The Docile Peasantry: Che Guevara's Failure in Bolivia Chase McNeill (2024)
Undergraduate: Chase McNeill
Faculty Advisor: Miguel La Serna
Department: History
As a guerrilla, Che would become a leader in three different insurgencies: Cuba, Congo, and Bolivia. The July 26th Movement would be the only insurgency that would be successful and would lead to the creation of his “Guerrilla Warfare.” Che would face failure in the Congo and his eventual death at the hands of the Bolivian army and the CIA in 1967. Even after his death, his popularity soared beyond what he had held in his lifetime due to his ideology and anti-imperial sentiment. Many point to Che’s fall in Bolivia due to United States intervention and Che’s lack of peasant support in the region. However, does the United States’ intervention in Bolivia encapsulate the full story? Che Guevara may only have to look at himself to see how his guerrilla warfare in Bolivia would fail and result in his death. Che would fail to understand the MNR movement in his first travels through the region. Additionally, Che would turn down the opportunity to work with the peasantry within the mines and would not stick around to understand the ideology of the revolution around him. Che’s failure to enter the mines would be a missed opportunity that foreshadowed his failure in Bolivia with a different form of revolution, guerrilla warfare. In sum, Che Guevara failed in Bolivia less so because of any other factors, but rather because of his own inability to adapt to the new political and ideological environment he found himself in.
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