Che Guevara: 39 Years of Media Hype
by Humberto Fontova
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Thirty-nine years ago this week, Ernesto "Che" Guevara got a major
dose of his own medicine. Without trial he was declared a murderer,
stood against a wall and shot. Historically speaking, justice has
rarely been better served. If the saying "What goes around comes
around" ever fit, it's here.
"Executions?" Che Guevara exclaimed while addressing the hallowed
halls of the U.N. General Assembly on December 9, 1964. "Certainly
we execute!" he declared, to the claps and cheers of that august
body. "And we will CONTINUE executing as long as it is necessary!
This is a war to the DEATH against the revolution's enemies!"
According to the Black Book of Communism, those firing-squad
executions had reached around 10,000 by that time. Sloboban
Milosevic, by the way, went on trial for allegedly ordering 8,000
executions. The charge against him by the same U.N. that deliriously
applauded Che Guevara's proud proclamation was "genocide."
"I don't need proof to execute a man," snapped Che to a judicial
underling in 1959. "I only need proof that it's necessary to execute
him!"
The "revolution's enemies" bound, gagged and murdered by Che and his
henchmen were among the most enterprising and valiant fighters of
the 20th century ranking alongside the Hungarian Freedom Fighters.
They fought just as valiantly, as desperately and, ultimately
just as hopelessly. They fought to the last bullet and usually to
the death.
The few survivors live today in places like Miami and New Jersey and
qualify as the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern
history. But you'll look for their stories on the History Channel
and PBS and in the New York Times, etc., in vain. They fought the
Left's premier pinup boys, you see. So their heroism doesn't qualify
as politically correct drama.
On the contrary, Time magazine honors Che Guevara among "The 100
Most Important People of the Century." Not satisfied with such a
measly accolade they list him in the "Heroes and Icons" section,
alongside Anne Frank, Andrei Sakharov, Rosa Parks and Mother
Theresa. From here the ironies only get richer.
The most popular version of the Che T-shirt and poster, for
instance, sports the slogan "Fight Oppression" under his famous
face. This is the face of a man who co-founded a regime that jailed
more of its subjects than did Hitler's or Stalin's and declared
that "individualism must disappear!" In 1959, with the help of
Soviet GRU agents, the man celebrated on that T-shirt helped found,
train and indoctrinate Cuba's secret police. "Always interrogate
your prisoners at night," Che ordered his goons. "A man's resistance
is always lower at night." Today the world's largest Che mural
adorns Cuba's Ministry of the Interior, the headquarters for Cuba's
KGB- and STASI-trained secret police. Nothing could be more fitting.
"Iron" Mike Tyson used to end fights with his arms upraised in
triumph. In 2002 he got a huge Che tattoo on his torso, visited
Cuba, and has been consistently and horribly stomped in fight after
fight ever since, a process perfectly mimicking the combat record of
his tattoo idol. Che was indeed proficient at smiting his enemies,
Mike, thousands of them, but only after they were bound, gagged and
blindfolded and I'm afraid the National Boxing Federation won't
allow this.
When the crowd of A-list hipsters and Beautiful People at the
Sundance Film Festival (which included everyone from Tipper and Al
Gore to Sharon Stone, Meryl Streep and Paris Hilton) exploded in a
rapturous standing ovation for Robert Redford's The Motorcycle
Diaries, they were cheering a film glorifying a man who jailed or
exiled most of Cuba's best writers, poets and independent filmmakers
while converting Cuba's press and cinema at Czech machine-
gunpoint into propaganda agencies for a Stalinist regime.
Executive producer of the movie Robert Redford (who always kicks off
the film festival with a long dirge about the importance of artistic
freedom) was forced to screen the film for Che's widow (who heads
Cuba's Che Guevara Studies Center) and Fidel Castro for their
approval before release. We can only imagine the shrieks of outrage
from the Sundance crowd about "censorship!" and "selling out!" had,
say, Robert Ackerman required (and acquiesced in) Nancy Reagan's
approval to release HBO's The Reagans that same year.
Che groupies are many and varied. Christopher Hitchens, for
instance, marvels at Che's "untamable defiance" and assures us in
the same New York Times article that "Che was no hypocrite."
The noted historian Benicio Del Toro, who will star as his hero in a
Hollywood biopic due next year, says that "Che was just one of those
guys who walked the walk and talked the talk. There's just something
cool about people like that. The more I get to know Che, the more I
respect him."
More than his cruelty, megalomania or even his epic stupidity, what
most distinguished Ernesto "Che" Guevara from his peers was his
sniveling cowardice. His groupies can run off in a huff, slam their
bedroom door and dive headfirst into their beds sobbing and kicking
and punching the pillows all they want, but Che surrendered to the
Bolivian Rangers voluntarily, from a safe distance, and was captured
physically sound and with a fully loaded pistol.
One day before his death in Bolivia, Che Guevara for the first time
in his life finally faced something properly describable as combat.
So he ordered his guerrilla charges to give no quarter, to fight to
the last breath and to the last bullet.
A few hours later, his "untamable defiance," lack of hypocrisy
and "walking of the walk" all manifested themselves. With his men
doing just what he ordered (fighting and dying to the last bullet),
a slightly wounded Che snuck away from the firefight and surrendered
with a full clip in his pistol, while whimpering to his
captors: "Don't Shoot! I'm Che! I'm worth more to you alive than
dead!"
His Bolivian captors begged to differ.
October 6, 2006
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