Che Guevara - The Racist

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]

Stateless - thank you so much for contributing that. You've single-handedly turned what was a fairly trivial thread into something quite important, in my opinion. I didn't know any of that. All I know of Guevara is the popular opinion of him as a freedom-fighter, and that's why I was surprised to find he had made such blatantly-racist comments. So many of today's so-called 'anti-fascists' worship Guevara and it seems such a misplaced admiration.

I'd like to ask though, as someone who doesn't speak the language, what does the above quote translate to? Apologies for my ignorance.

Brilliant post stateless.

Guevara was a fanatic.

Anyone who picks up a gun has made the gravest of mistakes.

Anyone with a Che Guevara T-shirt is displaying profound ignorance.

Any version of marxism is severely racist in that it portrays "minorities" as "victims" rather than self-sufficient (not to mention that every succesful american is portrayed as "evil").

[edit on 30-10-2009 by Skyfloating]

On the subject of racism and people redeeming themselves; my father was quite racist most of his life. One day , when he was in his fifties, we had a huge fight over the matter. You could sense it had effected him. Then he smoked some pot for the FIRST and LAST time... bingo, completely changed his ideas. Went and enrolled in aboriginal studies. Became a champion of equality. He now lives in China. He married the head of the english department at his local university. He loves it over there. He loves the people and the culture.

Anyhow, miracles do happen...and I'm telling you, this was miraculous.

Yes, racism was rampant during the first half of this century. Darwinism was and still is extremely provocative and supportive of racism. You really have to forgive the poor dears, though of course it is not in the least bit acceptable.

Good point Skyfloating. Young modern marxists make me cringe.

source

there are two sides to every story. what's do "political grounds" constitute in this case? is being executed for carrying out state sponsored torture "political grounds"?



can you explain this to me, as i understood it, marxism makes no particular distinction on the basis of ethnicity but instead concentrates on class. the lower classes are victims of the higher classes.

the only way i can make sense of your idea is if it is based on the idea that "minorities" are the soul inhabitants of the lower class.



jesus christ said something very similar yet many successful americans claim to be christians.

[edit on 30/10/09 by pieman]

Pieman, you are defending murder.

reply to post by mrwiffler

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i'm disputing the charge.

Literally the quote says without homeland but without a master. The quote is attributed to Marti when he was exiled. Basically he was saying that he was a man without a country. He had no heroes or master. Heroes, he believed, had a tendency to defraud and disappoint their admirers. But if one must have heroes then we should have them be people with the caliber of Martin Luther King and Ghandi.

There are several false myths perpetuated by defenders and admirers of Guevara with inane arguments in his defense. One is the one posted here about the disappeared. This shows a total lack of understanding of 1950's Cuba. Cuba was not Galtieris Argentina nor Pinochet's Chile. The knock on the door in the middle of the night was for the most part unknown. The Batista regime essentially operated like a crime family. Very corrupt and money oriented. It was all about payoffs for favors. It was not ideologically motivated as was the 2 regimes I mentioned as was Guevara. Batista and his cronies were more interested and money and personal enrichment. Still, under those circumstances Cuba prospered and there was a significant middle class and of course there was extreme poverty, so I heard, in the eastern provinces. I considered my family was lower middle class since my father worked as a truck driver for Cerveza Crystal. I don't remember seeing the abject poverty that I see now in Havana with its crumbling buildings nor the poverty I've seen in my travels to Venezuela, Peru and Colombia. I don't remember the police state mentality that exists there now. I do remember a good life as a child with abundant food and other basic necessities. In spite of the corruption existing at the time health care was almost universal. My father got 1 months paid vacation every year.

As for the false myth of Guevara's tribunals in La Cabana having lawyers defending them I have to laugh at the blatant lies perpetuated by the ignorance and mythology around Guevara. Anybody who knows anything about what went on in those early years would not repeats such a ridiculous myth. Revolutionary justice is in essence a kangaroo court. There was no habeas corpus. There was no right to a lawyer. Most of those executed were minor officials and their collaborators whose worst crime was taking a payoff for a favor. Perhaps crime worthy of a jail sentence not a crime warranting execution in front of firing squad. Some were inocent people who knew the wrong person. Others were accused to settle scores. In conclusion a grat injustice was perpetrated on a lot of people.



[edit on 30-10-2009 by Stateless]

reply to post by Stateless

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if that's the case, that's the case. i'ld like to see some corroboration for this. can you give me some links or source material?

In the thread I posted a while back (Che Guevara: Assassin, Coward, Imbecile), I found that this little Argentinean really believed the myth of himself. Fidel regarded him as a useful tool and quickly discarded him when he became too much of a liability.


Rascist or not, he was definitely a homicidal maniac.

This may come as a shock to some (or even to many), but most of the "admiration" for Che Guevara that can be seen on the streets of many cities, especially in Europe (and even more especially, among the "disgruntled" post-adolescents - some of which will never see 50 again), comes from the purely visual impact of his IMAGE. (Ask yourself why you always see only one and the same image on all those T-shirts...).

And here is the ultimate irony: this impact comes from the semi-conscious identification of Guevara's figure with that of - Christ.

(Susan Sontag explained this well in her book of essays on photography, comparing the famous image of his dead body to the painting of the dead Christ, by Andrea Mantegna.

The fact that many of his apparent admirers are self-proclaimed marxists and/or atheists may seem to contradict this, but it doesn't: substitution - rather than REAL abolition - of traditional religious figures and rituals by grafting "revolutionary" ideologies onto the existing religious substrate of a society is a well-known - and effective - practice to ensure the propagation of a "revolutionary" ideology.)

It never ceases to amaze me how deeply and thoroughly can people be manipulated by images. (I am not saying it is "good" or "bad" - just amazing.)

Personally, I find this (literally) blind and ostentatious adoration of him objectionable simply because it flatly refuses to see whatever doesn't fit the image.

Now, this is often the case with idols (think "Saint" Diana Spencer, to name just one example).
But here it becomes much more problematic, because the most objectionable part is precisely the part on which the adoration is based.
In other words: while you can bash Diana Spencer's private life and personality until the cows come home (and it is tempting! ), nobody can deny that she DID actually help people, both practically and as a catalyst; that's why the adoration for her apparently can withstand even the worst revelations of a more private nature.

But the adoration for Ernesto Guevara is supposedly based on his fight for the poor, the dispossessed, the oppressed - for social justice.
And I am sure he really did believe in his ideals, he really did want to help.
But in practice he was directly responsible for the totally unnecessary deaths of many hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, including many native Americans ("Indians").

If helping others really was Ernesto Guevara's primary objective, he would have done better by simply and honestly continuing his professional practice - being a physician (a pediatrician, to be precise).

But that probably felt too modest, too "local" an achievement for his ego to be happy.

And I must say, personally I don't find anything inherently wrong with appeasing one's ego... unless it leads to the misery of others.

His wish may have been sincere, but the fact remains his plight brought nothing to the "oppressed" that he set out to "liberate" - nothing, except destruction and death.

But hey, at least he provided a GREAT iconic image to the icon-crazed 20th century!

And, you know, even that wouldn't bother me AT ALL - if only his admirers acknowledged and admitted the real source of their admiration.

It's their aggressive hypocrisy I cannot stomach.




















[edit on 31-10-2009 by Vanitas]

That actually makes a hell of a lot of sense. Thanks for that. Everyone needs a messiah and often, the reality surrounding that messiah is far less relevant than the fact that he unites people.

reply to post by Cythraul

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Well said. You bet they do!
(People needing a messiah, I mean.)

And personally I find that perfectly understandable; it's a legitimate wish, in this bewildering world (and by "this", I mean from the beginning of time on Earth ).

It only becomes a problem - and a great danger - when it is concealed and morphed, parading as something else than what it really is...

Thank god for political correctness, before though control came into effect people were free to have "abhorrent" beliefs.

We can't have that.

reply to post by pieman

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There are plenty of eyewitness accounts.

You'll find some of them at the following link.

video.google.com...

reply to post by Stateless

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You must realize that some will never look at all side's. The wanna be revolutionaries don't want to see any of the truths of the lives of their heroes. Acting as if the internet holds the truth.

For pieman: Reading something and experiencing are 2 different things.


Look at Iraq. Love or hate the why's the US is there, can you deny the things Hussien did to his people? Mass graves were found all over the country filled with his handywork. Today that argument is never mentioned for some of the reasons we are there. The facts of the atrocities of the past get glossed over by the agendas of people who want others to perceive things their way.

He wasn't fighting for the freedom when he was reviewing the appeals of the "war criminals" in cuba once he and Castro came to power.

He oversaw what some people refer to as hit squads once his army defeated the Baista regime.

you have a right to your abhorrent beliefs and i have the right to abhor them. political correctness has nothing got to do with it.

eugenics, the belief that women were inferior, that homosexuality is somehow unnatural, they're all beliefs that i find abhorrent. i'm allowed to have an opinion.

reply to post by Stateless

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thanks for the link, i'm afraid i don't speak spanish. you're having a conversation on in english, on an english speaking board, a link to an english transcript or documentary would be a bit more appropriate.

for hangedman: stateless didn't actually experience any of the atrocities he's accused guevera of. it's second hand material. he learned about it later, by his own account. i'm asking for sources, nothing else.

as far as hussein goes, he didn't kill as many as the medical sanctions we all imposed on iraq, he killed fewer than the coalition has killed to date, not that it matters, an argument about who's worse is more than pointless.