Che chic
"Many of the early leaders of the Cuban revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che [Guevara] was a mainstay of the hard-line pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's 'labor camp' system — the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination.
"In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for 'two, three, many Vietnams,' he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: 'Hatred as an element of struggle; 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. This is what our soldiers must become. ... ' — and so on. ...
"Che was an enemy of freedom, and yet he has been erected into a symbol of freedom. He helped establish an unjust social system in Cuba and has been erected into a symbol of social justice. He stood for the ancient rigidities of Latin-American thought, in a Marxist-Leninist version, and he has been celebrated as a free-thinker and a rebel. And thus it is in [Walter] Salles' [film] 'Motorcycle Diaries.' "
— Paul Berman, writing on "Don't Applaud 'The Motorcycle Diaries,'" Friday in Slate at www.slate.com |
