Che Guevara: Fidel Castro :: Jesus: Christ

Che Guevara is an iconic hero, universally beloved and revered. Fidel Castro is often seen as a villain, hated and reviled as one of the world's last Stalinist thugs. But, are they really all that different? Or, did Che just have the advantage of dying young and therefore remaining pure, while Fidel lived on, grappling with and being tainted by an imperfect world?

This thought was triggered by the book I reviewed in my last blog post, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, by Philip Pullman. Pullman's intent was to contrast noble, idealistic Jesus with his cynical fictional twin brother, Christ. Pullman conceived Christ as a metaphor for the institutional church. I understood Christ even more broadly, as a general metaphor for institutional life. The tension between an organization's ideals and its reality is universal. The only way to be genuinely Jesus-like is to die young, and to therefore avoid the failures and compromises that inevitably come from engaging with the messy real world.

To further strengthen the analogy, Che and Fidel have really cool beards, like Jesus and Christ. Though I don't think either Jesus or Christ smoked cigars...

Che smoking a cigar

Fidel smoking a cigar

Che and Fidel