By Matthew Brady and M. L. Brillman
The Galway City Council scuttled plans to erect a statue to Ernesto "Che" Guevara but the very idea is repulsive to those who know about Guevara's crimes.
The plan to build the statue was apparently spearheaded by Irish Labour politician Billy Cameron. The Galway City Council approved an initial proposal last year and construction was slated for late 2012 or 2013 but never got off the ground due to widespread criticism, including public letters from U.S. Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
The proposal itself reflects the success of the €he Guevara brand ("€" insertion is deliberate). The Cuban economy is built, in part, on the myth of a socialist heaven and Guevara's role in that myth has been prepared, packaged and exported through books, postcards, photos, posters, paintings, videos, t-shirts, berets, and other paraphernalia. Indeed, unsavory characters have their admirers, but Guevara's posthumous popularity as the global symbol of revolution has been embraced by uninformed millions who know nothing of his murderous past.
They see what Hollywood and recent authors have portrayed -- a romanticized, one-sided account of portions of Guevara's life. They see the young idealist from The Motorcycle Diaries. Ironically, Guevara has become the darling of capitalist commoditization and conspicuous consumption, the very principles he purportedly fought against including a profound hatred for the United States. Ubiquitous t-shirts and posters now permeate affluent college campuses, diluting his supposed populist message of class struggle.
But the reality is Guevara oversaw and participated in thousands of summary executions without trial during and after the apotheosis of the Cuban Revolution. Nearly every Cuban living in Cuba or exile knows about La Cabaña -- where Guevara created, as one Cuban said, "an assembly line of torture, murder and assassination" during the Cuban Revolution. While Guevara's evil deeds are widely known in Cuba and Miami, awareness outside Cuba of Guevara's actions is only now coming to light -- see the Cuba Archive (www.CubaArchive.org) and a book titled The Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him by Humberto Fontova.
Returning to the issue of Galway, one must ask -- could the City Council find no better candidate? Guevara's lineage to the Lynch clan in Galway is murky. There is no source or report that has conclusively settled Guevara's Irish ancestry on his mother's side, father's side, both, or if they were from Galway or from Cork.
Galway should ultimately be applauded for rejecting the whims of a few old Irish Lefties, but this should be the last attempt to glorify Guevara anywhere in the world because doing so is disrespectful to his victims and offensive to humanity. If Galway still seeks a piece of granite iconography, its leaders could honor Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi who was in Ireland last month for an award and a concert called "Electric Burma" at which Irish musicians Bono, Bob Geldof and Damien Rice performed. Now that would have been worth a trip to Ireland.
Follow Matt Brady on Twitter: www.twitter.com/FHRCuba
Thousands of summary executions? What ignorance! Shame....
Sorry, but cuban people from USA are really pathetics...you don't mind the truth, lie and pretend in a desperate quest to be pitied, not inventing lies that you will get this. Learn to be honest and do not overdo it like you always do. The results? Nobody believes you.
Greetings from Italy.
TO SEE THE FULL DOCUMENTARY CLICK LINK
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-true-story-of-che-guevara/
American right-wingers like to ignore the inconvenient fact that Che Guevara battled 3 U.S.-backed dictators on 3 separate continents (Batista/Cuba, Mobutu/Congo, & Barrientos/Bolivia).
The right-wing also likes to avoid acknowledging that Che's radicalism was spawned from living in Guatemala during the 1953 overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz by the CIA (Operation PBSUCCESS) on behalf of Secretary of State Dulles and the United Fruit Company.
As the Cuban Revolution and Che proved, when given the decision of backing a democratic government that represents the interests of the majority of a nation's citizens or a right-wing dictator who will protect the business interests of the United States = the U.S. will usually chose the latter.
The Cuban revolution was a middle class revolution fired by nationalistic sentiment against a local dictator.
Che himself admitted it wasn't communist at all. The Cuban communists in fact had in the past supported Batista for the national elections (1940) , condemned Fidel Castro for his "bourgeois" attack on the Moncada barracks (1953), ran the unions for Batista and only joined the revolution against Bastista in late 1958 (Pacto de Caracas). (1)
After Castro seized power with the help of the communists he slowly eliminated the other leaders: Huber Matos as "traitor", Camilo Cienfuegos "disappeared" and Che shamed in to permanent exile by the reading of his "letter".
From the Congo to Bolivia Che failed hopelessly.
His capture and death were shameful and his hope that his name would save him from execution dashed by Bolivian officials.
Che should have expected mercy. From people in his band of rebels in the mountains to Batista officials and even strikers that annoyed the regime: all were ruthlessly shot.
Che was turned in to an icon: a mythical image that was larger than the man ever was. From 1968 icon he has now fallen to a cheap way to sell T-shirts, beer, alcohol mixers, ... (2)
(1) The Cuban Revolution.
http://www.cubaverdad.net/revolution.htm
(2) Che: más mito que realidad!
http://che-guevara.awardspace.com/
- Worked in a Leper colony and treated lepers (as seen in the excellent film 'The Motorcycle Diaries')
- Was instrumental in teaching over 900,000 Cubans to read
- Tended to thousands of sick campesinos
- Helped construct dozens of schools throughout Cuba
- Removed the Mafia and dictatorship of Batista from Cuba which had killed 20,000 Cubans and tortured thousands more
- Desegregated the schools in Cuba before they were in the Southern US
- Called out South Africa's Apartheid in 1964, 30 years before the West!
- Denounced the racism and KKK in America
... NO WONDER THE GOP HATE HIM :)
- was a racist as his remarks in his "motorcycle diaries" about blacks he met in Venezuela showed. This was again confirmed by his remarks about blacks in Congo
- was homophobic and part of the regime that set up the Castro concentration camps:
http://umap.impela.net/
- Che, just one of the comandantes of the revolution just like Huber Matos and in no way he had the same standing as the hero of Santiago de Cuba Frank Pais, a man betrayed by the Castros to the Batista police.
- Che failed revolutionary in both Congo and Bolivia
- Che: brutal executioner of hundreds of people
See:
http://che-guevara.awardspace.com/
INTRODUCTION: The saying “The fish die by the mouth”, refers to those who speak more than the necessary until being fooled by their own speech. Can his mythical reputation survive the publication of his own words?
The objective of this article is to expose the truth about Che, to demystify it in the face of those who feel admiration by this mass murderer, exposing the facts based on his writings, diaries, speeches, letters and conversations with those who knew him.
Che never questioned the crimes of Stalin and Mao, nor the totalitarian conceptions of Marxism, incompatible with the ideals of liberty and democracy, defending until his death his Stalinists ideas. His fanaticism made him an implacable enemy of liberty. The French writer Regis Debray, author of "Revolution in the revolution", wrote about the Che that: "He was adept of the totalitarianism up to the last body hair.”
CLICK LINK FOR ACADEMIC PAPER WITH FOOTNOTES & EVERYTHING!!
http://www.lanuevacuba.com/archivo2009/Ene/humberto-corzo-10.htm
"Che's life is an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom, we will always honor his memory." --- Nelson Mandela”
http://www.cubaarchive.org/downloads/CA08.pdf
THE TRUE STORY OF CHE GUEVARA- The History Channel presentation: From his famous motorcycle trips to his historic role in the Cuban Revolution, Argentinean revolutionary Che Guevara is profiled in a documentary produced to explore the life of the man whose visage has become an iconic symbol of hard left politics. This man, who ordered the execution of countless human beings while in charge of the notorious La Cabaña prison in Havana, who terrorized Cuban society and who denied freedom to thousands of citizens whom he considered “deviants” or “anti-revolutionaries” can never be accepted as a hero, martyr or — the shock of it — a saint.
TO SEE THE FULL DOCUMENTARY CLICK LINK
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-true-story-of-che-guevara/