision of the heterosexual sexual
experience through an apology of marriage, reproduction, and monogamy: “Un acto
grandioso [. . .] e1 acto de union y comunicacion mas profundo que puede haber entre dos
seres humanos,” and by explaining to Belli the “responsabilidades de la maternidad”
(Belli 25, 45). Her words sustain an idea of the female body as a mirror of an imposed
and naturalized social realm that teaches women to build themselves up according to their
roles as wives and mothers, as Monique Wittig afﬁrms: “[w]e [women] have been
compelled in our bodies and in our minds to correspond, feature by feature, with the idea
of nature that has been established for us” (10).

Belli’s mother reproduces a conventional “naturalized” view of woman as a
(sexual) servant to her husband again when she instructs Belli on her duties as “a perfect
wife”: “Una mujer debe ser una dama en su casa, pero no en la cama. En la cama, con tu
marido, pode’s hacer lo que querras. Nada esta prohibido” (44).2 With her juxtaposition
of the two basic, yet fundamental responsibilities of the bourgeois woman — to maintain
order and “proper” appearances in the household and to keep her husband happy — Belli’s
mother emphasizes a key concept in a patriarchal ideology: the role of women in the

domestic sphere is to “serve” the needs of her male partner through her work around the

 

2 1n saying this, Belli’s mother seems to reinforce the myth of “the perfect wife,” an idea that
Spanish poet Fray Luis de Le6n made famous with the publication of one of his most well-known works,
“La perfecta casada” (1583). While Luis de Leon originally wrote this text to educate his recently married
niece on the etiquette of the Sacrament of marriage, it was subsequently widely used as an instruction
manual for all wives and mothers throughout Spain
(http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/servlet/SirveObras/124716343 33485940765657/130000001.htm#lrl_)

126

house, the “proper place” for her —— cooking, cleaning and keeping up the appearance —
(Coons 186). A conventional interpretation of the “social responsibilities” of men and
women links man to the “symbolic structure” (patriarchy) that imposes order. by ﬁxing
the assigned “differences” between the functions of men and women in place while at the
same time allowing the male to reap the (sexual) beneﬁts of the female body (Butler,
Undoing Gender 1 19).

If in the examples above, Belli’s mother attempts to socialize her daughter by
teaching her how to express her sexual desires within the boundaries of her role as a
woman without neglecting her social duties as wife and mother, Belli takes something
much different away from these teachings: “[a]unque su intencion era segurarnente
inculcarme las responsabilidades de la matemidad, sus palabras acerca del poder de la
feminidad en una mente joven y sin prejuicios como la mia, despertaron ecos que
trascendr'an la mera funcion biologica. Yo era mujer” (45). Such an epiphany, which
Belli relates to the existence of an inherent female power, “I was a woman,” frames her
approach to the traditional role of a woman and what she comes to understand as her right
to be a woman in a bourgeois context.

In what follows, Belli consciously seeks to change the conventional view of
marriage as an idealized bourgeois institution imposed on a woman of her class in
viewing it as an “option” that she willfully chooses by hastily marrying her ﬁrst husband
against her parents’ will. Belli’s decision to rebel against patriarchy from within the
domestic sphere, a choice that would allow her to negotiate the relations of power in
patriarchal society and the roles imposed on the bourgeois woman while at the same time

maintaining a proper appearance as a wife and a mother, would locate her inside of the

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“power network” and allow for her ﬁrst intended moment of rupture from a male
hegemony (Foucault 96).3

Upon marrying her husband, Belli initially assumes that her change in social
status will provide her the platform for achieving “economic independence and personal
and sexual freedom” (Willis 131). Yet instead of granting her the autonomy she seeks
and guaranteeing the gloriﬁed passionate sexual union between her and her husband that
Belli’s mother refers to above, her relationship with her ﬁrst husband is dysfunctional —
they lack sexual chemistry, communication and have very different views of life — and it
actually ties her socially, emotionally and legally to a man with which she has little in
common and that immediately reinforces a traditional vision of marriage as a relationship
of servitude: “Ya instalada en mi nueva vida independiente me pregunte' mas de una vez
por qué mi experiencia de joven casada no se parecia alas palabras de mi madre [. . .] en
mi relacion de pareja no lograba, ni la union de titanes, ni la comunion e intimidad que la
convivencia con un hombre estaba supuestaa producir” (46).

Belli’s marriage not only fails on sexual and communicative levels, but it also
strips her of her independence. If at the onset she succeeds in convincing her husband to
allow her to work, another crucial factor in her pursuit of breaking away from patriarchal
codes and from her family as it would allow her to alter the social and “family
organization” (Scott, “Gender” 1063), he eventually requests that she abandon her career

and stay at home “como acostumbraban hacer las mujeres casadas” to nurture her

 

3 In The History of Sexuality (vol. I) (1978), Michel Foucault affirms that contrary to prior
analyses of the relationship between resistance and power, resistance is not located outside of power but
both would represent different coordinates of an intricate web of power relations: “[w]here there is power,
there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in
relation to power [...] these points of resistance are present everywhere in the power network” (96)

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relationship with him and have children (Belli 47).4 In doing so, Belli’s husband
reinforces a conventional vision of gender roles that assigns different functions to men
and women but never places the male outside of his traditional role as the head of the
family (Butler, Gender Trouble 22).

When Belli realizes that her marriage, which she now describes as “un desierto
sin esperanzas mantenido por miedo y por un penoso sentido del deber” does not grant
her the freedom that she initially sought, despite her conscious attempt to make her
marriage different, she ﬁnds through motherhood another way to express her feelings and
subversive desires from the home (58). This role allows Belli to experience the euphoric
love for her ﬁrst daughter that she never achieves with her husband as well as puts her in
a position to take advantage of what she views as biological and social power unique to
women: “Yo era mujer. En el género humano 1a unica que podia dar vida, la designada
para continuar la especie” (45). Belli’s goal to exploit her gendered power as a mother to
gain access to a reproductive absolute suggests that rather than accept a patriarchal View
of motherhood as one that demonstrates “little concern for women’s subjectivities” she
sees it as an expression of her unique social power (Barbas-Rhoden, Writing Women 87).
Although Belli’s aspirations to both reach and move beyond her role as a typical
bourgeois woman are defused by her domineering husband, her “failed” marriage forces
her to ﬁnd other ways to carry out her feminist agenda outside of the home, while at the

same time occupying her traditional roles as wife and mother. Belli’s relationship with

 

4 I cannot ignore the striking similarities between Belli’s ﬁrst marriage and that of Soﬁa in her
novel Soﬁa de los presagios (1996). Despite their distinct backgrounds, (Sofia is the daughter of a gypsy),
like Belli, Sofia views marriage as a way to achieve autonomyI However, upon marrying her husband
René, her vision of the institution begins to disintegrate as she realizes that for her husband “la mujer, si no
es pasiva y complaciente, es una puta” (Carrasco 38).

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the Poet, a man she meets in the workplace, provides the platform from which she will
achieve “sexual liberation” (Castells 268).S
Belli’s “Poetic” Discovery

Shortly after giving birth to her ﬁrst daughter, Belli begins to work at Publisa, the
advertising company. Belli’s job is not necessarily signiﬁcant for her career, but it is the
ﬁrst conscious step she takes outside of the home to go against her husband’s rule and
one that proves significant for her process of socialization, exposure to Nicaraguan
history and culture, and the development of her artistic and intellectual capacities.
Intellectuals, clandestine revolutionaries and artists expose her to a way of life that
inspires creativity and social awareness, as well as highlights the necessity and historical
responsibility to act on one’s personal and political impulses. Far different from her
husband, the men at Publisa read and discuss historical and current events, Marxism, art,
sexual liberation and the socio-political responsibility of the intellectual.

One such man is the Poet, who upon meeting her, names himself as her “tutor
intelectual” (55). Whereas Belli’s husband urged her to repress her intellectual,
professional, social, and sexual interests, the Poet stimulates and nurtures her concerns
and desires as well as gives her the conﬁdence and recognizes her right and socio-
historical responsibility to act on her developing interests and political views. The Poet,
who demonstrates his sexual attraction for Belli through his incessant (failed) attempts to
be with her (a fact that initially perturbs her for she takes this to mean that he disrespects
her status as a married woman), ends up provoking her interest because of his ability to

make her feel attractive and irresistible (56). In her description of the Poet it is clear that

 

5 In his study, Power of Identity (1997), Manuel Castells describes “sexual liberation” as the most

radical way in which women “challenge patriarchy” by taking control of their bodies and innermost desires
(268)

130

Belli’s attraction to him is not physical at ﬁrst, but is rooted in his apparent self-
conﬁdence and passion for poetry, history and culture: “El Poeta no era guapo pero se
comportaba como si lo fuera [. . .] [m]e bastaba oirlo hablar con pasion de un poema, un
trozo de historia, un plato delicioso para considerarlo enormemente atractivo y seductor”
(57).

Thus, more for awakening a cultural side of herself that she never knew she had
than his physical attributes Belli makes a conscious choice to pursue a romantic
relationship with the Poet. Belli’s decision does not come without guilt at ﬁrst, but it
does serve as an outlet for the expression of crucial aspects of her feminine identity that
she is forced to repress in her relationship with her husband: “Al go me decia que si me
negaba a conocer esa parte de mi misma nunca me adentraria en los misterios de la vida
[. . .] [n]o me parecia justo que un contrato social como el matrimonio implicara que yo
debia resignarme para Siempre a una situacion que no era mas que el producto de un mal
juicio, una equivocacion” (56).

Contrary to Belli’s description of her passionless and monotonous life with her
husband, she portrays her ﬁrst sexual relationship with the Poet as one that embodies her
mother’s mythical representation of marriage and that results in what she calls her
personal “Big Bang”: “Ni la imaginacion ni la literatura ni mi madre se equivocaban [. . .]
Esa trasgresion fue mi Big Bang personal. Me hizo cuestionar mis deberes y considerar
mis derechos, lo que era mi vida y lo que podia ser” (Belli 58). Belli’s conscious
decision to break her legal marriage contract by acting on her emerging sexual desires for
the Poet is signiﬁcant. In part, it is a step she takes in her personal quest for sexual

liberation through the recuperation of her sexual desires. Yet perhaps more importantly

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still, Belli’s experiencing sexual pleasure for the ﬁrst time makes her aware of the
difference between social “duties” and women’s “rights”. This realization leads her to
believe that “gender [is] a choice,” not an obligation and not a natural given and as such,
she has the option to choose to be the type of woman she wants to be (Butler, “Sex and
Gender” 29).

The sexual aspirations that Belli’s relationship to the Poet awakens in her also
spur a creative revolution from inside that reaches the page through her poetry.6 If, as
Helene Cixous suggests, “[w]riting has been run by libidinal and cultural — hence
political, typically masculine -— economy” (350), then Belli seeks to break with this view
by using her poetry as a form of feminine resistance founded on a sexual-erotic that
speaks through her body and aims to “reconstruct [. . .] the female identity” in terms
located outside of an illusive bourgeois discourse (Barbas-Rhoden, Writing Women 54).
Some, such as Laura Barbas-Rhoden, situate such a practice outside of a bourgeois realm,
but from my point of view, said interpretation is highly questionable. Belli continues to
deﬁne herself according to the established moral standard for women, which
distinguishes “good” women — wives and mothers — from “bad” women that act on their
sexual desires.

In these poems, Belli recalls: “Yo nombraba mi sexualidad, me apropiaba de ella,
la ejercia con gozo y pleno derecho. Los poemas [. . .] celebraban mis plenos poderes de
mujer” (68). Belli’s poetry, reﬂects her desire to reveal “that other limitless country [. . .]

the place where the repressed manage to survive: woman,” the country under her skin

 

6 For detailed analyses of Belli’s poetry see Greg Dawes’, Aesthetics and Revolution. Nicaraguan
Poetry 1979-1990 (1993), Pilar Moyano’s “La transformacién de la mujer y la nacion en la poesia
comprometida de Gioconda Belli” (1993), John Beverley and Marc Zimmerman’s, Literature and Politics
in the Central American Revolutions (1990), and Maria A. Salgado’s, “Erotismo, cuerpo y revolucion en
Linea defuego ( I999).

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through eroticism (Cixous 350). Belli’s appropriation of her bodily rights and pleasures
through poetry caused much criticism from within her family. In reading her poems an
aunt would exclaim, “Qué vergi‘renza,” others would call it, “<<poesia vaginal>> [. . .]
<<pomograﬁca, desvergonzada>>” and her husband, embarrassed to say the least, would
demand that prior to publishing another poem, she allow him to read it so that he could
censure it (Belli 68). Belli sees her “subversive” language as a vehicle through which she
and other women could break away from the rigid male code in patriarchal societies that
limits the roles of woman and conﬁnes her to certain spaces - [in my poems] “[d]e objeto
la muj er pasaba a sujeto” (68) —. Yet more than “break” with patriarchy, Belli’s erotic
poetry seems to reinforce a bourgeois morality for it would imply a dichotomy between
the bourgeois standard for woman, the “proper” way of being a woman outlined by her
mother, and the transgression of this norm through woman’s acting on (forbidden) sexual
desires. In what follows, I evaluate how Belli’s “erotic” revelation and ensuing desire to
distance herself from a bourgeois standard for women leads her to contribute to the
Sandinista Revolution.
The Romanticization of the Revolution

Perhaps a starting point for Belli’s participation in the revolution is the opening
chapter to her memoirs situated in Cuba in 1979. Such abeginning intends to
contextualize the Sandinista Revolution within Nicaragua and in relation to the previous
Cuban Revolution. Belli opens her memoirs and thus provides the ﬁrst glimpse of her
participation in the revolution in Cuba in 1979, a year that marks the 20th anniversary of
the triumph of the Cuban Revolution as well as the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua. The

success of the Nicaraguan revolution signiﬁed the end of the over forty year rule of the

133

 

 

U.S. backed Somoza Dynasty that began in 1937 with the rule of Anastasio Somoza
Garcia (who three years prior to his assumption of power ordered the assassination of
Augusto Sandino for his anti-imperialist revolutionary activity) and ended with his son,
dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s ﬂeeing from Nicaragua in 1979 and eventual
assassination in Paraguay one year later (Booth 50).

According to historian Thomas Walker, the domination of the Somoza Dynasty in
Nicaragua rested on: “co-optation of key domestic elites, direct control of the National
Guard, and the support of the United States,” which, in turn, spurred rigged elections,
genocide, embezzlement, the privatization of lands and industries, the governmental
control of capital and a lack of basic human rights (Walker 69). The Sandinista
Revolution emerged out of a desire to combat the despotism and North American
imperialism evidenced both during and prior to the Somoza years.7

The initial chapter of Belli’s memoirs also serves to highlight her experience in a
rebel training camp in Cuba, which causes her diremption between her revolutionary
desires and romantic (bourgeois) tendencies to surface. This division is observed in

Belli’s attraction to the heroic symbols or heroic “bearded” men of the Cuban Revolution

 

7 In the second chapter, Belli records a mini-history of the intervention of the United States in
Nicaragua ﬁ'om American filibuster William Walker to Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s totalitarian regime.
Walker, who was most likely attracted to Nicaragua for its important role in the transportation of goods
between the United States, Central America and the Caribbean prior to the existence of the Panama Canal,
traveled to Nicaragua with approximately sixty military soldiers and appointed himself as president of
Nicaragua in 1856. As president, Walker took control of the Nicaraguan assets of North American
Cornelius Vanderbilt’s international shipping company, Accessory Transit Route, which was founded in
1851 during the California Gold Rush, an action that would cause much resistance to his presidency.
Walker was eventually stripped of his presidency, sent back to the United States and executed in Honduras
(Scroggs 196-229). Belli connects Walker’s imposition of his rule in Nicaragua to Anastasio Somoza
Debayle’s totalitarian dictatorship by foregrounding the consequences of United States intervention in
Nicaragua (Belli 23). In providing this brief outline of the events leading up to the Sandinista Revolution,
Belli seeks to locate andjustify the origins of the insurgency and to highlight the signiﬁcant role of the
United States in condoning and making possible the ﬁnancial, political, military and ideological domination
of ultra conservatives in Nicaragua, her “pequeﬁo y rebelde pais, donde las guerras parecian no detenerse
nunca” (23).

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during her childhood - “Fidel era para mi e1 simbolo del heroismo mas puro y romantico”
(Belli 19) — and her seemingly innate repulsion for weapons when she ﬁnally has the
chance to take up arms under the direction of her idol, Fidel Castro.8

If, as I pointed out in the previous chapter, Omar Cabezas’ main anxiety was the
fact that despite his undying desire to participate in the combative aspects of the ﬁght
from the mountain as a guerrilla rebel, he was forced to return to the city before he had a
chance to pick up a weapon, with Belli, one observes a much different reaction to the
ﬁght and her role in it. Though too embarrassed to admit it, Belli views the act of picking
up a weapon as vile and associates it with her loss of integrity: “Con cada disparo el
cuerpo se me descosia [. . .] lejos de sentir ningr’rn placer, experimenté de manera
inequivoca el profundo rechazo que me inspiraban las armas de fuego” (17-18).

If, in fact, this core aspect of the revolution provokes such a strong reaction in
Belli, it begs the question, how will this bourgeois woman contribute to the revolution?
Though up until this point, Belli has consciously worked to move away from her
bourgeois upbringing in her attempt to carry out her feminist agenda, her social class
actually serves as a cover up for her involvement in clandestine activities in Managua as
well as minimizes suspicion by the government as Belli explains: “Por ser hijas de la

burguesia andabamos juntas sin despertar sospechas” (80).9 Thus, Belli’s bourgeois

 

8 Though Belli seems to idealize Fidel, her heroic vision of him is sharply contrasted during
another trip to Cuba when Belli portrays Castro as a “typical machista” that rather than listen to her wanted
her to listen to him and that abused his power as a man and rebel leader to try and get information out of
her regarding relations between the Popular Revolutionary Party (GPP) and the lnsurrectionals
( Terceristas) (293 -296).

At the start of the revolution, Belli aligns herself with the the lnsurrectionals (Terceristas), a
faction within the FSLN that sought the participation of workers, peasants and the bourgeoisie as a means
to establish a “broad anti-Somoza Front” that would not be easily identiﬁable as communist in nature
(Kagan 38). Such a move, which would emphasize democratic rather than utopian-aimed aspirations,
placed the Terceristas in opposition to orthodox Sandinista ideology rooted in Marxism—Leninism. Belli

135

upbringing becomes an essential tool in the initial stages of her participation in the
revolution. During the day, Belli participates in the movement by connecting with
members of distinct social classes under the banner of humanitarian work, sending
medicines and money to the guerrilla rebels on the mountain and publishing opinion
pieces against the actions of Somoza and his men in La Prensa.

At night, in order to preserve her facade as a respectable bourgeois housewife in
public, Belli dictates courses in English on Parent Effectiveness Training to other women
of a similar social standing. As teacher of these classes, Belli, still married at the time,
assumes the role of a typical woman of her class and pretends to share her students’
concerns about time management, developing skills for mothers, and other topics related
to the private sphere and women’s responsibilities. Such activities, especially Belli’s
work for La Prensa which reveals the injustices of the Somoza Regime to the public, lead
key members of Somoza’s Secret Police to suspect her afﬁliation with Sandinismo (124-
125). As a result, Belli decides to leave Nicaragua to participate in the revolution from
exile.

To go into exile means an inversion of roles that are typically assigned to men and
women in the family unit. Her decision to choose the Revolution over her family not
only earns her the title of an “unﬁt mother” from her husband, but in her absence he
moves beyond his traditional role as a man to take on the additional responsibility as the
primary or shared caregiver of their children during her absence.10 Belli’s choice to give

priority to the Revolution and the consequent shifting of roles within the family unit —

 

later joins the GPP when she participates in the revolution from exile as 1 will point out at a later point in
this chapter.

'0 Belli explains: “Mi marido consideraba que yo no estaba capacitada para responsabilizarrne por
el bienestar de mis hijas; que las dejaria abandonadas” ( l 93).

136

another example of her working within the domestic sphere to reformulate the complex
web of the relations of power — is conscious and as such is to be understood as another
intended moment of rupture from patriarchy. Yet in her later affairs with guerrilla rebels
it becomes clear that both act according to the naturalized “regulatory frame” of the
gender binary as even in the context of the revolution, the roles of machista and
submissive woman remain intact (Butler, Gender Trouble 33).

Similar to her initial connection to the Poet, Belli’s relationship with Nicaraguan
guerrilla leader Eduardo Contreras (“Marcos”), whom she ﬁrst meets in Managua in 1973
and reconnects with in Mexico two years later, begins as one of a platonic and education-
based nature, for Marcos serves as Belli’s intellectual and political tutor at the start of her
clandestine revolutionary missions in Nicaragua (Belli 124). Marcos helps Belli gain a
greater theoretical grasp on Sandinismo and encourages her to use her bourgeois status
and talents as a writer to uncover and document signiﬁcant information about the Somoza
Regime and relate it to the public. Yet, soon after meeting Marcos, her political tie to
him turns into a mutual sexual attraction.

Belli is quick to point out that Marcos initiates this change in their relationship by
grabbing her hand one day when they are in a car, together and saying “[v]os me gustas,
gsabes” (126)? It is obvious though, that Belli is unable to resist the temptation to
explore an unknown terrain with a man to whom she assigns an almost mythical status:
“[a]quel hombre era un ser mitico para mi [. . .] [e]on él no funcionaban las mismas
formulas aplicadas a1 comun de los mortales” (126). Belli’s desire to engage in a sexual

relationship with Marcos, a male rebel that for her embodies revolutionary excellence and

137

her aspiration to form part of a brotherhood of man —- “1a fraternidad, el calor de los
compaﬁeros” — emerge as conﬂicting “feminine” and “masculine” tendencies (172).

The underlying narrative in the interaction between Belli and Marcos is the
revolution. The idea that one’s commitment to the cause is until “Victory or Death,”
settles in when she learns that the whole time they were together in a car, Marcos was
carrying a bag around with him with a grenade in it; an object that Belli fearfully
mentions could go off at any time (127). Belli associates the anxieties that emerge due to
this situation with the presence of the grenade. Yet her description of such a scene
suggests that they are more related to her concern that the inevitable will happen: she and
Marcos will actually act on their sexual desires for one another, a fact that would
demonstrate Belli’s difﬁculty in separating her goals as a rebel from her seemingly
feminist agenda: “[m]etio la mano bajo mi camisa. Saco su pistola, la puso entre ambos
[. . .] Me miraba. Nos tocamos los rostros, e1 pelo. Cerré los ojos y puse mi oido en su
pecho. Senti ganas de llorar. Era tan facil detener un corazon. La pistola. La granada.
Marcos me beso. Me bebia el alma a través de los dientes. Sus manos un poco torpes
buscaban los cierres de mi blusa” (127).

The two aspects of the revolution that attract and repulse Belli, the image of the
heroic guerrillero and the violent symbols and ideas surrounding the movement — guns,
grenades, and the possibility of death — collide in this scene. Rather than relate what she
views as a temporary slip injudgment to a conscious decision to act on her sexual
impulses as she does with the Poet, Belli links her lapse of control to the revolution and
the uncertainty of whether or not the two would ever see each other again: “[s]er1’a por el

peligro, el riesgo perenne, no saber si seria la ultima vez” (128).

138

It soon becomes clear that Belli’s sexual attraction for Marcos overrides her
“fraternal love” for him when in anticipation for their reunion at another point in the
insurgency; she hopes for another explosive meeting and feels deceived when Marcos
confesses to her that he is in love with another woman. Belli’s ostensible independence
is put into question by her own insecurities and her bourgeois identity creeps up as a
result of Marcos’ rejection: “Desde el abandono de Marcos dudaba de mi misma ——
terrible debilidad femenina —” (192). In associating her self-worth with her relationship
with Marcos, Belli ends up recognizing her condition according to the very standard of
woman that she seeks to surpass both through her participation in the revolution and her
sexual experience. This provides an example of why Jane Gallop afﬁrms that within the
ﬁeld of feminism, critics often view a woman’s desire to act on her sexual impulses with
a man as contradictory to her political stance and agenda (108).

Marcos’ unrequited love for Belli also paralyzes her creative production. In
losing Marcos, Belli states “Comprendi que el unico mecanismo de control del
desbordado erotismo femenino es que requiere del amor para desatarse plenamente. La
poesia me abandono. Apenas un poema ocasional” (Belli 199). Belli’s creative block
seems to represent the traces of what Roger Horrocks deems as an emotional castration,
especially if one understands Belli’s writing as an extension of herself and as her utmost

expression of her feminine (sexual) desires (105).ll

 

H The rupture of her relationship with Marcos also seems to intensify Belli’s longing for her
country which, in turn, affects her capacity to produce poetry as well: “Sin Nicaragua me secaba” (199).
Now, without Marcos, it appears as though this geographical distance becomes a much stronger link
between Belli and Nicaragua, thus making it difﬁcult for her to overcome the effects of her temporal loss of
a national identity and the nostalgiashe feels for her country in her absence. Such a reaction of an exiled
subject is normal, according to Hilda Zamora, who states that “[a]l estar presente el exilio, se establece una
conexién indisoluble con el recuerdo, la memoria y la nostalgia como factores complementarios de dicha
condicién” (126). This inerasable footprint that stays when Belli leaves her country conditions the way in
which she remembers and expresses her longing for Nicaragua in her poetry (239-240) as well as the

139

Belli’s loss of what previously served as a vehicle for poetic expression seems to
trigger what she calls a “masculine” reaction to Marcos’ rejection of her: “Se desperto en
mi un instinto casi masculino de conquista. Los hombres dejaron de sorprenderrne [. . .]
Aprendi que' costuras sutiles penetrar para que se tomaran ductiles y dociles” (199). Belli
seeks to combat Marcos’ act of leaving her with a machista impulse of domination.

When Belli’s “femininity” is threatened, she follows a rigid male code and emotionally
detaches herself from her future conquistas. Belli’s description of the man as
impressionable inverts the vision of the bourgeois woman promoted in a patriarchal
paradigm by describing the woman as dominant and the male as “conquerable” and
suggests, as Carole Pateman contends, that such a reversal of the symbolic structure
promotes a vision of women as “replicas of men” but does not, I submit, categorize them
outside of the view of gender as a binary (187).

Given Belli’s reactive reproduction of the role of the patriarchal male when faced
with rejection, perhaps it would be helpful to turn yet again to Horrocks’ interpretation of
a similar state in the man, which contends that while castration usually refers to the act of
detaching the male reproductive organ from the male body, it also refers to the symbolic
disconnection from one’s feelings (105). '2 If one applies such an idea to Belli’s actions,
it appears that her emotional detachment from the men that follow Marcos is her way of

rebelling against the machista that still seems to exist, even in the context of the

 

indifference with which she looks upon the geographical landscape of Costa Rica: “La belleza de Costa
Rica no lograba despertarme. Demasiado placida [...] Echaba de menos los atardeceres furibundos, los
arboles enmarar’lados, las canadas y los aguaceros. Costa Rica se me hacia un agua mansa, leve como la
llovizna interminable de San Jose” (199). For Belli, Costa Rica, 3 space that would normally inspire
romantic visions in a poet, transforms into an almost unattractive place when compared with the images of
Nicaragua.

2 Horrocks explains “[c]astration means that something has been cut off, literally the male
genitals. But we also talk about men ‘cut off‘ from their feelings, or simply that someone seems very cut
off. So, this is a kind of emotional castration [...] a state of being withdrawn or remote” (105).

140

revolution. It could also imply an outward expression of her anxiety related to the loss of
her “feminine power,” so clearly evidenced in her statement “Yo era mujer,” which she
previously exercised as if it were a choice (45).

Belli’s attempt to regain control of herself by demonstrating indifference in her
relationships with men after Marcos leads her to her next intended moment of rupture
with the patriarchal norm when she tries marriage again, but in a different way with
Brazilian political activist Sergio de Castro. Prior to marrying, Belli and Sergio live
together, both were involved in the revolution and the two seemed sexually compatible.
In this case, her second marriage is not related to the impulse of a rebellious adolescent,
but is based on a combination of factors related to her own and her family’s pressure —
her daughters’ attachment to Sergio as a father-ﬁgure, her father’s push for her to uphold
the moral standards expected of a woman of her class, and her vision of Sergio as the
ideal lover, father-ﬁgure and man. '3 Belli’s decision to alter a conventional vision of
marriage would represent what Judith Butler calls a “discontinuity” with the norm; a
slight shift that would “reveal the temporal and contingent groundlessness of this
“ground”” (Gender Trouble 141). Belli’s step to participate in marriage, while at the
same time consciously altering its structure, could potentially result in a revision of the
bourgeois institution (141).

In Sergio, Belli ﬁnds a balance between her sexual, revolutionary, and traditional

desires that she lacked in her previous relationships, which makes it relatively easy for

 

‘3 Belli marries her ﬁrst husband in order to gain independence from her family, yet this time, she
speciﬁcally states that she accepts Sergio’s marriage proposal in part to regain her father’s respect: “Accedi
a casanne porque estaba cansada de que mi padre se negara a visitarme porque vivia con un hombre que no
era mi marido” (228). Ironically, she later explains that her marriage to Sergio was never actually legal for
they lacked a signiﬁcant document when they went to marry but decided to go through with the ceremony
anyway to please her family (228).

141

her to adapt to her new life with him and even sparks her desire to have another child,
Camilo.l4 Yet shortly after they marry, Sergio starts acting as her father as well, a fact
that Belli ﬁnds difﬁcult to ignore: “Nunca he tolerado la tendencia de los machos a
adoptamos alas mujeres, como si a1 casarse con nosotras adquieran una hija 0 un ser
desvalido que deben guiar por el mundo. Aunque Sergio era un ejemplar aventaj ado de
su género y usaba me'todos mas soﬁsticados, a mi no se me escapaba e1 paternalismo”
(229). With this confession, Belli points out that while on the surface, Sergio appears
progressive and accepting of her desire to exceed the norm for the bourgeois woman,
upon wedding, he assumes the role assigned to him within a traditional paradigm.
Sergio’s shift seems to suggest that the institution of marriage conditions men and
women to act according to a “naturalized binary” that assumes and superimposes male
superiority over women (Butler, Undoing Gender 43).

If Belli depicts Sergio as a microcosm of patriarchal society for following his
“assigned gender role” upon marrying her, such concerns do not seem to matter when,
while involved in underground missions in Costa Rica and Panama, Belli falls in love
with Henry Ruiz (“Modesto”), leader of the Prolonged People’s War (GPP) from the
mountain. Belli’s falling for Modesto would not only force her to exchange her family
life with Sergio for her relationship with him but also to sacriﬁce core feminist
aspirations and revolutionary goals for an alternative role as his lover and secretary.

Belli meets Modesto in Panama in 1978, shortly after transferring her loyalties

from one faction of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) — the Insurrectional

 

l4 Belli explains the nature of their relationship in the following statement: “Me acomodé a1 amor
placido de Sergio, que era como una cascarita de nuez comoda y acogedora ﬂotando en las corrientes
tumultuosas que anegaban mi vida. Dormiamos acurrucados el uno en el otro y haciamos el amor
aventurero y explorador, pleno de fantasias eréticas yjuegos; intenso y cotidiano” (229).

142

(Terceristas) — to another — the GPP (234). In the only description of the Sandinista
leader that Belli offers in her memoirs, she contrasts what she deems as his
unimpressionable physical (racial) attributes — white skin, delicate-type features and
smooth hands — with his sharp rhetorical skills and self-determination; qualities that earn
him the reputation of what Belli calls a Nicaraguan version of Che Guevara:
Modesto, el maximo jefe de la GPP, una version
nicaragiiense del Che Guevara [. . .] no poseia un ﬁsico
memorable: de estatura mediana, su piel era muy blanca, y
sus rasgos ﬁnos [...] [p]oco tiempo necesité, sin embargo,
para percatarme de que tenia la cabeza bien puesta sobre
los hombros [. . .] Aquel hombre era, a todas luces, una
persona que gozaba e1 conocimiento, y que lo poseia como
producto de un sobreesfuerzo personal realizado en
condiciones sumamente hostiles (244).

It should not come as a surprise that among the community of Nicaraguan
revolutionaries, Modesto, “e1 maximo jefe de la GPP,” earns the title of the Nicaraguan
version of Che Guevara (244).'5 According to Belli’s description, Modesto, similar to
Che, would not earn the respect of his peers based on his physical force, but rather for his
assertiveness and intellectual capacity.

Similar to her relationships with other male rebels, Belli’s connection to Modesto
has its roots in the revolution. With his guidance, she uses her bourgeois status as a cover

up for transporting documents, money, correspondence and other materials necessary for

 

'5 Belli dissociates Che from his political value by using his image to emphasize Modesto‘s
ostensible “bourgeois” qualities.

143

those involved in the Sandinista movement to Costa Rica, Panama and Honduras. '6 As a
result of her involvement in such revolutionary missions and close contact with Modesto,
the two develop a type of fraternal bond that is not void of sexual tensions but that is
inspired — not unlike her relationship with Marcos — by the combination of the dangerous
circumstances surrounding their participation in the revolution and her seemingly innate
romantic nature of getting involved in heterosexual relations.

As a result of Belli’s overwhelming attraction to Modesto — “me caian las miradas
de éste como una miel pegajosa” — her relationship with Sergio suffers (259). Such a fact
makes itself manifest in the physical and emotional distance she consciously creates
between her and Sergio: “La relacion con Sergio sufria [. . .] el desgaste de mi corazon
puesto en otra parte. Me distanciaba de 61 dia a dia porque hacerlo disminuia mi
sentimiento de culpa” (3 02). Belli associates the angst that her decision to leave Sergio
behind produces in her with her guilty conscience for having to choose between her
family and her sexual desires for Modesto. Yet, as she later points out, her hesitation in
leaving Sergio was more related to her doubt of Modesto’s capacity to be a “good”
partner. Sergio, without a doubt, possessed this quality: “A pesar de su dogmatismo, de
su rigidez moralista que me irritaba, Sergio era [. . .] [m]ucho mejor pareja, en. muchos
sentidos, que Modesto cuyo caracter mostraba suﬁcientes seﬁales de peligro como para
que yo advirtiera la precaria y eﬁmera felicidad que podia ofrecerme” (310).

Though at the onset, Belli appears to dictate the course of her relationship with

Sergio and Modesto, it is Modesto that demands that she either choose to lead a

 

'6 Belli explains: “Modesto considero que yo era 1a persona ideal para transportar dinero,
mensajes y documentos delicados entre Costa Rica, Honduras y Panama. Pensaba que mi estampa de
mujer de cierta clase me libraria de las sospechas de las autoridades en los aeropuertos” (261). Belli
transports such items by stufﬁng them in the arms and legs of dolls and in hidden compartments of
suitcases (261).

144

conventional lifestyle with Sergio or accept an altemative deal with him in which the
two, though romantically involved, continue to live in separate houses. The decision is
difﬁcult, but Belli chooses Modesto. The price of this decision is high. In exchange for
her physical and emotional closeness to Modesto, instead of acting as the sole mother of
her children, Belli is forced to share this duty with Sergio: “[s]er consecuente con la
aspiracion de igualdad entre hombres y mujeres era aceptar que los hombres podian ser
madres también” (339). Yet, her decision to agree to a splitting of the maternal duties in
the home is also an implicit negotiation when she chooses to give priority to her
relationship with Modesto over her marriage to Sergio.

Belli not only compromises her position within the family unit when she chooses
Modesto, but her role as the lover of a high proﬁle rebel leader in the movement requires
her to exchange her position as director of a revolutionary television station — a
responsibility that she earned for her strong journalism skills after the triumph of the
Revolution — for a position as Modesto’s secretary. According to Laura Barbas-Rhoden,
such a decision causes Belli to slip back into the “old gender codes” for she acts
according to the bourgeois standard for women (Writing Women 50).

Belli’s decision to give priority to Modesto’s demands over her own professional
and family desires causes her to suffer an internal conﬂict: “A ratos me arrepentia de
haber tornado una decision a todas luces equivocada, pero de pronto Modesto se me
acercaba o alguien me mencionaba que yo era la compafiera del comandante, y eso me
hacia sentir torva y oscuramente validada, importante” (345). Belli rationalizes her
delicate choice by reminding herself that as Modesto’s secretary, she is in close and

constant contact with him, even if it means that in the public eye many only view her as

145

the submissive servant to the revolutionary commander. Is this not the very position
assigned to the women of her class that Belli has sought to refute from the beginning
when she “chose her gender”; when she chose to be a woman?

Though Belli succeeded in performing her traditional duties as a wife and mother
while at the same time carrying out her feminist agenda through her work, poetry,
participation in the revolution and relationships with other men, her relation with
Modesto foregrounds the fact that in spite of all of her previous intents to break from the
norm, she has proven unable to create an identity of herself as a woman outside of a
power relationship with men: “No sabia estar sola. Me habia arriesgado alas balas, a la
muerte, traﬁcado con armas, pronunciado discursos, ganado premios, tenido hijos, tantas
cosas pero [. . .] [n]o sabia quien era realmente yo sin 1a referencia de alguien que me
nombrara y me hiciera existir con su amor” (378).

Perhaps even more striking still is the fact that Belli’s social class, which was so
useful for her involvement in the revolution at the onset, is a mark that she cannot erase
and that Modesto never forgives: “Ya me habia admitido [. . .] que temia que sus
hombres, su tropa, no comprendiera que se hubiera enamorado de mi. Le mortiﬁcaba que
consideraran que era una debilidad suya amar a alguien como yo” (376). Modesto’s
vision of Belli as a weakness, a shameful mark on his rebel leader status, leaves her with
no other choice but to leave him in the end. For Modesto, Belli has not only become a
symbol of the ruling class but an emblem of the bourgeois involvement in the revolution

as well and as such, she embodies one of the main points of conﬂict between the Marxist-

146

based GPP and the Terceristas that eventually emerge to dictate the course of Nicaragua
post-1979 (376).”

Belli’s difﬁculty in viewing her role as a woman outside of a gender binary begs
the question, if the only true ruptures with patriarchy are those that “contest the rigid
codes of hierarchical binarisms,” as Judith Butler suggests, then does Belli’s feminist
agenda, which seems to culminate in her relationship with Modesto, create “new
possibilities for gender” (Butler, Gender Trouble 145)?

The New Sandinista Society

After the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution, Belli participates in literacy
campaigns, healthcare revisions and the management of the information regarding the
1984 governmental elections, the ﬁrst democratic elections since the triumph of the
revolution in 1979.'8 Precisely because of the Sandinista victory, United States military
intervention through the F uerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN) or the “Contras,” a
counterinsurgent army comprised of Untied States trained former members of Somoza’s
National Guard, increased during Ronald Reagan’s two-term presidency (1981-1989).
As a result, the Sandinistas closely monitored the presence of North Americans in
Nicaragua at the time (Blanchard 78).

In this context, Belli met and fell in love with Charlie Castaldi, a North American

journalist that was in Nicaragua covering the elections for National Public Radio (NPR).

 

'7 After the Sandinista Victory, Belli explains: “[a] la gente eomo yo [...] se les cobraba e1 origen
de clase. era como una vergﬁenza con la que uno debia acostumbrarse a vivir, una suerte de pecado original
perdonado pero que nunca se olvidaba” (376).

The revision of the healthcare system in Nicaragua was of particular interest to Belli. During
her pregnancies, she mentioned her discontent with various aspects of the system in Nicaragua including
doctors’ oversimpliﬁcation of pregnancy-related complications and unequal treatment of women from
distinct social classes.

147

Her relationship with Charlie is portrayed as one without lies: “[con Charlie] me
arriesgue' a ser exactamente quien era. Decir exactamente lo que sentia. Asumir los
riesgos de mis emociones” (Belli 280). At the time Belli writes her memoirs, she
declares her ability to maintain a professional career as ajournalist, continue her
participation in politics, and live between two countries — the United States and
Nicaragua —.

Perhaps the ultimate proof of such a relationship becomes apparent when Belli
became pregnant again and had to choose to go through an abortion, given the risks
involved for her health. This choice does not come easy for Belli, who recalls:
“[m]uchos aﬁos llore' por lo que pudo haber sido. Compadeci tanto a mis coge'neres,
todas las mujeres que nos vemos desgarradas por ese tipo de decisiones de vida o muerte,
decisiones que tomamos en pleno ejercicio de nuestra libertad, pero que por Siempre nos
dejan una zona bombardeada en el corazon” (255). Belli’s decision to terminate her
pregnancy, a right that emerged with the feminist movement in the 19603, is not only a
sign of her taking control of her health and her body, but it is also another intended
moment of rupture from patriarchy that challenged the Catholic Church and the “natural
relations of marriage and reproduction” (Critical Passions 124).

Belli also proves her relationship with Charlie in the political arena. When co-
founder of the FSLN, Tomas Borge learned of their relationship, he requested that Belli
stop seeing Charlie because of his possible connection to people involved in the CIA
(Belli 118). Though Borge states that he trusts Belli, his demand, apart from revealing
his concern with security, suggests that even after the triumph of the revolution, sexism

continued to prevail among the leading Sandinistas (118). Borge’s request, perhaps even

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more than Modesto’s punishment of her for her bourgeois upbringing, makes Belli feel
marginalized and unrecognized despite her years of dedication to the revolution: “No
podia concebir que la Revolucién me marginara. El sandinismo era parte fundamental de
mi identidad. Afectivamente era mi familia, tan parte de mi como mi apellido. No podia
tolerar la idea de un posible ostracismo 0 de que se me tratara con desconﬁanza” (119).
Though Belli initially complies and leaves Charlie, she eventually chooses her happiness
— her future with Charlie — over the orders of the leading ofﬁcials in Sandinismo. For
Belli, Charlie’s uniqueness lie in the fact that she believes he is the man that can “tame
her,” a quality that no other man in her life up until this point has possessed: “en aquel
hombre [...] yo intuia el puerto ﬁnal de mis tempestades” and for this reason, she
proposes marriage to him (281). Belli’s proposal, which Carlos accepted, is another
example of her inversion of roles within the family unit. It is also, ironically, her attempt
to solidify her future in marriage and to build a life founded on a heterosexual absolute
within the very patriarchal paradigm she has sought to refute from the onset (281).

In this chapter, I sought to stress Belli’s intended moments of rupture with
patriarchy in Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution. In my analysis, it became
clear that though intentional, Belli’s carrying out of her feminist agenda was not without
contradictions for as she worked towards a new way of being a woman in Nicaragua, she
continued to act according to both her bourgeois (“feminine”) and revolutionary
(“masculine”) tendencies.

Belli’s choice to be a woman — “[s]in renunciar a ser mujer, creo que he logrado
también ser hombre (12) — who does not renounce to “love” in the same detached way as

a “man” and her actions throughout El pais bajo mi piel suggest that though she proves

149

capable of inverting the roles typically assigned to men and women in the family unit, she
fails to propose a code of gender that goes beyond the norm imposed by a bourgeois

hegemony.

150

Chapter 5: Citizens for Change: Subcomandante Marcos, the EZLN and their Cultural
War on Democracy

On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), an
“armed” masked rebel group based in the region of Chiapas in Mexico and their
spokesman Subcommander Marcos, came out of the jungle quite literally, to wage war on
the State of Mexico. Some of the events leading up to the EZLN’s decision to take up
arms — an action that for them was a last resort in their ﬁght to survive — include several
instances of electoral fraud, former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s disavowal of the
democratic practices outlined in the Constitution of 1917, the ofﬁcial document that came
out of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, and the complete disregard for the land, basic
human rights and mere existence of the indigenous communities (Taibo II, “Zapatistas!”
22).

On the same day, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a
trilateral trade bloc involving the United States, Mexico, and Canada that the Zapatistas
publicly recognize as their death sentence, or as Paco Ignacio Taibo II very candidly puts
is “the ﬁnal kick in the stomach to the indigenous communities,” came into effect (22).1
The combination of these reasons force the EZLN and Marcos to put their ten year
process of preparation in the Lacandon Jungle in Chiapas, a phase that Marcos attributes

to his “indianization,” into practice as they break the silence imposed on them by a

 

1 This agreement not only serves as one of the primary reasons that Marcos and the EZLN rise up
against the Mexican government in 1994, it also serves as a platform for his criticism of the United States
for historically supporting Latin American dictators, one that he makes in “Estados Unidos gde Vietnam a
Chiapas?”: “Es hora de que el pueblo de Estados Unidos cumpla con su compromiso histérico respecto a su
vecino del sur. Ya no equivocarse respecto al hombre a1 que hay que apoyar. Apoyar no a un hombre sino
a un pueblo, a1 pueblo de Mexico en su lucha por la democracia, 1a libertad y la justicia” (Nuestra arma
195).

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neoliberal state and push to restore the past of the indigenous population of Mexico by
using the very element repressed for over 500 years: the indigenous voice.2

The post-Cold War context in which Marcos and the EZLN emerge — one that
Carlos Vilas submits is deﬁned by an “economic globalization and new informational
technologies” — differs greatly from the years following the Cuban Revolution, a time in
which the Latin American radical Left continued to view armed revolution as the only
means to combat North American backed dictatorships (100). For Marcos and the
EZLN, words take the place of weapons, masks cover faces in an attempt to erase
differences and a post-political proposal for the construction of an inclusive democratic
Mexico that ﬁnds its roots in the indigenous communities (but does not exclude other
sectors of society) replaces the political agenda of the Cuban and subsequent
revolutions.3 Marcos’ distancing himself from the movements of the past and embrace of
“absolute democracy,” a post-Cold War ideology, begs the questions: is the
Contemporary Zapatista Movement a continuation of the revolutionary projects of the
radical Left of the 20th century in Latin America (Prozorov 126)? Or, does it indicate a
break from the “political act proper” (Zizek, “Class Struggle or Postmodernism” 99)? 4

The identity-oriented code that Marcos uses to unite distinct sectors of society in

their difference and in their common aims to gain recognition from the State and to

 

2 See Yvon Le Bot’s interview with Marcos, “Encuentro con las comunidades indigenas: el
choque cultural,” in Subcomamdante Marcos: El sueﬁo zapatista (1997). Also see the following articles
published in La Jornada: Luis Hernandez Navarro’s “Sublevacién en la Lacandona” (January 4, 1994), and
Blanche Petrich and Elio Henriquez’s article “Ellos dijeron: “la muerte es nuestra, ahora decidimos c6mo
tomarla,” (February 6, 1994). See also Juan Gonzalez Esponda and Elizabeth Polito Barrios’ “Notas para
comprender el origen de la rebelion zapatista,” in Revista C hiapas I in 1994.

Zizek deﬁnes “post-politics” as that which “[e]mphasizes the need to leave old ideological
divisions behind and confront new issues, armed with the necessary expert knowledge and free deliberation
that takes people’s concrete needs and demands into account” (The Ticklish Subject 198).

4 Zizek would argue that though Marcos’ multicultural discourse allows the “new multiple
political subjectivities” to come to the fore, it does not “reach this radical level of the political act proper”
(“Class Struggle or Postmodernism?” 99).

152

reinstate basic human needs not only causes a saturation of group-oriented issues, but
creates a noticeable gap between Marcos’ multicultural movement and Che’s desire to
implement a class-based system structured around the economic differences so prevalent
in Latin America.5 Marcos, then, locates his movement in what Slavoj Zizek would
identify as a post-political realm in which an emphasis on the “inauthentic” and a steering
away from “what really matters” becomes evident (The Ticklish Subject 354).6

What does this shift from “what really matters” for Che — a political agenda
centered on the sOcio-economical — to Marcos’ “post-political” desire to carry out an
agenda that seeks to include the groups previously left out of the nation in his plan for an
alternative Mexico? And what does Marcos’ emphasis on a politics of identity that
consciously omits the differences between classes, a slip that is so clearly noted in his
well-cited communiqué delivered on May 28, 1994: “Marcos es gay en San Francisco
[. . .] machista en el movimiento feminista, mujer sola en el metro alas 10 pm,” mean for
the view of his movement as one that is political in nature?7

In this chapter, I seek to respond to these and other questions that focus on how
Marcos strives to correct Che’s model of revolution in interviews and in his anthology
Nuestra arma es nuestra palabra (2001). If for Che the most signiﬁcant category in the

building up of a new society is social class, Marcos forces an implosion of identities

 

5 See Ernesto Laclau’s “Structure, History and the Political” in Contingency, Hegemony
and Universality (2000), p. 203-04: “The proliferation of particularisms not linked by any more global
emancipatory discourse could lead not only to the preservation of the status quo but also to a more
pronounced swing to the Right” (204). In other words, Laclau afﬁrms and Zizek would agree that the focus
on and merging together of the distinct struggles of different sectors of society could end up reinforcing the
ostensible stability of democracy, the “dominant system” (203).

“The talk about new forms of politics bursting out all over, focused on particular issues (gay
rights, ecology, ethnic minorities...)” Zizek afﬁrms “has something inauthentic about it, and ultimately
resembles the obsessional neurotic who talks all the time and is otherwise frantically active precisely in
order to ensure that something — what really matters — will not be disturbed, that it will remain
immobilized” (The Ticklish Subject 354).

7 . . .
See httpz/lwwwbiblIotecastv/chtapas/nuu'94/28may94.html.

 

153

reinstating them in a new light: that of a non-difference that could be summed up in the
Zapatistas’ slogan “todos somos Marcos”. The result is a proposal for a democracy that
“requires unity, but is only thinkable through diversity” and that deﬁnes as its base the
indigenous and other minorities left out of the ofﬁcial Mexico (Laclau, “Democracy and
the Question of Power” 2).

Key to understanding Marcos’ “creation” of a new democracy are the origin and
formative phase of the EZLN in the mountain and Lacandon Jungle in Chiapas, the rural
and urban movements he uses to construct his political identity as the spokesman for the
Zapatistas, and his “unauthoritative “I”, a clear indicator of the post-political stance he
uses to correct the errors of the past by incorporating minorities previously ignored by the
State in his plan for a horizontal society.8 Marcos’ ﬂeeing from a position of power and
grouping together of identities under the banner of a cultural war on democracy suggests
a movement towards an inclusive gender code that displaces the differences in class and
recognizes women and other minorities as its center. It becomes clear in my analysis that
though the Zapatista Movement begins as a socialist project inspired by Che Guevara’s
utopian aims, it gradually shifts in response to the new global context in which the
Zapatistas emerge, and aims to construct another Mexico through emancipation and
democracy.

Following Che: The F LN Arrives to the Mountain in Chiapas
In 1983, in reaction to a combination of the atrocities that occurred during

General Absalon Castellanos Dominguez’s term as governor of Chiapas (peasant

 

8 Since Marcos and the EZLN do not desire to assume a position or power but rather hope for
recognition ﬁom the State, one could argue that rather than “create” a new movement, Marcos provides
another option for Mexican citizens that though in opposition to the State, does not propose to replace it
with a new system.

154

assassinations, disappearances, kidnappings, and torture) and the corrupt practices of the
leaders of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PR1) over the course of several decades,
a group made up of six members National Liberation Forces (F LN) —three Indians and
three mestizos —— arrived to Chiapas with some theoretical knowledge extracted from
military-oriented guerrilla and counter-guerrilla manuals but without any prior practical
experience in the war.9 Such emphasis on the cultural background of the small nucleus of
men that formed the F LN brings up the question of ethnicity, a factor that apart from
Cabezas’ allusion to it in the closing words to La montaha has proven insigniﬁcant in a
revolutionary discourse. Marcos’ distancing from previous rebel insurgencies with his
emphasis on culture and ethnicity will become evident with the formation of the EZLN,
an indigenous-based army, as I will point out shortly.

The FLN, similar to previous rebel groups, goes to the mountain to undergo a
process of adaptation: “[n]osotros vamos a aprender a vivir en la montafia, a aprender a
pelear, y a esperar a que algun dia la revolucion estalle en Mexico” (Le Bot 138). Yet,
their idea of waiting until the conditions are ripe for revolution differs greatly from Che’s
foco theory. Ironically, Marcos names Che’s theory as the main source of inspiration for
the FLN’s preparatory phase in an interview with Yvon Le Bot in 1997: “Se planteaba
una guerrilla en te'rminos muy cercanos al foco guerrillero. En sus inicios es una guerrilla

que con su accionar, con su propaganda armada, pretendia crear conciencia y jalar a otros

 

9 In an interview with Yvon Le Bot, Marcos names the tactics he used in preparation for the
guerrilla phase in the Lacandon Jungle: “Durante esos aﬁos en la montaﬁa, como no tenemos apoyo
exterior, ni asesoria, ni nada, tenemos que recurrir a la formacién militar autodidacta, la que podamos
damos nosotros mismos, a través de las experiencias que leimos de las guerrillas latinoamericanas, pero
sobre todo a través de los manuales de guerrilla y contraguerrilla del ejército norteamericano. Nosotros
aprendimos guerrilla en los manuales de los “Rangers”, de los “Marines”, de los “Siespos”, de los “Seals” y
todos los aparatos de tipo comando militar que hay en el ejército norteamericano y en la OTAN. Ahi
aprendimos lo que era la guerrilla; lo que era el ejército regular lo aprendimos de los manuales de historia
militar” (Le Bot 138). This statement seems to suggest that the source of the group’s tactical knowledge on
the revolution comes more from the United States military manuals of counter-insurgency.

155

grupos que optaran por la lucha armada, hasta culminar con una guerra popular” (123-
124)

The F LN’s choice to follow Che Guevara’s model rather than other groups such
as the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URN G) seems interesting.10 The
Guatemalan rebel group would have been the most logical referent for Marcos and the
FLN due to the geographical proximity of Guatemala and Chiapas and the URNG’s
emphasis on peasant and indigenous rights. The URNG, similar to the F LN, initially
sought a government takeover but due to much resistance from the military junta of
General Efrain Rios Montt, what began as an armed insurgency transformed into a plea
for negotiations and recognition within the Guatemalan State. Yet, when Le Bot asks
Marcos if the FLN found inspiration in the URN G, he responds: “No. Nuestro referente
guerrillero no era la guerrilla centroamericana, sino el Che.” (135).

Che’s vision of the mountain and the guerilla rebel as two intricately related
aspects of a revolutionary insurgency proved highly inﬂuential for Marcos and the FLN
at the onset. What is more, Guevara’s plan to replace North American backed totalitarian
regimes in Latin America with a society grounded in socialist practices emerges as the
central focus of the FLN’s project in Mexico. The leaders of the F LN clearly outline
their plan in Statues of the Forces of National Liberation (F LN) (2003), a political

pamphlet that was originally written in 1980, three years prior to the small group’s

 

‘0 The URNG was primarily a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group formed in 1982 out of four
different revolutionary groups in Guatemala: The Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), the Rebel Armed
Forces (FAR), the Revolutionary Organization of the People in Arms (ORPA), and the central committee
of the Guatemalan Worker’s Party (PGT). The aims of the URNG, whose members were predominantly
Indian, were the following: “Elimination of repression and guarantees of life and peace; distribution of
property of the very wealthy, agrarian reform, price controls, and the allowance of reasonable proﬁts;
guarantee of equality between Indians and non-Indians; equal representation by patriotic, popular, and
democratic sectors in the new government, equal rights for women, protection for children, and guarantees
of freedom of expression and religion; and national self-determination and a policy of nonalignment and
intemational cooperation” (Barry 242-243).

156

decision to travel to the mountain. In it, the members of the F LN identify themselves as a
political-military group with socialist aspirations, deﬁne North American imperialism,
the capital-driven Mexican ruling class, and the means of coercion as their enemies, and
lay out their goal to carry out a movement that adopts core principles of previous Latin
American revolutionary campaigns:

The FLN is a political-military organization whose end is

the taking of political power for the campesinos and the

workers of the Mexican Republic, to establish a popular

republic with a socialist system. The enemies that oppress

and exploit the Mexican people are: imperialism, mainly

North American, their local compass, the Mexican

bourgeoisie and the puppets that form the Mexican

bourgeois State and their armed arms: the policemen, the

army, and the diverse paramilitary bodies [. . .] To defeat

these enemies, the FLN combines different forms of

struggle, mainly the politico-economic, the political-

military and the ideological (5).

If the F LN initially followed and sought to implement Che’s vision of the
mountain, guerrilla rebel and revolution as the most effective means to combat
imperialism and despotism in Mexico, when does Marcos abandon Che and his project
for a socialist revolution only to promote instead a predominantly indigenous movement
of a democratic nature and why does such a change take place? Local, national and

international circumstances contribute to the FLN’s transformation into the EZLN and

157

the latter group’s goal of carrying out a new type of movement that both responds to and
is driven by the immediate needs of civil society, a shift that would align Marcos with the
very democratic (bourgeois) discourse of the State.

On a local level, a clash of cultures between the F LN and the indigenous and
peasants in Chiapas sparks change. Once on the mountain, the members of the F LN
reeducate themselves in response to the contact with the indigenous and peasants in
Chiapas and the surrounding areas: “Sufrimos realmente un proceso de reeducacion, de
remodelacion [. . .] Como si nos hubiesen desmontado todos los elementos que teniamos —
marxismo, leninismo, socialismo, cultura urbana, poesia, literatura —, todo lo que formaba
parte de nosotros [. . .] Nos desarmaron y nos volvieron a armar, pero de otra forma. Y
esa era la unica manera de sobrevivir” (Le Bot 151). If in the guerrilla narratives
examined in previous chapters, one of the fundamental roles of the rebel is to educate and
politicize the peasant and indigenous masses on the mountain and in the city as observed
in Cabezas’ text, in Chiapas the opposite occurs: there is a depoliticization and
detheorization of the guerrilla rebel and an added emphasis on the basic needs of the local
communities in Chiapas (Kampwirth, “Marching with the Taliban” 235).

Apart from local changes, events occur in Mexico that emphasize the
government’s disregard for the indigenous and other communities: the earthquake of
1985, which unveiled the State’s discount for the resultant destruction of impoverished
areas of Mexico City, the electoral fraud that brought Carlos Salinas de Gortari of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to power in 1988, and his subsequent revision of

Article 27 of the Constitution of 1917 in 1992. Such an action went against revisions

158

made to the document after the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and resulted in the
privatization of ejidos and thus the indigenous communities’ loss of land (Hansen 11.).

These events made evident the continual disrespect for the rights of peasants and
indigenous communities, an argument that proved central to Emiliano Zapata’s campaign
for land and freedom during the Revolution, and emphasize the urgent need to carry out a
different type of movement in Mexico — as Marcos stated — centered on basic human
needs: liberty, justice and democracy (Nuestra arma 19).ll Consequently, the F LN
united with the already mobilized communities in Chiapas to form the EZLN, a group
that aimed to revive in a more peaceful way the ﬁght of former national revolutionary
hero and martyr Emiliano Zapata.

Also, two international historical occurrences that took place in the late 19803 and
early 90$ frame the formative period of the EZLN: the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989,
bringing to an end the ideological struggle that was the Cold War, and the preparation for
and coming into effect of NAFTA ﬁve years later, forcing the State to place an added
emphasis on international capital and thus thrust the Zapatistas into a global context.12
Marcos deﬁnes the new era of globalization as one in which the State’s desire to attract
and accumulate foreign capital replaces an appreciation for humanity and human rights
under a democratic government: “En el mundo de ellos, los que en el Poder viven y por el

Poder matan, no cabe el ser humano [. . .] El mundo del dinero, el mundo de ellos,

 

H These words, which Marcos symbolically uses as “weapons” in his non-violent cultural war on
the State, are also key components of a post-Cold War ideology and thus emphasize a shift from the
utopian spirit of Che-inspired movements in the 605, 705, and 805.

2 My relation of these two events and use of them to link the Cold War and post-Cold War period
is not meant to highlight what many deem as the fall of Communism, but rather to foreground the historical
circumstances and symbols (the Berlin Wall) that frame the emergence of Marcos and the EZLN and to
stress that very different from previous revolutions, the Contemporary Zapatista Movement is a product of
a post-Marxist era that explains a moving away from materialism and other class-based politics and an
embracing of democracy, a bourgeois concept that forces the surfacing of battles that for Che were of little
or no signiﬁcance — gender, race, sexual orientation and age.

159

gobierna desde las bolsas de valores. La especulacion es hoy la principal fuente de
enriquecimiento y, al mismo tiempo, la mejor muestra de atroﬁa de la capacidad de
trabajo del ser humano” (Nuestra arma 120).l3

Prior to the 1990s, Latin American revolutionary projects sought to replace
totalitarian regimes with socialist models, yet in the post-Cold War period in which the
EZLN comes forth, a national cultural problem surfaces. The change from the political to
the cultural will deﬁne the heart of the diplomatic Zapatista Movement and shape
Mareos’ discourse and view of revolution. How, exactly, will the global context in which
he builds up his movement affect Marcos’ treatment of the mountain, the guerrilla rebel
and the revolutionary process in Mexico in his writings?

From Guerrilleros to Ciudadanos: the EZLN’s Revision of the Revolutionary
Package

In their narratives, Che, Cabezas, and Belli depicted the mountain as a rebel
territory that was isolated from society, transformative in nature, and largely populated by
peasants and indigenous groups. For these reasons, the mountain became the geography
upon which change took place during revolution. In following such a vision, Marcos and
other urban rebels traveled to the mountainous region of Chiapas where they planned to
undergo a rigorous training regimen. Yet, once the group joins forces with the
indigenous communities and together, they take on a new collective identity as the
EZLN, the view of the mountain as the model space of formation of the guerrilla rebel

shifts. Instead, Marcos calls it “Zapatista territory,” a peripheral zone that though tightly

 

‘3 Additionally, when in his interview with Marcos in 2006, Jesus Quintero, host of El Loco de la
Colina, asks him how he understands politics in Mexico today, Marcos responds: “Para nosotros, la politica
en México es la prostituta mas cara que hay ahorita, la mas fea ademas y pensamos que es necesario
construir otra politica porque el estio, la desilusion que antes provocaba ahora se esta convirtiendo en rabia.
Nos estamos acercando [...] a la desesperacion a la orilla de la violencia a la gente de abajo” (El Loco de la
C olina 2006).

160

guarded by the National Army of Mexico, becomes an autonomous space in which
peasants, indigenous, and other citizens of Mexico that the Mexican government has
previously ignored come together to construct a plan for a more inclusive democracy
(Nuestra arma 255). This means that the mountain is no longer symbolic of the guerrilla
rebel’s intentional separation from the city but rather represents another sector of society.

A marginalization of the mountain also occurs on a textual level. Instead of
occupying the foundational space it does in other guerrilla narratives, Marcos only
mentions it in interviews in response to questions regarding his formation in Chiapas or it
appears as a signature in his writings “Desde las montaﬁas del sureste mexicano.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos,” alongside the three deﬁnitive “words” of the
movement: “democracia, libertad y justicia” (Nuestra arma 80).'4 The change between
previous views of the mountain as a key component in revolutionary discourse and
narratives to an erratic place only restituted by interviewers means that, though in both
cases the isolation from society is key to the implementation of change, Marcos moves
his focus from the proletariat to the local economy willing and ready to ﬁght against a
neoliberal state.

Such a shift in the meaning of the mountain transforms Marcos’ view of other key
aspects of revolution. In other rebel narratives, the revolutionary formed on and in
harmony with the mountain is the mobilizing force for change and the key to the building
up of a new future rooted in socialism. For Marcos, the Mexican citizens, speciﬁcally

those members of society that form part of the Nation but are excluded by it for reasons

 

'4 Marcos does speak directly to his formative years on the mountain in Y0, Marcos (1994). Yet,
the mountain appears as a prequel to January 1, 1994, date in which the movement actually begins, and thus
it does not carry the signiﬁcant ideological weight nor does it assume the central role in the movement that
it does in former Cheista revolutions.

161

of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and age become the driving force behind the
Contemporary Zapatista Movement: “La sociedad civil [. . .] [l]os olvidados de Siempre,
menos a la hora de los procesos electorales. Los prescindibles, menos a la hora de
exigirles e1 cumplimiento de obligaciones. Los excluidos, menos a la hora de imponerles
tributos. Los despreciados, menos a la hora de la muerte. La sociedad civil y su proyecto
de pais [. . .] enfrentada a1 poder y su proyecto de destruccion” (Nuestra arma 134).
Marcos’ View of the citizen as a person bound to others by the right to vote, basic civil
liberties and difference is built up in relation to the State and the idea of civil
(democratic) society. The crucial question to ask is what does the change from Che’s
focus on the guerrilla as a fundamental agent of change during revolution to Marcos’
view of the citizen, a human being bonded to others by concepts of equal rights (i.e.
voting rights), freedom and justice in a democratic society, as the engine for change of
the Zapatista movement imply (Heller 1-5)?15

Prior to the emergence of the EZLN, the revolutions studied have, for the most
part, implemented aspects of Che’s guerrilla tactics. Yet, a core component in the
Contemporary Zapatista Movement is the citizen that makes up part of a civil society
founded on cultural difference, inclusion, tolerance and hope for a fair future (Nuestra
arma 126). '6 Rather than focus on the differences in class, the fundamental problem for

other rebel authors, Marcos and the EZLN’s movement foregrounds what Judith Butler

 

'5 1n Beyond Justice (1987), Agnes Heller suggests that citizens are united by sets of rules, norms
and concepts. One such concept is justice, which Heller departs from Chaim Perelman’s deﬁnition of the
term in the context of equal rights: “Justice means the consistent and continuous application of the same
norms and rules to each and every member of the social cluster to which the norms and rules apply” (5).

16 In his interview with Quintero, Marcos explains that the reason why he and the other members
of the EZLN wear two watches, one on their right hand and the other on their left, is to symbolize the
intricate relationship between civil society and the EZLN. Once demands have been met and the war is
over, the citizens of Mexico and the EZLN will be one and only then will one watch be necessary.

162

656

recognizes as an emphasis on particularisms’ in search of an oversearching universal”
(“Merely Cultural” 38). In other words, Marcos’ shift from a class-based movement to
one that not only seeks to incorporate forgotten identities but strives to unite them in their
difference results in the depoliticization of the guerrilla rebel and the cultural recognition
of the citizen.17
What is more, Marcos even seeks to “correct” the vision of Che as an exemplary

99 ‘6

international guerrilla rebel by remembering him as “El Che, citizen of the world”:
“Ciudadano del mundo Che recuerda lo que ya sabiamos desde Espartaco y que a veces
olvidamos: 1a humanidad encuentra en la lucha contra la injusticia un escalon que la
eleva, que la hace mejor, que la convierte en mas humana” (105). The words that Marcos
uses to shape Che are common to a post-political discourse that intends to change his
political value and status and emphasizes instead his force as “a worldly citizen,” a
“subject of democracy” (Zizek, Looking Awry 165).

Ironically, the qualities that Marcos associates to Che’s status as a model citizen
bear a striking resemblance to Che’s deﬁnition of the revolutionary from the mountain in
El diario del Che en Bolivia: “Este tipo de lucha nos da la oportunidad de convertirnos en
revolucionarios, e1 escalon mas alto de la especie humana, pero también nos permite
graduarnos de hombre” (188). If for Che, the change from man to guerrilla rebel relates
to revolution, the mountain and the other rebels in the revolutionary vanguard, Marcos
displaces Che’s political focus and emphasizes instead the citizen’s role in the

construction of a democracy that respects differences, seeks recognition from the State,

and grants all sectors in society the right to maintain and exercise civil liberties.

 

'7 See also George A. Collier and Jane F. Collier’s “The Zapatista Rebellion in the Context of
Globalization” in The Future of Revolutions (2003 ), p.245.

163

 

The basis of such a movement is best described by Marcos, who, when asked in
an interview by Mexican journalist Carlos Monsivais what he and the EZLN hoped to
achieve through their uprising and subsequent negotiations with the State responded: “Lo
fundamental de nuestra lucha es la demanda de los derechos y la cultura indigenas,
porque eso somos. En tomo a esto se da e1 reconocimiento a la diferencia. De alli
nuestra liga con el movimiento homosexual y de lesbianas, y también con otros
movimientos marginados” (“Entrevista” 38). Marcos classiﬁes the Contemporary
Zapatista Movement as a cultural war that ﬁghts for an appreciation of the differences in
“others” through a non-difference: “A Zapatista is anyone anywhere ﬁghting injustice”
(Klein 116).18 Such an idea is symbolized in the black ski mask that the members of the
EZLN wear on January 1, 1994 and vow not to remove until the Mexican government
meets their demands.

Marcos further identiﬁes the change between Che’s model of utopian-aimed
revolution and the EZLN’s plan to “correct” the past when he states:

Hace 30 aﬁos e1 Che soﬁaba y repetia e1 sueﬁo de una
realidad transformada, nueva, mejor. El sueﬁo de la
rebeldia. Ese sueﬁo atraveso el tiempo y las montaﬁas y se
repitio de nuevo, igual pero diferente, en las montaf'ras del
sureste mexicano. El sueﬁo que hoy nos convoca es
ruptura y continuidad con ese sueﬁo del Che Guevara, asi

como su suefio fue ruptura y continuidad de ese otro sueﬁo

 

'8 I understand the term “other” according to Joan W. Scott’s deﬁnition of this category as one
that is prevalent in the history of difference and that highlights “the attribution of characteristics that
distinguish categories of people ﬁ'om some presumed (and usually unstated) norm” (“Experience” 22 .

l. 64

 

que desvelo por igual a Simon Bolivar y a Manuelita Séenz
(Nuestra arma 107).

Marcos inserts the EZLN and its vision of democracy into a tradition of
“dreamers” that fought for change in Latin America. He characteristically recognizes
Bolivar and Che as exemplary leaders of the Independence and revolutionary movements
of the past, yet his inclusion of Manuela Séenz, the former mistress of Simon Bolivar that
became active in the Independence movements of the 19Lh century mostly because of her
association to her lover, points to a trend in his writing to insert the minorities typically
left out of “ofﬁcial history,” a typically male—centered discourse, by mentioning the often
forgotten “petite history” of Séenz and Bolivar.

Marcos’ strategy to involve all sectors of society in the carrying out of the
Zapatista’s democratic agenda, again best expressed in the slogan “Todos somos
Marcos,” does not come without consequences. His push to cover up the anxieties of a
post-Marxist era by reinstalling such topics into a multiculturalist discourse results in
what Slavoj Zizek recognizes as “the depolicitization of the economy” (The Ticklish
Subject 356). In other words, rather than focus on the way the national economy
functions and results in the differences in classes, he makes his argument about the
effects of neoliberalism — the internationalization of the economy — and the poor
democratic practices of the State regarding culture. Zizek would associate this logic with
what others have called the “end of ideology” (353) and thus represents a point in history
in which: “[t]he political struggle proper is transformed into the cultural struggle for the

recognition of marginal identities and the tolerance of differences (218).l9

 

'9 Though Zizek is quite critical of this newfound emphasis on identity, Judith Butler seems
sympathetic to such a shift. See Bodies that Matter (1993) and “Merely Cultural” (1998).

165

If class antagonism determines the political struggle Zizek refers to, the
vocabulary that shapes the Zapatista movement post-January l, 1994, apart from
highlighting a vision of the State as an instrument of oppression of the minorities, reﬂects
questions of human rights, democracy and national identity: “We want democracy; I
mean the right of these people to choose the government. We want liberties [. . .] we want
justice [. . .] We don’t want more papers. We want schools, we want hospitals, we want
land, we want support of the government” (“Subcomandante Marcos Interview” 60
Minutes 1994).

Marcos’ conscious moving away from the Marxist-based model and guerrilla-
centered discourse so prevalent in past revolutionary projects and the creation instead of a
movement that incorporates the citizen as the main actor in the construction of a
horizontal society that seeks recognition rather than a position of power changes the
entire revolutionary package. In Marcos’ plan, a culture-centered politics that strives not
only to incorporate those previously left out of the Nation-state, but to identify the
forgotten sectors of society as the base and basis of a new democracy replaces key
concepts of former revolutionary insurgencies — utopia, the assumption of power, and
socialism —.

Marcos also follows a nation-centered model to create his political identity as the
spokesman for the Zapatistas by relating himself to two national occurrences: the
Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the Student movement of 1968. Marcos’ construction
of his identity in relation to these events — one a rural peasant movement and the other an
urban middle-class driven uprising — is a political gesture that he uses to avoid alignment

with the class-centered international movements of the past and to link his public persona

166

instead to the wide ranging sectors of Mexicans — peasants, indigenous, students and
other members of the middle class — that take part in such movements.
1910/1968: Marcos (Re)Deﬁnes his Political Identity

Over eight decades prior to the emergence of the EZLN, Mexico experienced the
ﬁrst revolutionary revolt of the 20th century with the Revolution of 1910. Throughout the
revolutionary period over a third of the population in Mexico was comprised of
indigenous peoples and mestizos that were often ignored by the government and denied
basic human rights, access to their land and autonomy (McLynn 33). With the guidance
of such leaders as Pancho Villa in the north and Emiliano Zapata in the south, the people
of Mexico, particularly the indigenous populations of the regions surrounding the
southern state of Chiapas, an area that though rich in natural resources was and is still one
of the poorest regions in the country to date, sought democracy, social justice, agrarian
reform and the right to reclaim basic human rights (Le Bot 34).20

It was not a coincidence, according to Marcos, that out of all of the leaders that
emerged during the Revolution, he and the Zapatistas chose to associate themselves with
Zapata’s name and battle for “Tierra y Libertad,” or “Land and Freedom,” outlined in his
Ayala Plan: “La ﬁgura de Emiliano Zapata posee una resonancia, un peso y una presencia
mayores para los mexicanos, para los campesinos indigenas, incluso para los mayas, que
Siempre, tanto en la época prehispanica como durante la Colonia y la Revolucion, han

permanecido en la periferia de la sociedad mexicana” (Le Bot 74). Zapata, then, not only

 

20 Yvon Le Bot afﬁrms: “De todos los estados de México, Chiapas es el que presenta los indices
de pobreza mas elevados y el que mejor ilustra las nuevas y las antiguas desigualdades extremas” (34).
Also see Marcos’ essay originally written prior to January 1, 1994 “Chiapas: el sureste en dos vientos. una
tormenta y una profecia” in Nuestra arma es nuestra palabra, p. 23-38.

167

represents the struggle for democracy, liberty and justice but he serves as a symbol that
uniﬁes Mexico’s past, present, and future under the banner of democracy.21

Marcos’ emergence as a spokesman for the citizens of Mexico on January 1,
1994, a moment deﬁned by much mistrust in the practices of Salinas de Gortari, evokes
images of Zapata and his struggle. Enrique Rajchenberg and Cathering He'au-Lambert
explain that for Mexico “[d]e la identidad individual de Marcos, oculta tras el
pasamontaﬁas, solo quedaba la identidad simbolica de un héroe guerrillero agrarista. Esta
reparacion sorpresiva de un pasado remoto [. . .] resurgia Ia ﬁgura emblematica del
defensor del pueblo campesino que murio por sus ideales”
(http://wvwv.revistachiapas.org/No2/ch2heau—raich.html).22

Marcos transforms the symbolic link between Zapata’s former struggle and the
Contemporary Zapatista Movement into one that has real political and legal antecedents

in his “First Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle” (1994).23 The declaration expresses

 

21 Marcos also draws on the significance of Zapata as an antecedent to and inspiration for the
Contemporary Zapatista movement in his essays on Votan Zapata, “Votan Zapata o 500 aﬁos de historia,”
and “La historia de las preguntas,” a god that, according to the myths of the Tzeltal Mayas, was the ﬁrst
one brought to earth to distribute the lands to the Indians (Nuestra arma 22). Correspondingly, Zapata,
whose Ayala Plan outlined, among other things, his proposal for land reform in Mexico, was the ﬁrst
Mexican revolutionary of the 20th century to ﬁght until his death for the rights and lands of the indigenous
peoples. For this reason, both Votan Zapata and Emiliano Zapata have come to represent the “heart” of the
Mexican population for Marcos and the EZLN.

2 In her study, Marcos, la genial impostura (2005), Maite Rico Beltrand de la Grange explains
that “Esta foto de Marcos (con su caballo) hace pensar inevitablemente en Emiliano Zapata, el general
incorruptible de la Revolucién de 1910)” (32). Similarly, in an evaluation of the emergence of the EZLN,
Zapata Lives.’.' Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico (2002), Lynn Stephen explains that from
the onset, the Zapatistas’ “Name, methods, and message clearly invoked the spirit of the Mexican
Revolution, advancing a simple platform of work, land, housing, food, health, education, independence,
liberty, democracy, justice, and peace in the names of Emilliano Zapata and Pancho Villa” (144).

Marcos states: “La dictadura porﬁrista nos nego la aplicacién justa de leyes de Reforma y el
pueblo se rebelo fonnando sus propios lideres, surgieron Villa y Zapata, hombres pobres como nosotros a
los que se nos ha negado la preparacion mas elemental para asi poder utilizamos como came de canon y
saquear las riquezas de nuestra patria sin importarles [...] que no tengamos nada, absolutamente nada [...]
Pero nosotros HOY DECIMOS zBASTAl, somos los herederos de los verdaderos forjadores de nuestra
nacionalidad, los desposeidos somos millones y llamamos a todos nuestros hermanos a que se sumen a este
llamado como el unico camino para no morir de hambre ante la ambicion insaciable de una dictadura de
mas de 70 aﬁos encabezada por una camarilla de traidores que representan a los grupos mas conservadores

168

the Zapatistas’ search for historical legitimacy and justiﬁes the reasons for their
seemingly abrupt appearance and declaration of war on the Mexican government for its
failure to act according to the principles outlined in the Constitution of 1917. Julia
Preston and Samuel Dillon, authors of Opening Mexico: the Making of a Democracy
(2004), contend that this constitution, which was the ofﬁcial document that came out of
the Mexican Revolution, initially reﬂected the spirit of the revolution. It emphasized the
democratic ideals that Zapata and others fought and died for, enforced the separation of
church and state, implemented free secular public education and radical land reforms, and
recognized worker’s rights. Also, in Article 27, the constitution promoted Mexican
nationals’ right to use the land and its resources through the implementation of the ejido
system that Zapata supported (48).24

Because this document not only recognized the autonomous nature of the
indigenous communities of Mexico, but pushed for radical Agrarian reforms, it became
what Marcos and the EZLN deemed the “Magna Carta” of the Contemporary Zapatistas
(441). Accordingly, after Salinas de Gortari called for the revision of his Article 27 in
1992, a move that would deemphasize the reforms accomplished during the Revolution,
and thus eschewed the democratic spirit of the original document, the Zapatistas made the

reinstatement of the terms of the original constitution a main priority in their cause.

 

y vendepatrias” (Nuestra arma 13). With this, Marcos uses the government’s perception of the indigenous
peoples as “came de caﬁén” an “easy target” and the complete disregard for and inhumane treatment of
such groups in Mexico as a means to gain the support of the women, children, elderly, and indigenous in an
uprising against the oppressive Mexican government.

2 Some texts that l consulted for information on the Constitution of 1917 and Article 27 include
Noel Hilarion Branch’s The Mexican Constitution of I91 7 Compared with the Constitution of I 85 7 (1 9 l 7),
Don M. Coverver, Suzanne B. Pasztor and Robert Bufﬁntgon’s Mexico: an Encyclopedia of Contemporary
Culture and History (2004), Julia Preston and Samuel Dillon’s Opening Mexico: The Making of
Democracy (2004), Yvon Le Bot’s Subcomandante Marcos, El sueﬁo zapatista (1997).

169

 

In a list of demands published on March 1, 1994 from the EZLN to the Mexican
Government, Marcos orders the reinstatement of the original terms of the constitution and
calls for the annulment of Salinas’ revision of Article 27: “El articulo 27 de la Carta
Magna debe respetar el espiritu original de Emiliano Zapata: la tierra es para los
indigenas y campesinos que la trabajan. No para los latifundistas [. . .] La reforrna
salinista al 27 constitucional debe ser anulada y el derecho a la tierra debe volver a
nuestra Carta Magna” (EZLN t.1 181). The association between Zapata’s and Marcos’
cause reveals that although one of the biggest triumphs of the Mexican Revolution was
the recognition of land use principles in the Constitution of 1917 and the subsequent
public and legal recognition of the minority groups that make up the foundation of the
Mexican-nation, the same ﬁght persists as the Mexican government continues to
disregard popular standards in practice over seventy years later when the Zapatistas come
onto the scene.

The other national event that Marcos uses to deﬁne his political identity is the
Student Movement of 1968, another consequence of the persistent lack of a democratic
spirit on the part of the Mexican government. The movement of 68’ originated in the
form of a peaceful protest that sought to use the growing national and international
attention placed on Mexico, chieﬂy Mexico City, due to the 1968 Olympic Games to be
hosted there to highlight the non-democratic practices of then President Gustavo Diaz
Ordaz, whose undemocratic actions, according to Carlos Monsivais, suggested that
“Reprimir es Gobemar. Gobemar es explicar serena y patriarcalmente la represion”

(“1968: Dramatis Personae” xi).25 Though the students sought to establish a dialogue

 

25 The bibliography on this movement is vast, but some valuable resources include: Ramon
Ramirez’s El movimiento estudiantil de México, julio/diciembre de 1 968 (1969), Elena Poniatowska’s La

170

with government ofﬁcials on how to implement what they deemed as reasonable changes
in the government (a tactic that Marcos and the EZLN would use nearly thirty years later)
the State responded with the brutal massacre of more than 350 citizens.

Even more shocking than the actual massacre, however, afﬁrms Kate Doyle,
senior analyst and director of the Mexico Project and the Guatemala Documentation
Project for the National Security Archive in Washington, DC, was the government
ofﬁcials’ decision to swiftly “sweep the evidence away”. The initial silencing of this
scene of carnage by the government became a “non-spoken pact to leave things as they
were”.26 On the thirtieth anniversary of the massacre, Marcos broke the implicit
agreement with his letter “Tlatelolco: Treinta aﬁos despue’s la lucha continua” (1998)
dedicated to the “Digna Generacic’m de 1968.” In an attempt to use his word as a weapon
of resistance against the government’s implicit breeching of a social contract with the
citizens of Mexico, a move that clearly distinguishes Marcos’ project from former armed
insurgencies, Marcos exposes the struggles, unnecessary deaths, lack of a fair, just
democracy, and the silences still evident in Mexico even decades later at the close of the
20’h century: “El movimiento de 1968 marco la historia de este pais de manera deﬁnitiva.
Entonces se enfrentaron dos paises: e1 construido sobre la base del autoritarismo, la
intolerancia, la represion y la explotacion mas brutales; y el que se queria y quiere

construir sobre la democracia. la inclusion, 1a libertad y la justicia” (Nuestra arma 155).

 

noche de Tlatelolco: testimonios de historia oral (1971), Sergio Zermer’lo’s México, una democracia
uto’pica: el movimiento estudiantil del 68 (1994), Alejandro Toledo and Marco Antonio Campos’
compilation, Poemos y narraciones sobre el movimiento estudintil de 1968 (1996), Julio Scherer Garcia’s
Parte de la guerra, Tlatelolco l 968 documentos del general Marcelino Garcia Barragan: los hechas y la
historia (1999), Paco Ignacio Taibo 11’s ’68 (2004), and Claire Brewster’s Responding to Crisis in
. Contemporary Mexico: the Political Writings of Paz, Fuentes, Monsivdis, and Poniatowska (2005).

See Mexico 's l 968 Massacre: What Really Happened?
(httpzl/www.npr.org-’templates/plaver/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=18:islist=false&id=97546687&m=97
661089).

171

Marcos magniﬁes the importance of such a moment by calling out for the
construction of a different form of democracy from below “Abajo, el Me'xico de 68” that
ﬁnds its roots in those that resist, those that continue, those that died and those that ﬁrst
survived 68 and now 98 (156- 157).27 The difference between the two Mexicos that
Marcos suggests emerge as a result of the massacre lie in the two opposing forces
involved: those that hide the truth and those that seek to expose it.28

In deﬁning himself in relation to the Mexican Revolution, a peasant-run
movement and the Student Movement of 1968, an event that united middle-class
intellectuals and other sectors of Mexican society, in a struggle against an unjust
government, Marcos highlights two signiﬁcant points: the construction of his political
identity in relation to key events in Mexican history and his incorporation of citizens
from all sectors of society in his ﬁght. In doing this, he detaches himself from Che’s
Marxist practices, ideologies on man and eventual internationalization of the revolution.

In an interview with Jesus Quintero, Marcos explains the distance he puts
between his and Che’s visions for the revolution. When Quintero asks what he thinks
when people compare him to Che, Marcos responds:

Es una comparacion injusta para el Che por supuesto. Se
trata de otra e'poca de América Latina, de otra época

mundial de otra forma de ver el mundo. De ninguna

 

27 Marcos’ reference to those from below here could be linked to M. Azuela’s Los de abajo
(1915), which, as is well-known, referred to those that participated in the uprising, mainly peasants and
indigenous peoples, as [as de abajo, or those from below.

Marcos also contrasts “silence” with “the word” in “La larga travesia del dolor y la esperanza”
and “La palabra y el silencio” where he makes reference to what he views as three Mexico’s: the Mexico
from above, the one from the middle, and the one from below (Nuestra arma 62, 86). Although Marcos
never explicitly mentions a class-related component, his exclusion of class from his discourse seems to
manifest itself in his use of the words above, middle, and below.

172

manera me compararia pues con el Che como no fuera en
desventaja pero no es nuestro objetivo ni compararnos con
ninguna de las ﬁguras revolucionarias o rebeldes que hay
en el mundo. Lo que nosotros queremos construir es una
identidad colectiva en la que quepan todos; todos los que
estén proponiendo otro mundo (Quintero 2006).

Such a statement, coupled with Marcos’ previous deﬁnition of his public persona
in relation to both a rural and an urban movement, foregrounds his rupture, though
humble, with the Marxist tradition that provided the basis for Che’s vision for Latin
America. Marcos deﬁnes a new order based in a collective body of citizens that the State
has ignored, silenced and brushed aside by “promoting the rights of the traditionally
excluded: indigenous people, women and even [. . .] sexual minorities” (Kampwirth,
“Marching with the Taliban” 23 7).

If Che employs a Marxist-oriented discourse in which an authoritative didactic
“I,” the guerrilla rebel that seeks to assume a position of power and appears unconscious
of the demands of political correctness that Marcos obsesses over, Marcos strives to
further sanitize his political identity of any traces of an aspiration to power or a class-
based ideology by speaking from the position of a “correct” dialectic un-authoritative “1”.
Such a change would explain Marcos’ self-identiﬁcation as Subcomandante Marcos and
not Comandante Marcos — a title he claims he earned on the mountain due to his “ﬂaw”
of proving impatient when dealing with the press - and his constant use of the ﬁrst person

plural “nosotros” or “we” —, although this often proves inevitable due to his role as the

173

leading voice and face (or mask) often associated with the Zapatista Movement (Yo,
Marcos 92).29

9

Apart from its didactic aims, Marcos “I” mentions gender and sexual orientation
as central issues for the EZLN. Marcos’ conscious implementation of women’s and gay
rights in his discourse signals movement in the male code for in his desire to appear un-
authoritative he also consciously avoids actions and words that would categorize him as
machista or anti-gay by recognizing women and other sectors oppressed because of their
gender or sexual orientation as “doubly othered” due to their need to change society and
themselves in order to achieve progress.

Marcos’ emphasis on identity politics is typical in a post-Marxist (post-utopian)
age in which: “Politics and theory are no longer oriented merely toward internal struggles
to establish their identities but are actively concerned with and directed toward issues and
struggles for our time” (Taylor, Vintges 4). Taylor and Vintges bring up a relevant point:
what was for Che and other rebels a “time” for class-struggle and revolution for Marcos
is a “time” in which the defense of the increasing distance between cultures and cultural
practices in a global era becomes a priority. Such a displacement means that for the ﬁrst
time, the differences in class, though implicit, do not take center stage in Marcos’ gender-
centered discourse. What he emphasizes instead is a ﬁght for the inclusion and

recognition of “others” in a horizontal society constructed from the bottom up.

Marcos’ Didactic “1”: Building a more (Politically) Correct Form of Democracy

 

29 Marcos is a paradoxical ﬁgure for though he seems to consciously ﬂee from power — when
Quintero asks him in the same interview cited in the previous note if he desires to assume a position of
power, he responds in the collective “we”, “No, no 5610 no aspiramos sino que nos provoca repulsa” — the
public deﬁnes him as the leader of the Zapatista Movement as well as associates him with noteworthy
leaders of the past ranging from Che Guevara to Robin Hood to Zorro.

174

Often in his writing, Marcos creates heteronyms or characters through which he
transmits his ideologies and uses as didactic tools to teach the reader about topics such as
diversity, difference, neoliberalism, rights, and justice. One ﬁgure Marcos uses to
achieve his educative aims is El Viejo Antonio, or Old Antonio, a member of the Mayan
indigenous community in Chiapas that served as Marcos’ mentor during his preparatory
phase on the mountain and that revives in his stories an oral Mayan tradition
(McCaughan 73).

The myths that Old Antonio relates to Marcos, which often come forward in
response to questions that the guerrilla in training on the mountain asks his elder, attempt
to explain the origin of the world through an indigenous perspective. Much different
from Western accounts of Latin American history that, according to Marcos, fail to
recognize the signiﬁcance of the indigenous communities in the building up of a Mexican
(mestizo) national identity, Old Antonio builds the world from the bottom up,
establishing as its base the indigenous peoples that walked the earth “muy a1 principio de
los mundos” (Nuestra arma 405). The concepts that shape Old Antonio’s creation of this
world prove of utmost importance to Marcos’ latter cultural war —— difference, colors,
communication, national symbols and unity (405). Through an analysis of Old Antonio’s
story, “La historia de las preguntas,” I intend to demonstrate how Marcos incorporates
Old Antonio’s voice as a means to revise ofﬁcial history and to recognize the indigenous
peoples as the origin of modern Mexican society.

The story begins in the mountains of Chiapas in 1984, ten years prior to the
appearance of the EZLN and thus before the coming into effect of NAFTA. At this point,

Marcos is not yet Subcomandante Marcos, but rather an inexperienced rebel living in the

175

Lacandon Jungle. When asked by Old Antonio why he and the other urban rebels
traveled to the mountain, Marcos responds by naming Emiliano Zapata and his
contributions to the changing of Mexican society during the Revolution of 1910.

Marcos, the inexperienced guerrilla rebel with much theoretical but little practical
training on the mountain at this point, focuses on Zapata’s material achievements. Such
accomplishments, which are later recognized in accounts of the ofﬁcial history of
Mexico, include the creation of his Ayala Plan, military campaign, and capacity to
organize the community against the Mexican government of Porﬁrio Diaz. Yet Old
Antonio actualizes Marcos’ vision of Zapata and his historical signiﬁcance by explaining
his unknown origin. Zapata, according to Old Antonio’s account, was born out of the
Mayan myth of lk’al and Votan Zapata, two gods that though separate learned to walk as
one by asking themselves three simple questions: how to move, where to go and how to
continue to move forward (Nuestra arma 438). The point of Old Antonio’s story
becomes evident in the end when the two gods achieve movement through
communication. Old Antonio links such an idea to Zapata, a man that learned to move by
leading a revolutionary movement against the regime of Porﬁrio Diaz, and encouraged
others to follow in his footsteps (439). After Old Antonio relates Zapata’s story to
Marcos, which emerges out of his desire to correct Marcos’ traditional view of history, a
naive Marcos seems to have missed the point and asks “gY Zapata?,” Old Antonio
responds: “Ya aprendiste que para saber y para caminar hay que preguntar” (43 8).

What needs to be foregrounded here is not necessarily the message of Old

Antonio’s story, which also appears in Marcos’ essay, “La palabra y el silencio” (1995),

176

but rather the subordinate position Marcos assumes.3O From the beginning, he presents
himself modestly as an inexperienced guerrilla rebel that takes at face value conventional
representations of Emiliano Zapata. Yet through his interaction with Old Antonio, a
respected elder, Marcos represents the view of the indigenous people as well as highlights
key concepts for a Zapatista — recognition, respect, dignity, communication, unity in
difference, and the use of the past (in this case an indigenous past) to construct a new
present and future.3 ' It becomes clear, then, that Marcos uses Old Antonio as a tool to
reinstate the indigenous voice in the history of Mexico and to recognize it as the origin of
a new Mexican society, without assuming a position of authority. This move inverts the
hierarchical order presented by ofﬁcial history and questions “history,” a discourse that
Joan Scott states is often viewed as a “foundationalist discourse” (“Experience” 26).

One also notices such a tactic through Marcos’ creation of and speaking through
Don Durito de la Selva Lacandona, a beetle (perhaps the most versatile species in the
entire insect and animal kingdom), that is also a knight errant that implicitly criticizes the
neoliberal Mexican State and acts in defense of the rights of citizens ostracized by the

hegemonic system (Ponce de Leon xxvii-xxviii).32 In his relationship with Don Durito,

 

30 The crux of Old Antonio’s message also appears in “La historia de las preguntas” through
Marcos’ description of the differences between the powerful and the Zapatistas: “Cuentan los mas anti guos
abuelos que tuvieron por regalo la palabra y el silencio para darles a conocer y para tocar e1 corazén del
otro. Hablando y escuchando aprenden a caminar los hombres y mujeres verdaderos. Es la palabra 1a
forma de caminarse para adentro. Es la palabra e1 puente para cruzar a1 otro [. . .] Nosotros usamos la
palabra para hacemos nuevos. El poderoso usa e1 silencio para esconder sus crimenes. Nosotros usamos e1
silencio para escuchamos, para tocamos, para sabemos” (87).

31 See also “La historia de los otros” (Nuestra arma 413), “La historia de los colores” (395), “La
historia del 1e6n y el espejo” (415), and “Historia del uno y los todos” (420).

By giving authority to these two characters — one representative of the voice of the elder (Old

Antonio), a ﬁgure that is highly respected in the indigenous community and the other a knight errant (Don
Durito), the heroic protagonist in the novelas de caballeria, a genre of writing whose parody became
famous with Miguel de Cervantes’ publication of El Quijote, Marcos succeeds in disseminating his
message to the people of Mexico and correcting accounts of official history without assuming a position of
power.

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Marcos, or the “not quite Commander” SupMarcos, describes himself as Don Durito’s
loyal squire (Nuestra arma 330).33 Through an evaluation of “El ratoncito y el gatito,” I
will show how Marcos continues to rewrite history from the bottom up, only this time
through Don Durito.

“El ratoncito y el gatito” relates the age-old fairytale — a genre of literature
known for its didactic and moralizing function — of the rivalry between the cat and the
mouse. Different from traditional interpretations of the story, Durito’s telling of it,
which, I submit, is a political allegory of the ﬁght between the neoliberal Mexican State
(post-NAFTA) and the Zapatistas, has a different ending. The ratoncito (the Zapatistas),
in the end, says “Ya Bastal” and eats the cat (the neoliberal State).

Durito, the self-described ultimate (beetle) warrior that women dream of and men
aspire to become, opens his story by clearly outlining the roles he and his loyal squire
SupMarcos occupy (330). While Durito assumes the role as SupMarcos’ superior and as
the educator of the masses, SupMarcos is a diplomat, a mediator that relays Durito’s
messages in the form of communiqués to the citizens of Mexico. In this particular
instance, Durito tells the story of the cat and the mouse while, in the meantime, he orders

SupMarcos to write to the people of Mexico to inform them of what he views as the basic

 

33 Ironically, Marcos attributes to Don Durito all of the qualities associated with the heroic views
of the guerilla rebel leader that he evidently seeks to avoid but that the media assigns to him in an attempt
to install him in the same tradition of Latin American revolutionary leaders that Che Guevara and other
rebel leaders of the past belong to: “Este pequeﬁo escarabajo decide recorrer los caminos del mundo para
deshacer entuertos, socorrer doncellas, aliviar a1 enfermo, apoyar al débil, ensei’iar a1 ignorante, humillar al
poderoso, levanter al humilde [...] Las noticias de sus hazaﬁas han dado ya la vuelta a1 mundo y millones
de mujeres suspiran por él, miles de hombres lo nombran con respeto y cientos de miles de niﬂos lo
admiran” (Nuestra arma 31 1), For further analyses on the public persona of Subcomandante Marcos see
the following articles included in The Zapatista Reader (2002), Octavio Paz’s “The Media Spectacle
Comes to Mexico,” Alma Guillermoprieto’s “The Unmasking,” “Andres Oppenheimer’s “Guerrillas in the
Mist,” Naomi Klein’s “The Unknown Icon,” and José de la Colina’s “As Time Goes By: “Marcos,” or the
Mask is the Message”. Also see the following interviews with Subcomandante Marcos: “Subcomandante
Marcos Interview with Ed Bradley” (1994) and José Quintero’s Entrevista al Subcomandante Insurgente
Marcos on El Loco de la C olina (2006).

178

requirements needed to ensure that diplomatic relations exist among countries. Durito’s
instructions include explicit orders to eliminate topics such as the forces of rapid
intervention, economic programs and the ﬂight of capital, deﬁnitive practices of the
Mexican government during the presidency of Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leén (1994-
2000)

Though at this point, Durito’s task of relating the story of the cat and the mouse
and SupMarcos’ responsibility to inform the public of the diplomatic practices between
countries appear unrelated, it becomes clear in the conclusion to the “rewritten” fairytale
that they are very much linked: “Es claro que existen, al menos, dos cosas que estén por
encima de las fronteras: la una es el crimen que, disfrazado de modemidad, distribuye la
miseria a escala mundial la otra es la esperanza que la vergﬁenza solo exista cuando uno
se equivoca de paso en el baile y no cada vez que nos vemos en un espejo. Para acabar
con el primero y para hacer ﬂorecer la segunda, solo hace falta luchar y ser mejores”
(331). Implicit in the introductory and concluding words to Durito’s story is Marcos’
harsh criticism of Zedillo’s neoliberal policies.34 The State’s desire to attract foreign
capital and strengthen the relations abroad through the privatization of lands and the
deregulation of the economy has a high political price for Mexico. When the State,
which Marcos states should serve as the protector of the people, places more emphasis on
foreign relations and accordingly concerns itself less with the conditions at home, the

people suffer the consequences. Change is in order and Marcos seeks to address such a

 

34 Marcos highlights the demoralizing effects of Zedillo’s embrace of neoliberalism on the
indigenous communities in Chiapas in two letters he writes to him in 1994 and in 2000 (72, 164). For
Marcos’ further discussion of this concept and its consequences see also, “Palabras en el Acto de Inicio del
Primer Encuentro Intercontinental por la Humanidad y contra el Neoliberalismo” (Nuestra arma 1 12),
“Mafiana comienza hoy” (Nuestra arma 120), “Segunda Declaracion de la Realidad por la Humanidad y
contra el Neoliberalismo” (127), “La sociedad civil, el concepto incomodo y la realidad molesta” (131), “El
caracol del ﬁn y el principio” (136), “Los misterios de la Cueva del deseo” (319) and “Otra nube, otra
botella y otra carta de Durito” (341).

179

 

 

need through the creation of a new form of democracy that does not denounce but rather
respects difference as a means to correct the past: “No es necesario conquistar el mundo
basta con hacerlo de nuevo. . .” (331).

Marcos, at a ﬁrst glance, assumes a subordinate position and Don Durito comes
forth as the more authoritative and didactic voice. Yet it becomes clear from the onset
that Durito, similar to Old Antonio, is a heteronym that Marcos uses to disseminate his
views on neoliberalism and the violence of the State in a global era as well as to spread
his message on how to resist a State that embraces foreign capital at the expense of
humanity among the citizens of Mexico and abroad. Marcos’ belief, as stated through
Don Durito’s moral of the story of the cat and the mouse, that nationality is only a mere
circumstantial accident (331) is symbolic of the post-Cold War context in which he and
the EZLN emerge. It emphasizes a moving away from the idea of the individual and an
aspiring towards a collective identity under the banner of universalism; a move that
seeks, according to Zizek “cultural recognition,” and the inclusion of all in lieu of a
combating of “material repression” as observed in previous revolutionary projects (The
Ticklish Subject 39).

Marcos expresses a similar desire in his letter to French historian and author of
Re'volution et sacriﬁce au Mexique (1986), Eric Jauffret. Marcos opens his letter with
Jauffret’s homage to David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera’s use of the mural as a
political statement and as representations of the ﬁght of Mexican society for democracy
during the Mexican Revolution (Nuestra arma 292). Yet in it, he recognizes the work of
a not so well renowned artist and political thinker from the Chiapas region: Beto, an

indigenous child. In spite of his young age of ten, Beto, out of necessity, matures quickly

180

 

 

because of the conditions in which he lives. He has already impregnated a woman in the
camp, served as the mentor to the three year-old orphan Nabor and through his inverted
drawing of the sea and the sky and other means of artistic expression, Beto proposed very
simple solutions on how to survive in a world plagued with corruption.

If in the ﬁrst part of his letter to Jauffret it appears that Marcos writes him simply
to revel in Beto and Nabors’ political maturity as well as to validate an often unheard
voice, he makes his desired point in a second part of the letter when he speaks directly to
Jauffret and links Beto’s inverted vision of the world to the words and peaceful actions of
the Zapatistas and their struggle to survive and create a more inclusive democracy in a

‘61,,

neoliberal world. Marcos’ didactic pervades in the form of the collective “we” of the
Zapatistas: “Aspiramos a que nuestra voz sea escuchada en todo el mundo y a que nuestra
lucha sea asumida por todos en todo el mundo. Nuestra causa no es la causa de la guerra,
no es la causa de la destruccion, no es la causa de la muerte. Nuestra causa es la causa de
la paz, pero con justicia; es la causa de la construccién, pero con equidad y razén; es la
causa de la vida, pero digna y siempre nueva y mejor” (291-292).35 Marcos clearly
distinguishes between the “cause” of the State (war, destruction, and death) and that of
the Zapatistas (peace, justice, construction) as well as justiﬁes the Zapatista’s, and the
citizen’s right to strive to live a better life.

Marcos’ emphasis on a different sector’s struggle for recognition is evident in

another story that he relates through Don Durito, “La verdadera historia de Mary Anne y

 

35 This association of the simpliﬁed yet mature political consciousness of the children from the
mountain and that of the Zapatistas comes up again in Marcos’ “Segunda declaracién de la selva
Lacandona”: “El EZLN tiene una concepcién de sistema y de rumbo para el pais. La madurez politica del
EZLN, su mayoria de edad como representante del sentir de una parte de la Nacién, esta en que no quiere
imponerle al pais esta concepcién. El EZLN reclama lo que para si mismo es evidente: la mayoria de edad
de México y el derecho de decidir, libre y democraticamente, e1 rumbo que habra de seguir. De esta
antesala historica saldra no 5610 un Mexico mas justo y mejor, también saldra un mexicano nuevo” (49).

181

 

Bonny Read”. This story is Don Durito’s correction of the original tale of two pirates,
Mary Anne and Bonny Read, that fall in love despite the fact that they are both of the
same gender. In its ofﬁcial version, the two women cross-dressed, traveled the sea in a
pirate ship in the company of other men, eventually fell in love and when the true
(gender) identity of each was revealed, order was restored; in other words, the
“normalized” societal codes are respected once again (358).

In this story Durito, similar to Marcos in his writings, seeks to uncover the story
beneath history: “lo mas grande siempre esta oculto, en lo profundo” as well as highlight
his interpretation of difference and vision of unity as a means to subvert the norm (359).
What matters for Durito is the love between these two human beings that he describes as
“muy “otro” y grande por diferente. Porque resulta que el amor sigue caminos propios y
es, siempre, un transgresor de la ley” and thus pushes the limits imposed on citizens by
society and serves as an example for others to follow (360). What is more, Durito
explains that Mary Anne and Bonny Read are “doubly” others for they not only changed
society through their decision to embrace their “abnormal” sexual orientation, but
underwent change within themselves as well: “Los diferentes en preferencia sexual son
doblemente “otros”, pues son “otros” dentro de los que de por si son otros” (360).

The voice of Marcos as SupMarcos, Durito’s loyal squire, only appears twice in
this story, once in the beginning to provide general information prior to the reading of the
text, and another in the end when SupMarcos, stumped by Durito’s explanation of the
double “otherness” he refers to in his story, requests that he further enlighten him on this
subject (360). It is quite simple to distinguish between Durito’s and SupMarcos’ voices

in this particular tale for the simple fact that SubMarcos’ words are highlighted in italics

182

and also because he clearly states at the onset that while going through some of Durito’s
writings, he found this story. Afterwards, Durito asked him to set it aside to include in
his new book. SupMarcos assumesyet again a subordinate position as Durito’s pupil by
further inquiring on topics he deems of utmost importance in grasping his superior’s
message after his abrupt conclusion to the story.

Though Durito takes on the central role as narrator of the story, SupMarcos has
the ﬁrst and last words. Before Durito even begins to relate his story, SupMarcos opens
the narrative by pointing out several signiﬁcant details that are not to be overlooked by
the reader but that are all unknown: the author, public (even though, ironically, the public
is stated quite clearly as the lesbians, homosexuals, transgender and transvestites), gender
of the protagonists and original date of publication of this story. SupMarcos leaves it up
to Durito’s audience to determine the gender and time of publication, both of which he
suggests explain themselves in the text: “A fe mia que la indeﬁnicion entre masculino o
femenino se explica por si sola en la epistola. La fecha esta emborronada [. . .] [p]ero
también me parece que igual pudo haber sido escrita hace siglos o hace semanas. Ya me
entendere’is” (358). From the onset, SupMarcos or Marcos strategically places himself in
a subaltem position in his relationship with Durito and in the periphery of the text by only
appearing at the beginning and end. Yet, the voice that really “speaks” in the story is
Marcos’ (unauthoritative) didactic “I” that allows the reader to interpret the story as well
as determine the gender of the protagonists and the time in which it took place.

Marcos’ voice reappears at the end to emphasize the moral of Durito’s revelation
of his version of the story of Mary Anne and Bonny Read: “Cuando luchamos por

cambiar las cosas, muchas veces olvidamos que eso incluye cambiamos a nosotros

I83

mismos” (360). It is evident that Marcos speaks through Don Durito here because the
same message appears in another one of his essays in reference to a different group that
he recognizes as “doubly othered” and thus all the more oppressed: the Zapatista women.
Marcos submits that because these women that he names as “las mujeres de abajo,” are
oppressed in both the public and private spheres, they suffer a double domination. Not
only are they ruled by their husbands at home, but they suffer from higher percentages of
illiteracy, are paid lower wages and are marginalized by a system that fails to recognize
equal rights between men and women (70).

Marcos does not highlight the case of women simply to outline their
subordination, but rather to suggest that precisely because of their double domination;
Mexican women ﬁght harder than the average citizen for rights and thus their (political)
awakening is doubly noted: “Al go empieza a no acomodar esta doble sumision. La doble
pesadilla duplica e1 despertar” (70).

Because of their situations in the private and public spheres, women feel the
pressure not only to change societal norms, but to evolve from within as well. The result
is the birth of the awareness of humanity that Marcos ties to a feminine consciousness:
“La conciencia de humanidad pasa a conciencia de femininidad, e1 saberse seres humanos
implica el saberse mujeres y luchar. No necesitan ya que nadie hable por ellas, su palabra
sigue la doble ruta de la rebelion con motor propio. .. e1 doble motor de las mujeres
rebeldes” (71). Such a statement also dissociates Marcos from a machista point of view.
What is more, his desire to describe how women that are victims of the State and of the
continual ﬂourishing of a machista code of conduct heads off a new type of movement

that occurs in parallel with that of the Zapatistas. Karen Kampwirth makes such an

184

 

association in Women and Guerrilla Movements (2002): “Women, equipped with new
independence and new skills [. . .] became open to mobilization directly in the EZLN, or
indirectly into a social movement that sympathized with the EZLN” (93). In linking
women’s ﬁght to the Zapatista movement, Marcos emphasizes their capacity to achieve a
dual-oriented collective goal that seeks change on both personal and public levels.

Marcos’ recognition of the central role of women in the Zapatista movement also
implies a shift from previous revolutionary insurgencies.36 Whereas for Che, Cabezas
and Belli, the agents of the revolutionary movement are the guerrilla rebels trained,
formed and changed as a result of living on the mountain, for Marcos, the consciousness
of the female revolutionary is not born in relation to the mountain, but is a product of her
double domination.

Marcos’ preoccupation with reconstructing history and society by inverting the
power structures in an attempt to recognize “others” traditionally excluded from the
Mexican nation is in line with the identity politics that emerges in a post-Cold War era, or
what Zizek calls a “politics of particular (ethnic, sexual, etc.) [. . .] in which every
particular group is ‘accounted for’, has its speciﬁc status (of victim) acknowledged
through afﬁrmative action or other measure destined to guarantee social justice” (The
Ticklish Subject 208). Marcos not only “accounts for” previously silenced voices in his
texts, but he places them at the center of his democratic project as the driving force for
change from within the system. Such an action suggests that Marcos is not only
“politically correct,” but he is anti-machista, pro-women’s, gay, children’s, and

indigenous rights.

 

36 See “Doce mujeres en el aﬁo 12” (Nuestra arma 5).

185

In Nuestra arma es nuestra palabra Marcos proposes a new direction for Mexico
through the inclusion of sectors of civil society that the government has historically
silenced. The distinct voices serve as the vehicles through which Marcos transmits his
moralizing teleological discourse and proposes a different code of conduct that brings
gender, race, culture, sexual orientation and age to the fore as the foundation of a
reproductive democracy without ever having to assume a position of power.

Marcos’ evasion of a position of power, conscious and careful recognition of all
identities (a sign of his multicultural discourse) under a proposal for a nation built upon
the tolerance of and embrace of difference proposes a new code of conduct that more
than simply promoting a masculinity that incorporates the feminine, situates the feminine
and other historically forgotten identities at the core of his rhetoric and his ﬁght for a
more just Mexico. The position from which Marcos speaks promotes an image of him as
a self-sacriﬁcial immaculate male that is highly mindful of what he is doing by serving as
the spokesman or negotiator of a movement that aims to emphasize human potential in an
inhumane era by including the identities left out of ofﬁcial history.

This chapter examined how what emerged as a class-based model in Che’s
writings changes in response to historical shifts and different demands of the Left
movement in Mexico. If for Che, the only identity category that proved signiﬁcant in his
building up of the code of manhood was social class, Marcos incorporates all identity
differences. Such a change explains Marcos’ desire to “correct” Che’s vision of the
revolution by promoting a view of the mountain as a Zapatista zone that rather than serve

as the foundational geography upon which the formation of the guerrilla rebel takes

186

place, becomes the territory in which citizens, core constituents of a democratic society,
unite in their difference.

Marcos’ prying open of this multitude of factors in his erection of a new and. all-
inclusive gender code that seeks to blur the lines between categories rather than
emphasize their differences suggests that he is a product of the post-Cold War context in
which he and the EZLN emerge. Marcos replaces the political model for revolution with
an identity politics that strives to promote political-correctness and a proposal for
democracy structured around a bourgeois democratic discourse that seeks inclusion from

the State, the recognition of differences and basic human rights for all.

187

Conclusions: From Revolution to Reform: Democracy and Culture as Politics, the Future
of the Revolution in Latin America?

In this dissertation, I proposed a “politics of gender” that links gender and class as
two complementary tools of analysis to evaluate Che Guevara’s new code of manhood.
In each chapter, I traced how C he’s model was interpreted, modiﬁed, and/or silenced in
guerrilla narratives and political texts representative of distinct revolutionary movements
of the 20th century in Latin America.

In my concluding words to this study, rather than attempt to “close” this project, I
will point to questions that may help determine a possible line of future analysis: what
does it mean to be a guerrilla rebel in a post-Cold War context? Is it possible to think of
“revolution” today? How should one think of a “politics of gender” post-19905? Before
I attempt to answer such questions, I will outline the points in this dissertation that have
proven most difﬁcult for me.

The main challenge I faced is one that I alluded to in the introduction but it is
worth mentioning again here: if much of the scholarship within the ﬁeld of gender studies
written on Che eschews his political agenda as a point of discussion and projects instead
mythical visions of him as a machista, a hero, 3 Christ-like ﬁgure, a power-driven
guerrilla rebel and a failure, how could I provide a study of Che’s code of manhood that
rather than “forget” to recognize class politics as a fundamental component in his rebel
narratives, actually brings it to the fore as a core aspect in the model of man he constructs
from the mountain?

The answer to this question seemed to be a study of Che’s revision of the
bourgeois male code through a “politics of gender” that recognizes gender and social

class as analytical tools. One of the loci that helped Che rethink gender in relation to his

188

model, though unconsciously, is the body. The uncharacteristic presence of the body in
Che’s Bolivian diary allowed him to move beyond the contradictory code of manhood
presented in Pasajes de la guerra revolucionario and to completely “break” with a
bourgeois model of man by proposing a new type of masculinity that incorporates the
“feminine” by focusing on the body and its various functions and needs. Che’s
contradictory male code allowed for other crucial aspects of the revolution that he had
previously silenced in Pasajes to seep through the cracks of subsequent rebel narratives
(i.e. emotions, the scatological, and sexual desires), particularly in Omar Cabezas’
bildiingsroman.

Another challenge I faced while writing this project was that although the rebel
authors that write and publish their works during the Cold War period appeared to follow
Che’s class-based model of the guerrilla rebel, in the ﬁnal two chapters in which I
explored texts by Gioconda Belli and Subcomandante Marcos, revolutionary authors that
write on the revolution from a post-Cold War period, Che no longer persists as a viable
model. Rather than exclude these works that seemed to disregard Che as an example
from my analysis, the contrast between the Cold War and post-Cold War guerrilla
narratives turned into an interesting and crucial analytical point and led me to another
query worth exploring. If Che disappears as a possible option for rebel authors that write
during a post-Cold War period, what does it mean to be a guerrilla rebel post-19903?

For Subcomandante Marcos, the last revolutionary icon I studied, Che is no
longer a paradigm for the guerrilla ﬁghter, but rather reaches the page of his political
texts as an elevated citizen; a “worldly citizen” (Marcos, Nuestra arma 105) that is linked
to a “national cause” (Zizek, Looking A wry 165). The shift from a vision of Che as a

class-conscious guerrilla rebel that set out to “break” with patriarchy through his

189

participation in the revolution and construction of a new model of man from the mountain
to a citizen “the subject of democracy,” is certainly signiﬁcant for it changes the entire
revolutionary package (165). Instead of treating the revolution as a “political act proper”
that seeks to replace the existing hegemonic system with a new socialist society, Marcos
carries out a reformist movement that aims to recuperate the historically silenced voice of
the indigenous peoples and to integrate groups previously ignored or left out by the State
in Mexico by implementing a more inclusive form of democracy.

As a consequence, an implosion of identities (i.e. gender, ethnicity, age, sexual
orientation), which Zizek relates to the idea of origins — “hereditary ties as a crucial
feature of capitalism” — takes the place of the class politics that served as the driving
force behind the revolutionary movements of the 605 and beyond (162). Marcos’ aim to
achieve the “leveling of all social differences” by uniting all sectors of society in spite of
and in their difference under the banner of universalism (but not socialism) is not the
same radical political act that Che sought to carry out. What this conﬁrms is that
democracy as a form of neoliberal capitalism persists as an absolute system (165).

In a post-Cold War context, the class-based revolution that emerged as a potent
political force in the 19605, 705 and even 805 is replaced by what Zizek calls a
“‘planetary’ democracy based upon the community of all peoples as ‘citizens of the
world’” and accordingly associates “politics” with a saturation of identities that brings
culture and the restoration of basic human rights to the fore as the main components in
Marcos’ cultural war on democracy (165). Yet, how can one conceive a “politics of .
gender” in a post-political period? Is it possible to think of a “politics of gender” in a

post-C old war context?

190

 

 

 

Marcos, for whom “culture is [. . .] political” seems to suggest that a view of class
and gender as two complementary and necessary categories of analysis is not possible in
1994, year that marks the start of the Contemporary Zapatista Movement, nor is it
necessary. Instead, Marcos and the EZLN ﬁght for the recognition of sectors of society
that have been previously ignored by the neoliberal Mexican State, a goal he seeks to
achieve through his proposal of a new and more inclusive form of democracy (Franco,
The Decline & Fall 270). This leads me to believe that in a post-Cold War context,
gender must be thought of in relation to other social markers besides class. In her article,
“Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” (1986), Joan Scott argues that
gender in combination with class and race are useful categories of analysis for they serve
as tools that lend to a better understanding of the complex nature of the relations of power
in a patriarchal context.

If my discussion of Scott’s third proposed point (race) has been minimized,
perhaps a renewed perception of a “politics of gender” that unites these three social
marks is in order for the evaluation of rebel authors in a neoliberal context in which
“gender difference and ethnic difference” come forth as a way of doing politics while the
prior emphasis on social class seems to fade away (Franco, The Decline & Fall 270).
This begs the question, how is class antagonism re-inscribed in the implosion of identities
that emerges as the basis of the socio-ethnic movements that seem to replace the radical
revolutions of the past in a new global context? I propose that a possible line of future
investigation would be to explore how gender and ethnicity compete with or incorporate
social class as identity markers in the rebel narratives and political texts that surface with

the contemporary socio-ethnic movements in Chiapas, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.

191

 

 

If gender and class came to the fore as the two complementary tools of analysis
for the rebel narratives written during the Cold War, a period in which the polarization of
classes represented a “problem of knowledge” (Myers 63) that distinguished the ruling
class from the masses, as Tony Myers suggests, in this post-Cold War context, gender
and ethnicity combine to form a “new kind of political agency” (Franco, The Decline &
Fall 271). Rather than strive for a changeover of governmental systems, as observed in
Marcos’ writings, the indigenous-based movements of the 19905 in Latin America aim to
“contest the terms and practice of citizenship,” demand recognition from and dialogue
with the State, promote the erasure of differences, and seek “territorial autonomy, respect
for customeu'y law [. . .] and bicultural education” (Yashar 30, 23).

One observes the new culture-based focus of politics promoted by the
Contemporary Indigenous Movements in the writings, political speeches and
communiqués of EZLN Commanders Ramona and Ana Maria, Luis Macas, founder of
La Confederacién de Nacionalidades de Indigenas del Ecuador (CONAIE) and leader of
the Pachakutik Movement, an electoral coalition of indigenous and non-indigenous social
movements, and Felipe Quispe (El Mallku), co-founder of the Guerrilla Army Tupac
Katari (EGTK) in Bolivia and Alberto Pizango Chota, current president of the Interethnic
Association for the Rainforest Development (AIDESEP) in Peru. These leading voices
that both write and act in the name of the indigenous sectors of their respective societies,
support the new type of socialism, a “21St century socialism” (Manwaring 8) that seeks to
challenge prior “anachronistic” visions of the indigenous peoples, reclaim their land and
combat the new form of capitalism that emerges in a global era: neoliberalism (Yashar

27).

192

 

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