The discovery of Che’s remains metonymically activated a series of interlinked associations—rebel, martyr, rogue figure from a picaresque adventure, savior, renegade, extremist—in which there was no fixed divide among them. The current court of opinion places Che on a continuum that teeters between viewing him as a misguided rebel, a coruscatingly brilliant guerrilla philosopher, a poet-warrior jousting at windmills, a brazen warrior who threw down the gauntlet to the bourgeoisie, the object of fervent paeans to his sainthood, or a mass murderer clothed in the guise of an avenging angel whose every action is imbricated in violence—the archetypal Fanatical Terrorist.

— Dr. Peter McLaren, author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution

Guevara’s life and legacy remain contentious. The perceived contradictions of his ethos at various points in his life have created a complex character of duality, one who was “able to wield the pen and submachine gun with equal skill”, while prophesying that “the most important revolutionary ambition was to see man liberated from his alienation”. Guevara’s paradoxical standing is further complicated by his array of seemingly diametrically opposed qualities. A secular humanist and sympathetic practitioner of medicine who did not hesitate to shoot his enemies, a celebrated internationalist leader who advocated violence to enforce a utopian philosophy of the collective good, an idealistic intellectual who loved literature but refused to allow dissent, an anti-imperialist Marxist insurgent who was radically willing to forge a poverty-less new world on the apocalyptic ashes of the old one, and finally, an outspoken anti-capitalist whose image has been commoditized. Che’s history continues to be rewritten and re-imagined. Moreover, sociologist Michael Löwy contends that the many facets of Guevara’s life (i.e. doctor and economist, revolutionary and banker, military theoretician and ambassador, deep thinker and political agitator) illuminated the rise of the “Che myth”, allowing him to be invariably crystallized in his many metanarrative roles as a “Red Robin Hood, Don Quixote of communism, new Garibaldi, Marxist Saint Just, Cid Campeador of the Wretched of the Earth, Sir Galahad of the beggars … and Bolshevik devil who haunts the dreams of the rich, kindling braziers of subversion all over the world”.

As such, various notable individuals have lauded Guevara; for example, Nelson Mandela referred to him as “an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom”, while Jean-Paul Sartre described him as “not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age”. Others who have expressed their admiration include authors Graham Greene, who remarked that Guevara “represented the idea of gallantry, chivalry, and adventure”, and Susan Sontag, who supposed that “Che’s goal was nothing less than the cause of humanity itself.” In the Pan-African community philosopher Frantz Fanon professed Guevara to be “the world symbol of the possibilities of one man”, while Black Power leader Stokely Carmichael eulogized that “Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us.” Praise has been reflected throughout the political spectrum, with libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard extolling Guevara as a “heroic figure” who “more than any man of our epoch or even of our century, was the living embodiment of the principle of revolution”, while journalist Christopher Hitchens reminisced that “Che’s death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do—fought and died for his beliefs.”

Conversely, Jacobo Machover, an exiled opposition author, dismisses all praise of Guevara and portrays him as a callous executioner. Exiled former Cuban prisoners have expressed similar opinions, among them Armando Valladares, who declared Guevara “a man full of hatred” who executed dozens without trial, and Carlos Alberto Montaner, who asserted that Guevara possessed “a Robespierre mentality”, wherein cruelty against the revolution’s enemies was a virtue. Álvaro Vargas Llosa of The Independent Institute has hypothesized that Guevara’s contemporary followers “delude themselves by clinging to a myth”, describing Guevara as a “Marxist Puritan” who employed his rigid power to suppress dissent, while also operating as a “cold-blooded killing machine”. Llosa also accuses Guevara’s “fanatical disposition” as being the linchpin of the “Sovietization” of the Cuban revolution, speculating that he possessed a “total subordination of reality to blind ideological orthodoxy”. On a macro-level, Hoover Institution research fellow William Ratliff regards Guevara more as a creation of his historical environment, referring to him as a “fearless” and “head-strong Messiah-like figure”, who was the product of a martyr-enamored Latin American culture which “inclined people to seek out and follow paternalistic miracle workers”. Ratliff further speculates that the economic conditions in the region suited Guevara’s commitment to “bring justice to the downtrodden by crushing centuries-old tyrannies”; describing Latin America as being plagued by what Moisés Naím referred to as the “legendary malignancies” of inequality, poverty, dysfunctional politics and malfunctioning institutions.

In a mixed assessment, British historian Hugh Thomas opined that Guevara was a “brave, sincere and determined man who was also obstinate, narrow, and dogmatic”. At the end of his life, according to Thomas, “he seems to have become convinced of the virtues of violence for its own sake”, while “his influence over Castro for good or evil” grew after his death, as Fidel took up many of his views. Similarly, the Cuban-American sociologist Samuel Farber lauds Che Guevara as “an honest and committed revolutionary”, but also criticizes the fact that “he never embraced socialism in its most democratic essence”. Nevertheless, Guevara remains a national hero in Cuba, where his image adorns the 3 peso banknote and school children begin each morning by pledging “We will be like Che.” In his homeland of Argentina, where high schools bear his name, numerous Che museums dot the country and in 2008 a 12-foot (3.7 m) bronze statue of him was unveiled in the city of his birth, Rosario. Guevara has been sanctified by some Bolivian campesinos as “Saint Ernesto”, who pray to him for assistance. In contrast, Guevara remains a hated figure amongst many in the Cuban exile and Cuban-American community of the United States, who view him as “the butcher of La Cabaña”. Despite this polarized status, a high-contrast monochrome graphic of Che’s face, created in 1968 by Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick, became a universally merchandized and objectified image, found on an endless array of items, including T-shirts, hats, posters, tattoos, and bikinis, contributing to the consumer culture Guevara despised. Yet, he still remains a transcendent figure both in specifically political contexts and as a wide-ranging popular icon of youthful rebellion.