To Che or not to Che

I was walking from the parking garage to my office today and spotted a young man getting out of his Honda Pilot SUV, proudly sporting a Che Guevara t-shirt. It reminded me of a conversation I had Monday night with a new friend of mine whose family is from Cuba. We were discussing the current condition of the Cuban infrastructure and we both spoke of a desire to see it soon, before the “normalization” of our country’s relations with Cuba and the influx of Disney, Starbucks and the Gap, all of which will rapidly transform the country into a caricature of its former self. Our ideas were pretty much in synch except for our views of Che. Seeing the kid in the t-shirt inspired me to do some more homework on the subject. What I have discovered is about what I thought before. This guy may have started out as a starry-eyed, idealist revolutionary, but he ended up as a power-hungry murderous thug.

Most people only know of Che through the iconic photograph of the handsome revolutionary taken by Alberto Korda. Others may know of him through the movie The Motorcycle Diaries and others may have learned about him in history classes. What the t-shirt and the movie don’t tell you are the facts surrounding Che’s role in the Cuban government after the revolution.

The “Motorcycle Diaries” weren’t the only diaries he kept. A 1957 diary entry he described how and why he shot Eutimio Guerra “Although I could not confirm it, I suspected him of passing on information. I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain.... His belongings were now mine.” This shoot first, ask questions later mentality was not isolated to the murder of Guerra, Che’s instructions to Ramiro Valdés regarding the treatment of dissidents were “If in doubt, kill him.”

In 1959, Castro put Che in charge of La Cabaña prison. According to José Vilasuso, who was in charge of the summary judicial process at La Cabaña, Che oversaw the kangaroo court that decided the guilt of all political prisoners that came before it. Sentences of death were carried out within hours of a decision being handed down and not a single case was ever overturned. In an interview given by Vilasuso (who is now an attorney in Puerto Rico) her recalled, “My duty was to legalize the files before they were sent on to the Ministry. Executions took place from Monday to Friday, in the middle of the night, just after the sentence was given and automatically confirmed by the appellate body. On the most gruesome night I remember, seven men were executed.”

Those not executed in La Cabaña were certainly not treated with care. Prison chaplain Javier Arzuaga was quoted in New Republic As saying “…there were about eight hundred prisoners in a space fit for no more than three hundred: former Batista military and police personnel, some journalists, a few businessmen and merchants. The revolutionary tribunal was made of militiamen. Che Guevara presided over the appellate court. He never overturned a sentence. I would visit those on death row at the galera de la muerte. A rumor went around that I hypnotized prisoners because many remained calm, so Che ordered that I be present at the executions. I pleaded many times with Che on behalf of prisoners. I remember especially the case of Ariel Lima, a young boy. Che did not budge. I became so traumatized that at the end of May 1959 I was ordered to leave the parish of Casa Blanca, where La Cabaña was located and where I had held Mass for three years. I went to Mexico for treatment. The day I left, Che told me we had both tried to bring one another to each other’s side and had failed. His last words were: “When we take our masks off, we will be enemies.”

La Cabaña wasn't the only prison that Che oversaw. He also was in charge of the forced labor camps. Che explained the first of these camps, Guanahacabibes, thusly,
“[We] only send to Guanahacabibes those doubtful cases where we are not sure people should go to jail ... people who have committed crimes against revolutionary morals, to a lesser or greater degree.... It is hard labor, not brute labor, rather the working conditions there are hard.”
These are the same camps that today contain political dissidents, Jehovah’s Witnesses, AIDS sufferers, homosexuals, Afro-Cuban priests, Catholics and others seen as "unfit" by the Castro regime.

So back to the t-shirts… At the Oscars last year, Carlos Santana was sporting a Che shirt. The crowd cheered. I tend to agree with the dissenting voice of jazz musician Paquito D’Rivera, who in an open letter to Carlos Santana published in the March 31, 2005 edition of El Nuevo Herald said, “One of those Cubans [at La Cabaña] was my cousin Bebo, who was imprisoned there precisely for being a Christian. He recounts to me with infinite bitterness how he could hear from his cell in the early hours of dawn the executions, without trial or process of law, of the many who died shouting, ‘Long live Christ the Lord’”

So let the uninformed try to be commie-chic hipsters. Just remind them that if Che had had lived and carried out his dreams, they might not feel the same way. After all, when asked about the Cuban Missile Crisis, Guevara told a British newspaper, “If the rockets had remained, we would have used them all and directed them against the very heart of the United States, including New York, in our defense against aggression.”