IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily: The Real Che Was No T-Shirt Idol, As Cuban-American Author Finds

IBDeditorials.com: The Real Che Was No T-Shirt Idol, As Cuban-American Author Finds

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, July 10, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Cuba's late Marxist revolutionary, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, is experiencing something of a revival these days. His fiery-eyed visage and rock-star good looks, immortalized in an iconic snapshot by photographer Alfredo Korda in 1961, seem to epitomize the youthful idealism of revolution, rebellion and free-spiritedness.

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Since then, the famous communist's face has shown up on T-shirts, car decals, wristwatches, baby clothes, CD cases, hubcaps, jewelry, backpacks, and in Manhattan classroom posters, ironically advertising value of his image to capitalist markets.

Hillary Clinton has been spotted at campaign rallies with Che T-shirt wearers. Carlos Santana has paraded his shirt at award shows. Angelina Jolie reportedly sports a Che tattoo. And Hollywood has idealized the Argentine-born revolutionary in glossy movies like "The Motorcycle Diaries."

The only problem with this romance is there's not a wisp of truth to it. Guevara was a deadly "killing machine" whose legacy was to enslave and impoverish Cuba.

Cuban-American author Humberto Fontova researched the man behind the image, exploring why pop culture seems so enamored of Che Guevara. Speaking to dozens of Cubans who knew and fought with Guevara (1928-1967), Fontova pieced together a very different picture of Guevara for his book, "Exposing The Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him."

We spoke with Fontova about the real Che, one of history's most undeservedly idolized mass murderers.

IBD: You spent some of your childhood in the first years of the Cuban revolution before your family managed to escape in 1961. How did your family manage to get out?

Fontova: Filmmaker Michael Moore said that the reason Cubans live so well in the U.S. is that they brought all their loot from Havana. But almost all Cubans came to the U.S. with only the clothes on their backs.

We managed to get out by plane, not raft, or inner tube in 1961. The totalitarian bureaucracy allowed some people to get out legally, but it took a year to get the paperwork done, and as we got to the airport, Cuban troops yanked my mother's earrings off her ears and my sister's crucifix off her neck, letting them take only one suitcase.

They said the items belongs to "la revolution," or "the people" and what they meant by "the people" was the Stalinist functionaries' family. My father drilled holes in (the) soles of his shoes and hid his wedding rings.

But at the last stage before the flight, when were leaving from the airport, security forces came and grabbed my father and said he's not going anywhere. Just before they dragged him through the door, my mom said we aren't leaving. My dad told her she had to leave, and we figured he was going to the firing squads. He told my mom "Whatever happens to me, I don't want my children growing up in communist country." We were just ages 8, 5 and 7 years old but we knew something was wrong.

IBD: Why did your dad want to flee?

Fontova: My dad doesn't like to take orders. There's this myth that anyone leaving Fidel Castro's revolution had to be a millionaire, a gangster or a crook. All he wanted was to not be a slave.

We got to Miami, and my mom called Havana. She learns my father is in G2 security headquarters where people were taken for questioning. A lot of people didn't emerge from that questioning and you can imagine my mom's terror, in a strange country, not a penny to her name, three kids and probably a widow. My family moved to New Orleans to stay with relatives.

New Orleans had a fair number of Cubans, and we lived in a small apartment. A few months went by and my mom picks up the receiver again. This time, her reaction was markedly different, this was a screech of joy. My father was calling from the airport, and I remember my dad emerging from the door of the plane and she was running and that embrace I'll never forget. Our story had a happy ending.

What I am trying to do is remind and inform people that thousands of Cuban families did not have a happy ending.

IBD: You mention that the regime imprisoned people. What kinds of figures are you talking about?

Fontova: Cuba in 1961 had 6.3 million people. According to Freedom House, 500,000 Cubans have passed through Cuba's prison systems, proportionately more than went through Stalin's Gulag. At one time in 1961, 350,000 Cubans (were) jailed for political crimes and 1 out of 18 Cubans was a political prisoner. These were people who were overheard talking badly against regime. It's very difficult for people to visualize what a totalitarian regime is — after all, doesn't Latin America always have dictatorship?. Yeah, but Latin America does not have totalitarian Stalinist dictatorships, except in Cuba.

IBD: How did Che create this?

Fontova: It wasn't two weeks after Castro entered Havana that Soviet agents entered. Che was the main conduit with Soviet intelligence agencies.

The Cuban regime executed more people proportionately in its first three years in power than Hitler did in six. Think about that execution rate and then think about that slogan associated with Che — "resist oppression." The ironies are so rich, comparing what Cuban-Americans read and what they experienced.

IBD: Guevara bragged from the podium of the United Nations that "we do executions."

Fontova: And he said "we will continue to do executions" in 1964. According to the Black Book of Communism, published in Paris, 14,000 men and boys were executed in Cuba by that stage, that would be the equivalent of 3 million executions in the U.S., and yet that man who carried them out was hailed by Jesse Jackson, who wrote a book condemning capital punishment.

IBD: Speaking of communist chic, Cameron Diaz got into trouble for toting a Mao bag in Peru, where people knew Maoist terror.

Fontova: But you will notice that Cameron Diaz apologized, so I attribute 80% of the Che paraphernalia seen on people to ignorance. Especially when I am in a generous mood. I hate to think people are that dumb. With ignorance, it's different, they just don't know. After all, if you were to see Korda's picture of Che from a distance, you might say that's a pretty cool picture because it looks like Jim Morrison of The Doors. They have big notions, especially the young kids who see Che as a hero — that he is a revolutionary, that he fought "The Man." No, sir, I say, he was "The Man" that rebellious people fought against. You got it completely backwards.

IBD: You wrote about how Che loathed rock 'n' rollers, gays, artists, black people, and anybody who was part of the establishment.

Fontova: I do this in (the) book by simply quoting Ernesto "Che" Guevara. There is a misperception that he was a free spirit. He had cold Stalinist personality. He used to sign his early correspondence "Stalin II." He said early on that he saw the solution to all the world's problems behind (the) Iron Curtain. But this was not some hippie dippie Marxist, Guevara said in speech in 1962 that he regarded the very spirit of rebellion as anti-revolutionary. Figure that out, he said individualism must disappear in Cuba. If you tried to do your own thing under his regime you wound up in a prison camp.

IBD: What about his personality?

Fontova: He had an arrogant nature. I interviewed people who visited him and tried to save their sons from firing squad executions without trial. He liked to toy with them. He liked to pick up the phone in front of weeping mothers and bark out, "Execute the Fernandez boy right now!"

He was clinically a sadist. Fidel, you could call a psychopath. Murders didn't affect him one way or another. For him, it was a utilitarian slaughter to consolidate his one-man rule.

Che, from all the people I talked to, relished the slaughter. He had a section of a wall knocked out of his second story office so he could watch his beloved firing squads at work.

IBD: Did he kill minors?

Fontova: Lots of boys that went to the firing squads were 15, 16, 17 years old. They were poor boys who joined the military for benefits, much as is done in this country sometimes. They were the ones who got stuck holding the bag. They were killed for the Stalinist regime to say, "We are running the show now" and "This is what is going to happen to you if you question what we are doing here."

They did not make secret of these executions. They wanted make them public as an example similar to what the Stalin forces did to the Polish officer corps in the Katyn Forest Massacre. One reason was to behead the officer corps of the former Cuban army — because they knew that when the time came for a counterrevolution, they'd be the leaders to defeat. But they also wanted to cow the population.

IBD: Was Che an idealist?

Fontova: The book could have been titled that everything you read about Che is not just wrong but upside down. When Che moved to Havana in 1959, it was to the most luxurious mansion inside Cuba. It had waterfalls, it had what would be considered a plasma TV, it had a yacht harbor, a sauna. Its completely documented.

IBD: Yet Che is considered the brains of Cuban revolution.

Fontova: Ariel Dorfman wrote huge economium for Time magazine naming him among the heroes and icons of the 20th century, alongside Mother Teresa. Parisian intellectual Jean Paul Sartre called him "the most complete human of the 20th century." Che was often called the brains of the revolution, but Castro was pulling strings behind him. Guevara seemed like an intellectual because he consorted with French intellectuals as some Argentines did, but in fact he was Castro's puppet and chief executioner.

IBD: The media missed all this. Will it ever change?

Fontova: The mainstream media monopoly is being broken. Alan Colmes of "Hannity and Colmes" once asked me, "Why are these stories coming out now as opposed to 20 years ago? All of a sudden, you discover all this horrible information on Che."

I said, "No, Alan, people have been talking about this since 1959, but it never made it past the mainstream media filter." That monopoly is over, so our side can tell its story to middle America. I like to think this book is an example of that.