Note to UNESCO: Comandante Ernesto "Che" Guevara is Still Dead

Unfortunately, the United Nations is trying to promote his ideology using U.S. tax dollars

Ideas have consequences and those ideas are sometimes represented by iconic images. This is the case with the image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara and the philosophy of political action that he advocated and that others seek to emulate.  His claim to fame was the role he played along with Fidel and Raul Castro in installing a totalitarian communist regime in Cuba and attempting to spread this model using violent means in Africa and Latin America. Guevara was executed  summarily on October 9, 1967 in La Higuera, Bolivia after he and his band of guerrillas were captured trying to overthrow the government there and install a Castro style regime. His is a legacy of blood and terror that should be lamented not celebrated.

However the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) doesn't see it that way and decided on June 18, 2013 to add “The Life and Works of Che Guevara” to the World Registrar. UNESCO is providing funds to preserve Che Guevara’s papers. Guevara in addition to promoting communist ideology, is best known as an advocate for guerrilla warfare who viewed terrorism as a legitimate method of struggle against an enemy. U.S. tax dollars are paying for some of this. As the world threatens to spiral down into more extreme violence, perhaps one should consider some of the messages UNESCO and U.S. tax dollars are paying for in promoting the writings of Mr. Guevara. The website I Hate the Media compiled ten quotes that reflect the overall thinking and legacy of the Argentine communist revolutionary.

1. “Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!” (1953)

2. “Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary.” (1967)

3. “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary … These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution!” (1959)

4. “A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The Wall!” The Wall is a reference to the wall where Che’s enemies stood before his firing squads.

5. “I am not Christ or a philanthropist, old lady, I am all the contrary of a Christ … I fight for the things I believe in, with all the weapons at my disposal and try to leave the other man dead so that I don’t get nailed to a cross or any other place.” (1956)

6. “If any person has a good word for the previous government that is good enough for me to have him shot.” (1967)

7. Che wanted the result of the Cuban missile crisis to be an atomic war. “What we affirm is that we must proceed along the path of liberation even if this costs millions of atomic victims.”

8. “In fact, if Christ himself stood in my way, I, like Nietzsche, would not hesitate to squish him like a worm.”

9. “Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.”

10. “It’s a sad thing not to have friends, but it is even sadder not to have enemies.”

Guevara's legacy and philosophy of hatred, war and death is a recipe for violent failure. Even if the Guevarist disciple is successful on the battlefield the so called victory will be a dystopian nightmare for all. In 2011 events in Libya were still unfolding but the images of Che Guevara on both sides indicated that regardless the outcome the end result would a bloody and violent disaster. Here is what I wrote at the time:

Australia's News Limited reported on March 28, 2011 that jubilant rebels had set eyes on Qaddafi's home town. At one time Qaddafi himself was viewed as an "African Che." This meant that Qaddafi's rule was brutal, bloody and short for dissenters. At the same time the rebels, also embracing Guevara's bloody political code, have in their uprising against a tyrant also engaged in war crimes and despicable behavior. This does not bode well for what ever emerges out of the conflict in Libya.

The fact that UNESCO is now promoting these writings internationally will lead to more unnecessary bloodshed and conflict. Instead of embracing this icon of violence, and others, the world needs to learn from and emulate non violent icons such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Aung San Suu Kyi, Corazon Aquino, Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa, and Desmond Tutu.

Thankfully, the Nobel Peace Prize has a better tradition of this and has demonstrated it once more in 2015 with awarding it to the National Dialogue Quartet that brought a nonviolent and democratic outcome to the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia.

Che Guevara died violently after spending a good chunk of his life arranging executions and using unconventional and violent means to overthrow governments. Sadly, the UN is promoting ideas and philosophies that will turn young people wanting "to be like Che" into becoming cold killing machines and meeting his same fate. This cycle of glorifying violence needs to end. Guevara's ideas like Hitler's and Mao's need to be recognized for the failure that they are.