By Nicholas Eagle
LiberPress- Club Bad Friends - October 2007 - A specter is haunting the world since late 60: Photo of Ernesto "Che" Guevara. His image, which has become hitch flag young people would reply, has been reproduced ad nauseam in posters, t-shirts, shirts, pants and underwear. The legendary guerrilla has become a fetish consumption, while being so one of the leading figures of the revolutionary mythology. Ernesto Guevara is revered as a celestial being, despite its known role of executioner in the blood bath that opened the Castro revolution. The Argentine-born adventurer - who promptly won the confidence of Fidel Castro offered to the first summary execution in the Sierra Maestra guerrillas - came in Havana in 1959 with its legendary stars and famous guerrilla commander.
immediately took over as head of La Cabaña, a dark colonial fortress where hundreds of prisoners were executed, first anti-Castro opponents Batista and then convicted of counter in summary trials without minimum procedural safeguards. Most of them did not reach age 30.
is known that some so-called revolutionary courts came to feel pangs of conscience when handing down sentences of death or long prison terms based on unfounded accusations. One, chaired by Commander Felix Pena, dared to acquit for lack of evidence to a large group of air force pilots Batista. He refused to stay the course relentless "revolutionary justice", who commanded judge "conviction" and not evidence. Fidel Castro himself emerged as chief justice. Declared a mistrial impeccable and ordered the formation of a tribunal to "judge" back to the pilots. They were convicted the second time and the commander Pena, a lawyer and a guerrilla in the Sierra Maestra, ended up "committing suicide." Che Guevara
not walked with such squeamishness. Cold and calculating, devoid of scruples primary Felix Pena. In his capacity as head of the executions at La Cabaña, required in the summary trials militant zeal prevailed over any consideration of the legal system. In the prefabricated sentences, which he reviewed and approved, the hesitation there was no reasonable doubt nor any remnant of the "bourgeois justice."
His motto was not "in doubt, abstain", but of the times of the Sierra Maestra: "When in doubt, kill." His orders, on the other hand, were not always exempt from this "fine irony" that captivated more than an intellectual on both sides of the Atlantic. Sometimes sent to the wall and writing this brief note definite: "Give aspirin." The macabre aspirin
Che ensued so that even came to apply to former comrades in arms. It was perhaps not entirely wrong when the poet Roque Dalton chest proclaimed to "socialism is an aspirin the size of the sun." Some time later he was able to see firsthand what is socialist as aspirin Guevara doctor's prescription. None other than their own guerrilla comrades summarily passed it by arms.
Another quote attributed to Che Guevara, "harden without losing the tenderness", has caused many American fascination, perhaps to synthesize the idealized vision of dashing highwayman, or by the attraction exerted on the masses outright kitsch. But above all, not well understood that "harden" means, key Guevara, mercilessly crush the political adversary. Or in the words that Guevara himself used to define the role of a good revolutionary, is hardened to become "an effective, violent, selective killing machine in cold blood." Che Guevara
reached the category of myth because it embodied the iconoclastic attitudes of a turbulent time. Was a time when young people of the Western world and rock combined the drug with political mischief. New heroes are forged representative of radicalism that marked the 60's. The figure of Guevara was owing to pearls.
His becoming "legendary hero" also explains, of course, by the fact that he died relatively young in what is often seen as a quixotic adventure. But more than anything, is due to the impact of a picture I took seven years before his death, which appears in print of romantic poet, is perfectly suited to those hippy years - One of the few pictures of her, of course, that does not extend his remarkable resemblance to Cantinflas, the famous Mexican comedian.
At 40 years after the death of Che, however, provide enough historical distance and critical perspective to the famous photo shoot in the same landfill where it was to stop the failed utopia that served as a framework. But chemanía refuses to disappear, stimulated by the frivolity of the left and the lack of scruples of those who trade in the lucrative image, converted into a pop icon. Idolatry of the executioner
Castro is one of those contradictions that feeds the "anti-imperialist ideology." How can we understand these pacifists protesting against the war in Iraq while flying the effigy of a figure who preached the systematic violence? There is tenderness
what is lost, but sanity, when he worships a character that is proposed to impose with bullets and bombs its bloody dystopia. Korda snapshot bloody blinds us to the dimension of the spectrum that runs the world with all the horror of totalitarian monosyllable. Che, tell their fans and followers. Cubans prefer to call the Butcher of La Cabaña.
