Che Guevara - The Racist, page 2

I feel that I have to intervene here.

I was six years old in 1959 living in a small town in what was then the Pinar de Rio providence of Cuba. Today that town is in Habana Campo. Of course at that age I did not have an understanding of the chaos and events going on around me. Violence had not really touched the western Providences the way they had affected the eastern Providences from where the barbudos had marched down from the Sierra Maestra. I remember my father's euphoric enthusiasm and hope for Cuba's future when Batista fled. I remember him wearing his red and black armband with the number 26 on it. I remember also my mothers sarcasm at the new leader of Cuba and her criticism of my father for being a Castro supporter. That euphoric enthusiasm slowly turned to disappointment as the summary executions became a regular event in Cuba mainly revealed through rumors and unoffial then official reports. First there was disappearance of Camilo Cienfuegos under questionable circumstances as Castro consolidated power. That was the final event that turned my father against the new Castro government. My mother could not help that I told you so. I remember my uncles and grandfather being picked up and detained for no reason other than suspicion for being counter-revolutionaries, which they weren't. They were opposed to the new regime, but that was grounds for suspicion. I remember the vigils of my mother, my aunts and grandmother at the notorious Guanajay prison trying to get word on their men, brothers, husbands and sons. Later one of those uncles would do 2 tours in the Cuban adventure in Angola. A total of 4 years in the African jungles. I remember in the early 60's right before the missile crises as my father was forced to dig huge trenches. I'm still not sure what they were for. I remember the blackouts in the middle of the night and how my house trembled. How my father and I peeked out the window and we saw large tread-ed vehicles with canopies covering something cylindrical as cargo. My sister and I were sent to Habana were it as safer. But were does Guevara come in? Guevara tied all of this together and I came to realize this later. My father took me one afternoon to the Malecon. The iconic walk along the shores of Habana Harbour. On the other side of the harbour is the famous Morro Castle with it's iconic lighthouse built during colonial times. Adjacent to it was La Cabana, an old Spanish presidio or prison. I remember my father asking me to be quiet and to let him listen as we stood there on the Malecon. I listened too. I could hear a distant cracking sound. I knew he heard too. I asked what the cracking sound was, I didn't get an answer. Later when I was older I realized that the cracking sound was the firing squad ending men's lives. Some of them as young as 18 years old. Today an 18 year old to me is more a child than a man. Guevara was the head of the revolutionary tribunals that was handing down these death sentences. He was a one man judge and jury and appeals panel all wrapped into one. He had the final word on these men's lives. He personally sentenced over 800 men to their deaths. The overwhelming majority, if not all, summarily executed on political grounds. Not for criminal offenses. Guevara was a mass murderer. A violator of the most basic human right, the right to life. For whom he was, I could not imagine a more fitting end for him in the mountains of Bolivia. He deserved his end, in some ways it was poetic justice. Some people are such a plague on humanity that it is better that they don't exist. Guevara was one of those people. He died like the animal that he was.

As for the admiration I see many have for Guevara I like to subscribe to Jose Marti philosophy on this, "sin patria pero sin amo".

[edit on 29-10-2009 by Stateless]