The Nomadic Alternative – Page 39

courageous death in battle rather than bed. He girds his sword and sets off to tackle the menace. Deserted by all but one of his companions, he battles with the Worm, kills it, but dies of a mortal wound, and his soul leaves the body to "seek the reward of the just".

Ernesto Lynch Guevara fails to marry an Argentine heiress, conceives a mission to fight poverty and disease, and declares his hostility to the Catholic Church - and Christ too if he stands in the way. "I, like Nietzsche, would not hesitate to step on him like a squishy worm." Accompanied by his revolver, his beloved bufoso, the visible and tangible sign of his manhood, he embarks on a series of wanderings through South America, self-consciously imitating the knight-errantry of Don Quixote. He fights leprosy in leper colonies on the Amazon, and then joins the band of Cuban revolutionaries in Guatemala. There, American-run protection rackets reinforce his hatred of the rich, and he comes to see the problems of the world as a Manichaean struggle between the poor (human) and the rich (monsters). The medical missionary becomes a giant-killer. The Revolutionary Catechism of Nechaev replaces the Hippocratic Oath of Dr. Schweitzer.

The revolutionaries make a voyage of initiation aboard a small yacht, the Granma, over the sea to Cuba. After landing, the heroes migrate round the Centre, which is held by the American-engendered Batista. This, said Guevara, was the "nomadic phase" of the Cuban Revolution. After Guevara's brilliant strategy at Las Villas, the Beast runs away, and the revolutionaries enter Havana to the acclamations of the crowd. Meanwhile the Mother of the Beast licks her sores and plans an ill-conceived revenge, but the "enormous water hag" is discomforted at the Bay of Pigs and withdraws.

The Hero receives his due Reward - a Cuban wife and directorship of the National Bank of Cuba. But its treasure dwindles, and though his heroism remains undisputed, internal threats and jealousies cloud his future. He prefers to die in action than be shut in an office (or worse?) and looks for new monsters to fight. Again the call to fight the Capitalist Giant beckons him. "Again", he wrote