Comandante Che: Guerrilla Soldier, Commander, and Strategist, 1956-1967 (review)

Just when you thought there couldn't possibly be more to say about Che Guevara along comes Paul J. Dosal with yet another book, a good one, in fact. Whether or not we need it is another question. Dosal says he planned to write a biography but changed his mind when a plethora of Guevara biographies popped up in 1997, the 30^th anniversary of the famous revolutionary's death. Instead he decided to convert his material into a military analysis of Guevara's career. The problem is that, although many things about Guevara capture our interest, they do so mainly because of our fascination with his soldiering. That means that nearly everyone who has written about the man has written about his military career, forcing Dosal to march us along some very deeply worn trails as we follow Guevara from his youth in Argentina until his death in Bolivia. Along the way Dosal provides a light overlay of military analysis, including an occasional critique of various commanders' strategies.

Dosal's concluding chapter, however, puts much more substance into his military analysis, giving us a thorough and insightful review of Guevara the soldier, and expressing, among other things, the intriguing notion that he proved himself a better conventional military commander than a guerrilla chief. Furthermore, throughout the book Dosal, unlike many predecessors, pays careful attention to the military moves of Guevara's enemies, especially in his last campaign, deep in Bolivia's back country. To do so he relies upon the fair-sized literature on the Bolivian-U.S. response to that insurgency, and thus avoids the tone of so much earlier writing that portrays Guevara's enemies in Bolivia as one-dimensional and relentlessly foolish and vicious. Dosal also emphasizes the preeminent role played by the Bolivian armed forces in bringing Guevara down in a contest far too often seen as one waged almost exclusively between the Americans, if not simply the CIA, and the guerrillas.

Dosal sensitively and accurately links Guevara's battles in the Congo and Bolivia with Cuban foreign policy, which many writers, holding an Arthurian image of Guevara, have ignored. Indeed, while the Round Table view fits the man—he definitely followed a personal quest, one for international revolution—nevertheless, Fidel Castro and Cuban foreign policy made his pursuit of that quest possible. At the same time, Dosal faults Geuvara as a diplomat, showing that he never managed to get the Soviets or the Chinese to support wholeheartedly his notion of simultaneous revolution on three continents. But we need to remember how opposed the Soviets and their orthodox Communist affiliates around the world were to Cuban revolutionary theories, and how irritated the Chinese had become with the Cubans for perceived snubs in favor of the Soviets after the Sino-Soviet rift. Guevara would have needed to be an extraordinary diplomat indeed to gain the full-fledged backing of either, much less both. And even though Dosal makes no claim to be writing an economic story, I think it is fair to point out that during his years in Cuba Guevara served that country extremely well as a economic negotiator, putting together international agreements that benefited Cubans enormously.

To tell his story Dosal has consulted the appropriate archives, but he cites them very infrequently, instead referring almost entirely to published primary and secondary sources. These include the latest writings of Guevara and his colleagues and the most recent scholarship, and from these materials the author very capably weaves his narrative. While the significant analytical material in this book could well have been presented in a long article, Dosal has brought together the main elements of the Guevara story, especially the military elements, in a concise and well-written account supported by the latest research. He does not pretend to deal with...