By Alex Harper, Fifth-year English student
(Published in THE GAMECOCK from the University of South Carolina in
Tuesday, April 19, 2005)
USC, like every other college campus in America, has its own contingent
of liberal students who can be seen around campus donning Che Guevara
T-shirts. Whenever I see one of them, I always wonder whether they bought
the shirt for ideological reasons or just because they recognize that Che\'s
picture, the one where he\'s looking resolutely at something or another and
wearing the famous black beret, is fashionable among college students.
Knowing a little about Che and what a savage monster he was, I\'ve been
inclined to think that, in fact, these students do not know the first thing
about him and are only wearing the shirt because they think it\'s cool.
I found at least one piece of evidence to support this theory a couple of
days ago when, flipping through the Garnet & Black magazine, I saw a guy
wearing one of these shirts in the "Caught Red-Hot" section. In reference to
his taste in clothing, he said he likes to represent people in history whom
he thinks are important, and that he looks at "what they\'ve done for their
country."
At that point, I realized that this guy knows absolutely nothing about the
person whose face he\'s wearing on his shirt. Like I said, though, most Che
shirt-wearers probably don\'t -- or at least I hope they don\'t. So I
thought I would use this space to let these people know just who this Che
Guevara guy is whose memory they\'re so proudly honoring on their way to
class.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara was a devout Stalinist and a ruthless murderer. In
post-revolution Cuba, he was one of the chief architects of that country\'s
labor camps that killed about 20,000 Cuban people. Samuel Farber, a member
of the editorial board of the socialist Cuban magazine Against the Current,
explains in the Summer 1998 issue of New Politics: "Clearly, Che Guevara
played a key role in inaugurating a tradition of arbitrary administrative,
non-judicial detentions, later used in the (Military Units to Aid
Production) camps for the confinement of dissidents and social \'deviants\':
homosexuals, Jehovah\'s Witnesses, practitioners of secret Afro-Cuban
religions and non-political rebels." ';paragraph[1] = 'As Jay Nordlinger
points out in his Dec. 31, 2004, National Review column, Che was especially
fond of personally executing prisoners in the La Cabana fortress he was in
charge of by administering a gun shot to the back of their necks. La Cabana
was a slaughterhouse where people could be put up against the wall in front
of the firing squad for any number of "crimes," no matter how incidental.
Humberto Fontova reminds us in NewsMax of an interview given by a former
prisoner of La Cabana, Pierre San Martin, to El Nuevo Herald in 1998. In the
article, Martin recounts witnessing Che\'s execution of a young boy for
attempting to save his father from the firing squad. For that mistake, Che
put his pistol to the back of the boy\'s neck and fired it, nearly
decapitating him.
Somehow, I don\'t think this is the "social justice" or "love for the
people" Che fans have in mind when they buy his shirt. Che certainly never
cared about the people. In response to the living conditions in Cuba
post-revolution, Che wrote in "Man and Socialism in Cuba," "It is not a
question of how many kilograms of meat are eaten or how many times a year
someone may go on a holiday to the seashore" (so much for the worker\'s
paradise). All Che cared about was power and the communist experiment.
If anyone still feels compelled to wear a Che shirt, you ought to consider
buying the one that has the words, "I have no idea who this is," written
below Che\'s picture. At least that way the people who do know who he is
won\'t think you are so morally callous that you think it\'s fashionable to
pay tribute to a man responsible for the deaths of thousands and a gulag
system that, to this day, imprisons blacks, homosexuals, AIDS patients,
people of faith and political dissidents for being the Communist society\'s
undesirables.
USC, like every other college campus in America, has its own contingent of
liberal students who can be seen around campus donning Che Guevara T-shirts.
Whenever I see one of them, I always wonder whether they bought the shirt
for ideological reasons or just because they recognize that Che's picture,
the one where he's looking resolutely at something or another and wearing
the famous black beret, is fashionable among college students.
Knowing a little about Che and what a savage monster he was, I've been
inclined to think that, in fact, these students do not know the first thing
about him and are only wearing the shirt because they think it's cool.
I found at least one piece of evidence to support this theory a couple of
days ago when, flipping through the Garnet & Black magazine, I saw a guy
wearing one of these shirts in the "Caught Red-Hot" section. In reference to
his taste in clothing, he said he likes to represent people in history whom
he thinks are important, and that he looks at "what they've done for their
country."
At that point, I realized that this guy knows absolutely nothing about the
person whose face he's wearing on his shirt. Like I said, though, most Che
shirt-wearers probably don't -- or at least I hope they don't. So I thought
I would use this space to let these people know just who this Che Guevara
guy is whose memory they're so proudly honoring on their way to class.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara was a devout Stalinist and a ruthless murderer. In
post-revolution Cuba, he was one of the chief architects of that country's
labor camps that killed about 20,000 Cuban people. Samuel Farber, a member
of the editorial board of the socialist Cuban magazine Against the Current,
explains in the Summer 1998 issue of New Politics: "Clearly, Che Guevara
played a key role in inaugurating a tradition of arbitrary administrative,
non-judicial detentions, later used in the (Military Units to Aid
Production) camps for the confinement of dissidents and social 'deviants':
homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, practitioners of secret Afro-Cuban
religions and non-political rebels."
As Jay Nordlinger points out in his Dec. 31, 2004, National Review column,
Che was especially fond of personally executing prisoners in the La Cabana
fortress he was in charge of by administering a gun shot to the back of
their necks. La Cabana was a slaughterhouse where people could be put up
against the wall in front of the firing squad for any number of "crimes," no
matter how incidental.
Humberto Fontova reminds us in NewsMax of an interview given by a former
prisoner of La Cabana, Pierre San Martin, to El Nuevo Herald in 1998. In the
article, Martin recounts witnessing Che's execution of a young boy for
attempting to save his father from the firing squad. For that mistake, Che
put his pistol to the back of the boy's neck and fired it, nearly
decapitating him.
Somehow, I don't think this is the "social justice" or "love for the people"
Che fans have in mind when they buy his shirt. Che certainly never cared
about the people. In response to the living conditions in Cuba
post-revolution, Che wrote in "Man and Socialism in Cuba," "It is not a
question of how many kilograms of meat are eaten or how many times a year
someone may go on a holiday to the seashore" (so much for the worker's
paradise). All Che cared about was power and the communist experiment.
If anyone still feels compelled to wear a Che shirt, you ought to consider
buying the one that has the words, "I have no idea who this is," written
below Che's picture. At least that way the people who do know who he is
won't think you are so morally callous that you think it's fashionable to
pay tribute to a man responsible for the deaths of thousands and a gulag
system that, to this day, imprisons blacks, homosexuals, AIDS patients,
people of faith and political dissidents for being the Communist society's
undesirables.
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