Tema: The real Che Guevara

Mexico City, Oct. 17, 2006 (EFE) - The revolution in Cuba "was not democratic" and neither is it communist now, "but rather a vulgar State capitalism also called 'Fidelismo,'" affirmed the grandson of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Canek Sanchez Guevara.

In a letter and a "self-interview" that is being published today in the Mexican weekly "Proceso," Canek harshly criticized the "messianism" of Fidel Castro and the change of direction he made for the revolution, transforming himself from "the young revolutionary to the elderly tyrant" who "falsified" an ideal.

The eldest grandchild of Che Guevara stated that the repression that exists in the island, with its "perpetual surveillance over individuals" and "the prohibition of associations that might exist at the margin of the State" is nothing but "a vulgar State capitalism" that, according to him, will die with Fidel.

The eldest grandchild of Che Guevara was born in Cuba; he is 30 years old and is now a Mexican citizen. He presently lives in Oaxaca and is a writer and graphic designer. His mother, Hilda Guevara, was the first child of the guerrilla leader.

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. If something isn't good to start with, you can't do much to improve it.

I'm pretty sure most of the people wearing the shirts don't actually support the jailing of poets, homosexuals and roqueros (kids who like to rock out). Guevara's own musician grandson fled Cuba after he and his rock'n'roller friends had been terrorized one too many times by the Cuban fuzz for the popular charge of "pre-criminal dangerousness". - Cassandra Wilkinson, “The unpalatable truth about Che Guevara”, The Australian, July 14, 2007.

This is a legal charge under Cuban law which allows the regime to detain people whom they think are likely to commit crimes. The charge carries a penalty from one of up to four years in prison.

The digest may also include the fact that Cuban women had three months' maternity leave before the revolution but not after. Cuba had more female university graduates than the US before the revolution but not after. Cubans had the eight-hour day before the revolution but not after. For all those sensibly upset about Australia's lack of compassion for refugees, I would urge them to consider that before Guevara's revolution, Cuba accepted more immigrants per head of population than the US. Indeed, more Americans moved to Cuba than Cubans moved to the US. - “The unpalatable truth about Che Guevara”, The Australian, July 14, 2007.

These are very important accomplishment that took place in Cuba before the so call “revolution”, with people immigrating to the island instead of escaping from it.

Those who wear the revolutionary's T-shirt on university campuses should also reflect that one of the key dissident movements in Cuba is the campaign for free libraries. In the upside-down world of Cuba's continuing repression, librarians have become enemies of the state and are being jailed for promoting the counter-revolutionary activity of reading. - The unpalatable truth about Che Guevara”, The Australian, July 14, 2007.

Seems that Bradbury “Fahrenheit 451” about state-sponsored censorshiphas have arrived to Dr. Castro’s island.

WHO IS CHE GUEVARA?

Great tongue in cheek read. Visit the people’s socialist revolutionary mega-store Che-Mart. Who is Che Guevara

Che Guevara is the Great Salesman of Communism. He started his glamorous life by killing people who didn't buy his ideas of universal happiness and equality. Although this selling method worked well in South American and African countries, young Ernesto quickly realized that to conquer the world he had to learn other techniques.

He noticed that in the Land of Big Capital some idealistic college students, as well as pimple faced white middleclass teens had already begun to put his unwashed visage on their T-shirts and dorm room walls. Bingo! Like all communists faced with the prospect of making a few dollars, Che decided to try his hand at the mysterious entity known as "work" and "business investment".

A brilliant salesman, Che performed an ingenious maneuver by faking his own death and thus achieving the Jim Morrison type icon status. As the progressive world mourned and idolized his image, Che quietly started printing his own T-shirts in the humble basement of a Bogota Laundromat.

At first the process involved dunking his head in a bucket of ox blood and physically pressing his face on the T-shirt. After sales began to pick up he was able to apply for a small business loan and purchased a screen printing machine.

Che has marketed his brand name brilliantly over the years, selling to specific niche in the market: young people who have no clue what Che has done or what he stands for. The cash keeps flowing as most college dorms world-wide are being adorned with his face, and more and more middle class sons and daughters wear Che products in order to, among other things, wash away the guilt of their well-heeled upbringing.

"It's just cool to wear my stuff. Who cares what I'm about!" says a confident Guevara from his 36th floor office of his world headquarters on Madison Avenue in New York City. His unique product sells solely on popularity, coolness and young people looking to gain acceptance in social circles. "You can essentially turn out complete junk and people will still wear it because they want to be in," declares John Hayden of Consumer Reports magazine.

Iniciado por Hyeronimus

Salute, salute, salute.

"Sales go through the roof as anti-war protests grow in popularity!"

In the near future Che-Mart intends to diversify its global image into several different product lines. There's an Apprentice-style TV show called "The Revolutionary" in the pipeline. The show will pit several left-leaning young people against each other, charging them with such tasks as fermenting revolution in small counties, organizing protests against McDonalds and attacking the police. The winner will receive.????


Today Mr. Guevara commands a huge global business empire with offices in New York, Paris, London and Tokyo. He has been featured in Forbes and Fortune magazines no less than 8 times. With houses in New York, Los Angeles and Aspen, Che has come a long way from his humble revolutionary beginnings. His company has been listed in the Fortune 500 for the last 6 years and Che-Mart has been voted one of the Ten Best Employers in the United States. Recently featured in Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, he is an avid collector of fine art and Ferraris. Che spends his spare time on the slopes of Aspen or socializing with his good friend and business associate Donald Trump. With a fleet of Lear jets he is never too far from corporate boardrooms of the world.

The future is looking bright for Che-Mart as the endless supply of liberal college professors and college students will keep his global empire afloat for the foreseeable future.”

Why is it so hard to notice sarcasm these days, or irony for that matter?

The sarcasm and the irony are obvious. Iit may not be a laughing matter, but I couldn't help but find it hilarious. That's why irony is so powerful. It can tell big truths through humor.

When you buy Che products, you are partaking in a capitalist system that Che did not support. Furthermore, you are helping someone get rich by selling socialism. Now that is ironic. Wearing Che T-shirts is a tacit acknowledgement of capitalism's triumph over socialism.

If you buy a Che shirt what are you endorsing? Capitalism. One of the many things Che was fighting against. By plastering his face on every piece of merchandise imaginable you have completely gone against his socialist beliefs.

Gustavo Villoldo, 71, a Cuban exile who was a major player in Guevara's capture in the Bolivian jungle, plans to auction off a strand of Guevara's hair and other items.

Asked for proof of the hair's authenticity, Villoldo said he had no reason to lie.

"It is what it is, and I let people believe or not, and that's up to them," he said.
He added that DNA evidence could be extracted from the hair and compared with surviving members of the Guevara family.

The Cuban government says it recovered Guevara's remains from Bolivia a decade ago and laid them to rest at a monument in Santa Clara, Cuba.

Villoldo disputes that account, saying the makeshift grave the remains were pulled from held seven bodies while he buried only three.

He buried Guevara -- close to the grave later uncovered by the team of Cuban forensic experts -- because he wanted to deny Havana the chance of turning "Che's" remains into a monument to Cuban President Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. - Tom Brown, “Man who buried "Che" hopes for killing at auction”, Reuters, September 4, 2007

Who is buried in Che’s tomb? Eventually will be find out through DNA identification prosses..

Che was a sadistic madman living out fantasies under the veil of ideology that was romanticized by the idea and grandeur of violent uprising and revolution and didn't care about humane ethics or values. The communist movement around the world was simply a vehicle for him to carry out his morbid obsessions. He's not the great revolutionary depicted on posters, murals, and t-shirts, but rather a grand failure and pathetic excuse for a human being.

A very accurate portrait ofChe Guevara

The myth of Che Guevara is seductive and lush. It"s the story of an Argentinian rich-boy who was so shocked by poverty he became a Robin Hood fighting alongside the poor, until eventually he was murdered by the CIA. But the reality of Che Guevara is very different. The facts show that he was a totalitarian with a messiah streak, who openly wanted to impose Maoist tyranny on the world. He was so fanatical that at the hottest moment in the Cold War, he even begged the Soviet Union to nuke New York or Washington or Los Angeles and bring about the end of the world. - Johann Hari, Should Che be an icon or not?, 06 October 2007, Independent UK

It is true that Che"s story begins with a motorcycle journey across South America. The young man was repulsed by the gap between the swanky transplanted European culture in which he lived and the starving misery of the indigenous peoples. He could see that this was caused largely by America"s habit of smashing local governments and replacing them with dictators prepared to slobber over US corporations. But he concluded from that journey - gradually, over a few short years - that there was only one solution: the imposition of authoritarian communism, by force, everywhere. He chose not to see that this system, wherever it is tried, makes people even poorer still, invariably spreading famine, starvation, and terror..- Johann Hari, 06 October 2007, Independent UK

Those who live by the sword, die by the sword

He bragged that there was "not a single discrepancy" between Mao"s world view and his own. As Che was happily fawning over Mao in the flesh in Beijing, in the surrounding countryside there was an epidemic of mothers cutting off the flesh from their inner thighs to feed it to their starving children. The programme that caused this biting hunger - the mass collectivisation of the farms - represented "true socialist morality", Che said. The dictator killed 70 million people in the end, cheered on by his guerrilla friend at every stage - Johann Hari, 06 October 2007, Independent UK

Che was a staunch Stalinist, which after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 started to move away from the Soviet Union, and by 1965 has become a Maoist Stalinist.

When Che and Fidel Castro’s guerrilla army seized power in Cuba, he was immediately - and to his delight - put in charge of the firing squads. He instituted a system of "trials" that lasted just a few hours, with himself as sole judge. They invariably ended with the low-level functionaries of the Batista regime being lined up and shot. Che"s public declarations from that time are blunt. "All right, it is dictatorship," he shouted at one point. "It"s criminal to think of the needs of the individual." He even banned Santa Claus, saying he was an "American imperialist import." - Johann Hari, 06 October 2007, Independent UK

Che became chief prosecutor at La Cabaña fortress, where he preside over hundred of executions without respect for due process.

Even his closest friend and confidant couldn’t believe his transformation in a cold killing machine.

The friend who had travelled with Che on the famous motorcycle journeys, Alberto Granado, was shocked when they met up in Havana after the revolution. He could not understand how Che"s compassionate response to poverty all those years ago had led him to announce he now wanted to become an "effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machine".- Johann Hari, 06 October 2007, Independent UK

Che"s fanaticism reached its peak in October 1963, when he seriously advocated a course of action that would immediately end life on earth. Che had implored the Soviet Union to place nuclear missiles on Cuba. He knew the US would interpret this as an act of aggression and probably retaliate with nuclear weapons - but he said that "the people [of Cuba] you see today tell you that even if they should disappear from the face if the earth because an atomic war is unleashed in their names... they will feel completely happy and fulfilled" knowing the revolution had inspired people for a while. Che did not say how he knew the Cuban people would be delighted to die of radiation sickness, their hair burning on their heads and their skin slopping from their faces. - Johann Hari, 06 October 2007, Independent UK

Che did not hesitate in supporting a nuclear confrontation without given a damn that such action sealed the annihilation of the Cuban people and a large part of the US and the Soviet Union

Che did not hesitate in supporting a nuclear confrontation without given a damn that such action sealed the annihilation of the Cuban people and a large part of the US and the Soviet Union.

Che"s fanaticism reached its peak in October 1963, when he seriously advocated a course of action that would immediately end life on earth. Che had implored the Soviet Union to place nuclear missiles on Cuba. He knew the US would interpret this as an act of aggression and probably retaliate with nuclear weapons - but he said that "the people [of Cuba] you see today tell you that even if they should disappear from the face if the earth because an atomic war is unleashed in their names... they will feel completely happy and fulfilled" knowing the revolution had inspired people for a while. Che did not say how he knew the Cuban people would be delighted to die of radiation sickness, their hair burning on their heads and their skin slopping from their faces. - Johann Hari, 06 October 2007, Independent UK