By Don Carver, Miami *
Ché  the  Idol

It was Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet dictator, who first warned the world of the “cult of personality”, that irrational and emotional process of lionization that transforms a man into a myth. Khrushchev was warning the Soviet Union of the cult that had formed around Joseph Stalin, a cult that distorted Stalin's image from that of a mere mortal into an infallible authority, a spiritual figurehead, the Christ of communism. In much the same way, Ernesto Ché Guevara has become a mythical and moral leader for the radical left in America . They wear his image proudly on the chests of their shirts, his face adorns their dorm room walls and his memory remains sacred in their hearts.

The statist left has adopted the image of Ché as their own, making him a mascot of their movement. No so-called “peace” rally would be complete without a poster or placard extolling the Argentinean-born revolutionary. Uncritically they accept the man and the myth as a symbol of the “social justice” they agitate for, a pious-like leader and mentor for their ambitious and righteous project of re-shaping the world according to their orthodoxy.

The legend of Ché, a socialist who realized the dream of collectivism, appears to be inseparable from their statist fantasies. Ché is an icon from the now seemingly bygone world they once celebrated in which socialism engulfed the better part of the globe and statist radicals were making headway here at home. These sentiments are evident in the demonstrative light in which Ché is regarded in today.

In the 1999 Time Magazine list of the 100 most important people of the 20th century, Ariel Dorfman remarks that Ché was “an adventurer who… broke down limits without once betraying his basic loyalties” calling him a “hero” who “provides the restless youth of our era with… a fierce center of moral gravity” and calling him “Christ-like.” In the movie The Motorcycle Diaries which received rave reviews at the Sundance Film Festival, Ché was glorified as a humanitarian and rebel against authority. The popular band Rage Against the Machine whose videos can be found on MTV have put his image on their T-shirts and posters. Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher called Ché \"the most complete human being of our age.\" “He is a romantic. He had a political consciousness that changed Latin America ” gushed García Bernal, the actor who played Chéin the Showtime mini-series Fidel and in The Motorcycle Diaries in a Los Angeles Times interview. But who was the man behind the legend? Who was the real Ché?

Ché's Repression
He was more than just a guerilla and fiery orator, but also a leader at the helm of the new communist government in Cuba.  Ché and Castro were the chief engineers of this new social experiment. While Ché held many formal positions, from the head of the central bank, to manager of Cuba 's central planning committee, he was most importantly Castro's unofficial right-hand man and most enthusiastic advocate.

As soon as Ché and Castro took power in Cuba, they began to break the promises that had fueled the rebellion against the Batista regime. By June of 1959, just 6 months after the rebel victory over Batista, Castro announced that elections would be postponed indefinitely. When asked why, he simply quipped “Elections? What for?” At the same time, and as always with Ché's backing, he suspended the 1940 constitution which guaranteed many fundamental rights. The French writer Jeannine Verdès-Laroux commented “the totalitarian nature of the regime was inscribed there from the very beginning.” In the years following the revolution new laws banned the freedom of association, the right to free speech and the free press would be abolished, replaced by strict speed codes and a party run press directed from the top. The new regime also deported dissidents and priests, closed colleges and spied on students, and persecuted artists and Christians. The functionality and power of formerly independent unions were taken over by the ministry of labor while the government seized massive amount of private property without regard for property rights. The once independent judiciary was put under control of the executive. On May Day in 1960 Castro announced there would be no elections in Cuba —ever. Castro and Ché were now full-fledged tyrants, capable of ruling by decree. This led way to their ability to set up forced labor camps, similar to those used by the Soviets and Nazis.

Various groups have estimated that Cuba held between 15,000 and 500,000 or so political prisoners between 1959 and the 1980s and murdered about 20,000 Cubans. To this day no one knows the exact figure however, because of the regime continues to restrict the flow of information in and out of the country. This is the “social justice” Ché helped bring to Cuba.

Ché the Mass Murder
For a man who claimed to be liberating the peasants of Latin America, Ché spent an awful lot of his time obliterating them. From very early on he had learned the value of violence to maintain order and consolidate power. As part of a rebel detachment fighting the Batista regime in Cuba, Ché had a child who had stolen some food immediately executed without trial. After the 1959 rebel victory in Cuba over the Batista regime, various foreign presses reported that over 600 Batista supporters were killed in mass executions. Ché was later made the supreme prosecutor of the new state's “cleaning commission” and sent hundreds to their deaths at La Cabaña prison while Fidel Castro 's brother and Ché comrade Raúl Castro rounded up POWs and massacred them. Historian Jorge Castañeda charges that these executions “were carried out without respect for due process” The Cuban human rights activist Armando Valladares who was imprisoned at the La Cabana prison claims that Ché took “personal interest” in the torture and execution of some political prisoners.

While many of the anti-Batista revolutionaries favored democratic socialism or western democracy, Ché and Castro favored Soviet-style communism. After the revolution toppled the Batista regime, the jockeying for power began. Ché was vicious in his strategy against the democrats, deporting them, jailing them, sending them to concentration camps and executing them. In Ché's Cuba you could be put up against the wall simply for passing out anti-communist literature, a tactic Che referred to as “justice at the service of future justice” Regis Débray, Ché's Bolivian companion described him as “an authoritarian through and through”

Ché was ambitious however, and thusly desired to obliterate more than just his political rivals and own innocent people. During the Cuban missile crisis, he demanded that nuclear war be unleashed on the United States . He told British reporter Sam Russell that “if the [nuclear] missiles had been under Cuban control [during the Cuban missile crisis], they would have fired them off.” Reportedly, he was disappointed when Khrushchev decided to draw back his weapons in the missile crisis. \"If the weapons had been left, we would have used them against the heart of the USA\" he remarked.

Creating a Just Society
Historical analysis shows that Ché was instrumental in setting up the Cuban concentration camps, hence the Nazi SS Death's Head skull which adorns the beret of the Che figure on the cover of this magazine. The corrective work camps housed both political dissidents and so-called social “deviants” such as homosexuals and other social outcasts. Samuel Farber, a writer raised in Cuba contends that “Ché Guevara played a key role in inaugurating a tradition of arbitrary administrative, non-judicial detentions [concentration camps]…for the confinement of dissidents and social ‘deviants.'” Che comrades like Regis Débray admit Ché was the engine behind the idea. One of Ché's chief policies for the new Cuba included sending “people who have committed crimes against revolutionary morals” to the forced labor camps to be re-educated.

It was Ché's hatred of the individual that led him to squeeze out any semblance of independent thought from Cuba . He trusted in the collective: collective redistribution, or socialism and collective justice, or social justice. In a July 1960 speech, Ché told a crowd of students and workers that “individualism… must disappear in Cuba ” saying that the proper “utilization” of the individual is for the “absolute benefit of the community.” Men were mere components in Ché's socialist nightmare. It was this attitude that lead Ché to lash out against all and any who disagreed with his orthodoxy and his vision of a socialist super state which would ensure social justice for all and freedom for none. He wasn't just socializing the economy. He was socializing the people.

Ché's new order required indoctrinating Cuban society according to his vision of “revolutionary morality”. This new morality transformed individual Cubans into what he called the “new man”, mere vessels of the collective, devices under absolute control, working in the absolute interest the state. In this way the state could control the minds of Cubans and target them absolutely in one direction and at one enemy. Like Hitler, Ché used hatred to focus the energies of the masses. \"Hatred as an element of struggle” Ché remarked in his essay Two, Three, Many Vietnams, “unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine [emphasis mine]” This is ultimately what Chéadvocated, the creation of an organic machine, filled with killers and under his control, bringing his brand of social justice to the world.

His Legacy
Ché's legacy is one of repression, terror, murder and destruction. One in which children lost their parents, patriots lost their country and tens of thousands lost their lives. Yet so many who claim to be supporters of peace seem are so enthralled with the cult of Ché. So what makes his life and actions so compelling?

Ché is a hero to the statist left, not in spite of what he did, but because of it. Because he implemented the ultimate form of social collectivism. What Ché represents is what the statists are really seeking: unyielding control over the destiny of others, the economic and political livelihoods of America 's citizens. The right and the ability to implement social justice as they see fit. This is what his image represents and this is what the statists desire. He was a man who got things done, who not only advocated but implemented.

Ché represents the next step for the statist activists, from ideas to actions. He is the manifestation of their rebellion, rebellion against individualism, diversity, capitalism, freedom. But real rebels do not support centralized state authority. They do not support collectivism. They fight it. Real rebels don't worship a cult of personality. Real rebels crash it. Those who worship Ché aren't rebels or peace activists. They are dupes furthering the destructive legacy of collectivism and the mayhem it has wrought the world over.

* For NetforCuba International / June 14, 2005
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