In all the schools in the country, today is the ceremony for the first grade students to enroll in the Pioneer organization. The morning assembly lasts longer than usual, the parents accompany their children while they put on the neckerchiefs and shout, for the first time, the slogan, "Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che." I also went through this on two occasions, once when I was enrolled in the OPJM* and the other on the day when I witnessed my son Teo being initiated. My recollections of the two are so different they seem to have occurred in diametrically opposite dimensions.
In my case it was the years of ideological fervor and, barely three feet tall, I was determined to give my life for the neckerchief they had just put on me. I felt touched by the hand of the Fatherland even though in reality I was only being added to the ranks of an ideology. The slogan of the organization I had just entered seemed like the magic words that would open all doors to me, though at that time I didn't even know that the suffix "ism" forms nouns that mean "doctrine, sect, system." Much less would I have wanted to be separated like Lybna who, because she was a Jehovah's Witness, did not take "her vows" together with the rest of the children in the classroom. Around her hovered a cloud becoming darker, precisely because the blue cloth was not tied around her neck.
Twenty years passed and I was there with my son one morning in October to see him initiated into the Pioneer movement in which I no longer believed. The teacher walked up and down the ranks and asked the children to repeat the slogan about Che Guevara. Teo remained silent, with a pout that didn't escape the eagle eyes of the principal. When they asked him why he didn't say the slogan like the rest of the students he pointed out, with childish simplicity, "Because Che is dead and I don't want to be dead." I assumed my son was about to be entered into the ideological catalog under the worst of the letters, the "C" for counterrevolutionay. But no, the teacher laughed and gave him his first lesson in opportunism, "Ah Teo, repeat the slogan now, why make problems for yourself."
*Jose Marti Pioneer Organization
Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
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"Above all, always be capable of feeling most deeply any injustice committed against anyone in the world. That is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary."
“Peace does not work, Violence is needed. In order of create socialists regimens it is needed to spills rivers of blood and we will continuing fighting even to the cost of millions of victims of an atomic holocaust.
February 10, 1957. Guerrilla guide Eutimio Guerra is accused of treachery , in a summary process the guide is condemned to dead but due to evident lack of proves no one of the guerrilla men want to execute the prisoner. Suddenly Che stand up and kill the man shooting him in the head. Days later Che writes in his dairy book: “…To kill a human been is something ugly but exemplifying. Now on no one of my guerrilla fellows will call me again The guerrilla dentist" . In a letter to his father he tells about this crime: "Dad, I have to confess you that at that moment I understood that I like to kill".
However, let the dynasty not forget what happened to Nicolaus Ceausescu, Sadam Hussein, and Benito Mussolini. Where the people of those countries now hate their dead guts to no end, and don’t even want their bones, or their family and relatives buried in their land, let alone see any standing monuments or likeness of them
Written by his own hand in "Traveling Notes", the dairy book he wrote while traveling America, same book used for Vinizio del Toro's film "Motorcycle Dairies". While waiting the boat to Pascuas Islands he wrote about the women of these Islands:
......"for them (the Pascuas Islands women) must be an honor to have a white men like me"
......"Black people could keep them as a pure race just thanks to theirs lack of love for the bath"
......"Black people are lazy and uses to spend the money getting drunk"
His military trainer in Mexico before the invasion of Cuba by Castro's forces, Miguel Sanches (alias "El Coreano"), said about him: "He hate black and mexican people that's why he always have problem with them" ...... El Coreano also said: "He uses to call mexican people as - la indiada analfabeta -, (illiterate indians)" ......
Of course nothing about che's racism is explained in del Toro film..... leftists only want to show the mythical side of the assassin.
Pierre San Martin a former prisoner in Fort La Cabaña, where thousand of cubans were killed by che, wrote: "It was May 1959. Suddenly the door of our cell opened and the guards pushed inside a skinny boy 12 years old. We all (prisoners) were surprised of having a child with us. Why are you here?, What did you do???, we asked him........ I fought with them, I tried to avoid them kill my dad but I couldn't, said the boy while crying and blooding from several points of his face.
Some days later the boy was brought to the shooting place. Che said to him "Get on your knees and ask my pardon", the boy answer was "I won't". Che walked around the child while taking out his pistol and once behind the boy said "So you are a valiant boy, eh????" and shot him in the neck causing the separation of the head and the body.
Che was responsible for 1897 summary executions in Cuba and more than 2000 along his life. Himself killed more than 20 persons for different reasons among them 2 boys. Felix Rodriguez, a cuban that participated in Che's capture in Bolivia, interrogated him about his responsibility in the dead of "more than 2000 peoples" ..... he protested the motives of those dead, "They all were CIA agents", he said but he did not said nothing about the quantity!!!!
= Jon Lee Anderson, author of the 800 + page 'Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life', who spent 5 years researching the man:
"I have yet to find a single credible source pointing to a case where Che executed an innocent. Those persons executed by Guevara or on his orders were condemned for the usual crimes punishable by death at times of war or in its aftermath: desertion, treason or crimes such as rape, torture or murder."
"We must say here what is a known truth, which we have always expressed before the world: firing squad executions, yes, we have executed; we are executing and we will continue to execute as long as is necessary. Our struggle is a struggle to the death."
Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqAvuiyzz5k
It's true the communists fixed some important things, universal healthcare is a good thing but the ideological baggage is unnecessary and oppressive. What's needed now are thousands of American visitors, companies setting up operations, free access to the Internet and all those other things that undermined the other communist regimes.
As long as we impose the restrictions, the Cuban government is relatively safe from those influences.
Eventually, expect Iranian-style street demonstrations.
By the way, Cuba had free health care and education long before Castro.
Hilarious.
In 2007 USA sold to Cuba goods for $582 000 000
In 2006 sold goods for $484 000 000
In 2008 sold goods for $680 000 000
USA supplies Cuba almost all food the island needs (85%), including……………..sugar!!!!!!!!!
In the years of the soviet subside to Cuba, the dictatorship received from Russia $360 000 000 000 cash (5.000 millinons yearly) and all needed, oil, weapons, wood, machinery, trucks. iron, paper and spear parts.
Only the received cash were equivalent to 100 Plan Marshall ………….. remember people……… with only one Plan Marchall Europe rose from devastation to welfare after WWII………… so
Embargo does not exist......... can you demonstrate the opposite after these figures????
In response to pressure from some American farmers and agribusiness, the embargo was relaxed by the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, which was passed by the Congress in October 2000 and signed by President Bill Clinton. The relaxation allowed the sale of agricultural goods and medicine to Cuba for humanitarian reasons. (Wikipedia)
The loss of the Soviet subsidies crippled Cuba and to this day it struggles.The real measure is not how much of Cuba's food cmes from US companies, but the comparison with what it would be if free trade was allowed.
If that was allowed, it would start to undermine the Cuban government much more effectively than the rantings of the exiles, which just corrupts our political process.
>Cuban schoolchildren begin their classes each day with the following slogan of indoctrination: “Pioneers for Communism, we will be like Che.” They will be then the new men; fanatics, liars, assassins and failed men, reaching the total realization of being like Che. Hatred to the enemies of the revolution is inculcated to the children in scholastic age. This quote of José Martà condemns hatred: “The haters should be declared traitors to the Republic. Hatred does not construct”<
A great article, very concise and at the same time comprehensive. A lot has been written about Che, but I hadn’t seen a compilation such complete and effective like this article.
Link: http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y09/enero09/23_O_3.html
But really, I wanted to point out that -ism has four noun constructs, of which a doctrine is one. It also forms nouns of action, state, or condition.
You missed the point Ms Yaoni on the pioneer status given to Che.