Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant by Humberto Fontova Page A
Authors: Humberto Fontova
Tags: Non-Fiction, Politics
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meticulously researched book The Losers : The Definitive Report, by an Eyewitness, of the Communist Conquest of Cuba and the Soviet Penetration in Latin America . This one features Che and his invincible “column” on their long march through Las Villas province: “Guevara’s column shuffled right into the U.S. agricultural experimental station in Camagüey. Guevara asked manager Joe McGuire to have a man take a package to Batista’s military commander in the city. The package contained $100,000 with a note. Guevara’s men moved through the province almost within sight of uninterested Batista troops.” 10
This was part of the famous “Battle of Santa Clara” where Che earned his eternal fame. The New York Times of January 4, 1959, covered this same “battle” and reported: “One Thousand Killed in 5 Days of Fierce Street Fighting.... Commander Che Guevara appealed to Batista troops for a truce to clear the streets of casualties. . . . Guevara turned the tide in this bloody battle and whipped a Batista force of 3,000 men.”
All baloney, by the way. Statistically speaking, a nocturnal stroll through Central Park offers more peril than Castro’s rebels faced from the dreaded army of the beastly Fulgencio Batista. According to Bethel, the U.S. embassy was a little skeptical about all the reports of battlefield bloodshed and rebel heroics and investigated. They ran down every reliable lead and eyewitness account of what the New York Times called a “bloody civil war with thousands dead in single battles.” The embassy report found that in the countryside, in those two years of “ferocious” battles, the total casualties on both sides actually ran to 182. 11 New Orleans has an annual murder rate double that.
But to give them credit, most of Castro’s comandantes—if not the New York Times —knew their Batista war had been a gaudy clown show. After the glorious victory, they were content to run down and execute the few Batista men motivated enough to shoot back (most of these were of humble background), settle into the mansions stolen from Batistianos, and enjoy the rest of their booty.
But Che’s pathological power of self-delusion wouldn’t allow him to do this. And he paid the price. When Che tried his hand at a guerrilla war not against unmotivated Batistaites, but in Africa, where people actually shot back and everything, he was run out with his tail between his legs within months. Then, in Bolivia, he and his merry band of bumblers were betrayed, encircled, and wiped out in short order.
Here’s a “guerrilla hero” who in real life never fought in a guerrilla war. When he finally brushed up against one, he was routed. Here’s a cold-blooded murderer who executed thousands without trial, who claimed that judicial evidence was an “unnecessary bourgeois detail,” who stressed that “revolutionaries must become cold killing machines motivated by pure hate,” who stayed up till dawn for months at a time signing death warrants for innocent and honorable men, whose office in La Cabana had a window where he could watch the executions—and today he is a hero to the Hollywood and college campus Left.
Here’s Communist Cuba’s first “minister of industries,” whose main slogan in 1960 was “accelerated industrialization,” whose dream was converting Cuba (and the Western Hemisphere, actually) into a huge bureaucratic-industrial ant farm—and he’s the poster boy for greens and anarchists who rant against industrialization.
Here’s a sniveling little suck-up, teacher’s pet, and mama’s boy (his parents were limousine Bolsheviks), who was a humorless teetotaler, a plodding paper-pusher, a notorious killjoy, and all-around fuddy-duddy. In 1961, Che established a special concentration camp at Guanacabibes in extreme western Cuba for “delinquents” whose “delinquency” involved drinking, vagrancy, disrespect for authorities, laziness, and playing loud music—and yet you see his
This was part of the famous “Battle of Santa Clara” where Che earned his eternal fame. The New York Times of January 4, 1959, covered this same “battle” and reported: “One Thousand Killed in 5 Days of Fierce Street Fighting.... Commander Che Guevara appealed to Batista troops for a truce to clear the streets of casualties. . . . Guevara turned the tide in this bloody battle and whipped a Batista force of 3,000 men.”
All baloney, by the way. Statistically speaking, a nocturnal stroll through Central Park offers more peril than Castro’s rebels faced from the dreaded army of the beastly Fulgencio Batista. According to Bethel, the U.S. embassy was a little skeptical about all the reports of battlefield bloodshed and rebel heroics and investigated. They ran down every reliable lead and eyewitness account of what the New York Times called a “bloody civil war with thousands dead in single battles.” The embassy report found that in the countryside, in those two years of “ferocious” battles, the total casualties on both sides actually ran to 182. 11 New Orleans has an annual murder rate double that.
But to give them credit, most of Castro’s comandantes—if not the New York Times —knew their Batista war had been a gaudy clown show. After the glorious victory, they were content to run down and execute the few Batista men motivated enough to shoot back (most of these were of humble background), settle into the mansions stolen from Batistianos, and enjoy the rest of their booty.
But Che’s pathological power of self-delusion wouldn’t allow him to do this. And he paid the price. When Che tried his hand at a guerrilla war not against unmotivated Batistaites, but in Africa, where people actually shot back and everything, he was run out with his tail between his legs within months. Then, in Bolivia, he and his merry band of bumblers were betrayed, encircled, and wiped out in short order.
Here’s a “guerrilla hero” who in real life never fought in a guerrilla war. When he finally brushed up against one, he was routed. Here’s a cold-blooded murderer who executed thousands without trial, who claimed that judicial evidence was an “unnecessary bourgeois detail,” who stressed that “revolutionaries must become cold killing machines motivated by pure hate,” who stayed up till dawn for months at a time signing death warrants for innocent and honorable men, whose office in La Cabana had a window where he could watch the executions—and today he is a hero to the Hollywood and college campus Left.
Here’s Communist Cuba’s first “minister of industries,” whose main slogan in 1960 was “accelerated industrialization,” whose dream was converting Cuba (and the Western Hemisphere, actually) into a huge bureaucratic-industrial ant farm—and he’s the poster boy for greens and anarchists who rant against industrialization.
Here’s a sniveling little suck-up, teacher’s pet, and mama’s boy (his parents were limousine Bolsheviks), who was a humorless teetotaler, a plodding paper-pusher, a notorious killjoy, and all-around fuddy-duddy. In 1961, Che established a special concentration camp at Guanacabibes in extreme western Cuba for “delinquents” whose “delinquency” involved drinking, vagrancy, disrespect for authorities, laziness, and playing loud music—and yet you see his
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