Hating Che Guevara
Some righteous Che-bashing here and here.
Throw a rock in West Los Angeles, you'll hit someone wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt.
And do me a favor . . . throw it hard.
Throw a rock in West Los Angeles, you'll hit someone wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt.
And do me a favor . . . throw it hard.
posted by Kate Marie | 11:22 PM | Permalink
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8 comments
8 Comments:
One comment in the post you linked to stands out for me:
"Five years earlier, while a communist hobo in Guatemala, Che had seen the Guatemalan officer corps rise against the Red regime of Jacobo Arbenz and send him hightailing to Czechoslovakia."
There are a couple of distortions here: Jacobo Arbenz Guzman's government was not "Red." He was the democratically elected President of Guatemala. Nor did he flee directly to Czechoslovakia, he went first to Battista's Cuba and ended his life in Mexico.
Jacobo Arbenz Guzman tolerated the participation of the Guatemala Labor Party (a Communist organization) in Guatemalan politics and planned a land reform that threatened the interests of the United Fruit Company. He was overthrown in a CIA-engineered coup (labeled "Operation PBSuccess," an earlier and more successful version of the "Bay of Pigs" operation) that led to decades of military rule. Between 1954 and 1981 an estimated 60,000 people were killed by the various (US-supported) military governments of Guatemala, a record that more than rivals anything done in Castro's Cuba.
Despite the distortions and ellisions in the post to which you linked, I would agree with one point the author makes. The experience of Guatemala definitely shaped Che's attitudes and informed the tactics he applied to the struggle in Cuba. However ruthless the agents of "red revolution" were and are in Latin America, their US-backed opponents were and are no less so.
U.S. involvement in Guatemala was not our finest moment (see Normandy, liberation of Auschwitz, Kuwait, Emancipation Proclamation, etc. and so forth for that). However, just as the defenders of that action engage in knee-jerk defense of its noble motives, those who have made "Guatemala" a mantra of U.S. opposition are just as knee-jerk in their condemnation of it.
We live in an imperfect world with imperfect players. The U.S. since its inception has done its best to fight for freedom over tyranny, life over death and happiness over horror. At the time of PBSUCCESS operation, the greatest threat to freedom, life and happiness the world over was Communism and the Soviet Union. The U.S. believed, perhaps erroneously, that the Soviets were pulling the strings of the Guzman regime and attempting to establish a beach head in Latin America. We supported and funded a revolution to overthrow what we perceived to be a dangerous and developing communist regime in our region. Yes, a bloody civil war ensued. Yes, a lot of the guys we supported turned out to be bad (See also our support of Stalin over Hitler). Yes, the guys they were fighting were bad too. Yes it was ugly. Yes it ravaged the nation and many were killed. Were we wrong? Probably. But removedly instigating a revolution for freedom that reaped such havoc by those acting independently is far different than personally, oppressively and intentionally rounding up the people we don't like ourselves and lopping off their heads or murdering them with our firing squads like Che Guevera, Castro, and Stalin.
Just in case you were trying to equate the U.S. to the likes of those killers and oppressors (which I hope you were not trying to do, Madman), I felt compelled to speak up.
But here's the thing, Madman -- I don't walk around wearing a United Fruit Company T-shirt (or a Pinochet T-shirt). The notion that San Ernesto was NO WORSE than his U.S.-backed opponents (which is arguable, since he extolled the most tyrannical,illiberal form of government imaginable) doesn't go very far toward making him admirable, does it? That's the whole point . . . why is he a fashion statement?
"Power to the Peopppppppppllleee".
Dear Wonderdog,
I guess the fact that we live in an imperfect world with imperfect players creates the problem of how much imperfection is tolerable. Che's mistakes made out of fear of yanqui imperialism would seem not to be, while our mistakes made out of fear of Communism are? As far as I can see the only moral distinction you draw is that Che committed his crimes personally while we committed ours by proxy. If Che had been at Normandy would that have bought him a pass?
Of course, you could point to plenty of places where, unlike Guatemala (where I would still contend we took a pretty direct hand with some pretty venal motives mixed in among the nobler sentiments) terrible crimes were committed by Americans for America. Even there one could talk about how best intentions go awry, etc. etc. etc., but if we can cut ourselves this kind of slack why does someone like Che remain such an unalloyed villain? It's not as if Fulgencio Batista was Mother Theresa or the government he led was the Boy Scouts.
Dear Kate Marie,
Oh the irony of one who sports an "I Heart Haliburton" hat proclaiming her lack of an "I love United Fruit" T-shirt. I see your point, but your original post wasn't "De-fetishizing Che" or "Let's Not Wear Che T-Shirts" it was "Hating Che." I was just pointing out that taking such an unequivocal stance AGAINST Che pushes someone like the author of that post I cited into distortions and ellisions, Che might be a deeply ambivalent figure, but to deny him any nobler motives whatsoever takes some monkeying around with the facts.
As to why he continues to fascinate people, especially teenagers- you're a student of literature and narrative, the answer should be obvious. Che is an archetype (the Rebel) made flesh. His story has all of the drama of fiction or myth, and will continue to appeal, all the more so for the fact that no one is ever likely to succeed in the way Che did ever again, given the new state of the world's technology and the new resources available to the world's governments. There are stories so primal their allure transcends politics or even morality.
Che is "deeply ambivalent" -- on a smaller scale -- in the same way that Stalin and Mao are "deeply ambivalent." He's "deeply ambivalent," for that matter, in the way that Pinochet is "deeply ambivalent," but I don't see you pleading that we not ignore Pinochet's "nobler motives" when we condemn him. I'm not denying ANY nobler motives -- I simply don't care about them. As I said before, Che committed his murders in the name of the most tyrannical, illiberal form of government on earth. It doesn't excuse him, or make him any less reprehensible, to say he cared about the plight of the poor and oppressed. In the end, he committed his mass murders not because he liked poor people, but because he was a perpetual adolescent in thrall to an ideology of hatred and power.
"As to why he continues to fascinate people, especially teenagers- you're a student of literature and narrative, the answer should be obvious. Che is an archetype (the Rebel) made flesh. His story has all of the drama of fiction or myth, and will continue to appeal, all the more so for the fact that no one is ever likely to succeed in the way Che did ever again, given the new state of the world's technology and the new resources available to the world's governments. There are stories so primal their allure transcends politics or even morality."
-- That might be convincing except for the fact that only about ten percent (and I'm probably being generous) of the adolescents and Hollywood types who wear the Che T-shirts know the FIRST thing about him. For them, he's a rebel archetype in EXACTLY the same way that James Dean is a rebel archetype; he hasn't needed to be de-contextualized in order to pass into myth and iconography, because those who wear the T-shirts never understood him in context in the first place. [This is tangential, but it kind of reminds me of a story I read about Johhny Depp and his Charles Manson T-shirt. Depp lives in Paris, and according to the story, he asks people he admires to sign his T-shirt. He had planned to ask Roman Polanski to sign his shirt, until somebody explained to him why that wasn't such a good idea . . .)
As for Che's "success." If Cuba is an example of success, then I suppose we can congratulate Pinochet for his murderous regime, as well. Gandhi is a "rebel" who succeeded far beyond San Ernesto's wildest dreams. Why don't we see him on T-shirts? Because he doesn't look cool and wear a beret.
P.S. I forgot to mention the fact that, in the places where Che shirts proliferate, wearing one is anything but "rebellious." It's a concession to trendy conformism.
Get one of these if you really want to be subversive:
http://www.thoseshirts.com/noche.html
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