Che, Smoking, and Death

“Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it,
like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks,
using a ring with no stone in it,
with no finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth,
with no tongue,with no throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.”

-Pablo Neruda

This morning I was lamenting the fact that I cannot smoke because it shreds my lungs to bits, I am prone to lung infections. Then I continued my dreary lament by telling my roommate about el Che’s asthma and how he smoked because it kept bugs away in the jungle. He quipped that Che was “pretty suicidal.”

I immediately corrected him. But it made me think about what Che really thought of death. I know he’s not suicidal because his life is always in relation to the cause he is fighting for. And because of this his life is not even his to take.

“Until victory always” is the mantra. If taken seriously then self preservation is a must, “for he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day” (RNM, Heathen). But again, ‘self’ is only a relation to the cause, and it is the cause that is victorious or not.

As a child, he was forced to be in bed during the worst of his asthma attacks, but during periods of good health, he was known to test his boundaries by hiking, swimming, climbing trees, playing football and shooting. So we can assume that Che does not fear death so much as to let it cripple his abilities, but he is cautious enough to not be suicidal. Guerilla warfare is about small, tactical strikes as to eliminate the number of deaths on the revolutionaries side. It is a life preserving style because the guerillo is more concerned with the lives of his comrades than the death of his enemies.

And so, I’m just as confused as I started. Che knew smoking was bad for him and slowed him down, but it also kept him company and kept bugs away. In his youth though, his father used to keep a rigorous diary about the material conditions on the farm and the correlation between Che’s attacks. In the end, there was no correlation. So maybe after years of attempting to combat his poor health, Che lit up a cigar and decided that the only thing that was going to keep him free from pain, was the pursuit of pleasure.