Benicio del Toro was last night in Caracas. No doubt paid by the Venezuelan government. According to the Venezuelan news agency, de Toro (who played Dr. Gonzo in one of my favorite movie, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), assisted to the premiere of the movie el Che in Nuevo Circo in downtown Caracas. In the pictures he is caught right next to Libertador mayor and Ex-Electoral Vice President Jorge Rodriguez. What is really pathetic is that they were showing the movie in a Bull Fight arena. Nuevo Circo in Caracas is legendary for bull fights with bullfighters from Spain and all over the world. Poetic, I would say so...
As for Che Guevara, I have a lot to say about this fellow. Mythical I would certaintly say so. Specially when you can see him in T Shirts all over, trying to get a reaction from society. Most people do not know much about the history of Che Guevara and how we met Fidel, climbed on a boat with him in Mexico to invade Cuba, how we was appointed President of the Central Bank and how we escape Castros hands to hide in the mountains of Bolivia. There are a bunch of movies out there, concerning Che and Fidel, let alone television documentaries, so why is Steven Soderberg doing another movie about Che Guevara?
The truth is Che Guevara was a sociopath killer hired by Fidel Castro for the invasion of Cuba. When the invasion succeded the monster Che Guevara was getting bigger than Fidel´s...
I will post this article by Dale Yeager, and US writer on who was really Che Guevara. And not the manipulative version out there trying to make a quick buck...
Yogui, this is for you:
Why He Became Famous
A search for his name in Google produces 1,120,000 hits. His image is tattooed to the belly of Mike Tyson [and Maradona´s shoulder], and he frequents the t-shirts and hats of college students and celebrities.
In 1952, former Cuban president Fulgencio Batista was third in the race for president and decided to hold a coup. By the way, he had done this earlier in 1933 and was elected the first time by forming a political alliance with the Cuban Communist Party, sound familiar?
In 1953 a young attorney named Fidel Castro, tried to oust Batista but he and his group failed after which he was arrested and jailed. After two years, Batista freed Castro. That same year Castro meets Che Guevara and Che joined Castro’s 26th of July Movement.
In 1956 Castro and his 26th of July Movement launched another attack and was beaten by Batista’s troops…again. Castro moved to the mountains for three years. In 1958, several groups [not affiliated with Castro], tried to bring down Batista, along with Castro’s crew.
Eventually Batista realized that the gig was over for him and he fled Cuba on New Year's Day 1959.
After the revolution's success, the 26th of July Movement was joined with other bodies to form the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, which in turn became the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965.
So who was Che Guevara?
His full legal name was Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna. He was of Spanish-Irish descent.
In 1928, he was born into an aristocratic and politically Marxist family in Rosario Argentina. As a boy he played rugby and was nicknamed the “The Raging" because he was extremely aggressive.
In 1948 Guevara entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. There is no evidence that he graduated with a medical degree. In fact the only medical job he had was that of a medical assistant and his efforts to get an internship as a doctor were not successful.
1956 he married his first wife Hilda Gadea, an exiled Peruvian Marxist. They had one child. Later in 1959 he decided to divorce Gadea and marry a Cuban, Aleida Marsh. They had four children. In 1964 this loyal father had an extramarital affair with Lilia Rosa López, and they had a son Omar Pérez. His closest friends described Che as a father using one word …absent. In reality he was – like all political extremists – obsessed with his cause and his personal pleasure instead of the well being of his family.
But many people see Che Guevara as a liberator as a social savior. He was far from that. When Guevara met Castro and joined forces with him Cuba needed saving….or did it?
Facts from a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization report on Cuba released in 1957:
· "One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class”.
· "Cuban workers are more unionized (proportional to the population) than U.S. workers.
· The average wage for an 8 hour day in Cuba in 1957 is higher than for
workers in Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany.
· Cuban labor receives 66.6 per cent of gross national income. In the U.S. the figure is 70 per cent, in Switzerland 64 per cent. 44 per cent of Cubans are covered by Social legislation, a higher percentage then in the U.S."
· In 1958 Cuba had a higher per-capita income than Austria and Japan. Cuban
industrial workers had the 8th highest wages in the world. In the 1950's Cuban stevedores earned more per hour than their counterparts in New Orleans and San Francisco.
· Cuba had established an 8 hour work-day in 1933 -- five years before FDR's New Dealers got around to it. Add to this: one months paid vacation.
· Cuba, a country 71% white in 1957, was completely desegregated 30 years before the U.S.
· In 1958 Cuba had more female college graduates per capita than the U.S.
In reality the Cuban people had lost control of their government when Batista seized power in 1952. When the Castro / Che team took over the country was thriving economically and in some ways socially but it had lost its direction. History has shown that when liberal democracies lose their direction there is always an opportunist ready and waiting to take over.
But maybe with all of his faults Che was a kind man, a loving man, think again! In his article “The Killing Machine”, Alvaro Vargas Llosa details the violent side of Guevara.
· In April 1967, speaking from experience, he summed up his homicidal idea of justice in his "Message to the Tricontinental": "hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine."
· "I feel my nostrils dilate savoring the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood of the enemy,"
· Guevara's disposition when he traveled with Castro from Mexico to Cuba aboard the Granma is captured in a phrase in a letter to his wife that he penned on January 28, 1957, not long after disembarking, which was published in her book Ernesto: A Memoir of Che Guevara in Sierra Maestra: "Here in the Cuban jungle, alive and bloodthirsty."
· In January 1957, as his diary from the Sierra Maestra indicates, Guevara shot Eutimio Guerra because he suspected him of passing on information: "I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain.... His belongings were now mine."
· Later he shot Aristidio, a peasant who expressed the desire to leave whenever the rebels moved on. While he wondered whether this particular victim "was really guilty enough to deserve death," he had no qualms about ordering the death of Echevarría, a brother of one of his comrades, because of unspecified crimes: "He had to pay the price." At other times he would simulate executions without carrying them out, as a method of psychological torture.
· Instruction given to his underlings, "If in doubt, kill him".
· José Vilasuso, a lawyer and a professor at Universidad Interamericana de Bayamón in Puerto Rico, who belonged to the body in charge of the summary judicial process at La Cabaña [the prison Castor put Che in charge of], told me recently that Che was in charge of the Comisión Depuradora. The process followed the law of the Sierra: there was a military court and Che's guidelines to us were that we should act with conviction, meaning that they were all murderers and the revolutionary way to proceed was to be implacable. My direct superior was Miguel Duque Estrada. My duty was to legalize the files before they were sent on to the Ministry. Executions took place from Monday to Friday, in the middle of the night, just after the sentence was given and automatically confirmed by the appellate body. On the most gruesome night I remember, seven men were executed.
· Javier Arzuaga, the Basque chaplain who gave comfort to those sentenced to die and personally witnessed dozens of executions, spoke to me recently from his home in Puerto Rico. A former Catholic priest, now seventy-five, who describes himself as "closer to Leonardo Boff and Liberation Theology than to the former Cardinal Ratzinger," he recalls that there were about eight hundred prisoners in a space fit for no more than three hundred: former Batista military and police personnel, some journalists, a few businessmen and merchants. The revolutionary tribunal was made of militiamen. Che Guevara presided over the appellate court. He never overturned a sentence. I would visit those on death row at the galera de la muerte. A rumor went around that I hypnotized prisoners because many remained calm, so Che ordered that I be present at the executions. After I left in May, they executed many more, but I personally witnessed fifty-five executions. There was an American, Herman Marks, apparently a former convict. We called him "the butcher" because he enjoyed giving the order to shoot. I pleaded many times with Che on behalf of prisoners. I remember especially the case of Ariel Lima, a young boy. Che did not budge. Nor did Fidel, whom I visited. I became so traumatized that at the end of May 1959 I was ordered to leave the parish of Casa Blanca, where La Cabaña was located and where I had held Mass for three years. I went to Mexico for treatment. The day I left, Che told me we had both tried to bring one another to each other's side and had failed. His last words were: "When we take our masks off, we will be enemies."
· Che set up the first forced labor camp, Guanahacabibes, in 1960. This camp was the precursor to the eventual systematic confinement, starting in 1965 in the province of Camagüey, of dissidents, homosexuals, AIDS victims, Catholics, Afro-Cuban priests, and other such scum, under the banner of Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción, or Military Units to Help Production. Herded into buses and trucks, the "unfit" would be transported at gunpoint into concentration camps organized on the Guanahacabibes mold. Some would never return; others would be raped, beaten, or mutilated; and most would be traumatized for life, as Néstor Almendros's wrenching documentary Improper Conduct showed the world a couple of decades ago.
But maybe the people of Cuba today are benefiting from his reforms and economic genius. According to Ernesto Betancourt his deputy at the Cuban National Bank where he was put in charge by Castro, " Che was ignorant of the most elementary economic principles”.
Today Cuba is a mess.
Water and sewer pipeline networks are in shambles.
Only 62% of Cubans have access to clean water.
Cuba is lacking 1.6 million housing units.
Cuban schools rely on 18 year old high school graduates as their primary teachers.
Cuba, with the governments blessing, has become a major sex tourism destination and is a source country for women and children trafficked for exploitation.
AIDS victims are imprisoned in locked compounds and not allowed out.
Way to go Che!
This article is dedicated to the men, women and children killed by Che Guevara.
14 executed by Che in the Sierra Maestra during the anti-Batista guerrilla struggle (1957-1958):
1. ARISTIDIO 2. MANUEL CAPITÁN 3. JUAN CHANG 4. “BISCO” ECHEVARRÍA 5. ECHEVARRÍA BROTHER #1
6. ECHEVARRÍA BROTHER #2 7. EUTIMIO GUERRA 8. DIONISIO LEBRIGIO 9. JUAN LEBRIGIO 10. “EL NEGRO” NÁPOLES
11. “CHICHO” OSORIO 12. ONE UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER (“EL MAESTRO) 13.-14. 2 UNIDENTIFIED PEASANTS
10 executed in Santa Clara at Che’s orders in only two days (January 1959):
1. RAMÓN ALBA 2. JOSÉ BARROSO 3. JOAQUÍN CASILLAS 4. FÉLIX CRUZ 5. ALEJANDRO GARCÍA OLAYÓN
6. HÉCTOR MIRABAL 7. J. MIRABAL 8. FÉLIX MONTANO 9. CORNELIO ROJAS 10. VILALLA
156 executed at La Cabaña Fortress prison at Che Guevara’s orders:
1. VILAU ABREU 2. HUMBERTO AGUIAR 3. GERMÁN AGUIRRE 4. PELAYO ALAYÓN 5. JOSÉ LUIS ALFARO
6. PEDRO ALFARO 7. MARIANO ALONSO 8. JOSÉ ALVARO 9. ANIELLA 10. MARIO ARES POLO
11. JOSÉ RAMÓN BACALLAO 12. CEVERINO BARRIOS 13. EUGENIO BÉCQUER 14. FRANCISCO BÉCQUER
15. RAMÓN BISCET 16. ROBERTO CALZADILLA 17. EUFEMIO CANO 18. JUAN CAPOTE FIALLO
19. ANTONIO CARRALERO 20. GERTRUDIS CASTELLANOS 21. JOSÉ CASTAÑO QUEVEDO 22. RAÚL CASTAÑO
23. EUFEMIO CHALA 24. JOSÉ CHAMACE 25. JOSÉ CHAMIZO 26. RAÚL CLAUSELL 27. ÁNGEL CLAUSELL
28. DEMETRIO CLAUSELL 29. JOSÉ CLAUSELL 30. ELOY CONTRERAS 31. ALBERTO CORBO 32. EMILIO CRUZ
33. JUAN FELIPE CRUZ 34. ORESTES CRUZ 35. HUMBERTO CUEVAS 36. CUNY 37. ANTONIO DE BECHE
38. MATEO DELGADO 39. ARMANDO DELGADO 40. RAMÓN DESPAIGNE 41. JOSÉ DÍAZ CABEZAS
42. ANTONIO DUARTE 43. RAMÓN FERNÁNDEZ OJEDA 44. RUDY FERNÁNDEZ 45. FERRÁN ALFONSO
46. SALVADOR FERRERO 47. VICTOR FIGUEREDO 48. EDUARDO FORTE 49. UGARDE GALÁN
50. RAFAEL GARCÍA MUÑIZ 51. ADALBERTO GARCÍA 52. ALBERTO GARCÍA 53. JACINTO GARCÍA
54. EVELIO GASPAR 55. ARMADA GIL Y DIEZ CABEZAS 56. JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ MALAGÓN 57. EVARISTO GONZÁLEZ
58. EZEQUIEL GONZÁLEZ 59. SECUNDINO GONZÁLEZ 60. RICARDO GRAO 61. BONIFACIO GRASSO
62. RICARDO JOSÉ GRAU 63. OSCAR GUERRA 64. JULIÁN HERNÁNDEZ 65. FRANCISCO HERNÁNDEZ LEYVA
66. ANTONIO HERNÁNDEZ 67. GERARDO HERNÁNDEZ 68. OLEGARIO HERNÁNDEZ 69. SECUNDINO HERNÁNDEZ
70. JESÚS INSUA 71. ENRIQUE IZQUIERDO 72. OSMÍN JORRÍN 73. SILVINO JUNCO 74. ENRIQUE LA ROSA
75. IGNACIO LASAPARLA 76. JESÚS LAZO 77. ARIEL LIMA LAGO 78. RAÚL LÓPEZ VIDAL 79. ARMANDO MAS
80. ENERLIO MATA 81. ELPIDIO MEDEROS 82. JOSÉ MEDINAS 83. JOSÉ MESA 84. FIDEL MESQUÍA
85. JUAN MILIÁN 86. FRANCISCO MIRABAL 87. LUIS MIRABAL 88. ERNESTO MORALES 89. PEDRO MOREJÓN
90. DR. CARLOS MUIÑO, MD. 91. CÉSAR NECOLARDES ROJAS 92. VICTOR NECOLARDES ROJAS 93. JOSÉ NUÑEZ
94. VITERBO O'RREILLY 95. FÉLIX OVIEDO 96. MANUEL PANEQUE 97. PEDRO PEDROSO 98. RAFAEL PEDROSO
99. DIEGO PÉREZ CUESTA 100. JUAN PÉREZ 101. DIEGO PÉREZ CRELA 102. JOSÉ POZO 103. EMILIO PUEBLA
104. ALFREDO PUPO 105. SECUNDINO RAMÍREZ 106. RAMÓN RAMOS 107. PABLO RAVELO 108. RUBÉN REY
109. MARIO RISQUELME 110. FERNANDO RIVERA 111. PABLO RIVERA 112. MANUEL RODRÍGUEZ
113. MARCOS RODRÍGUEZ 114. NEMESIO RODRÍGUEZ 115. PABLO RODRÍGUEZ 116. RICARDO RODRÍGUEZ
117. JOSÉ SALDARA 118. PEDRO SANTANA 119. SERGIO SIERRA 120. JUAN SILVA 121. FAUSTO SILVA
122. ELPIDIO SOLER 123. JESÚS SOSA BLANCO 124. RENATO SOSA 125. SERGIO SOSA 126. PEDRO SOTO
127. OSCAR SUÁREZ 128. RAFAEL TARRAGO 129. TEODORO TELLEZ CISNEROS 130. FRANCISCO TELLEZ
131. JOSÉ TIN 132. FRANCISCO TRAVIESO 133. LEONARDO TRUJILLO 134. TRUJILLO 135. LUPE VALDÉS BARBOSA
136. MARCELINO VALDÉS 137. ANTONIO VALENTÍN 138. MANUEL VÁZQUEZ 139. SERGIO VÁZQUEZ 140. VERDECIA
141. DÁMASO ZAYAS
*15 additional executions were reported by The New York Times (on 2/6/59, 2/8/59, 3/16/59, and 4/2/59),
but names are unknown.
References:
1. State Department on Repression in Cuba, Fact Sheet Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and the Bureau of Public Affairs
Washington, DC December 15, 2003
2. The Killing Machine, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, The New Republic, 7/11/2005
3. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization) report on Cuba, 1957
4. CAFC.gov U.S. Department of State July 2006
5. FREE SOCIETY PROJECT, INC. http://www.cubaarchive.org/
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