Che Guevara Honoured - Political Forum

Kazikli Bey · #1 (**permalink**) 10-09-2007, 07:46 AM

Source: Che Guevara honoured | The Australian

Quote:

October 09, 2007

LEFTIST leaders and sympathisers marked the 40th anniversary of the death of revolutionary icon Ernesto Che Guevara today in Cuba, where he is buried, and Bolivia, where he was killed in 1967.

Acting president, Raul Castro, led the main event in Cuba here under a giant bronze statue of the guerrilla fighter in the town of Santa Clara, some 300km east of Havana.

Convalescing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, 81, was absent, but a homage he penned was read in public. The Argentine-born doctor-turned-guerrilla was "a flower torn up prematurely by the stem. I bow my head to pay tribute - with respect and gratitude - to the exceptional warrior," Castro wrote.

Guevara's Argentine widow Aleida March, 71, attended the event, along with his four children Aleida, Camilo, Celia and Ernesto. Guevara had a daughter with his first wife, a Peruvian revolutionary, both of whom are dead.

Loudspeakers also blared an October 3, 1965 recording of Fidel reading a farewell letter that Guevara wrote as he prepared to join the guerrilla war in the Congo.

Guevara's youngest son, Ernesto, honoured his father by roaring by on a bright red motorcycle along with 37 members of Cuba's Harley-Davidson motorcycle club.

The drive-by memorialised Guevara's ride across Latin America in the early 1950s on his Norton 250, immortalised in the book - recently turned into a movie - The Motorcycle Diaries.

Guevara fought a key battle in Santa Clara in 1958 during the Cuban revolution. In 1997 Castro buried Che's remains in this town after his bones were discovered in Vallegrande, Bolivia, where soldiers executed him after he was captured in 1967 as he tried to spread Marxist revolution to South America.

In Vallegrande, at the main Bolivian event, leftist President Evo Morales told a crowd of 3,000, including a former guerrilla fighter from Cuba and leftists from six nations, that Che will be remembered "for his political ideology and for giving his life for others.

"This struggle continues, as long as there is capitalism, as long as neo-liberalism does not change," Morales said as the crowd roared in support.

The leftist Venezuelan government honoured Che by unveiling a monument at Pico del Aguila, some 4,000 metres (13,100 feet) above sea level in western Venezuela.

"This is a sacred place," said Culture Minister Francisco Sesto, noting that both Che and 19th century liberator Simon Bolivar visited the site.

In Miami, the capital of the rabidly anti-Castro Cuban exile community, the views on Che were not as positive.

"He is the symbol of anti-Americanism, of violence. I don't think he should be remembered for anything good," said Felipe Salinas, a resident of Miami's Little Havana.

"Like many people," said Maria Carrera, another exile who left Cuba a decade ago, "I was a Che fanatic. But since I arrived in Miami I don't defend him any more. Here we receive information, which does not happen in Cuba, about Che ordering many executions."

Che is a complex person that blends legend and reality, said Uva de Aragon, a Cuban-American academic at Florida International University.

"We'll still have to wait many years for history to deliver a definite judgement on Che, when the passions of both sides have passed," she said.

Born in the Argentine city of Rosario, Guevara was shocked to witness the economic disparity of the region during his travels across Latin America in 1952 and 1953.

Guevara met Castro in Mexico in 1955, and quickly joined the uprising against then Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. By the time the revolution triumphed in January 1959, Guevara was a key player.

The guerrilla leader was convinced that violence was necessary to overturn the unjust social order in Latin America.

After leaving Cuba and leading a group of Cuban revolutionaries fighting with Marxist guerrillas in the Congo, Guevara travelled to Bolivia, arriving in late 1966.

He led a small clutch of rebels for 11 months trying to spread revolution, but found little support.

The Bolivian army and two Cuban-American US Central Intelligence Agency agents captured an ill Guevara in the village of La Higuera, and executed him on October 9, 1967. He was 39.

- AFP

The spirit lives on, even though Che did some bad things, people remember him more for his message, his passion and his powerful love for people that he didn't even know. His life was given to others, maybe not always for the right cause or ideals but i think we can all agree that his intentions were always good and that he was never in it for himself. He is a man to be admired, sometimes i wish some world leaders today would take a leaf or two out of his book and share his passion for a just world based on equality and brotherhood.

joep182 · #2 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 03:12 PM

Che was and is the greatest, an ironically Christ-like figure.

Roycerson · #3 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 03:49 PM

Are you fucking kidding me? Jesus of Nazareth didn't try to murder his way to utopia.

I think you owe him a big apology. What fuck is wrong with people? Che was fucking evil incarnate.

I think it should be legal to shoot a person sporting Che gear, it's self-defense. They're clearly out to destroy me and most free people.

1. Che was responsible for the execution of thousands of political prisoners in Cuba (most of them purely for their opposition to Castro's communist policies or for no reason at all).

2. Che enjoyed torturing and abusing the prisoners, including children.

3. Che was instrumental in setting up the Castro regime's massive forced labor camps and secret police apparatus.

4. Che tried to organize campaigns of terrorism against civilians in the US and elsewhere (though he largely failed in these efforts).

5. Far from being merely a Third World nationalist or pragmatic leftist, he was a committed, hard-line Stalinist, even going so far as to call himself "Stalin II" early in his career.

He DEFINES "enemy of freedom".

joep182 · #4 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 04:28 PM

"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality"

“If you tremble indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine” - el comandante

Roycerson · #5 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 04:31 PM

"Hatred is an element of struggle; relentless hatred of the enemy that impels us over and beyond the natural limitations of man and transforms us into effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machines. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy."

Looks to me like he said whatever he thought would work at the time. He can't be telling the truth in both cases. He was clearly a liar as well as a murderer and tyrant.

joep182 · #6 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 04:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roycerson

"Hatred is an element of struggle; relentless hatred of the enemy that impels us over and beyond the natural limitations of man and transforms us into effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machines. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy."

Looks to me like he said whatever he thought would work at the time. He can't be telling the truth in both cases. He was clearly a liar as well as a murderer and tyrant.

Of course he can be true in both cases. You can love your comrades and hate the exploitative class you seek to destroy. There is no contradiction.

iTaliAN_ICe · #7 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 04:41 PM

He certainly wasn't as great or perfect as some people would have you believe. As far as I'm concerned, he was just a person - no better or worse than the next.

Now, he's little more than a picture rich white kids wear on their t-shirts to seem "rebellious."

Roycerson · #8 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 04:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joep182

Of course he can be true in both cases. You can love your comrades and hate the exploitative class you seek to destroy. There is no contradiction.

OK... but he's still a murderer/tyrant/enemy of freedom and all around evil motherfucker and his followers are still advocates of same.

joep182 · #9 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 04:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by iTaliAN_ICe

Now, he's little more than a picture rich white kids wear on their t-shirts to seem "rebellious."

He's far more than a picture - he is an inspiration to millions. His story, more than any reveals a love and empathy for fellow man. If we lived in a world of Che's it would be a far better place.

Seremos como el Che

Roycerson · #10 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joep182

He's far more than a picture - he is an inspiration to millions. His story, more than any reveals a love and empathy for fellow man. If we lived in a world of Che's it would be a far better place.

Seremos como el Che

If we lived in a world of Ches (plural not possessive) everyone would be dead or enslaved. "For the good of the whole"