Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant by Humberto Fontova Page B
Authors: Humberto Fontova
Tags: Non-Fiction, Politics
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The only thing Che excelled at was the mass murder of defenseless men. Just as in 1940, when Stalin’s commissars rounded up captured Polish officers, herded them into the Katyn Forest, and slaughtered them to a man, so Che tried to track down former Cuban army officers—and anyone else whose loyalty was suspect—and slaughter them to a man. Che’s true legacy is simply one of terror and murder. That dreaded midnight knock; wives and daughters screaming in fear and panic as Che’s goons drag off their dads and husbands; desperate crowds of weeping daughters and shrieking mothers clubbed with rifle butts outside La Cabana as Che’s firing squads murder their dads and sons inside; thousands of heroes yelling at the firing squads “ Viva Cuba Libre! ” and “ Viva Christo Rey! ”; mass burials, secret graves, and sometimes crude boxes with bullet-riddled corpses delivered to ashen-faced loved ones.
When the wheels of justice finally turned, and Che was captured in Bolivia, he was revealed as unworthy to carry his victims’ slop buckets: “Don’t shoot! I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!” 12 He had learned nothing from the bravery of the Cuban patriots he’d murdered. The champagne corks popped in Cuban American households when we got the wonderful news of Che’s death in October 1967. Yes, our own compatriots serving proudly in the U.S. Special Forces had helped track down the murderous, cowardly, and epically stupid little weasel named Che Guevara in Bolivia. Justice has never been better served.
The writings he left behind are turgid gibberish, only underlining that he went through life with a perpetual scowl. Food, drink, good cheer, bonhomie, roistering, fellowship—Guevara recoiled from these like Dracula from a cross. “I have no home, no woman, no parents, no children, no brothers. My friends are friends only so long as they think as I do politically.” 13 As a professional duty, I tortured myself with Che Guevara’s writings. I finished glassy-eyed, dazed, almost catatonic. Nothing written by a first-year philosophy major (or a Total Quality Management guru) could be more banal, jargon-ridden, depressing, or idiotic. A specimen: “The past makes itself felt not only in the individual consciousness—in which the residue of an education systematically oriented toward isolating the individual still weighs heavily—but also through the very character of this transition period in which commodity relations still persist, although this is still a subjective aspiration, not yet systematized. 14
Slap yourself and let’s continue: “To the extent that we achieve concrete successes on a theoretical plane—or, vice versa, to the extent that we draw theoretical conclusions of a broad character on the basis of our concrete research—we will have made a valuable contribution to Marxism-Leninism, and to the cause of humanity.”
Splash some cold water on your face and stick with me for just a little more: “It is still necessary to deepen his conscious participation, individual and collective, in all the mechanisms of management and production, and to link this to the idea of the need for technical and ideological education, so that we see how closely interdependent these processes are and how their advancement is parallel. In this way he will reach total consciousness of his social being, which is equivalent to his full realization as a human creature, once the chains of alienation are broken.”
Throughout his diaries Che whines about deserters from his “guerrilla” ranks (bored adolescents, petty crooks, and winos playing army on the weekend). Can you blame them? Imagine sharing a campfire with some yo-yo droning on and on about “subjective aspirations not yet systematized” and “closely interdependent processes and total consciousness of social being”—and who also reeked like a polecat (foremost among the bourgeois debouchments
The only thing Che excelled at was the mass murder of defenseless men. Just as in 1940, when Stalin’s commissars rounded up captured Polish officers, herded them into the Katyn Forest, and slaughtered them to a man, so Che tried to track down former Cuban army officers—and anyone else whose loyalty was suspect—and slaughter them to a man. Che’s true legacy is simply one of terror and murder. That dreaded midnight knock; wives and daughters screaming in fear and panic as Che’s goons drag off their dads and husbands; desperate crowds of weeping daughters and shrieking mothers clubbed with rifle butts outside La Cabana as Che’s firing squads murder their dads and sons inside; thousands of heroes yelling at the firing squads “ Viva Cuba Libre! ” and “ Viva Christo Rey! ”; mass burials, secret graves, and sometimes crude boxes with bullet-riddled corpses delivered to ashen-faced loved ones.
When the wheels of justice finally turned, and Che was captured in Bolivia, he was revealed as unworthy to carry his victims’ slop buckets: “Don’t shoot! I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!” 12 He had learned nothing from the bravery of the Cuban patriots he’d murdered. The champagne corks popped in Cuban American households when we got the wonderful news of Che’s death in October 1967. Yes, our own compatriots serving proudly in the U.S. Special Forces had helped track down the murderous, cowardly, and epically stupid little weasel named Che Guevara in Bolivia. Justice has never been better served.
The writings he left behind are turgid gibberish, only underlining that he went through life with a perpetual scowl. Food, drink, good cheer, bonhomie, roistering, fellowship—Guevara recoiled from these like Dracula from a cross. “I have no home, no woman, no parents, no children, no brothers. My friends are friends only so long as they think as I do politically.” 13 As a professional duty, I tortured myself with Che Guevara’s writings. I finished glassy-eyed, dazed, almost catatonic. Nothing written by a first-year philosophy major (or a Total Quality Management guru) could be more banal, jargon-ridden, depressing, or idiotic. A specimen: “The past makes itself felt not only in the individual consciousness—in which the residue of an education systematically oriented toward isolating the individual still weighs heavily—but also through the very character of this transition period in which commodity relations still persist, although this is still a subjective aspiration, not yet systematized. 14
Slap yourself and let’s continue: “To the extent that we achieve concrete successes on a theoretical plane—or, vice versa, to the extent that we draw theoretical conclusions of a broad character on the basis of our concrete research—we will have made a valuable contribution to Marxism-Leninism, and to the cause of humanity.”
Splash some cold water on your face and stick with me for just a little more: “It is still necessary to deepen his conscious participation, individual and collective, in all the mechanisms of management and production, and to link this to the idea of the need for technical and ideological education, so that we see how closely interdependent these processes are and how their advancement is parallel. In this way he will reach total consciousness of his social being, which is equivalent to his full realization as a human creature, once the chains of alienation are broken.”
Throughout his diaries Che whines about deserters from his “guerrilla” ranks (bored adolescents, petty crooks, and winos playing army on the weekend). Can you blame them? Imagine sharing a campfire with some yo-yo droning on and on about “subjective aspirations not yet systematized” and “closely interdependent processes and total consciousness of social being”—and who also reeked like a polecat (foremost among the bourgeois debouchments
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