Fidel and Che: A Revolutionary Friendship

In this elegiac study of the revolution's iconic leader, Reid-Henry makes the relationship between Fidel Castro and Che Guevara the central dynamic of each man's life and of the revolution itself. On the one hand, the driven, domineering, strategically minded Castro galvanized the dreamy Guevara to discover his talent as a guerrilla commander and political executioner. On the other hand, Reid-Henry works hard to demonstrate that Guevara's poetic soul and quixotic Marxist purism made its mark on Castro's calculating mind. In his most revisionist claim, the author insists, not very convincingly, that Guevara's ill-starred insurrectionary expeditions to the Congo and Bolivia were not merely convenient ways for Castro to rid himself of his difficult comrade but wholehearted collaborations intended to spread their joint revolutionary vision to the world. Reid-Henry's portrait of the Che-Fidel dynamic makes the Cuban revolution as much a romantic adventure as an authoritarian bureaucracy, but Castro's obvious dominance of the partnership renders that picture unpersuasive. 30 b&w photos. (Aug.)