Activism and Martyrdom - Essay Example

Indeed, these men made more than just a large impact upon many people during their very lifetimes, it is even more interesting, nay, educating or even enlightening, to examine the lasting effects that they had achieved in souls through time and the consciousness of the society and the world as a whole. In the same way, it is also very enlightening to see how certain events can change the direction of the society and its morals, such as the Kent State Massacre or the Tianamen Square. Somehow, these tragedies, like the men mentioned above, have affected and continues to affect the way people think and, ultimately, act consonant with social standards.

The imprints that the example the said people gave and said events left forever changed society and its way of thought and action.Revolutionaries like Che Guevara, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. were aware of the dangers of their chosen path, their chosen activism, and these very real dangers they ignored in favor of the ideologies they espoused to their deaths and as such they are martyrs. While “historically, a martyr is a person who dies for his or her religious faith. Sometimes, it is for a different "noble cause", like patriotically dying for a nation's glory in a war (usually known under other names such as "fallen warriors").

”" (Wikipedia) The term is herein used metaphorically to signify people killed in a historical struggle for some cause, or those whose deaths served to galvanize a particular movement. Martyrs are fierce fighters for their chosen ideologies during their lifetimes. Their deaths seemed to shift the burden of continuing the fight even to mere bystanders and changing the points of view of the apathetic. The moral influence derived from the example given by their lives and their violent deaths change the people.

The ideologies that are left behind are absorbed into the mainstream social thought creating subtle change in political structures and social philosophy.Che Guevara, the Ideal Socialist. Che Guevara helped sparked a communist revolution in Latin America where together with Fidel Castro, the masses have "made him a symbol of their struggles against U.S. interference and poverty and corruption in their own nations" (World). Recently popularized by the film The Motorcycle Diaries, Che Guevara is a doctor from Argentina who believed that Socialism is the only effective means to maintain equality among his people (Omar).

Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna (1928 - 1967) was an Argentinian-born physician who as Marxist revolutionary helped Fidel Castro overthrow General Fulgencio Batista during the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Guevara actively participated in the economic and social reforms implemented by the new Communist government and helped guide Cuba on its socialist path. He wrote many speeches, articles, letters, and essays and a suicidal manual on guerrilla strategy and tactics. Guevara went to the Congo and then to Bolivia to foment socialist revolutions.

It was in Bolivia where he was captured and was summarily executed by the Bolivian Army on October 9, 1967. His death did not decrease his influence, Guevara became an icon of socialist revolutionary movements and the left wing worldwide. He was known for his austerity, simple lifestyle, sacrifice and dedication to the achievement of the socialist society. His legend spread throughout the world and he was singled out from other revolutionaries by many young people in the West because he rejected a comfortable bourgeois background to fight for those who were deprived of political power