The real Che Guevara

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When Carlos Santana and Eric Burdon, (among many other rockers) smugly sport their elegant Che T-shirts they plug a regime that in the mid to late 60's rounded up "roqueros" (Cuban rock & Roll fans) and long hairs en masse, and herded them into prison camps for forced labor under a scorching sun. These young prisoners' "counter-revolutionary crimes" often involved nothing more than listening to music by The Animals and Santana.

When Madonna camped it up in her Che outfit for the cover of her American Life CD she plugged a regime that criminalized gays, and anything smacking of gay mannerisms. In the mid 60's the crime of effeminate behavior got thousands of youths yanked off Cuba's streets and parks by secret police and dumped in prison camps with "Work Will Make Men Out of You," in bold letters above the gate (the one at Auschwitz' gate read: "Work Will Set You Free) and with machine gunners posted on the watchtowers.The initials for these camps were UMAP, not GULAG. But the conditions were identical.

When the crowd of A-list hipsters and Beautiful People at the Sundance Film Festival (which included everyone from Tipper and Al Gore to Sharon Stone, Meryl Streep and Paris Hilton) exploded in a rapturous standing ovation for Robert Redford's The Motorcycle Diaries, they were cheering a film glorifying a man who jailed or exiled most of Cuba's best writers, poets and independent film-makers while converting Cuba's press and cinema--at Czech machine-gun point-- into propaganda agencies for a Stalinist regime.

Executive producer of the movie, Robert Redford (who always kicks off the film festival with a long dirge about the importance of artistic freedom) was forced to screen the film for Che's widow (who heads Cuba's Che Guevara Studies Center) and Fidel Castro for their approval before release. We can only imagine the shrieks of outrage from the Sundance crowd--about "censorship!" and "selling out!"-- had, say, Robert Ackerman required (and acquiesced in) Nancy Reagan's approval to release HBO's "The Reagans" that same year. - Humberto Fontova, “Che Guevara 39 Years of Hype”, Guacarabuya, October 2006

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Che is a pop-culture icon born of a stylish graphic image. His image has become a capitalist brand. He must be turning in his tomb.

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More than his cruelty, megalomania or even his epic stupidity, what most distinguished Ernesto "Che" Guevara from his peers was his sniveling cowardice. His groupies can run off in a huff, slam their bedroom door, and dive headfirst into their beds sobbing and kicking and punching the pillows all they want-- but Che surrendered to the Bolivan Rangers voluntarily, from a safe distance, and was captured physically sound and with a fully loaded pistol.

One day before his death in Bolivia, Che Guevara--for the first time in his life--finally faced something properly describable as combat. So he ordered his guerrilla charges to give no quarter, to fight to their last breaths, and to their last bullet. A few hours later his "untamable defiance," lack of hypocrisy and "walking of the walk " all manifested themselves. With his men doing just what he ordered ( fighting and dying to the last bullet) a slightly wounded Che snuck away from the firefight and surrendered with a full clip in his pistol while whimpering to his captors: "Don't Shoot! I'm Che I'm worth more to you alive than dead!" - Humberto Fontova, “Che Guevara 39 Years of Hype”, Guacarabuya, October 2006

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This guy just beg for his life, he didn’t know how to die like a man like the 14 years old boy he killed at La Cabaña that said to him: “If you're going to kill me you're going to have to do it the way you kill a man, standing, not like a coward, kneeling.”

Che and Cuban Industrialization

In 1961 Guevara was appointed as minister of industry, and in the name of diversification the cultivated area was reduced and manpower distracted toward other activities. Cuban industrialization failed due to the lag of raw materials for the new industries.

By 1963, all hopes of industrializing Cuba were abandoned, and the revolution accepted its role as a colonial provider of sugar to the Soviet bloc in exchange for oil to cover its needs and to re-sell to other countries. For the next three decades, Cuba would survive on a Soviet subsidy of $120 billion.

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CHE A CRIMINAL AND HIS MYTH

The myths that surround Che are much more interesting than the man; problem is, they simply do not resemble reality.

In February 1959, Che began training foreign guerrillas and terrorists in Cuba. His first guerrilla attack (planned with the brothers Fidel and Raul Castro) was to “liberate” Panama in April 1959. But by May 1, he suffered a humiliating defeat by Panama’s National Guard. On June 14, 1959, Fidel Castro sent Che’s guerrillas to the neighboring island of the Dominican Republic to fight against dictator Trujillo. But Che’s guerrillas again failed miserably.

After Che’s failure in Africa, he was summoned to Havana for two days of secret conversations with Castro. He was then sent back to Africa with 200 Cuban soldiers to help a Congolese leftist group. After he failed there, in late 1965, he secretly returned to Cuba, leaving his soldiers behind. Che was kept hidden all through 1966.

Along with 17 Cubans (clandestinely smuggled into Bolivia), he began organizing a guerrilla movement. But he was able to recruit only 15 Bolivians. By the end of March 1967, Castro stopped supplying Che’s guerrillas. The last contact with Havana was in July 1967.

Denounced by the peasants and Indians in the region (who never supported his intrusion), Che and his guerrillas were finally apprehended by the Bolivian army on October 7, 1967. As we all know Che was executed and Castro at last had the martyr he was longing for. His amputated hand is proudly displayed in the Museum of the Revolution in Havana.

For heaven sake, there is more hatred from the left in America directed against Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush than against a real bad guy and a mass murderer: Che Guevara. -Agustín Blázquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton,

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Fidel Castro just used him and cut him loose.

Che at the Oscars

Carlos: in the mid 1960's Fidel and your charming t-shirt icon set up concentration camps in Cuba for, among many others, "anti-social elements" and "delinquents." Besides Bohemian (Haight-Ashbury, Greenwich Village types) and homosexuals, these camps were crammed with "roqueros," who qualified in Che and Fidel's eyes as useless "delinquents."

A "roquero" was a hapless youth who tried to listen to Yankee-Imperialist rock music in Cuba.

Yes, Mr Santana, here you were grinning widely – and OH-SO-hiply! – while proudly displaying the symbol of a regime that: MADE IT A CRIMINAL OFFENSE TO LISTEN TO CARLOS SANTANA MUSIC!

I'll pass along the thoughts from Cuban music legend, Paquito D'Rivera. He wrote his recent letter to you in Spanish. "My command of English wouldn't allow me to fully express my indignation" at your cheeky Oscar gig, he explained. Seems that Mr D'Rivera had relatives among those your t-shirt icon jailed, tortured and murdered. - Humberto Fontova, LewRockwell.com, April 2, 2005

One prisoner of La Cabana who managed to get out alive, Pierre San Martin, described life inside the prison when Che Guevara was in charge. He was eyewitness of the murder in cold blood of a boy around 14 years of age carried out by Che in La Cabana.

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A Cuban gentleman named Pierre San Martin was also among those jailed by the gallant Che. A few years ago he recalled the horrors in a El Nuevo Herald article.

"One morning the horrible sound of that rusty steel door swinging open startled us awake and Che's guards shoved a new prisoner into our cell. His face was bruised and smeared with blood. We could only gape. He was a boy, couldn't have been much older than 12, maybe 14.

"What did you do?" We asked horrified. "I tried to defend my papa," gasped the bloodied boy. "I tried to keep these Communist sons of b**tches from murdering him! But they sent him to the firing squad."

Soon Che's goons came back, the rusty steel door opened and they yanked the valiant boy out of the cell.

"Kneel Down!" Che barked at the boy.

" I said: KNEEL DOWN!" Che barked again.

The boy stared Che resolutely in the face. "If you're going to kill me," he yelled. "you'll have to do it while I'm standing! MEN die standing!"

"And then we saw Che unholstering his pistol. It didn't seem possible. But Che raised his pistol, put the barrel to the back of the boys neck and blasted. The shot almost decapitated the young boy.

To a man (and boy) Che's murder victims went down in a blaze of defiance and glory. So let's recall Che's own plea when the wheels of justice finally turned and he was cornered in Bolivia. "Don't Shoot!" he whimpered. "I'm Che! I'm worth more to you alive than dead!"

This swinish and murdering coward, this child-killer, was the toast of the Oscars. - Humberto Fontova LewRockwell.com, April 2, 2005

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The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. - Paul Berman, THE CULT OF CHE, slate.com, Sept. 24, 2004

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Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"— and so on. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a guerrilla movement that had failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. - Paul Berman, THE CULT OF CHE, slate.com, Sept. 24, 2004

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The present-day cult of Che—the T-shirts, the bars, the posters—has succeeded in obscuring this dreadful reality. And Walter Salles' movie The Motorcycle Diaries will now take its place at the heart of this cult. It has already received a standing ovation at Robert Redford's Sundance film festival (Redford is the executive producer of The Motorcycle Diaries) and glowing admiration in the press. Che was an enemy of freedom, and yet he has been erected into a symbol of freedom. He helped establish an unjust social system in Cuba and has been erected into a symbol of social justice. He stood for the ancient rigidities of Latin-American thought, in a Marxist-Leninist version, and he has been celebrated as a free-thinker and a rebel. And thus it is in Salles' Motorcycle Diaries. - Paul Berman, THE CULT OF CHE, slate.com, Sept. 24, 2004

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The modern-day cult of Che blinds us not just to the past but also to the present. Right now a tremendous social struggle is taking place in Cuba. Dissident liberals have demanded fundamental human rights, and the dictatorship has rounded up all but one or two of the dissident leaders and sentenced them to many years in prison. In the last couple of years the dissident movement has sprung up in yet another form in Cuba, as a campaign to establish independent libraries, free of state control; and state repression has fallen on this campaign, too. - Paul Berman, THE CULT OF CHE, slate.com, Sept. 24, 2004

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I wonder if people who stand up to cheer a hagiography of Che Guevara, as the Sundance audience did, will ever give a damn about the oppressed people of Cuba—will ever lift a finger on behalf of the Cuban liberals and dissidents. It's easy in the world of film to make a movie about Che, but who among that cheering audience is going to make a movie about Raúl Rivero? - Paul Berman, THE CULT OF CHE, slate.com, Sept. 24, 2004

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The world is awash in Che paraphernalia, and this is an ongoing offense to truth, reason, and justice (a fine trio). Cuban Americans tend to be flummoxed by this phenomenon, and so do others who are decent and aware. There is a backlash against Che glorification, but it is tiny compared with the phenomenon itself. To turn the tide against Guevara would take massive reeducation - a term the old Communist would very much appreciate. - Jay Nordlinger, National Review, December 31, 2004.

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It is not tiny anymore, since in the last few years more and more has been reveal about his true character.

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You find his items in the most surprising places. Or maybe they are not so surprising. The New York Public Library has a gift shop, and until just the other day, it sold a Guevara watch…

That one of the world's most prestigious libraries should have peddled an item puffing a brutal henchman was not big news, but some Cuban Americans, and a few others, reacted. On learning of the watch, many sent letters to the library, imploring its officials to come to their senses. One Cuban American - trying to play on longstanding American sensibilities - wrote, "Would you sell watches with the images of the Grand Dragon of the KKK?" It was also pointed out that Communist Cuba, which Guevara did a great deal to found and shape, is especially hard on librarians. The independent-library movement has been brutally repressed, and some of the most inspiring political prisoners stem from that movement.

In any event, the New York Public Library withdrew the watch just before Christmas, offering no statement. - Jay Nordlinger, National Review, December 31, 2004

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Well done by the New York Public Library staff. It was the right thing to do.

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The fog of time and the strength of antiyanqui-Communism have obscured the real Che. Who was he? He was an Argentinian revolutionary who served as Castro's primary thug. He was especially infamous for presiding over summary executions at La Cabaña, the fortress that was his abattoir. He liked to administer the coup de grace, the bullet to the back of the neck. And he loved to parade people past El Paredón, the reddened wall against which so many innocents were killed.

Furthermore, he established the labor-camp system in which countless citizens - dissidents, democrats, artists, homosexuals - would suffer and die. This is the Cuban gulag. A Cuban-American writer, Humberto Fontova, described Guevara as "a combination of Beria and Himmler." Anthony Daniels once quipped,"The difference between [Guevara] and Pol Pot was that [the former] never studied in Paris." - Jay Nordlinger, National Review, December 31, 2004

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He really deserve to be call a cold-blooded killing machine

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One of the most nauseating recent celebrations of Guevara took the form of a movie, The Motorcycle Diaries, whose executive producer was Robert Redford (one of the most dedicated Castro apologists in Hollywood, which is saying something). The movie received a standing ovation at the Sundance Festival. About this obnoxious hagiography and whitewash, I will confine myself to quoting Tony Daniels: "It is as if someone were to make a film about Adolf Hitler by portraying him as a vegetarian who loved animals and was against unemployment. This would be true, but rather beside the point." - Jay Nordlinger, National Review, December 31, 2004.

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Very true and very well said.

Are you one of those that have romantic feelings about Che? If the hat fits wear it

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There are some who will always have romantic feelings about Guevara, and the Cuban revolution. For this type, Guevara was a true man, not a namby-pamby liberal, but hardcore - pure in his willingness to do the necessary. An anti-Communist of my acquaintance asked a friend of his why she admired Guevara. She answered, "He never sold out." Frank Calzón, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, says, "Yes, Guevara was 'courageous' and 'committed.' So are many bank robbers." In the run-up to the Iraq War, I asked Bernard Kouchner - the great French humanitarian and politician - why so many of his countrymen seemed enthusiastic about Saddam Hussein. He said their enthusiasm for Saddam was akin to their attachment to Che: It was a way of expressing anti-Americanism (in brief), the facts about the two men aside. - Jay Nordlinger, National Review, December 31, 2004.

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The freshman protesting the execution of a serial killer with a pacifist sing and wearing a Che hat, that really is a new one.

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A few weeks ago, the Hartford Courant ran a photo of a Trinity College freshman who was protesting the execution of a serial killer. He carried a sign that said, "Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" - and he was wearing a Che Guevara hat! Talk about sending mixed messages.

Some people take comfort in the fact that Guevara, the Communist who wanted to destroy everything capitalist, has become a commodity. But that comfort is cold - because the unending glorification of this henchman is, yes, an offense to truth, reason, and justice. Think of those who might take his place on those shirts - for instance, Oscar Elías Biscet, one of Castro's longtime prisoners. He is a democrat, a physician - a true one - and an Afro-Cuban (for those who care). He has declared his heroes and models to be Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Not only does he deserve celebration, he could use the publicity - but nothing. - Jay Nordlinger, National Review, December 31, 2004

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Mary A. O'Grady has given a very accurate portrait of who really was Che Guvara.

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Guevara is not just a dead white guy from a well-to-do family who terrorized a racially mixed nation and executed hundreds of innocents in the late 1950s and 1960s. He is also a symbol of the totalitarian regime that persists in Cuba, which still practices his ideology of intolerance, hatred and repression. It is not the torture and killing alone that make the tragedy. That only describes the methodology. Guevara's wider goal -- to forcibly strip a population of its soul and spirit -- is what is truly frightening and deplorable. - MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY, “Che, Cuba and Christmas”
Wall Street Journal December 22, 2006

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Luis Ortega writes in his book "Yo Soy El Che!" that Guevara sent 1,897 men to the firing squad.

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"The Black Book of Communism," published in 1999 by Harvard University Press, notes that early in his career Guevara earned a "reputation for ruthlessness; a child in his guerrilla unit who had stolen a little food was immediately shot without trial." In his will, the book says, "this graduate of the school of terror praised the 'extremely useful hatred that turns men into effective, violent, merciless and cold killing machines." - MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY, “Che, Cuba and Christmas” Wall Street Journal December 22, 2006.

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Defenders of Guevara can't even claim that his cruelty brought about equality. Today state policy makes it a crime for the raggedly dressed, malnourished and mostly black Cuban people to visit the beaches, museums and amply stocked stores of their own country, while well-fed tourists in fashionable cruise-wear go where they like. This amounts to de facto apartheid.- MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY, “Che, Cuba and Christmas” Wall Street Journal December 22, 2006.

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Very well put, I couldn't have said it better myself