"Debunking the Che Myth"
By
Claudia Fanelli
Che
Guevara,
I shudder when I hear his name. I
am repulsed when I see a shirt with his face on it. And when I hear that
Hollywood is 
making yet ANOTHER
movie about him, well, I get downright nauseous.
I just cannot get my mind around why so many people, especially
Americans, have chosen to believe that this coward is a hero when in fact he was
a mass murderer, a poor excuse for a warrior and a lousy businessman. Recently,
however, it has occurred to me that the majority of the people who sport these
t-shirts don’t have a clue about who Guevara was. Those who think they do
know have bought into the myth of a man who fought for his beliefs, wanted to
help the poor and died trying to bring justice to the less fortunate. I consider
it my duty to enlighten the ignorant and debunk these myths.
I
admit, Ché is popular. He was a
murderer and a thug, but I can’t deny his popularity.
Ché is cool, he’s hip, he’s trendy to the shirt-wearers.
But they are
clueless. As a high school teacher, I see kids wearing shirts emblazoned with Ché’s
image all the time. His image is being mass-marketed all over the country.
(Ironic that a man allegedly so opposed to capitalism has become one of
retail’s most popular sellers.) One student I saw wearing a shirt actually
does know who Guevara was and loves what he represents, at least, what the
Hollywood version is. When I asked the student if he would likewise don a Hitler
shirt, he looked at me as if I had two heads.
“They’re both mass-murderers,” I explained. The teen waved me off
as if to say “Lady, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Some
kids who wear the shirts really do think they know who he was and they wear his
image because they think he did something good, helping to bring the Revolution
to Cuba. But that’s where their knowledge of Cuba, Ché and Castro end. They
do not know any details about the oppression and cruelty that the revolution has
brought to Cubans in the last forty-some years or how the revolution that
Guevara helped to create has destroyed
a once prosperous island, and I don’t think they care. They don’t know about
how thousands of Cubans fled their homeland with nothing and often left family
members behind just to get a chance to be free. They don’t know that prior to
Castro taking over, more people moved to Cuba than to the United States.
They don’t know that spies lurk on every corner in Cuba, ready to report
someone speaking against the revolution to Castro’s henchmen. These same
people are sputtering over President Bush tapping the phones of terrorists in
our country but people speaking out against the leader of Cuba and being jailed
for it seems to be fine. Imagine if
all if these Ché lovers and Castro fans were jailed for speaking out against
President Bush! There wouldn’t be
enough jails to hold them. That’s
the beauty of democracy- the right to free speech.
Cubans haven’t been able to speak freely for almost 50 years thanks, in
part, to Ché.
Let’s
face it, the overwhelming information available about Guevara is positive,
glowing, stories about his dedication to La Revolución. They hear how he fought side by side with Fidel to make sure every Cuban
had food and shelter and healthcare, ripping the country out of the tyrannical
hands of Fulgencio Batista. 
What
they don’t hear is the real plight of the Cubans. Cubans still eat rations, waiting in line for morsels with their ration
cards. They can buy one pair of
shoes, if they fit, great, if not, they make do with what they get. They
live in dilapidated buildings, are punished if they apply for a visa to leave
the country and can never go beyond the current level of poverty in which they
currently exist. Don’t believe that Cuba has come to this? Visit www.therealcuba.com
and see for
yourself. Of course, healthcare is FREE but Cubans must obtain it in run down,
unsanitary hospitals (the best are only for foreigners and tourists) and if God
forbid they have AIDS, they are then segregated from the rest of the country in
a sanitarium. How many of these Ché fans, the majority of them cookie-cutter
liberal clones, would really want to honor the memory of a man who also believed
in ousting gays from the general population? That, more than the murders of innocent people, would really
make them angry.
Part
of the Ché myth is Guevara the economic genius who, far from being a great
economic strategist, ran the Cuban economy into the ground when Castro placed
him in high-ranking government positions, one of which was as President of the
National Bank of Cuba. He foolishly believed that price should not dictate
supply and demand, but rather, the social worth of a product should.
The
problem is that people who have seen “The Motorcycle Diaries” have
already bought into the romantic version of this Argentine doctor riding through
South America on a motorcycle, seeking to help the poor. They don’t need to know anything else- that would spoil the beauty of
the myth. The Ché reality is that he was a ruthless, cold-blooded killer who
pondered, in his dairy, if one particular victim was guilty enough to die- after
he killed him! This is the man who
enjoyed the smell of gunpowder and the blood of his enemy.
This
is the man who put to death or he, himself, killed anywhere from 4,000 upwards
of Cubans because they did not agree with the ideals of the “Revolution.” This is the man whose slogan was “If in doubt, kill him.” As for
fighting, Ché was never involved in any real
battles. 
Humberto Fontova, author
of “Fidel” calls them “skirmishes” at best. Even charging down from the
Sierra Maestra mountains into Havana there was no real opposition; Batista and
his men had already fled. Ché himself trained guerrillas and terrorists. Castro
sent Ché’s “best” to the Dominican Republic in 1959 to organize a
revolution against dictator Trujillo but they failed.
Ché’s guerrillas were also sent to Panama, where they were trounced by
Panama’s National Guard. Castro
sent Ché to liberate Africa twice in 1965 and the great warrior took a double
beating. Ché went into hiding in 1966. In Bolivia, Ché could only
rally 15 Bolivians for his uprising. In
March of 1967 Castro decided he would no longer send Cuban troops to Bolivia to
help Ché and ended contact with Ché in July of that year. Ché was captured and killed in October, 1967.
I
don’t see the heroic value of the man who, when he was captured in Bolivia by
the Bolivian forces and the CIA, begged, "Do not shoot! I am Ché Guevara
and worth more to you alive than dead.” Shouldn’t
a man who believes in his cause be willing to die for it? Guevara wanted his life spared because, when all is said and
done, he was a coward. No wonder Castro got rid of him by sending him to
Bolivia.
So,
are these shirt-wearing fools deluded with the idea that Communism is good? That everyone having the same is utopia? Surely they must know that Communism thrives when people are
poor and in need of someone to lead them from their misery. In the case of Cuba,
they had already suffered under Batista’s tyrannical rule, and welcomed
Castro’s revolution. Had they
only known that Batista was a saint in comparison!
Ché
supported the idea of everyone being equal, that the poorest and the richest
were
to be on equal financial
ground. Nobody can own their own business or company, and even farms were
confiscated and turned over to the government at the start of the Revolution. At
that point, people who had worked all of their lives to own their own business
or who worked hard to buy a nice house had it snatched away from them. If
initially Guevara’s ideals were to have equality for everyone, that everyone
have the same amount of wealth, how does one explain the Rolex watch removed
from his arm at his death? Former
CIA agent Felix Rodríguez proudly wears that watch as a trophy today.
Did all the Cubans get a Rolex? Were
there ration books in the 1960’s to make sure each and every member of the
Revolution was given such a watch? I’m
sure they gave them out along with the rice cookers. It seems to me that if
anything, Ché was a hypocrite as well as a coward.
What
they don’t know is that he was a doctor, a man who took an oath to save human
lives, and he ended up taking them away. So, kids, keep buying those Ché
shirts, skateboards, belt buckles and mugs.
Ché would be pleased to know that the capitalism he so loathed was alive
and well and wearing his face. You know, I think in lieu of the shirt I’ll buy
the Ché toilet paper.
Fidel:
Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant by Humberto Fontova
CMFLibertad@yahoo.com