Imagine the CIA’s confusion as Che’s sainthood began to extend far beyond Cuba’s shores. “The most complete human being of his age,” said Jean-Paul Sartre. “An inspiration for every human being that loves freedom,” said Nelson Mandela. Ernesto Sabato declared that “the struggle of Guevara against the U.S. was the struggle of the Spirit against Matter,” which at least had the virtue of being a little true, though not in the way Sabato thought.
This used to make me rage. In Colombia, we have no military celebrities—we only worship enemies of the state. In Medellín you’ll still see Pablo Escobar T-shirts. Our television screens are dominated by narco stories, and sympathetically reintegrating guerrillas. Simón Bolívar is neglected. No one cares about the Man of the Laws. Even Uribe is tarred and feathered with the paramilitary brush. There are no official gods.
• • •
A simple text, over WhatsApp. “I think I know why you gave me those books.” I arranged to meet her at the Che mural. And so, under the eyes of the saint, she told me what she’d learned, dissecting where Che had gone wrong.
“In a way,” she said, coming to what she thought was the point of the lesson, “ideology killed him. He fooled himself into believing the myth. There’s something a little tragic about it.”
Tragic. Right. She pitied him. This man with the soulful eyes and the bohemian hair looking down on us. Good. I didn’t want her to look up at the mural in rage, as I might have done at her age. Rage is too close to love. But pity . . . that’s a small step away from contempt, which never dies.
“I think it’s funny,” I said. “He was an inspiration to generations of guerrillas. Carlos Marighella in Brazil. Luis de la Puenta and Héctor Béjar in Peru. For Humberto Ortega in Nicaragua. For our own ELN. And they followed his tactics, because they believed in the saint.” At least, they did until they realized how bad those tactics were. Which, in some cases, took decades.
“I suppose that is lucky for you.”
“Think of them,” I said, “decades in the jungle, fighting without a hope of victory because of the unbelievable stupidity of their Che. Think of the men who followed his lessons and died pointlessly, because their hero was a fool who wanted to believe his own legend.” I pointed at the mural. “The church should canonize him. The patron saint of capitalism.”
“He looks so romantic,” she said, her gaze up on the mural, taking in the haunted eyes, the flowing hair, a fake Christ promising fake salvation built upon his martyrdom.
“When you walk by that, I want you to remember that the people who put it up didn’t even have enough patriotism to put up a Colombian communist. At least the Universidad de Antioquia has Camilo Torres for their guerrilla icon. And I want you to remember that the people who put it up didn’t even have enough brains to put up a true champion of communism. The CIA couldn’t have dreamed up a more effective way of sabotaging the guerrilla, corrupting their tactics, and training their armies for failure. But that’s the left for you. No substance, no intelligence. Just . . . good hair. Think of that, every time you pass through here. It’s the funniest joke in history.”
She promised me she would. I left, secure in the knowledge that I had sufficiently prepared my daughter for school. She would take what she needed from this place, but not be changed by it. She would still be mine.
• • •
That was months ago. As I head to meet Valencia at a bakery a few blocks from campus, around the corner from the American embassy, I wonder how secure that feeling really is. Whether I really have inoculated her against poisonous ideas so that she can continue moving into the future I have envisioned. And it doesn’t help that before I can even begin, just as we’ve barely sipped our aromáticas, she announces an unexpected plan of her own.
“I was in the Plaza Ch . . . Santander,” she says, “looking at the mural. And I was thinking about what you told me. About how ideology kills the mind.”
This was not what I had told her. I had told her leftists were stupid. But fine. A worthy lesson.
“You know, for one of my classes my first semeseter, top students were invited—”
“Yes, yes,” I say. “The trip to do field work in Norte de Santander.” Documenting the violence.
“I didn’t say anything at the time, because I didn’t think I’d want to go. But . . . I was offered a spot.”
She looks at me, her beautiful face still, expressionless.
“Of course you were,” I say. “You’re a brilliant student.”
She goes on to explain the nature of the work, and how we as a society need to acknowledge and respond to the violence suffered by rural populations at the hands of the FARC, yes, but also at the hands of paramilitaries and police and even . . . but she doesn’t say the army. She just lets me infer. “It’s not dangerous there anymore,” she says. “My professor says it’s very settled now.”
Her professor knows nothing. The Mil Jesúses are in charge now, and Representative de Salva claims the Mil Jesúses are like ISIS. I could tell her that. But she’s my daughter. That might make it more appealing. And besides, Representative de Salva is wrong. There have been very few murders around La Vigia since the Mil Jesúses took over, following the El Alemán raid. I’ve been keeping track. So what to tell her?
My daughter is looking down at her hands, long, elegant hands. Hands unblemished by hard work. Behind the counter, I can see the baker pulling a tray of pan de yuca out of the oven.
“One moment,” I tell
