Che Guevara Lies

As the world's leftists keep celebrating the 40th anniversary of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's death and keep selling him as the ultimate champion of a people's revolution, I keep thinking about my friend Carlos Barberia.

When you talk to Barberia, you see the other side of Guevara, who has become a romanticized icon.

At a time when Guevara's face has become a T-shirt fashion statement among young Americans, Barberia has a way of explaining why they should reconsider idolizing a man such as Guevara.

Barberia's story is dramatic, suspenseful — fit to become a Hollywood classic. Instead of fiction about Che, depicting the guerrilla/terrorist as a humanitarian motorcycle rider, this movie would be the story of one of Guevara's lucky-to-be-living victims.

Imagine a movie opening with Barberia, a black, robust man, leading the band at the swanky nightclub of the old Havana Hilton Hotel in Cuba before the revolution. Picture him living through those tumultuous days before the fall of Fulgencio Batista's dicatorship, when Havana's watering holes for American tourists were being bombed and terrorized by rebels.

Then fast-forward to the triumph of the Fidel Castro Revolution, the sudden departure of Batista, as Barberia performed on New Year's Eve, the evening before the first day of 1959. In the following months, destiny would bring Barberia close to Castro, Guevara and many of the other leaders of the revolution.

After all, when the guerrillas came down from the mountains, ironically, they stayed at the Hilton. For the first few months of 1959, Castro and his top men occupied three floors of the prestigious Havana hotel. And when the guerrillas and the musicians got hungry in the middle of the night, they all gathered at the hotel kitchen looking for leftovers.

That's where Barberia met Castro and Guevara. They hit it off right away. Barberia was an admirer of the rebels, and the rebels found him entertaining.

"We became very friendly, and we would talk about all kinds of things," Barberia said.

Suddenly, Barberia and the other musicians fell into the awkward yet privileged position of chatting informally with the men who had just taken over the government and were reshaping the country.

Think of it as a movie. Doesn't it have all the necessary hooks to make it a box-office hit?

It got to the point where Barberia felt he could say anything to Castro or Che. He even felt he could be critical.

During those first few months of 1959, Castro had put Guevara in charge of the firing squads that executed hundreds of Batista government officials and other Cubans considered potential enemies. Guevara served as prosecutor, judge and jury.
And at one point, Barberia felt it was getting out of hand.

"I simply suggested to Fidel that they should consider stopping the firing squads, and El Che was listening," Barberia said. "I told them they were killing too many people."

A few hours later, at the crack of dawn, a group of Guevara's men went knocking on Barberia's door in Havana. He was told that Guevara wanted to see him at La Cabana, the old Spanish fortress that had been turned from a tourist attraction to a prison, complete with firing squads.

Barberia said Guevara greeted him at the officers' club, a beautiful dining room that had a glass wall overlooking the castle's courtyard. He said he knew the room well because his Kubavana Orchestra had performed there many times back when La Cabana was still a place for tourists. But in the first few months of Castro's rule, that courtyard had become the stage for Guevara's bloody firing squads.

Barberia said Guevara invited him to breakfast, ordered two rare steaks and told him to sit facing the courtyard. Barberia had been invited to watch the executions.

"They brought four guys out, but when they shot the first one, I got up and I walked away," Barberia said.

Barberia felt that his rejection of Guevara's methods made him a marked man. In December 1959, upon learning that Guevara's men were investigating him, Barberia went into hiding in Havana and then out of Cuba. When Guevara's men went looking for him, Barberia said, "They took my father and had him shot."

Take that story into account when you consider that on the main commercial road in the town where Barberia lives (Bergenline Avenue in Union City, N.J.), there are boutiques selling T-shirts with Che Guevara's face.

Barberia, now 72, has made strides in the United States, both as a bandleader and as an advertising salesman for New York Spanish-language radio stations. But when he is confronted with images of Guevara, Barberia is visibly affected. His face turns red. His eyes shed tears. When he sees young Americans who don't know Guevara's true history blindly following a murderer who has been turned into a pop-culture icon, Barberia makes a visible effort to restrain himself.

Not long ago, when Barberia waited for a bus on Bergenline Avenue, he spotted a Guevara T-shirt on a rack at a sidewalk sale. And he couldn't take it. They had brought the T-shirt out too close to the comfort zone. He grabbed the T-shirt, took it inside the store and paid for it. And then he took it back outside and set it on fire.

When police arrived, Barberia said he was honest in explaining his outburst. "Che Guevara killed my father," he told the officers. "He had my father shot by a firing squad in Cuba."

As luck would have it, Barberia said one of the cops was a young Cuban-American. "He told me, 'I have not seen anything,'" Barberia said, "and he walked away."

Think of it as a movie — one with real memories and real pain.

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

Che Guevara is an icon, but those who idolize him idolize a lie. Che was not a “freedom fighter.” He was a killer who enjoyed killing. He was, after all, Fidel Castro’s executioner.How many people Che executed is debatable. As Humberto Fontova, author of Exposing the Real

Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him, writes:

A Cuban prosecutor of the time who quickly defected in horror and disgust named Jose Vilasuso estimates that Che signed 400 death warrants the first few months of his command in La Cabana. A Basque priest named Iaki de Aspiazu, who was often on hand to perform confessions and last rites, says Che personally ordered 700 executions by firing squad during the period. Cuban journalist Luis Ortega, who knew Che as early as 1954, writes in his book Yo Soy El Che! that Guevara sent 1,897 men to the firing squad.

In his book Che Guevara: A Biography, Daniel James writes that Che himself admitted to ordering “several thousand” executions during the first year of the Castro regime. Felix Rodriguez, the Cuban-American CIA operative who helped track him down in Bolivia and was the last person to question him, says that Che during his final talk, admitted to “a couple thousand” executions. But he shrugged them off as all being of “imperialist spies and CIA agents.
Why did Che kill so many?

Power. Simple power.

Guevara had witnessed the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz, and felt that Arbenz would still be in power if he had only killed more people. He did not want the same result in Cuba, so executions were the rule.

Che would often execute people without so much as a trial. Fontova relates Che being confronted for his behavior, and Che’s response:

Che ordered 27 Batista soldiers executed as “war criminals.” Dr. Serafin Ruiz was a Castro operative in Santa Clara at the time, but apparently an essentially decent one. “But Comandante” he responded to Che’s order. “Our revolution promises not to execute without trials, without proof. How can we just….?”

“Look Serafin” Che snorted back. “If your bourgeois prejudices won’t allow you to carry out my orders, fine. Go ahead and try them tomorrow morning–but execute them NOW!”
The Batista soldiers would get a trial, after facing Che’s firing squad. Che often liked to finish the job with a .45 at five paces, shattering the skull of the condemned. And he liked killing.
Prior to the revolution in Cuba, and shortly after landing in Cuba with Fidel and Raul Castro, Che wrote his wife. In the letter, he said, “”I’m here in Cuba’s hills, alive and thirsting for blood.” Another account has the wording a little different, with Che writing, ““Here in the Cuban jungle, alive and bloodthirsty.”

The sentiment is the same. Che was looking forward to killing.

Fontova described the first time Che killed for Fidel:
Fidel Castro ordered the execution of a peasant guerrilla named Eutimio Guerra who he accused of being an informer for Batista’s forces. Castro assigned the killing to his own bodyguard, Universo Sanchez. To everyone’s surprise, Che Guevara — a lowly rebel soldier/medic at the time (not yet a comandante — volunteered to accompany Sanchez and another soldier to the execution site. The Cuban rebels were glum as they walked slowly down the trail in a torrential thunderstorm. Finally the little group stopped in a clearing.

Sanchez was hesitant, looking around, perhaps looking for an excuse to postpone or call off the execution. Dozens would follow, but this was the first execution of a Castro rebel by Castro’s rebels. Suddenly without warning Che stepped up and fired his pistol into Guerra’s temple. “He went into convulsions for a while and was finally still. Now his belongings were mine.” Che wrote in his Diaries.

Shortly afterwards, Che’s father in Buenos Aires received a letter from his prodigal son. “I’d like to confess, papa’, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing.”
His enjoyment of murder is illustrated by his remodeling of his office at La Cabana. If Che couldn’t be five paces away, he still wanted to watch. He had a wall removed that overlooked the area where executions were carried out.

He also loved to make the condemned families watch the executions. For example, a mother lobbied Che for mercy on her young son. Che responded by picking up the phone. He ordered the execution to be carried out immediately. He had this mother watch her son executed, so she could stop worrying about her son.

In 1997, Pierre San Martin, a Cuban who was jailed by Che, recalled an incident that happened in 1959. A 12-14 year old boy, beaten and bloody, had been thrown into the cell with him. The boy said he was there for simply defending his father. The boy was trying to keep his father from being executed. He failed.

Later, the guards came for the boy:
Near the wall where they conducted the executions, with his hands on his waist, paced from side to side the abominable Che Guevera.

He gave the order to bring the boy first and he ordered him to kneel in front of the wall. We all screamed for them not to commit this crime and we offered ourselves in his place. The boy disobeyed the order with a courage that words can’t express and responded to this infamous character: “If you’re going to kill me you’re going to have to do it the way you kill a man, standing, not like a coward, kneeling.

Walking behind the boy, the Che said “whereupon you are a brave lad…” He unholstered his pistol and shot him in the nape of the neck so that he almost decapitated him.
There are so many stories to tell about Che that illustrate his joy of killing. Yet the myth continues. The useful idiots who wear the Che t-shirts, like Carlos Santana or Johnny Depp, believe the myth, and continue the lie.

Che was not a freedom fighter or a revolutionary. He was a killer who enjoyed killing.
He was a monster on the scale of Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin.

(This article is cross posted at Newsvine, where you expect the usual useful idiots to be out in mass defending this killer.)

Gourmet delicious fine foods from Che Gourmet made specially for rich western hard cash

From the blog www.okieonthelam.com

Listened to Humberto Fontova talk about his latest book, Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him this AM on the Dennis Prager radio show, hosted by Mark Taylor today, and boy, what a force of nature Humberto seems to be.

Known for his previous political book on Cuba, Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant or more better known for his The Helldivers’ Rodeo: and The Hellpig Hunt: books, Humberto pulled no punches as he detailed what a murderous thug was Che Guevara. There is much available in print and on the web about Guevara, as you can easily see if you follow that link to his Wikipedia page. Fontova is out to separate the man from the myth — showing us a “Che” that is neither brave nor majestic, just crude, cowardly and homicidal to the core.

I can’t wait to get hold of a copy of this important book, as the mere taste of the teasers given during today’s interview are powerfully compelling. To give you an ideal of Fontova’s writing, one can read his online articles. In one of his FrontPage Mag articles from May 2006, Fontova highlights the Cuba that Castro and Che tore apart in their so-called “workers’ revolution”.
Here’s a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) report on Cuba circa 1957 that dispels the fantasies of pre-Castro Cuba still cherished by America’s most prestigious academics and its most learned film critics: “One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class,” it starts. “Cuban workers are more unionized (proportional to the population) than U.S. workers.

The average wage for an 8 hour day in Cuba in 1957 is higher than for workers in Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany. Cuban labor receives 66.6 per cent of gross national income. In the U.S. the figure is 70 per cent, in Switzerland 64 per cent. 44 per cent of Cubans are covered by Social legislation, a higher percentage then in the U.S.”

In 1958 Cuba had a higher per-capita income than Austria and Japan. Cuban industrial workers had the 8th highest wages in the world. In the 1950’s Cuban stevedores earned more per hour than their counterparts in New Orleans and San Francisco. Cuba had established an 8 hour work-day in 1933 — five years before FDR’s New Dealers got around to it. Add to this: one months paid vacation. The much-lauded (by liberals) Social-Democracies of Western Europe didn’t manage this until 30 years later.

Cuba, a country 71% white in 1957, was completely desegregated 30 years before Rosa Parks was dragged off that Birmingham bus and handcuffed. In 1958 Cuba had more female college graduates per capita than the U.S.

Doesn’t sound like it needed a “revolution” to help the poor working class, now does it. Does make one wonder why our intellectual class and University professors across the land worship the thought and image of “Che”. How many Che t-shirts have you seen out there? Far too many, that’s for damn sure. Here is a long excerpt from another Fontova FP article, this one posted on the anniversary of Che’s death last fall. It’s value here is self explanatory.

Employing interrogation techniques lovingly imparted by their East German STASI and Russian KGB, mentors, Cuba’s security forces finally pinpointed Tony’s hideout. As always, the Russian-trained Castroites came in overwhelming force and heavily armed with Soviet weapons. As always their foe was suicidally valiant, horribly outnumbered and utterly devoid of allies. Invariably, this characterized the armed exploits of a regime still revered as a “valiant underdog” by millions of imbeciles worldwide.

Castro and Che’s troops finally closed on Tony and captured him after a ferocious firefight where Tony took 17 bullets from their Czech machine guns, mostly in his legs.
As reverential and studious Stalinists, the Castroites desperately wanted Tony alive for a show trial, the better to terrorize and cow their subjects.

The Reds took Tony to a hospital and doctors patched him up–not completely now, just enough to keep him alive until his trial. Shortly he was dumped in La Cabana’s dungeons and fed just enough to keep him alive. A month later they went through the farce of a trial and the verdict–naturally–was death by firing squad.
On the way to the stake at the old Spanish fort turned to a prison and execution ground by Che Guevara, Tony was forced to hobble down some cobblestone stairs Again Tony pelted his captors with dreadful curses and stinging abuse, ”Russian lackeys!” Tony yelled again as they dragged him off. “Idiots!”

Tony’s insults hit home and stung. Finally a furious guard lost it. “CABRON!” (you B**tard!) He yanked Tony’s crutch away while another gallant Commie– WHUMP!– kicked the crippled freedom-fighter powerfully from behind. Tony tumbled down the long row of steps and finally lay on the cobblestones at the bottom, writhing and grimacing. One of Tony’s bullet- riddled legs had been amputated at the hospital, the other was gangrened and covered in pus. The Castroite guards cackled as they moved in to gag Tony with their tape.

Tony watched them approach while balling his good hand into a fist. Then as the first Red reached him –BASH!! right across his eyes. “AYEEH!” the Castroite staggered back while rubbing his face.

“You!…YOU!…..his gallant partner rushed towards Tony who was getting a good grip on his crutch with his other hand. BASH!!–Tony smashed the Red with his wooden crutch. “CABRON!” The enraged Castroites yelped for help against their helpless (as always) enemy.

“I’ll never understand how Tony survived that beating,” says eye-witness Hiram Gonzalez who watched from his window on death-row, screaming in helpless rage at the Communist guards. The crippled Tony was almost killed in the kicking, punching, gun-bashing melee but finally his captors stood off, panting and rubbing their scrapes and bruises. They’d managed to tape the battered boys mouth, but Tony pushed the guards away before they bound his hands. Their commander nodded, motioning for them to back off.

Now Tony started crawling towards the splintered and blood-spattered execution stake about fifty yards away, pushing and dragging himself with his hands as his stump of a leg left a trail of blood on the grass. As he neared the stake he’d stop and start pounding himself in the chest. His executioners seemed perplexed. The crippled boy was trying to say something. But his message was muzzled by the gag the gallant friend of George McGovern made obligatory for his thousands of execution victims.

Tony’s blazing eyes and grimace said enough. But no one could understand the boy’s mumblings. Tony kept pushing himself, shutting his eyes tightly from the agony of the effort. His executioners shuffled nervously, raised their rifles, lowered them. They looked towards their commander who shrugged. Finally Tony reached up to his face and ripped off the tape that George McGovern’s sparkling dinner companion required for his condemned.

The 20 year-old freedom-fighter’s voice boomed out. “Shoot me RIGHT HERE!” roared Tony at his gaping executioners. His voice thundered and his head bobbed with the effort. “Right in the CHEST!” Tony yelled. “Like a MAN!” Tony stopped and ripped open his shirt, pounding his chest and grimacing as his gallant executioners gaped and shuffled. “Right HERE!” he pounded.

On his last day alive, Tony had received a letter in jail from his mother. “My dear son,” she counseled. “How often I’d warned you not to get involved in these things. But I knew my pleas were vain. You always demanded your freedom, Tony, even as a little boy. So I knew you’d never stand for communism. Well, Castro and Che finally caught you. Son, I love you with all my heart. My life is now shattered and will never be the same, but the only thing left now, Tony….. is to die like a man.”

“FUEGO!!” Castro’s lackey yelled the command and the bullets shattered Tony’s crippled body, just as he’d reached the stake, lifted himself and stared resolutely at his murderers. But Castro’s firing squads usually murder a hero who is standing. The legless Tony presented an awkward target. So some of the volley went wild and missed the youngster. Time for the coup de grace.

Normally it’s one .45 slug that shatters the skull. Eye-witnesses say Tony required… POW!-POW!….POW!– three. Seems the executioner’s hands were shaking pretty badly. But they finally managed. The man Time Magazine’s hails among the “heroes and icons of the Century” had another notch in his gun. Another enemy dispatched–bound and gagged as usual.

Castro and Che were in their mid-thirties when they murdered Tony.

According to the authoritative Black Book of Communism their firing squads riddled another 14,000 bound and gagged freedom-fighters. Many (perhaps most) of their murder victims were boys in their early twenties and late-teens. Some were even younger. Carlos Machado and his twin brother Ramon were fifteen when they spat in the face of their communist executioners and died singing their national anthem as lustily as they cursed Che Guevara’s Internationale. Their dad collapsed from same volley alongside them.

Compare Carlos and Tony’s death to Guevara’s capture: “Don’t shoot!” whimpered the arch-assassin to his captors. “I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!”
Then ask yourselves: who’s face belongs on T-shirts worn by youth who fancy themselves, rebellious, freedom-loving and brave?

As Fantova said on the radio, it’s a complete oxymoron for the peaceniks to run around wearing “Che” t-shirts. Might as well wear a “Himmler” shirt to a Holocaust memorial! Sheesh! What a bunch of morons, Liberals, Progressives, Intellectuals; Useful Idiots!

www.okieonthelam.com

Jason Mattera and The Young America's Foundation put together a very powerful video on Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara including the mugshots of the people he murdered:








Maybe when (if) Barack Obama becomes president he can go coddle with Fidel's brutal younger brother Raul and break down the Cuban Marxist Regime.UPDATE: The Marxists not only murdered their opponents- they murdered the economy.

By Michelle Malkin

You can get a poster for the misguided moonbat in your life–free for a limited time–here:
During his vicious campaigns to impose communism on countries throughout Latin America, Che Guevara trained and motivated the Castro regime’s firing squads that executed thousands of men, women, and children.

All individuals used in this photo montage were murdered by Che and the Cuban regime, revealing the truth of Che’s cruel murderous hypocrisy and acknowledging his countless victims — known and unknown.
***
Background from Val Prieto at Babalu Blog:

I believe the YAF “che” poster was originally designed for Humberto Fontova’s lecture series in the University circuit as part of The 29th annual National Conservative Student Conference where he talked about his latest book “Exposing the Real che guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him”. (I believe you may have met him or heard him lecture sometime this past year.) The photographs used for the image are real, most gathered from Cuban exiles who lost family members at the hand of the Butcher of La Cabaña himself.

I cant even begin to tell you just how much pain che guevara caused to so many. It isn’t just those that he systematically killed, but the wives he widowed and children he orphaned, the parents who sons and daughters were executed. che’s been dead for forty years but in many cases, the families of his victims are still feeling the grief and anguish and certainly, Cuba is still suffering from the disease of a regime he helped instill.

Here’s a link to one of Humberto lectures, via the YAF website.