I was thinking about The Motorcycle Diaries the other day, and thinking about Ernesto "Che" Guevara. For anyone who hasn't seen the movie, you should. Among other things, I was impressed to learn that Che, prior to becoming a revolutionary, was a medical student.
That got me thinking about revolutionaries-as-people. What makes them tick? What are their backgrounds? Why wouldn't they conform? I've listed below a few 20th century revolutionaries and their occupation prior to their revolution...
Vladimir Lenin - Lawyer
Joseph Stalin - Seminary student
Adolf Hitler - Failed artist/soldier
Ho Chí Minh - Chef
Emiliano Zapata - Village leader
Pancho Villa - Sharecropper/bandit
Subcomandante Marcos - Philosphy and communications professor, Jesuit-educated
Osama bin Laden - University student (economics and business administration, or civil engineering)
Chang Kai-shek - Military officer
Mao Tse-tung - Political official
Abimael Guzmán - Philosphy professor
Mahatma Gandhi - Lawyer
Yasser Arafat - University student (civil engineering)
Fidel Castro - Lawyer
Hugo Chávez - Military officer
Ruhollah Khomeini - Muslim cleric/political philosphy teacher
Augusto Pinochet - Military officer
Muammar al-Qadhafi - Military officer
So, according to my count: 4 military officers, 4 students, 3 lawyers, 3 professors/teachers (philosophy or political science), 2 village/political leaders, 1 chef, and 1 sharecropper bandit...
8 years ago
7 comments:
Are people who would become revolutionaries drawn to certain fields or do certain fields create revolutionaries?
certain kinds of thought inspire certain kinds of revolution?
yeah, the motorcycle diaries was good. i need to see it again.
jared, i know this may be a lot to ask considering how busy you've been, and i'm asking here because i seem to have lost your email, but do you remember that essay "nine drafts of a suicide note" i sent you ages ago? by erik anderson reece? i've somehow managed to lose my only copy. i've been looking for it two weeks now, with no luck. i promised a copy to another friend, and i like to re-read it myself... would you could you send me a copy of your copy? i've even tried to find it in a book or compilation of essays, but the universe just won't put out on this one. help?
I found a copy of Nine Drafts if Jared doesn't have it. Let me know. You can email me at jill4prez@yahoo.com
I think it's a little of both...
I know it's trite to say, but I'd assume that the military men are drawn to power while some of the others drawn to fight injustice or poverty...especially Gandhi, the lawyer, or Che, the doctor.
But, of course, every person is different and I shouldn't read too much into their careers...and even the military men may have idealistic intentions in staging a coup.
One thing I thought was interesting, as I was researching these men, was that a few of them were also amateur poets. It was also interesting to note that many of them were avid readers of books or authors that we consider Western or democratic.
...which goes to show that one man's Pol Pot is another man's George Washington.
Shasta, I looked through my file box and couldn't find it right off...I might have put it in one of my notebooks.
Jill (my cousin) will totally send it to you if you want to go that route. She's cool like that.
The silver lining here is that a) I just found out that Jill has a blog and b) whilst searching through my philosophy folder in my file box, I came across a picture by a Latin American surrealist I mentioned on your blog a long time ago...the one that The Sky is Falling reminded me of...
It was Rufino Tamayo's La Gran Galaxia.
what a coincidence... i do like that image. thanks for your help... your cousin is going to save me...:)
Here's a quote I found that got me thinking about this in the first place...
"The fact that all the suspects were well-off and had tons of education shouldn't be surprising, says an interesting piece in the WSJ that reports on the research work of a Princeton economist who says that it's a "misconception" to think poverty leads to terrorism. Alan Krueger says there's simply no evidence to prove that the uneducated and the poor are more likely to carry out a terrorist act, and, in fact, the opposite is usually true."
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