I've traveled to Cuba and Bolivia, and have visited Che-related sites, as well as read numerous books (nonfiction and fiction) about Che Guevera. I've stood in the Plaza de la Revolucion in Havana. A few years ago, I read the book, then enjoyed the film, "Motorcycle Diaries." This week, my husband and I watched last year's Steven Soderbergh film, CHE, an four-hour, two-part biopic of Che's participation in the Cuban and Bolivian revolutions. I was struck by Benicio Del Toro's nuanced characterization of the charismatic man, especially when I discovered that the actor had spent seven years researching the hero/antihero. As Del Toro interviewed Che's family, friends, fellow revolutionaries and others who knew him, he found most remembered him as compassionate man, "a weird combination of an intellectual and an action figure, Gregory Peck and Steve McQueen, wrapped in one."
As with any historical figure, how one characterizes Che depends on one's own perspective of history. Those of us who write historical fiction can either write what we consider a balanced and neutral version of real people from long ago, or we choose a specific way to remember an historical figure, and hope our readers do their own research to determine where they stand vis-a-vis our characters.
Roy P. Basler wrote, "To know the truth of history is to realize its ultimate myth and its inevitable ambiguity." Whether the story is that of Che Guevera or a nameless child in the Civil War, writers of historical fiction make authorial choices that determine how our readers perceive both famous and ordinary people. How readers respond to those choices is up to them, but a well-rounded, complicated man such as Che Guevera gives us all a lot to consider.
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