Alvaro Vargas Llosa
LiberPress- The Independent org -October 8, 2005, Che Guevara supporters commemorated the anniversary of the death of revolutionary, held thirty-eight years in the Yuro ravine in Bolivia. Is an appropriate time to address ten myths that keep alive the cult of Guevara. The last time I visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York, an American student wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt and a beret caught my attention (the fact that Nicole Kidman to walk in at that very moment may have had something to do with my noticing him). I asked him politely what exactly he admired so much about this man. Here are the ten reasons he mentioned-and my response.
1. HE WAS AGAINST CAPITALISM. In fact, Guevara was in favor of state capitalism. Precluded wage labor system in Marxist jargon of "appropriating surplus value" only when it was private. But he turned the "appropriation of surplus workers" in a state system. An example of this is forced labor camps he supported, starting with Guanahacabibes in 1961.
2. HE MADE CUBA INDEPENDENT . In fact, he engineered the colonization of Cuba by a foreign power. Instrumental in turning Cuba into a temporary beachhead of Soviet power (he sealed the deal in Yalta). As head of the "industrialization" of Cuba he failed in the objective of ending the country's dependence on sugar.
3. HE STOOD FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE. In fact, he helped ruin the economy by diverting resources to industries that ended in failure and halved the sugar harvest, Cuba's mainstay, the term of two years. Rationing started under his stewardship of the island's economy.
4. MOSCOW FACES. In fact, he obeyed Moscow until Moscow decided to ask something in return for its massive transfers of money to Havana. In 1965 he criticized the Kremlin because it had adopted what he called the "law of value." He then turned to China on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, one of the horror stories of the twentieth century. He simply switched allegiances within the totalitarian camp.
5. HE CONNECTED WITH THE PEASANTS . In fact, he died precisely because he could not "connect" with them. "The peasant masses do not help us at all," he wrote in his Bolivian diary before he was captured-an apt way to describe his journey through the Bolivian countryside trying to stir up a revolution that could not even enlist the help of Bolivian Communists (they were realistic enough to realize that the peasants did not want a revolution in 1967 had already had one in 1952).
6. WAS A GUERRILLA GENIUS. In fact, with the exception of Cuba (which was even given a third category. LVDCL), every guerrilla effort he helped set up failed woefully. After the triumph of the Cuban revolution, Guevara set up revolutionary armies in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Haiti, all of which were crushed. He later persuaded Jorge Ricardo Masetti to lead a fatal incursion into Argentina from Bolivia. The role of Guevara in the Congo in 1965 was tragicomic. He allied himself with Pierre Mulele and Laurent Kabila, two butchers, but got entangled in so many disagreements with the second-and relations between Cuban and Congolese fighters were so strained-that he had to escape. Finally, his incursion in Bolivia ended in his death (his followers are commemorating this Sunday, October 9).
7. RESPECT FOR HUMAN DIGNITY. Actually, I had a habit of taking people's property. He told his followers to rob banks ("the struggling masses agree to rob banks because none of them has a penny in them") and as soon as the Batista regime collapsed, occupied a mansion and seized she said a case of expeditious expropriation for public purposes revolutionary lineage (Without just compensation). (In more than one occasion ordered to kneel was going to shoot, to humiliate them further. LVDCL)
8. HIS ADVENTURES WERE A CELEBRATION OF LIFE. Rather, it was an orgy of death. He executed many innocent people in Santa Clara in central Cuba, where his column was the last stage of armed struggle. After the triumph of the revolution, was in charge of prison "The Shack" for half a year. He ordered the execution of hundreds of prisoners-former Batista men, journalists, businessmen, and others. A few witnesses, including Javier Arzuaga, who was the chaplain of "The Shack" and Joseph Vilasuso, who belonged to the group in charge of the summary judicial process, recently gave me their painful testimonies.
9. He was a visionary. His vision of Latin America was actually quite blurred. Consider, for example, his view that the guerrillas had to take to the field because that was where the struggling masses lived. In fact, since the 60 most peasants have peacefully deserted the countryside in part because of the failure of agrarian reform, which has hindered the development of a property-based agriculture and economies of scale with absurd regulations forbidding all sorts of private arrangements.
10. HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE UNITED STATES. predicted Cuba would surpass the GDP per capita in the United States by 1980. Today, Cuba's economy can barely survive thanks to Venezuela's oil subsidy (about 100,000 barrels a day), a form of international alms that does not speak too well of the regime's dignity.
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* Alvaro Vargas Llosa is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute
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