The Dartmouth Beacon

Though their crimes against humanity occurred in different places, at different times, and on different scales (Che was the lesser offender, though only through diseconomies of scale, not incongruence of intent) la Vega’s Nazi analogy is one of the few of the sort that carries any historical water, and her passion in issuing that most serious of comparisons is readily appreciable by anyone who knows the man behind the head.

POSH BEGINNINGS

Che was born Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna into a financially comfortable Argentinean family. He was the first child, and it is widely believed that he was conceived out of wedlock. In embarrassment, his birth certificate was later altered to June 14, 1928. Ernesto would suffer no social improprieties such as that and, later, would underwrite the mass executions of Cuban homosexuals: bearers of, at the time, another sort of social impropriety.

Ernesto and his family espoused radical left-wing views, common among tony Argentinean nobles. His formative years were spent in a politically self-reinforcing environment. Although his parents attempted to send their eldest son on the silver-lined straight and narrow by shipping him off to the university to become a doctor (he eventually earned his M.D., and practiced famously incompetent medicine) he quickly fell through the cracks and into the hands of the local devil—Fidel Castro. He would eventually put himself, Castro, and Cuba under the auspices of the Soviet Empire, practically pulling the Iron Curtain along its rails with his own bloody hands.

But there was much lollygagging ere his descent into “revolution”. Ernesto spent boyhood vacations in Latin America tooling around in his American-made Norton motorcycle, which he nicknamed “the Great”. His equally politically pernicious brother, Alberto, suggested in 1951 that he take a year off from school and do that wild and spontaneous bike tour of South America they had always been talking about. They did, and he kept a travelogue which would eventually gross millions in capitalist box offices.

THE WRONG CROWD

Ernesto returned to Argentina, dashed off his medical degree, and began a broad survey of South America. The small countries there were riddled with poverty and corruption. A crop of largely well-intentioned politicians, who billed themselves as reformers, liberals, revolutionaries, and the like, began to seize power. These young leaders consorted with Stalin’s localized end-tentacles, who provided public relations and policy suggestions. (Suggestions which, as history reminds us, would eventually turn into edicts from Uncle Joe as he sought ultimate power.) Many of them refused to run under the banner of communism since, even to the huddled masses, the idea of a losing freedom in a centrally-planned economy was anathema. But Marxism simmered, simmered, simmered, until it came to a boil, at which point local leaders could not avoid Soviet domination. The empire dawned, and it was a game of Axis and Allies.

But Ernesto played on the micro level, inside several of the vulnerable Latin-American nations. He became convinced early on that socialism, and then Communism, would act as a panacea for the inequality he perceived. His most productive years in terms of Marxist sophistry were in Cuba, while functioning as Castro’s point man for loss prevention and opposition suppression. He may have done just as well- and exponentially more- under Stalin himself.

But the path begins in Guatemala. His tour of South America was interrupted when the CIA toppled the Guatemalan government, prompting Ernesto to seek refuge in the consulate building. He was hardened against the United States which, he presumed, was embarking on an imperial quest to stop any government which, as he saw it, was doing what was necessary to eradicate economic inequality. “What was necessary” was an elitist, top-down political system based on economic fiat. And such a thing could only be imposed by force. Ernesto Guevara waited in that embassy until he could secure safe passage to Mexico, where he met the brothers Castro. With Fidel’s help, he would do what was necessary.

TAKING CUBA

Fidel and Raul were holed up in Mexico City, after being exiled from Cuba in an armed insurrection led by General Fulgencio Batista, who assumed dictatorial powers after a successful coup d’état. Brilliantly, the brothers were fixing to return to Cuba, via armed insurrection, and assume dictatorial powers with a coup d’état. Ernesto traveled to Cuba with Fidel, neither of whom expected to bear the brunt of the fight (nor would they), and 80 other armed guerilla warriors. In the twenty-four months of battles that followed, Ernesto earned the respect of the dictator-to-be for his ruthless and merciless policies and the eagerness with which he took to his new sinecure as executioner. A strong believer in capital punishment- especially when no trial is involved- Ernesto would execute spies, informants, deserters, and insubordinates with impunity. There is no record of how many prisoners he personally executed with his .32 pistol. And there is no counting how many death slips he stamped.

What is known is that he largely avoided combat. “Lead the march” he did, but only in a rhetorical sense. Ernesto preferred to kill people who had already been captured and subdued. Indeed, even in his native Argentina he was proud of the fact that his asthma kept him from joining the army.

Guevara’s fiery speech and inhuman cruelty towards his political enemies obscured all personal cowardice, and endeared him to Castro. Fidel promoted Ernesto to major within months, and after two years the war was over. He officially joined the new socialist government of Cuba, divorced his Peruvian wife and left her to fend for the child he fathered by her. He was soon appointed director of the La Cabaña fortress/prison. Over four years he instituted programs that resulted in mass executions of inmates. Torture was de rigeur, with mock executions (always, always followed by the real thing in due time) being the preferred method of extraction. And from his La Cabaña came the infamous Cuban labor camps, which incarcerated and killed political dissidents, gays, and anyone diagnosed with AIDS.

One Cuban journalist who knew Ernesto, Luis Ortega, wrote that his personal firing squad dispensed with 1,897 political dissenters. This during the first handful of nights in Castro’s Cuba. It was policy for friends and family of the condemned to witness the execution, and inspect the blood-spattered paredon that always remained.

Ernesto was never far from Castro’s ear. He aligned Cuba closely with the Soviet Empire, which conveniently seemed to be the only customer for Cuba’s goods. He also signed off on Russia’s plan to place nuclear missiles in Cuba, aimed at the United States of America. He would later tell a reporter that, if Cuba had been given control of the missiles, he would have ordered them launched.

FAILED REVOLUTIONS, AND THE END

Beginning in the spring of 1965, Ernesto disappeared for several years, touring the other Communist nations of the world. His failures in instituting a working socialist economy in Cuba fermented personal embarrassment, and as it slowly occurred to him that the Soviets may not be honest brokers, he fled Havana in humiliation over how closely he had aligned his adoptive nation with Stalin. When he resurfaced, it was in Africa, where he asked and received Castro’s help in mass-indoctrination of Africans in the Marxist precepts. It was his hope to inspire Cuban-style anarchy in order to accomplish something. (Ernesto’s goals become increasingly ambiguous as he moves from revolution to revolution; the only commonality being the ruthless murder and torture of those who disagree with the left-wing flavor of the day.)

His revolutions on the Dark Continent were routed by local nationalist armies who had assistance from the CIA. Ernesto’s next stop was Bolivia, where he attempted to raise a guerilla army. In the jungles, the CIA was training the Bolivian army to deal with Communist guerillas and a small contingent of US Army Rangers was also on the ground. Two of Ernesto’s columns were quickly captured by national forces. The ardently anti-communist president of Bolivia requested his head on a platter, which nearly happened. Ernesto was frustrated by the lack of grassroots support- he had not enlisted a single Bolivian peasant by the end. He was so desperate, in fact, that nearly all of the final missions upon which he set his guerilla army were to obtain asthma medicine for himself. As the revolution was failing and he was preparing for withdrawal, Bolivian forces located his encampment and captured him. He is reported to have begged for his life during the seizure of the camp. Although it was an American CIA officer who spearheaded the search for Ernesto, Guevara was unfortunately not captured by the Americans. The Bolivians who did find him proceeded to execute him. His expensive Rolex watch went to the American CIA officer. His hands to Castro.

Ernesto—Che, as he is limned in adulation—succeeded in nothing. He achieved only death and destruction. Romantic for himself, and tragic for those he led to devastation. He did not inspire peasants. He inspired a guilty middle class to leave schools and jobs and farms and join armed uprisings that accomplished nothing politically, killed hundreds of thousands of innocents, and set back the cause of Latin-American democracy for decades. In the same essay in which Che called for “many Vietnams” he also wrote of “[h]atred 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.” He pined for such inhumanity, saying “[t]his is what our soldiers must become.” And that is what he was. He belongs on the darkest pages of history books, not on t-shirts.