Unfortunately, most people with Che t-shirts and posters who go around pumping their fists and yelling revolucion have no clue as to who he was really. Any Hollywood film made about his life will manipulate history just like all historical films do. You sacrifice the ugly or the boring for the romantic.

Slate Magazine writes about the Che Guevara people should know,

But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution’s first firing squads. He founded Cuba’s “labor camp” system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che’s imagination.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa (son of Mario Vargas Llosa) has a more detailed account of, “The Killing Machine: Che Guevara, from Communist Firebrand to Capitalist Brand”

I’ve often thought of making a T-shirt that had Che Guevara on the left side, underneath the title ‘Leftist Totalitarian’, and Augusto Pinochet on the right side underneath the title ‘Rightist Dictator”, and at the bottom of both write, “Atleast Rightist Dictators leave you with a better economy”.

The love of Che by the left is a perfect example of their moral bankruptcy and their disconnect with reality.

“Atleast Rightist Dictators leave you with a better economy”

Oh my gosh, I know you just didn’t lend support to that bastard Agusto Pinochet. It’s too bad all those Chileans murdered under the Pinochet regime did not live to enjoy the good economy.

Che was a Marxist murderer. For an accurate view of this sociopath’s crimes against humanity see this article by Humberto Fontova:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19823

Gustavo,
Che was a “Marxist murderer?” Give me a break.

Che wasn’t just a Marxist dictator, he was the worse kind of Marxist dictators, as Slate writes, “Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won.”

Cuba under Fulgencio Batista was no paradise that’s for sure

It certainly was no paradise, but compared to how Che left Cuba afterwards, it can be considered a paradise. Here are some stats about Cuba before and after Che and Castro,

Before Castro, Cuba was as rich as Italy, and richer than Spain. Cuba has not merely lagged behind, it has actually grown poorer, and is now more than five times poorer than these countries. It used to be among the richest in Latin America, now it’s among the poorest.

Cubans had better access to food than all other Latin American countries, except Argentina, before Castro, but now they have worse access than almost all the others. Cubans are the only people in Latin America who have seen their intake of calories decrease since then. It is now better than in the 90s, but more than every tenth Cuban is chronically undernourished.

Cuba had lower infant mortality than all other Latin American countries before Castro, and lower than France, Italy and Japan. It is the only area where progress has continued since then, but it has been much slower than in other similar countries.

(Source: Manuel Sánchez Herrero och Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique: Los llamados logros.)

But hasn’t anyone benefited from the revolution? Sure, Castro has amassed a fortune equal to ten percent of Cuba’s GDP. This is one dictator who does not wear his uniform because he can’t afford a suit.

And, oh, did I mention that Castro has murdered more than 70 000 of his own citizens for political reasons? That’s about seven times more than Pinochet, who is hated by all leftists who love Castro. Apparently murder and brutality is not what they object to in Pinochet.

Reminds me of this quote,

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism[communism] is the equal sharing of miseries.” – Sir Winston Leonard Spenser Churchill

HP, so I take it you’re not going to watch the upcoming Che movie when it comes out? Come on man, it’s on me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I think del Toro is a great actor. Did anyone see the movie “Fidel” in which pretty boy Gael also played Che? Sadly, it forced otherwise talented Latin American actors to sputter out cheesy lines in English, but it also had a much more balanced look at the revolution and Che than The Motorcycle Diaries.

HP is not the only nutty Pinochet apologist out there.

Hey, I am no Pinochet apologist, I was making a comparison.

But on the other hand, I’d rather be called a ‘Pinochet apologist’ than a ‘Che apologist’, that’s for sure.

Btw, thanks for the subtle compliment JWM, glad to know I’m not ‘actually scary’.