Spain is in crisis: Second in command of a NATO member is telling a fellow Spanish politician that Cuban communists were right to seize her property.

Che Guevara's totalitarian legacy is in power in Spain

Spain is in crisis. The 2nd Deputy Prime Minister of Spain Pablo Iglesias not only celebrates Che Guevara, who not only helped found a 61 year old dictatorship in Cuba, but whose threats of bloody murder gave rise to a generation of right wing military juntas across Latin America in reaction to communist efforts to violently destabilize the region.

When opposition Spanish politician Rocio Monasterio called out Spain's  2nd Deputy Prime Minister of Spain he failed to respond to her charge that Che Guevara had executed Cubans by firing squad in 1959,  and deflected by saying that the Cuban communists were right to seize her family's property. 

 

It is an appeal to the fundamental communist value that often goes unmentioned: envy. Translated to English  Mr. Iglesias said: "Your family became rich in Cuba with sugar industries that savagely exploited their workers, repressing them when they went on strike, thanks to the murderous dictatorships of Machado and Batista. The revolution did justice. It is logical that you hate Che. Greetings." Left out by Mr. Iglesias was the fact that labor unions in Cuba  had been one of the forces that removed Machado from power in 1933. 

The mass execution of Cubans in the early 1960s involved a fair amount of poor farmers, and workers who did not appreciate a communist dictatorship being imposed on them. Many took to the hills and resisted the imposition of a new dictatorship. Iglesias's so-called progressive sympathies apparently find nothing wrong with his hero rounding up the politically suspect and putting them to death.

The man Mr. Iglesias honors on his social media said in 1959: “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary … These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution!”

The Castro revolution executed thousands of Cubans, locked up hundreds of thousands of Cubans, built a police state, with the assistance of the KGB and the East German Stasi, and imposed revolutionary terror to consolidate power. Credible and conservative estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll against Cuban nationals ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000. In the beginning executions were televised in Cuba to terrorize the populace. 

Corporal of Dictator Batista's army, executed by a Castro firing squad, Andrew Lopez of UPI

Consistency is not Mr. Iglesias's strong suit. He claimed that Che "was murdered," but ignores that  Guevara was captured and killed on October 8, 1967 after attempting to violently over throw the government of Bolivia with an armed insurrection.  Would Mr. Iglesias consider that the men put to death by Ernesto "Che" Guevara were murdered? How about those who were executed for their belonging to a social class or holding opinions different than the Argentine Maoist who had not taken up arms, like he did? 

Rocio Monasterio raised the question of firing squads in 1959 and Pablo Iglesias dodged the question while regurgitating Pro-Castro talking points that are also false.

But what about his "hero", and the charge made by Ms. Monasterio?

Ernesto "Che" Guevara, in a letter to his father after executing an unarmed man made the following revelation: "I'd like to confess, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing." Mr. Iglesias is declaring as an exemplar a murderer who enjoyed killing. 

Despite facts presented Iglesias doubled down with slanders against a fellow member of parliament that do not reflect the reality, that prior to 1959 independent labor unions were powerful in Cuba, and the vast majority of Cuban workers had decent healthcare.

The success of labor unions in obtaining better conditions for their workers could be seen in their health indicators that saw greater improvement under the Republic (1902- 1959) than under the Castro regime (1959 - present). 

Pablo Iglesias seems to forget that Fulgencio Batista was a left wing dictator, and a person of color, with communists in his cabinet. One of them, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, ended up in Fidel Castro's regime.

Nor does Mr. Iglesias have a problem with both Fidel Castro's and Che Guevara's good relations with Francisco Franco. Or that Guevara attended a bull fight in Madrid with Franco's secret police.

Lastly, the Castro regime today is a white minority government that repressed a democratic dissident movement that more closely reflects the racial make up of Cuba today. Furthermore it is important to point out that the last three men executed by firing squad, were black men trying to flee Cuba to freedom, and in June 2020 a young black man was shot in the back and killed by revolutionary national police and in August 2020 a black opposition activist died on hunger strike protesting his unjust imprisonment.

This is the legacy that the 2nd Deputy Prime Minister of Spain Pablo Iglesias is wanting to make a reality in Spain and in other countries across Latin America.

Spaniards and friends of freedom around the world need to be vigilant with the government now in power in Spain, and in particular with Mr. Pablo Iglesias who is not shy about expressing his totalitarian sympathies.  

Absolutely true. The second in command of a NATO member is telling a fellow Spanish politician that the Cuban communists were right to take away her property. I wouldn’t buy a bicycle in Spain while this communist is Vice President. https://t.co/RRhWn3Fv88

— Mike Gonzalez (@Gundisalvus) October 10, 2020