Note to His Admirers: Commandant Ernesto "Che" Guevara is still dead and his ideas are toxic

"I'd like to confess, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing." Ernesto "Che" Guevara, in a letter to his father after executing an unarmed man.  

Che Guevara dining with Mao Zedong in 1960 during the Great Leap Forward

Ideas have consequences and those ideas are sometimes represented in iconic images. This is the case of the image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his toxic philosophy of political action that others seek to emulate.  He embraced hatred and dehumanization of the other as the means to carry out what he thought necessary actions.

“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.”

Guevara's claim to fame was the role he played alongside Fidel and Raul Castro in installing a totalitarian communist regime in Cuba then attempting to spread this model using violent means in Africa and Latin America. 

Months after the world came perilously close to a nuclear holocaust in October 1962, Che Guevara was disappointed. Guevara declared in November 1962: "What we affirm is that we must proceed along the path of liberation even if this costs millions of atomic victims.”

Ernesto 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 legitimate government there and install a Castro style dictatorship. His legacy at the time was already one of blood and terror that should be lamented not celebrated.

Guevara was an admirer and an ideological ally of Mao Zedong, who is the greatest mass murderer in human history.

Armando Valladares, the Cuban dissident, writer, poet and former prisoner of conscience who served 22 years in Cuban prisons starting in 1960 described him as follows: 

"He was a man full of hatred … Che Guevara executed dozens and dozens of people who never once stood trial and were never declared guilty … In his own words, he said the following: 'At the smallest of doubt we must execute.' And that's what he did at the Sierra Maestra and the prison of Las Cabañas."    

If one doubts the above observation by Valladares characterizing Guevara as a hateful mass murderer then one need only look to the Argentine guerrilla's own words embracing violence, armed struggle and "annihilating" capitalists in letters to his Aunt and parents. He was a communist who in 1953 in a letter written from Guatemala to his Aunt Beatriz reported on an oath he made, "I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won't rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated."

Anniversary of the death of murderous, sadistic, homophobe, racist Che Guevara.

Fidel Castro asked a crowd “What do we want our children to be” and they answered ”We want them to be like Che”.

Chilling. Horrific.

Photo of the two assassins together. pic.twitter.com/Fp5bsIFK8S

— Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (@RosLehtinen) October 9, 2019

Today, his views on race and homosexuality have not aged well. It is interesting that whereas Gandhi's views as a young man have been questioned and continue to be criticized Che Guevara gets a pass despite writing in his motorcycle diary:

"The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese. And the two ancient races have now begun a hard life together, fraught with bickering and squabbles. Discrimination and poverty unite them in the daily fight for survival but their different ways of approaching life separate them completely: The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations."

In the same diary he refers to homosexuality in a negative context:

"The episode upset us a little because the poor man, apart from being homosexual and a first-rate bore, had been very nice to us, giving us 10 soles each, bringing our total to 479 for me and 163 1/2 to Alberto."

Fidel Castro in a March 13, 1963 speech was clear in his distaste for the "effeminate" were he openly attacked “long-haired layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of organizing “effeminate shows” in public places.  The Cuban dictator, and Guevara's comrade, warned: “They should not confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with weaknesses in the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these degenerates.”

Two years later in 1965, Fidel Castro spoke explicitly about the Cuban Revolution's views on homosexuals:

“We would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant communist should be.” 

In 1964 the Castro regime began rounding up Gays and sending them to Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción). These forced labor camps were for those suspected of or found guilty of "improper conduct."  Persons with effeminate mannerisms: what the Cuban government called "extravagant behavior" were taken to these camps.  

Admirers of Ernesto "Che" Guevara need to do some soul searching and ask themselves do they want dehumanize those they disagree with, in order to murder them without mercy?  This is what Che Guevara did in Cuba and sought to carry out in Bolivia when he was captured and executed. Why are you wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with image of a psychotic mass murderer? 

Finally, to those who introduce this individual to children, they should be charged with child abuse.

Che Guevara executed for trying to overthrow government of Bolivia on this day in 1967