86 years ago, Ernesto Che Guevara was born. Here are some books and documentaries to remember his revolutionary life…

Ernesto “Che” Guevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967)

“Che was not only a heroic fighter, but a revolutionary thinker, with a political and moral project and a system of ideas and values for which he fought and gave his life. The philosophy which gave his political and ideological choices their coherence, colour, and taste was a deep revolutionary humanism. For Che, the true Communist, the true revolutionary was one who felt that the great problems of all humanity were his or her personal problems, one who was capable of ‘feeling anguish whenever someone was assassinated, no matter where it was in the world, and of feeling exultation whenever a new banner of liberty was raised somewhere else’. Che’s internationalism – a way of life, a secular faith, a categorical imperative, and a spiritual “nationality” – was the living and concrete expression of this revolutionary Marxist humanism.” — Michael Löwy, author of “The Marxism of Che Guevara: Philosophy, Economics, Revolutionary Warfare”

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SOME OF THE BEST BIOGRAPHIES WRITTEN ABOUT CHE:

Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life Jon Lee Anderson (2010, Grove Press, 672 pgs) Download e-book (7 mb, epub)

“Acclaimed around the world and a national best-seller, this is the definitive work on Che Guevara, the dashing rebel whose epic dream was to end poverty and injustice in Latin America and the developing world through armed revolution. Jon Lee Anderson’s biography traces Che’s extraordinary life, from his comfortable Argentine upbringing to the battlefields of the Cuban revolution, from the halls of power in Castro’s government to his failed campaign in the Congo and assassination in the Bolivian jungle.Anderson has had unprecedented access to the personal archives maintained by Guevara’s widow and carefully guarded Cuban government documents. He has conducted extensive interviews with Che’s comrades—some of whom speak here for the first time—and with the CIA men and Bolivian officers who hunted him down. Anderson broke the story of where Guevara’s body was buried, which led to the exhumation and state burial of the bones. Many of the details of Che’s life have long been cloaked in secrecy and intrigue. Meticulously researched and full of exclusive information, Che Guevara illuminates as never before this mythic figure who embodied the high-water mark of revolutionary communism as a force in history.”

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Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Jorge G. Castaneda (1998, Vintage, 496 pgs) Download e-book (5 mb, epub)

“By the time he was killed in the jungles of Bolivia, where his body was displayed like a deposed Christ, Ernesto “Che” Guevara had become a synonym for revolution everywhere from Cuba to the barricades of Paris. This extraordinary biography peels aside the veil of the Guevara legend to reveal the charismatic, restless man behind it. Drawing on archival materials from three continents and on interviews with Guevara’s family and associates, Castaneda follows Che from his childhood in the Argentine middle class through the years of pilgrimage that turned him into a committed revolutionary. He examines Guevara’s complex relationship with Fidel Castro, and analyzes the flaws of character that compelled him to leave Cuba and expend his energies, and ultimately his life, in quixotic adventures in the Congo and Bolivia. A masterpiece of scholarship, Compañero is the definitive portrait of a figure who continues to fascinate and inspire the world over.”

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CRITICAL STUDIES:

Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution Peter McLaren (2000, Rowman & Littlefield, 264 pgs) Download e-book (31 mb, pdf)

“Che Guevara is usually perceived as a Romantic model whom we should admire, while pursuing our daily business as usual—the most perverse defense against what Che stood for. What McLaren’s fascinating book demonstrates is that, on the contrary, Che is a model for our times, a figure we should imitate in our struggle against neoliberal global capitalism.” (Slavoj Zizek)

“McLaren’s writing is a brilliant blend of passion, commitment, and critical analysis and insight. It is poetry and prose in an intimate dance that touches, at once, readers’ hearts and minds. This new book, which appeared at the very dawn of the new millennium, is no exception. Indeed, it is probably McLaren’s most important and exciting text to date. It is also one of the most important books on critical education, and thus also education and social justice, to have been written in the twentieth century. Only a ‘Comrade of the heart’ could have written with such ardour, precision, and depth.” (Paula Allman, Education and Social Justice)

“Peter McLaren’s Che Guevara, Paulo Freire is a vigorous intervention in the complexity of the contemporary political situation—from rearticulating the project of radical pedagogy to his argument to reorient the left itself. Through his groundbreaking regrasping of Che’s revolutionary practices,McLaren critiques the left—especially progressive left pedagogy—for its marginalization of class and complacent reformism. In an effective intervention, he puts the international class struggle at the forefront of a revolutionary pedagogy. As part of his argument for the reorganization of social institutions in Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, McLaren offers a sustained radical critique of transnational neoliberalism and its corporatization of education—in doing so, he places revolutionary pedagogy in solidarity with the oppressed of global capitalism.” (Teresa L. Ebert, Author of Ludic Feminism and After)

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DOCUMENTARIES:

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Ernesto “Che” Guevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967)