“The highest forms of human solidarity and loyalty arise among such lonely and desperate people.”
Ché – Commenting on a Peruvian Leper Colony
Che Guevara was one of many people who influenced Big Joe.
Born in Agentina in 1928 where he was due to settle down and enter marraige after his studies as a physician. However, Ché went on a trek that would change the course of his life.
Ché decided to take a year out of his studies to travel S. America. His trek took him first to Bolivia then, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador. Along his journey he witnessed first hand the cruelties visited upon the people of South America. This continent suffered the same ills that Ireland did: resource extraction, absentee landlordism, classism, slave-labour, and the forcing of native peoples off their land.
He later came into the company of two revolutionaries; Raul and Fidel Castro, Cubans, who saught to rid their island of the Proxy-American control under the Baptista rulership.
Quickly ascending the ranks of the revolutionary army, he earned influencial roles in the new Cuban government. One such role is rumoured to be completely accidental as he attended a national conferrence chaired by Fidel, he began to daydream. The new workers’ government badly needed a National Bank President. Fidel asked of the assembly “Is anyone here an economist?”
Ché in his dreamlike state heard Fidel ask “Is anyone here a Communist?” He immediately raised his hand, and from then on he was the President of the National Bank of Cuba.
With the Baptista out of the way, Ché felt the world was ready for Global Revolution. He decided that the place to start is the Congo and Bolivia. Both attempt to build a revolutionary army failed. And during an operation in Bolivia he was captured by the CIA, and held for two days.
“Ché held his head high, looked everyone straight in the eyes and asked only for something to smoke.”
– Jaime Nino de Guzman (one of Ché’s captors)
For two days straight he refused to answer any questions of substance to Bolivian authorities. Attempting two seperate escapes before he was executed on the 9th of October 1967.
Rest in Peace