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Lot 96
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Legend Che Guevara Signed Document as Cuban Ministre de Industrias
Legend Che Guevara Signed Document as Cuban Ministre de Industrias
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Description:

Guevara Che



Legend Che Guevara signed Document as Cuban Ministre de Industrias.

 

Che Guevara document signed ''Che'' dated "14 August 1964", giving his approval for the hiring of someone at $185.00 per month. Document concludes with the closing, ''Revolucionariamente''. 8.5'' x 10.75''. Creasing, uniform toning, punch holes at top, and light chipping to margins. Overall in very good condition. At this time, Guevara was emerging as a compelling statesman on the world stage.

 

Legend Che Guevara, an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist signs this documents just a few years post the bay of pigs, and in the midst of yet another Soviet crisis during the tense dispute over the Soviet Union's failure to pay its $52.6 million share of bills for peacekeeping operations in the Congo and the Middle East, delaying  the United Nations General Assembly until December of 1964 (Che was present for when the UN  Assembly finally commenced, and two attempts were made on his life at the UN complex)

 

Guevara traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger and disease he witnessed. His burgeoning desire to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the United States prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Arbenz, whose eventual CIA assisted overthrow at the behalf of the United Fruit Company solidified Guevara's political ideology. Later Guevara met Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht Granma with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second in command and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime. Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, instituting agrarian land reform as minister of industries, helping spearhead a successful nationwide literacy campaign, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for Cuba's armed forces, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism. Such positions also allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces.  Guevara, who was practically the architect of the Soviet-Cuban relationship then played a key role in bringing to Cuba the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

 

Several months after this letter would find Che at the UN, an assembly which almost never happened. A dispute over the Soviet Union's failure to pay  its $52.6 million share of bills for peacekeeping operations in the Congo and the Middle East delayed the start of the 1964 session until December, after the United States threatened to invoke a U.N. rule barring countries whose payments were more than two years in arrears from voting in the Assembly. The dispute dragged on for months until the Soviet's agreed to make voluntary contributions. Other countries were rushing to pay their U.N. bills, including Taiwan, which hoped that its $3.6 million check would preserve not only its voting rights but also its very membership in the organization, which was under attack from supporters of the Communist-governed mainland. (Taiwan succeeded, but only until 1971.) Other issues before the Assembly included civil war in the Congo, (today’s Democratic Republic of Congo), ethnic tension in Cyprus and the admission of Malawi, Malta and Zambia to the United Nations. There was at least one delegate with star power: Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Cuban Minister of Industry, who gave several speeches. Guevara was emerging as a compelling statesman on the world stage; calling for the end to apartheid in South Africa, and in another speech was charging that the United States was planning to attack Cuba. As he spoke, Guevara later learned there had been two failed attempts on his life by Cuban exiles during his stop at the UN complex.  The first from Molly Gonzales, who tried to break through barricades upon his arrival with a seven-inch hunting knife, and later during his address by Guillermo Novo, who fired a timer-initiated bazooka from a boat in the East River at the United Nations Headquarters, but missed and was off target. Afterwards Guevara commented on both incidents, stating that "it is better to be killed by a woman with a knife than by a man with a gun", while adding with a languid wave of his cigar that the explosion had "given the whole thing more flavor.

 

Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs and films. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by moral rather than material incentives, Guevara has evolved into a quintessential icon of various leftist movements. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, while an Alberto Korda photograph of him, titled  Guerrillero Heroico (shown for review in this listing), was cited by the Maryland Institute College of Art as "the most famous photograph in the world"



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