Term Paper Transformational Leadership

Che Guevera
Analyzing the leadership style

Submitted by: Shanu Prasad (u310045)

Submitted to: Dr. Fakir Mohan Sahoo Professor, Organisational Behaviour Xavier Institute of management Bhubaneswar

I don't care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting. Che Guevara Full name: Ernesto 'Che' Rafael Guevara de la Serna. 'Che' variously translates as "Hey, you ...", or 'Chum', or 'Buddy', or 'Pal', or 'Dude', or 'The Kid'. Country: Argentina, Cuba. Associate with: Cuban Revolution Cause of revolution: Liberation of Cuba from a corrupt military dictatorship and resistance to United States interference in Cuban political affairs. Background: Christopher Columbus claims Cuba for Spain on his first voyage in 1492. The Spanish are ousted by the US in the war of 1898. The island is then effectively annexed by the US. American business interests flourish but the domestic political process is seriously compromised by US interference. 1933 sees the entry of Fulgencio Batista y Zaldvar onto the political scene when the then army sergeant leads a military revolt that installs a new revolutionary government. In January 1934 Batista topples the new government and installs himself as dictator, ruling until 1940 when he is legitimately elected as president. Finding himself out of power in 1944, Batista, now a general, bides his time until 10 March 1952, when he overthrows the government in a bloodless coup and cancels planned elections. The US recognises the Batista government on 27 March. Batista rules by decree and presides over a corrupt regime with links to US business and organised crime. Born on 14 June 1928 in Rosario, Argentina, into a liberal, middleclass family. He is the first of five children. As a child he suffers from asthma, and will do so for the rest of his life. 1947 - He begins studying for a degree in medicine at the University of Buenos Aires. He spends his leave on motorcycle tours with his friend Alberto Granado, who runs a dispensary at the leper colony of San Francisco del Chanar near Cordoba in Argentina. In journeys undertaken in 1951 and 1952, Guevara travels first in Argentina, where he meets the lepers at Cordoba, then heads west into Chile and then north through Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and on to Miami in the US, where he is turned back by the immigration authorities.

While in Peru he works in the San Pablo leprosarium. His experiences with the lepers and the poor and underprivileged during his travels have a key impact on the development of his political thought. He becomes convinced that genuine equality can only be achieved through socialism. Guevara's experiences on the road are later described in his book 'Motorcycle Diaries'. 1952 - Guevara participates in riots against Argentine President Juan Pern. 1953 - Guevara completes his medical degree in March. He travels to Bolivia and then to Guatemala, which is governed by the reformist administration of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmn. While in Guatemala Guevara meets his first wife, Hilda, an exiled Peruvian Marxist. The couple will later divorce. 1954 - The Guatemalan Government is overthrown by a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) backed coup d'tat in June 1954. The CIA's involvement includes the compilation of lists of individuals to be "eliminated", imprisoned or deported following the coup. After helping in the resistance against the coup, Guevara flees to Mexico City, where he works in the General Hospital and teaches on the medical faculty of the National University. His experience of the CIA's role in the downfall of the Guzmn government confirms his growing belief in the need for armed resistance against opponents of socialism. 1955 - While in Mexico he meets Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary. Castro is in self-imposed exile following his early release from a prison sentence imposed after his abortive attempt to overthrow the Batista regime on 26 July 1953. "Our first argument revolved around international politics," Guevara later writes of his first meeting with Castro. "By the small hours of that night I had become one of the future expeditionaries." 1956 - From his base in Mexico, Castro forms the 26th of July Revolutionary Movement. Guevara joins the group as a medic and trains with them in guerrilla warfare techniques. The group of 82 land on the coast of Oriente province (in the island's east) on 2 December and launch an attack against the Batista regime. The attack results in the death or capture of most of the revolutionaries. The 12 survivors, including Castro, his brother Raul and Guevara, retreat to the Sierra Maestra Mountains to the south. From there they stage continuous successful guerrilla attacks against the Batista government, gaining widespread support and growing to an estimated 3,000 men.

Guevara becomes Castro's chief lieutenant and distinguishes himself as a resourceful and ruthless tactician capable of ordering the execution of traitors and waverers but also deeply concerned for the welfare of his troops. Guevara comes to believe in hatred as a potent revolutionary force. "Hatred (is) an element of the struggle," he later writes in his 'Message to the Tricontinental'. "A relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy. We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centres of entertainment; a total war." In 1957 he is made a commander of one of the largest of the five guerrilla columns. 1958 - The US provides Batista with US$1 million in military aid. The US has become the dominant economic force in Cuba, which is treated as an international playground. However, the revolution cannot be stopped. In November Guevara leads the guerrilla advance from Oriente Province through government lines to central Las Villas Province. Guevara's column takes the strategic provincial capital of Santa Clara in the centre of Cuba on 28 December. The road to Havana is now clear. 1959 - With the guerilla forces pressing in, Batista flees the country on new year's day. Castro's 3,000 guerrillas have defeated a 30,000 strong professional army. Guevara enters Havana on 2 January. A new interim government is formed and is recognised by the US on 7 January, the same day that Castro enters the capital. Castro assumes the position of prime minister on 16 February. Guevara is declared Cuban born. He marries his second wife, Aleida, then travels through Africa, Asia and Yugoslavia. Guevara and Aleida had fought together during the insurgency. They will have four children. The new revolutionary government quickly arrests and tries the 'Batistianos', the supporters of the Batista regime, for alleged atrocities committed during the dictator's rule. As commander of the La Cabana Fortress in Havana, Guevara is closely involved in the trials. More than 500 civil and military officials from the former government are executed.

It is reported that Guevara takes a personal interest in the prosecutions of former members of Batista's Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities. He is also involved in the reorganisation of the national army. On 7 October Guevara is appointed as director of the industrialisation program of the Instituto Nacional de la Reforma Agraria (National Agrarian Reform Institute), the agency that administers land reforms and the expropriation of American-owned businesses and agricultural estates. He stays in the position only until 26 November, when he is made president of the National Bank of Cuba. Guevara advocates rapid industrialisation and centralisation of the economy, a position that will put him at odds with others in the government more concerned with the development of the agricultural sector. He also argues that Cuba should turn to the political left and ally itself with the Soviet Union. He calls for the creation of a 'New Man' selflessly dedicated to the betterment of society. Relations between the US and Cuba sour when the land reforms begin to bite and US industrial, commercial and agricultural interests in Cuba are nationalised. Meanwhile, Castro frequently promises to allow a general election and the return of democracy but refuses to set a firm timetable for the restoration of the electoral process. 1960 - In February Castro signs a trade agreement with the Soviet Union. Cuba agrees to buy Soviet oil in return for sugar exports and US$100 million in credit. The US responds in March by terminating purchases of Cuban sugar and ceasing oil deliveries. Covert operations coordinated by the CIA include the formation of a paramilitary force of Cuban exiles to invade the island and overthrow Castro. 1961 - The US officially breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba on 3 January and intensifies attempts to destabilise the Castro government. In the first two weeks of April there are several terrorist bomb attacks in Havana as well as bombing raids on Cuban airfields by unidentified aircraft. On 17 April 1300 Cuban exiles, supported by the CIA and operating from a base in Nicaragua, attempt to invade Cuba at a southern coastal area called the Bay of Pigs. After three days of fighting they are crushed by Castro's forces. In the aftermath about 20,000 Cubans are arrested and charged with counterrevolutionary activities.

From October 1960 to February 1961, Guevara tours socialist and communists countries, including Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and China, as part of a commercial delegation seeking loans and trade agreements. On 23 February 1961 he is appointed minister of industry in the Cuban Government, stepping down from his position as president of the National Bank. In the industry portfolio, Guevara continues his advocacy of centralised economic planning. He fixes prices for staples, reduces rents, and places controls on the accumulation of private capital. Industrial output is increased, imports are reduced and the tax burden is shifted to upper and middle income earners. Meanwhile, the 26th of July Revolutionary Movement is merged with the Communist Party of Cuba. Castro declares that Cuba is now a socialist state, although Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev publicly states that Castro is not a communist. Castro has become the head of a non-elected, single-party regime focused on his own charismatic personality. 1962 - In February the US extends the trade restrictions on Cuba. The restrictions are extended even further in March. Imports of all goods made from or containing Cuban materials are now banned, even if the product is made in third country. The 'Cuban Missile Crisis' flares in October when the US Government discovers that the Soviet Union is setting up launch sites for long-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. After a tense 13-day standoff between US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev the missiles are removed on condition that the US withdraws its missiles stationed in Turkey and ceases its attempts to overthrow Castro. During the crisis Guevara argues in favour of a first strike and is bitterly disappointed when the missiles are withdrawn. 1963 - US economic and social restrictions on Cuba are tightened further still. Travel to the island by US citizens is banned, as are all financial and commercial transactions. All Cuban-owned assets in the US are frozen. In December Guevara address the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, stating that armed struggle is the only sure path to socialism. At home however, his policies contribute to the decline of the Cuban economy and begin to fall out of favour.

1964 - Tensions within the Cuban Government over Guevara's economic policies continue and are heightened by his enthusiasm for carrying the revolution beyond Cuba into other parts of Latin America and to Africa. Guevara begins to travel widely and frequently, meeting with guerrilla and revolutionary groups and their supporters around the world and arranging the formation of the Organisation of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America (the 'Tricontinental Conference'). In March he represents Cuba at a UN conference on trade and development in Geneva. He travels to Peking in China, then to Paris and Algeria and Moscow. In December he again addresses the UN General Assembly, before travelling to Canada, Algeria and Mali. 1965 - At the start of the new year Guevara is still moving, to the Congo, then to Guinea, Ghana, Dahomey, Algiers, Paris, Tanzania and Peking. In February, while addressing the Tricontinental Conference at Algiers, he hints at his disillusionment with the established socialist countries, implying that they are exploiting underdeveloped nations for their own ends. "Socialism cannot exist without a change in conscience to a new fraternal attitude toward humanity, not only within the societies which are building or have built socialism, but also on a world scale toward all peoples suffering from imperialist oppression," Guevara states. "We have to prepare conditions so that our brothers can directly and consciously take the path of the complete abolition of exploitation, but we cannot ask them to take that path if we ourselves are accomplices of that exploitation." "The development of countries now starting out on the road to liberation should be paid for by the socialist countries ... There should not be any more talk about developing mutually beneficial trade based on prices rigged against underdeveloped countries by the law of value and the inequitable relations of international trade brought about by that law." "If we establish that kind of relation between the two groups of nations, we must agree that the socialist countries are, in a way, accomplices of imperialist exploitation. It can be argued that the amount of exchange with underdeveloped countries is an insignificant part of the foreign trade of the socialist countries. That is a great truth, but it does not eliminate the immoral character of the exchange.

In March Guevara is back in Cuba but with his policies now discredited stays only long enough to drop out of the political scene. His treatise 'Socialism and Man in Cuba', in which he elaborates on his theory of the 'New Man', is published on 12 March. In April he tells Castro he is relinquishing all his official positions and his Cuban nationality. In July he travels to the Congo with a group of Cuban volunteers to ferment a rebellion in the eastern part of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The rebellion, which is not widely supported by the local people, fails. Guevara moves on. On 3 October Castro publicly reads a farewell letter written to him by Guevara in April. "I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban revolution in its territory," the letter says, "And I say goodbye to you, the comrades, your people, who are already mine ... Other nations of the world call for my modest efforts. I can do that which is denied you because of your responsibility as the head of Cuba, and the time has come for us to part." During the same period, Guevara drafts and circulates his 'Message to the Tricontinental' in which he effectively declares war on the US. "Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for the people's unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America," the message says. 1966 - Guevara returns to Cuba in March, but quickly travels on to Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Bolivia, where he joins and becomes a leader of a communist guerrilla movement attempting to overthrow the country's military government. 1967 - The guerrilla band has some initial success but receives little support from the local people. "The ... masses don't help us in anything and instead they betray us," Guevara complains. Never numbering more than 50 men and one woman, the guerrillas are soon outmanoeuvred by about 1,800 US-trained and armed Bolivian troops. The troops are assisted by advisers from the CIA. On 8 October Guevara is wounded in the foot and captured near Vallegrande, in the mountains of central Bolivia. "I'm Che Guevara and I'm worth more to you alive than dead," he tells his captors. He is carried to the village of La Higuera, 30 km southwest of Vallegrande, and placed under guard in the schoolhouse, along with other captured rebels.

Around noon the following day, and against the CIA's wishes, Guevara is executed with four gunshots to his chest. His last words are reported to be, "I know you have come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man." Guevara is dead at the age of 39. In crude military terms, Guevara was more an example of the romantic and tragic figure fighting for a cause against all odds. Military defeat can sometimes become cultural victory, and that happened in spades to Ches reputation. The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolutions first firing squads. He founded Cubas labor camp systemthe system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Ches imagination. The comments following Bermans analysis put to shame the standard of discussion prompted by almost any web-site I have caught up with. They go a long way to teasing out the ways in which cultural forces shape our icons, and give us the leaders we create. Berman completely fails to understand the role of iconography in art, particularly in Catholic cultures. Che is a hero to many because he resisted a truly ugly system, remained true to his ideals, and conveniently died before the Revolutions slow, pathetic demise became apparent to nearly everyone. He is therefore associated in the public mind with what was right about the Revolution, rather than what was very, very wrong about it The humans underlying the icons are just stand-ins for the values they emphasize. Che has come to symbolize the values of resisting injustice and rejecting worldly excess. The loneliest place on the left in the 1960s was reserved for those who opposed Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Why are people on the left so delusional about Castro and Guevara? One reason is Castros good fortune in his [American] enemies [such as ] Jesse Helms .. getting passed a law which commits the United States to side with the property claims of people who havent lived in Cuba in forty years.

The second reason involves the cultural tendencies which arose in the 1960s. The third reason is that Fidel and Che were, in a sense, speaking to their social peers when they addressed the American left, and knew how to be heard by them. The redress of charisma The dismissal of charisma as a late-twentieth century construct seems hardly likely to eliminate the idea from popular discourse, however sophisticated the objections. In practice, the term, not unlike creativity, retains some functional purpose in every-day terms. Nor can the term be defeated on the grounds that individuals labeled charismatic turn out to be narcissistic, or pathological. The challenge seems to me to find more convincing theoretical characterizations of those behaviours that continue to be labeled as chararismatic. We have come a long way from the idea proposed by Weber, of charisma as the revolutionary force of personality which ruptured traditional power-structures. The term charismatic is now applied to many kinds of person. Tracing their antecedents is difficult. There seems to have been a Darwinian evolution of numerous kinds of charismatic leader to whom the term is applied. What is overwehelmingly likely, is that no unique set of characterstics will be found that adequately captures a charismatic type. (I base this on the well-known failure of searches for univeral traits capturing the leadership construct). It is not a coincicence, however, that the image of the charismatic is that of the idealised hero or heroine. But Don Juan was allegedly rather an ugly-looking person, and far from comely in appearance. Walt Disney, so often described as a charismatic, looks in photographs to be a quintessential salary-man. And Hitler, so easy to portray as an inadequate buffoon, nevertheless had a terrifying power over the collective that gathered to hear him. All that being said, Ches potency was augmented by the imposing impact of several famous images. Alexander the Great was breathtakingly handsome, and we all know the legend of Helen of Troy.

Taxonomizing charisma Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, A wider examination of political and revolutionary charismatics would include advocates of non-violence: Gandhi, Mandela (well, lets say the iconic Mandela), as well as some of the leaders classed as tyrants by Jeff Schubert. Broadening the scope of the investigation, we would add the charismatic business leader, who at times seems associated with various power-grabbing common to alpha-males of other primate species. Then there is the more local recognition accorded to the charismatic sales manager, school teacher, tenor, civil servant, tennis coach, entrepreneur, cleric Maybe there is scope for a someone to develop a taxonomy of charismatic leaders, applying the methods of linguistic analysis.