On The Road In The Kingdom Of Fear

Forget Che, leave him in the past where he belongs

What is it with students and Che Guevara? The amount of otherwise decent and intelligent people I have seen with Alberto Korda’s enduring photograph emblazoned on a t-shirt is ridiculous to the point of banality. Che Guevara was sexy and, in some ways idealistic but he was also a defender of Stalin and mass murder.

Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favoured a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the soon to be ‘free’ Cuba. Che, however, gave unwavering support to the pro-Soviet faction which ultimately triumphed. While the resulting system is celebrated for training many excellent doctors and providing a fine education for its people - what use is literacy if you cannot choose which books you wish to read in your long healthy life?

Immediately after the collapse of the Batista regime Castro put Che in charge of La Cabana prison where he oversaw mass executions. Conservative estimates place the number of Cuban ‘counter revolutionaries’ executed on his orders well into the hundreds. A former Catholic priest at the prison recalls that Guevara “never overturned a sentence.” He later founded Cuba’s “labour camp” system that was later used to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims.

He often spoke of martyrdom and managed to compose a number of disturbing phrases, including wanting to make his soldiers into a “violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine”. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a guerrilla movement that had failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. His ultimate aim in South America was to create another Vietnam, turning the entire continent into a quagmire that would eventually destroy the United States.

Is this a man to celebrate? Do these students think about all those innocent people killed on his orders as he they pull on their £40 t-shirt in a morning? I accept that Che was fighting against odious right-wing forces, especially in Guatemala, where the US was backing a far-right coup on behalf of the United Fruit Company. However, these forces had to be resisted with left-wing democracy, not more totalitarianism.

I have been pondering the Cult of Che ever since the release of the Motorcycle Diaries, a beautifully shot, wonderfully acted, and frustratingly unbalanced account of the man. Reviving an old Stalinist icon will do little for the democratic and progressive elements of left. Leftists our age are the first generation in nearly a century to be totally untainted by association with communism. The worst thing we could do is squander this opportunity and revitalize the heroes of that bloodstained era. Accompanying the Che paraphernalia I see CCCP jackets, Cuba hoodies and assorted badges bearing, among others, Fidel and Lenin. This is an embarrassment.

Of course it is true that right-wing denial of atrocities is equally apparent, but that is to be expected. The right’s lauding of Pinochet, the Saudi’s and a whole host of other undemocratic and oppressive dictatorships is heinous. This, however, is no excuse for us; we have to set ourselves higher moral standards.

The present-day cult of Che has succeeded in obscuring his barbaric past. Che was an enemy of freedom and stood for callous Marxist-Leninism, yet he is celebrated as a free-thinker and a rebel. Why does revolutionary (or is it capitalist?) chic not bear the face of Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel or Aung San Suu Kyi? These are real heroes - democrats who believe in the freedom of speech, freedom from oppression and are untainted by a love for Soviet authoritarianism.

Dissident liberals in Cuba are still demanding fundamental human rights, and the dictatorship still places many in prison. Reading the memoirs of Cuban dissenter Armando Valladares has placed the brutality of the Cuban system into perspective. His diaries chart his 23 year incarceration in various prisons, including La Cabana. He suffered savage beatings, psychological and biological experimentation and isolation beyond imagination. His crime; nothing more than refusing to place a placard on his desk at work saying he supported Communism. I have come to the conclusion that anyone who wears Che, Cuba or CCCP clothing is either ignorant or a nihilist.

posted by Alexander Try @ 8:35 pm