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Che as a Marxist Travel Influencer:

This blog post will discuss Che’s potential ability to use his travels throughout the world to become a social media influencer. 

The Problem: How can Che leverage his travels to further his vision of global Communism and liberating countries from their Capitalist and Western influence?

It goes without saying that Che did travel the world. From his humble beginning during his Motorcycle Diaries days to his revolutionary work in Cuban, Mexico, and Guatemala, Che spent most of his young revolutionary years in South America. Following the success of the Cuban Revolution, Che took on a mindset that the work he did in Cuban was "something spiritual that would transcend all borders" and began working on taking his work global. Che emerged as a "revolutionary statesman of world stature" and represented Cuban at the United Nations, condemning how "Yankee monopoly capitalism" had ravaged countless countries. Che would later appear on the CBS Sunday news program Face the Nation and influence other American revolutionaries like Malcolm X. Che’s travels would soon take him across the Atlantic, visiting developing countries like the Congo, Algeria, and China. All in all, Che would travel to over 50 countries during his life and would be involved in 3 armed revolutions. However, due to the technological limitations of the time, Che struggled to generate a global narrative of his work that others could follow.

Information Systems: During his travels,  Che could have utilized social media to become a “Marxists Travel Influencer.” 

Travel Influencers: The concept of travel influencers is pretty simple, gain a following through posting on social media about your travel. Travel influencers often travel to exotic, aesthetic, or culturally significant locations worldwide and take stylized photos of their travels. Travel influencers appeal to people’s desires to travel and explore the world through the lens of others. Not everyone can afford to travel and stay at luxury 5-star hotels, but seeing others do it lets people enjoy just a tiny bite of a world they will probably never get to enjoy. 

Strategy: While travel influencers are usually pretty politically neutral, I believe that Che could take a robust Marxist viewpoint by showing how Capitalism is ravaging places of great beauty. A vast majority of developing nations at the time and even today are culturally and ecologically beautiful nations that have been decimated by Western imperialism. I believe that Che could document and post his travels so that others can see what the West was doing to these countries and how Che’s Marxist views could liberate them. At the time, few people believe in Che’s end goal of a global Marxist revolution, expanding outside South and Central America. By creating a narrative of how so many countries are suffering from capitalism and imperialism, Che could make that far-fetched idea palatable for the average person. Furthermore, Che could inspire others by making them want to be in his shoes. The young renege man with a true devotion to his ideals, traveling the world for a greater purpose is a far more interesting idea than a simple travel influencer. To envision what this may have looked like, I threw together a few fake Instagram posts Che could have made: