Poems Guevara lived and died by
2014.02.16. 23:21
The contents of a green, dog-eared notebook carried by revolutionary Che Guevara when he was shot dead by the CIA in a remote Bolivian village 40 years ago [the article was published in September 2007] are to be revealed to his adoring fans for the first time.
Not political writings or military plans, but a collection of his favourite poetry, written out in his own hand.
As Guevara was yesterday voted 'Argentina's greatest historical and political figure', ahead of the anniversary of his death next month, a publishing house in Mexico launched a book containing the contents of his anthology. 'When Che was captured, the military searched his bag and found two notebooks: one containing secret codes to communicate with Havana and the green notepad,' says Mexican writer and Guevara biographer Paco Ignacio, who wrote the preface to the book.
According to colleagues, he bought the cheap notebook on a trip to Tanzania in 1963 and would retire, often up a tree, to write in it. Publishing house Planeta has refused to say how it obtained the notebook but said that it spent two years verifying its authenticity before publishing.
'It is a very intimate anthology loaded with political poems and poems dealing with emotions, feelings. This adds another element to the myth of Che,' says Ignacio.
Among the 69 poems are some by Chilean Pablo Neruda, one of the greatest Spanish-language poets of the 20th century, Cuban Nicolas Guillen and Peruvian Cesar Vallejo, who was one of the century's great poetic innovators.
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