Collected for the first time, here are Guevara's letters, the vast
majority never-before published in English.
"The powerful of the earth should take heed: deep inside that T-shirt
where we have tried to trap him, the eyes of Che Guevara are still
burning with impatience." --Ariel Dorfman
Ernesto Che Guevara was a voyager--and thus a letter writer--for his
entire adult life. The letters collected here range from letters home
during his Motorcycle Diaries trip, to the long letter to Fidel after
the success of the Cuban revolution in early 1959, from the most
personal to the intensely political, revealing someone who not only
thought deeply about everything he encountered, but for whom the process
of social transformation was a constant companion from his youth until
shortly before his death. His letters give us Che the son, the friend,
the lover, the guerilla fighter, the political leader, the philosopher,
the poet. Che in these letters is often playful, funny, sometimes
sarcastic, and deeply affectionate. His life was short, and these twenty
years, from when he was 19 until days before his death, show it was also
incredibly rich and full.
As his daughter Aleida Guevara, also a doctor like her father, writes,
"When you write a speech, you pay attention to the language, the
punctuation and so on. But in a letter to a friend or a member of your
family, you don't worry about those things. It is you speaking, in your
authentic voice. That's what I like about these letters; they show who
Che really was and how he thought. This is the true political testimony
of my father."
This book is available in a Spanish language edition, Te abraza con
todo fervor revolucionario.
"Che is not only an intellectual, he was the most complete human being
of our age." --Jean Paul Sartre
"In these present times, when for many ethics and other profound moral
values are seen to be so easily bought and sold, the example of Che
Guevara takes on an even greater dimension." --Rigoberta Menchu
