I was strongly rebuked a while back for my conspicuous failure to show sufficient reverence for the late physician, statesman, reformer, and humanitarian Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
So I would like to reiterate, as clearly as possible, my contempt for the man. He was a sociopathic murderer, and I would also like to communicate my disgust at the romanticizing cult that has grown up about him.
I’ve despised him since long before I gained a beloved Havana-born Cuban daughter-in-law and came to know and appreciate her family.
It has even been suggested to me that Che Guevara was an exemplar of Christian values, and that his heroic image is entirely appropriate for display near churches. But consider this, from the Wikipedia entry about Dr. Guevara:
“As second in command [to Fidel Castro], Guevara was a harsh disciplinarian who sometimes shot defectors. Deserters were punished as traitors, and Guevara was known to send squads to track those seeking to go AWOL. As a result, Guevara became feared for his brutality and ruthlessness. During the guerrilla campaign, Guevara was also responsible for the sometimes summary execution of a number of men accused of being informers, deserters or spies. In his diaries, Guevara described the first such execution of Eutimio Guerra, a peasant army guide who admitted treason…. Upon Guerra’s request that they ‘end his life quickly’, Che stepped forward and shot him in the head, writing ‘The situation was uncomfortable for the people and for Eutimio so I ended the problem giving him a shot with a .32 pistol in the right side of the brain, with exit orifice in the right temporal [lobe].’ His scientific notations and matter-of-fact description, suggested to one biographer a ‘remarkable detachment to violence’ by that point in the war.” . . .
“Jacobo Machover, an exiled [Cuban] opposition author, dismisses the hero-worshipping [of Che] and portrays him as a ruthless executioner. Exiled former Cuban prisoners have echoed similar sentiments, including Armando Valladares, who declares Guevara ‘a man full of hatred’ who executed dozens without trial, and Carlos Alberto Montaner, who claims Guevara possessed ‘a Robespierre mentality’, wherein cruelty against the revolution’s enemies was a virtue. Alvaro Vargas Llosa of The Independent Institute has hypothesized that Guevara’s contemporary followers ‘delude themselves by clinging to a myth’, describing Guevara as ‘Marxist Puritan’ who employed his rigid power to suppress dissent, while also operating as a ‘cold-blooded killing machine’. Llosa accused Guevara’s ‘fanatical disposition’ as being the linchpin of the ‘Sovietization’ of the Cuban revolution, speculating that he possessed a ‘total subordination of reality to blind ideological orthodoxy’. Moreover, detractors have attempted to demonstrate that Che-inspired revolutions in much of Latin America had the practical result of reinforcing brutal militarism and internecine conflict for many years. Hoover Institution research fellow William Ratliff places Guevara as a creation of his historical environment, referring to him as a ‘fearless’ and ‘head-strong Messiah-like figure’, who was the product of a martyr-enamored Latin culture which ‘inclined people to seek out and follow paternalistic miracle workers.’ Ratliff speculates that the economic conditions in the region suited Guevara’s commitment to ‘bring justice to the downtrodden by crushing centuries-old tyrannies’; describing Latin America as being plagued by what Moisés Naím referred to as the ‘legendary malignancies’ of inequality, poverty, dysfunctional politics and malfunctioning institutions.”
If you genuinely believe that killing people in large quantities is not only acceptable but fun, then you should unashamedly proclaim your belief by wearing Che Guevara tee-shirts and plastering your walls with posters of him:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thor-halvorssen/an-open-letter-to-urban-o_b_1895353.html
If you think Hollywood should glorify sociopathic mass murderers, you should demand more films like this one:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2004/09/the_cult_of_che.html
If you believe that murderous tyrants should be celebrated and the names of their victims forgotten, you shouldn’t look at this site:
This was a truly horrific man.
Not cool.
Posted from Jericho, Palestine
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