He'd been captured in Bolivia the day before and taken to a schoolhouse,
WaPo recounts.
Félix Rodríguez, a Cuban American CIA operative posing as a Bolivian military officer, would find him covered in dirt inside that schoolhouse the next day. His hair was matted, his clothes were torn and filthy, and his arms and feet were bound. The U.S. government wanted him alive to be interrogated, but Bolivian leaders decided that Guevara must be executed, fearing a public trial would only garner him sympathy. The official story would be that he was killed in battle.
Rodríguez, who was instrumental in Guevara’s capture, had mixed emotions at that time, as he acknowledged later in an interview. Here was a man who had assassinated many of his countrymen, Rodríguez said, and yet he felt “sorry for him.”
Then, he told the guerrilla leader that he was about to die. “I looked at him straight in the face, and I just told him. . . . He looked straight to me and said: ‘It’s better this way. I should have never been captured alive,’ ” Rodríguez recalled during a “60 Minutes” interview years later.
The two men shook hands. “He embraced me. I embraced him,” Rodríguez said. Then Rodríguez left, ordering a soldier to shoot below the neck because that would fit the official story that Guevara had died in combat....
The next day,
his body was displayed to the world and Freddy Alborta took this photograph titled "The passion of the Che”:
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75 comments:
Great career move!!
That's the picture that should be on a t-shirt.
Because fuck that guy.
Standard Lefty: "He was the Weinstein guy of his time"
No, actually he was a pretty gleeful mass murderer.
He particularly like executing farmers and gays.
And he is beloved on the left.
But then again, "Now I know" had never heard of him before. Can you imagine the shock when Inga learns about Stalin?! That will be something to see.
A racist, homophobic, homicidal maniac. No wonder the Left loves him.
The True Che
When my brother was young he idolized Guevara. He named his son Che.
Only goofballs on the left love him. Similarly, only goofballs on the right love Trump. Luckily, conservatives still have some sane ones left like Senator Bob Corker.
The10,000 people he murdered with a baseball bat could not be reached for comment.
Too bad they could only kill him once. He deserved so much more.
Only goofballs on the left love him.
The Left never lacks tyrants and mass murderers to love.
He was every bit as evil as any NAZI.
From Instapundit: "You can't spell douche without Che".
I modified my Che T-shirt with the following: "Si sos hincha de Che, sos hincha de pelotudo sin cerebro." Translated from Argie-speak: "If you're a Che fan, you're a fan of a brainless asshole."
I once attended a viewing of a movie about Che. Afterwards there was a discussion with the filmmaker, an Argentine teaching at a college in the US. The film was a replete with visual beauty. Coherent thought, not so much. In the film, a Bolivian stated that Che's human rights were violated- which is ironic given the hundreds that Che executed as prison master. In the discussion, someone brought up Che's record as Lord High Executioner. The filmaker's reply was that the trials at which they were condemned to death followed legal norms. Yeah,right. In Castros' Cuba: What the Castros say is the law.
I told the audience that any Argentine who came to Bolivia to start a revolution was swimming against a strong current, given how Bolivians perceived Argentines. I proceeded to tell a joke to illustrate my point.
A priest in Bolivia ended each mass by saying, "May the wrath of God descend upon the Argentines." Word of this eventually reached his Bishop, who in no uncertain terms told the priest to cease and desist: Argentines are as much sons of God as are Bolivians.
The priest stopped his putdowns of Argentines. The months passed, and soon Easter season had arrived. The priest told his flock the story of the Last Supper.
Jesus said to his disciples, the priest recounted, "One of you will betray me."
"Master, it is I" (Maestro, soy yo), said Peter.
The priest continued. Jesus replied, "No Peter, it is not you.:
Simon spoke. "Master it is I." (Maestro, soy yo.)"
Jesus replied, "No Simon, it is not you."
The priest recounted similar dialogue between Jesus and his disciples, until he arrived at Judas.
Judas spoke. "Che, maestro, soy zho."
Judas spoke in the singing/cantante accent of the Argentine, and with the Argentine "zh" pronunciation of "y," so that it was obvious that Judas was Argentine.
The audience broke out in laughter. The filmmaker said, "Let's change the subject."
Love Trump? Good luck finding that on these boards.
Supporting his rollback of regulations? Nominating conservative judges and - hopefully - justices? You got me. I support the policies.
Leviathan must be stopped so Leftist Collectivists don't get a chance to mass murder like so many Leftist Collectivists before you.
Like Che.
I wonder how many of Che's victims were treated with the same respect.
Leftists like Che t-shirts. I wonder why leftists don't wear Hitler t-shirts?
This wouldn't have happened if Columbus hadn't "discovered" America!
mocktturtle
When my brother was young he idolized Guevara. He named his son Che.
Your brother's son wasn't the only one.
Chesa Boudin is another. Che- as in Che Guevara, and "sa" as in South America: Che South America Boudin. Chesa's parents, David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, were Weather Underground militants jailed for their role in the felony murders in the 1981 Brinks robbery in Rockland County, New York. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn raised Chesa from infancy while his parents were in prison. Chesa's leftist pedigree also includes his grandfather Leonard Boudin, prominent lefty lawyer, and his great-great uncle Louis Boudin, a Marxist theorist.
In his twenties, Chesa Boudin decided to take the backpacker's route through Latin America, which he recounts in his book Gringo: A Coming of Age in Latin America.
Within 24 hours of arriving in Caracas, Chesa Boudin had an audience at Miraflores, the Venezuelan equivalent of our White House- a.k.a. presidential palace. That access occurred because of his leftist pedigree. Ordinary backpackers do not merit that access. Chesa went on to work for about a year out of Miraflores. His stepfather/caretaker Bill Ayers came down to shout the praises of Chávez's wonderful,miraculous Revolution. We all know how that turned out.
It is of interest that Chesa Boudin's Wikipedia page has no mention of his time working for Hugo Chávez at Miraflores, the Venezuelan presidential palace.
So Che crawfished and surrendered. Murdered, pillaged, raped, and assassinated his way across Bolivia. People pleaded for their lives but he just killed them anyway. Then he surrendered.
Wish they had a Gitmo back then. Locked him up without telling anyone then took their sweat time 'Jack Bauering' him for info. And only when they had everything he knew, lock him in the darkest cell and throw away the key.
"the Passion of the Che." uh huh. He was so Christlike, well except for all those people he executed.
It's like comparing the Michaelanglo painting of the martyrdom of St. Peter to the photo of Mussolini hanging by his heels.
I forget the man's name, but he was left-wing and he was part of the Lincoln Brigade that went to Spain to aid the Communists during the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway was there also. And I got the impression that this man had really admired Hemingway before actually knowing him. Something happened in Spain, something that Hemingway did, that this man was quite upset at, I don't think he actually described it, but it had to do with the war and obviously it was disillusioning.
But here's the part I remember. Later they were both in Cuba, Hemingway and this man, during the Cuban revolution. He had gone to meet Hemingway and they were in this public square and Hemingway was eating and drinking, or at least drinking, and at the same time, that they were there, Che Guevara was also there. He wasn't with them but he was with a group of men he commanded, and Che Guevara and his men were shooting children. They had rounded up a group of upper-middle class kids, and they were killing them.
Now for the man telling the story, part of the horror of it was watching Hemingway eating and drinking with no evidence it disturbed him at all.
Now is this a true story? Is it believable that a man as intelligent as Hemingway clearly was and with such remarkable insight into human behavior would act like this?
I don't know.
American leftist idiots fell for Che because he looked hip and cool and they thought he was a Noble Hispanic. They're too ignorant to know Argentinians are of European descent. (I once made a black Castro fanboy angry by pointing out that Castro was of pure Spanish descent and the white Cubans don't think much of the black ones.) He was as evil as Stalin's henchman Beria, who was also a serial rapist, but nobody wears Beria Tshirts. Beria was a doughy, pale, ugly Russian. Not glamorous like Che.
"As God is my witness, I thought that Commies could fly"
- General Augusto Pinochet.
Isn't he dreamy, ladies?
His face belongs on a thousand t-shirts!
Please tell me they propped him up after that picture and shot him a few more times.
Alvaro Vargas Llosa, in 2005, published a fascinating article, "The Killing Machine / Che Guevara, from Communist Firebrand to Capitalist Brand". I read it in The New Republic, back when that magazine was still thought-provoking and heterodox, but am finding it here:
http://tinyurl.com/c2ya3
On this 50th anniversary of the T-shirt idol mass murderer's death, I think I'll treat myself to a re-reading. The comparison at the end with Juan Bautista Alberdi is wonderful. Key lines to me: "unlike the old and new darling of the left, Alberdi never killed a fly.... His likeness does not adorn Mike Tyson’s abdomen."
There's no passion in Guevara in this picture. He's dead, so it's really more of a pieta, except that no one in the picture is mourning his death.
Rodriguez was supposed to keep Guevara alive so the CIA could take him to Panama for questioning. The Bolivians killed him, but I don't think Rodriguez tried very hard to stop them, or at all, for that matter. It was revenge, and it was stupid; a trial may have garnered sympathy for him, but instead they made him a martyr.
Char Char Binks:
"instead they made him a martyr."
And as some Israeli colonel once said, We prefer dead martyrs to live ones.
What I always found bizarre about Che from a theoretical Marxist point of view was how he completely misunderstood the class n+ature of the Cuban Revolution. Che went to Bolivia because it was the poorest country in Latin America, & he thought the greater the misery index, the better chance of fomenting a revolution.
Except that judgement has absolutely no grounding in any sort of Marxist theory. Matter of fact, in Marxist ideology the lumpenproletariat peasantry are considered to be not possessed of revolutionary consciousness at all.
Not only that, but the Cuban Revolution wasn't a revolution of the destitute & impoverished either. Cuba before the revolution had for Latin America quite a good standard of living. It had the highest literacy in Latin America. It was rather that the Cuban middle class was embarrassed & felt stymied by the corruption & incompetence of the Bautista regime. It didn't help that Bautista was mulatto, & the Spanish pure-bloods resented being ruled, well, by who they considered to be a n****r.
So, here come the Castro boys out of Mexico with a guerilla band. Handsome, upper middle class, Jesuit educated, & of Spanish Galician stock. Matter of fact, from the same village Franco's family came from. The middle class signed on board, only to discover too late that the Castros had lied, & that they were Commies, & that the middle & upper classes were their next targets.
Another in the NYTimes’ recent series leading Commies? They have been really brazen lately.
Oh, I see it's WaPo, with a news angle at least.
Since we're talking about reevaluating historic figures, isn't it weird that Che is still treated respectfully?
How was his LGBT record, so you think?
Speaking of Argentines, a Brazilian joke:
What's the perfect example of a good deal?
Buy an Argentine for what he's really worth & sell him for what he thinks he's worth.
Those are really big big toes!
Well theirvlead Latin American reporter, midriff, is the son in law of the late Cuban spy master camilo piniero,
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/11/28/plimpton-papa-cuba/
Castro sent Che to Bolivia to die. Even the Castro brothers were afraid of that psychopath.
I had an employee (who passed away a few years ago ) who as a teenager was imprisoned at La Cabana prison for some very minor B.S political charge while Che was in charge. He told of of the screams of the prisoners and how mothers would come and beg Che to spare their sons from execution in the morning. Instead he often personally killed the prisoner that evening.
It used to be said the only good Communist is a dead Communist. The only good thing to be said about Che is that he is dead.
Watch the lost city, Andy Garcia spent 15 years trying to bring the story by Cabrera infante to the screen and then distribution, there is a short scene that showed the callousness of che at la cabana.
The problem with the batista regime was that it wasnt brutal enough, thus was a lesson the Guatemalans and later the Brazilians and the argentinez didn't forget.
YH pretty good observation of pre Castro Cuba. Castro came from a wealthy family. And he died infinitely wealthier than his father. Castro was a pretty good ball player. He almost came close to being hired by the Yankees. If only, Cuba might have been spared the disaster that befell it.
I never looked into Che. He was on tee shirts, is all I know. Shaggy people.
YoungHegelian
Che went to Bolivia because it was the poorest country in Latin America, & he thought the greater the misery index, the better chance of fomenting a revolution.
Except that judgement has absolutely no grounding in any sort of Marxist theory. Matter of fact, in Marxist ideology the lumpenproletariat peasantry are considered to be not possessed of revolutionary consciousness at all.
Mao didn't consider the above Marxist ideology to be an impediment to fomenting a peasant-based revolution. Admittedly, I know very little about Marxist theory.
But to get back to Bolivia. An additional handicap Che had was that from the point of view of most Bolivians, it already had its revolution in 1952. The three big tin mining companies were nationalized. Peasants were given title to their land. As such, Bolivian peasants didn't view Che as a liberator- they already had their land- but merely as a foreigner.
Chi means aliveness. It circulates in natural patterns.
Contrasts.
Anyone who compares Guevara to any current day American political leader should be ashamed.
@RJ,
Mao didn't consider the above Marxist ideology to be an impediment to fomenting a peasant-based revolution.
That the peasantry can be a revolutionary force is Maoism's unique contribution to Marxist ideology. The Soviets didn't think it was possible & thought Mao would fail. Actually, Mao wanted to rule & there was no proletariat to be found in China, so he made up shit that let him come to power. Once in power, he screwed over the peasantry big, big, time.
Notice that what both the Soviets & Chi-coms did after they took power was begin a process of rapid industrialization. What's often said about these industrialization efforts is that they wanted to catch up with the West, needed heavy industry to modernize the economy, blah, blah, blah.
I think that a big reason both regimes undertook massive industrialization is that they wanted to quickly sprout a proletariat. Both regimes were embarrassed by criticisms by European Marxists that without the existence & leadership of a strong proletariat, their revolutions were in a very real sense bogus.
Check out the Reichsadler insignia on the man poking Che's torso. Very Third Reich. As the Reichsadler derives from the Holy Roman Empire, and because Bolivia was neither Holy nor Roman, I wonder who or what influenced that style.
narcisco
Well theirvlead Latin American reporter, midriff, is the son in law of the late Cuban spy master camilo piniero
Washington Post and NPR “reporter” Nick Miroff married to daughter of Cuban G-2 founder and KGB protege Manuel “Barbarroja” Piniero.
Wapo, NPR, etc. “reporter” Nick Miroff (who specializes in Latin America) and wife Camila Piniera Harnacker, (an academic apparatchik of the Castro regime.)
NPR and Washington Post correspondent Mick Miroff also corresponds with the “Center for Public Integrity.” Our mission: “To serve democracy by revealing abuses of power, corruption and betrayal of public trust by powerful public and private institutions, using the tools of investigative journalism.”
So we thought it proper to reveal some of Miroff’s own powerful connections. Nick Miroff’s wife Camila Piniero (the issue of a marriage between one of Cuba’s most powerful secret police/KGB-proteges and an apparatchik who served Chilean communist Salvador Allende) today serves as an academic apparatchik of the Castro regime.
Unsurprisingly, Miroff’s wife Camila Alejandra Piñeiro Harnecker (like Miroff) studied at Berkeley. Unsurprisingly, she gets U.S. visas for the asking, while former Honduran interim (and Constitutional and pro-U.S.) President Roberto Micheletti got his yanked years ago.
Yup.
Yes but its gGerman.And not a few German immigrants including Ernest room in the late 20s visited there. Of course Klaus Barbie was another fellow in the beigbothood. But his assistance was not ultimately accepted
Good riddance to Che - a Communist thug.
Judging by their descendants, those Spanish sailors Columbus brought over with him were tough fighters.
Che died the way most leftists die: of terminal stupidity.
Now is this a true story? Is it believable that a man as intelligent as Hemingway clearly was and with such remarkable insight into human behavior would act like this?
Some of the most evil men in history were intelligent and had remarkable insight into human nature. Knowledge of human nature is what made them so dangerous.
Che was a physician, a graduate of Buenos Aires University Medical School, I believe. So much for 'do no harm'.
chickelit
Check out the Reichsadler insignia on the man poking Che's torso. Very Third Reich. As the Reichsadler derives from the Holy Roman Empire, and because Bolivia was neither Holy nor Roman, I wonder who or what influenced that style.
There were German emigrants to Bolivia well before 1945.Lloyd Aereo Boliviano was founded in 1925 in Cochabamba, making it the second oldest airline in South America. (Not my favorite airline.) Its founder was Guillermo Kyllmann- a rather German surname there. Bolivian beer is excellent: Paceña- since 1877 is considered to resemble German beer, but I don't know if Germans were behind its founding.
I knew some Bolivians who went to Germany for university.
There are also Mennonites in Bolivia- also in Bolivia well before 1945. I once tried to converse with a German-speaking girl at the Santa Cruz airport whose command of Spanish or English was minimal- so our conversation didn't go very far. I suspect she had been visiting a Mennonite colony.
Remarkable dearth of leftie commenters on this thread.
Mockturtle, President Assad is a physician. And of course, there was Mengele and the other Nazi doctors. when I tried to read "The Nazi Doctors", years ago, I couldn't finish it. I had some trouble sleeping after reading a few chapters. One of the murderous quacks was a Harvard Medical School grad.
Very true, exiled. I have also read some history of Mengele and his experiments. The Nazis were in a bubble of their own and many genuinely believed that they were benefitting mankind by their atrocities. The way abortion has been accepted today I sometimes wonder how far any of us are from committing atrocities if we feel emboldened by our culture and sanctioned by our laws.
One of the"leftist goofballs" who admired Che was Bill Ayers. You know, Obamas friend, who visited the WH more than once.
the distance between the "leftist goofballs" and mainstream Demcrat pols is not nearly as far as our leftist trolls like to pretend.
Yes Ayres fancied himself a fan of marighela, who tried to adapt guevara to urban environments, he was dead within a year.
Ayres was in good at bomb making, so after mark felt provided an avenue of escape, he went into education
Che would probably be a capitalist today -- making tons of money on t-shirts.
That wasn't his job, what has a decade of evo Morales done to bolivia, pshaw.
I really do not get the appeal of this guy. He was a ruthless, murdering, true leftist. Maybe it's just the cool image of him that everyone has seen.
"the distance between the "leftist goofballs" and mainstream Demcrat pols is not nearly as far as our leftist trolls like to pretend."
True
Yep
Ok this is getting ridiculous...
Inga pulls out the -Che was just a guy in the neighborhood that no real democrat would associate with today...and pay no attention to all those dem pols that actually do still hang around and laud that crowd-...like DeBlasio et al.
The rewriting of history continues apace with Steve Uhr contributing whatever weak sauce he was able to conjure up and, unexpectedly, announces this left-wing mass murderer would be a conservative today!
Of course he would Stevie! Just like Stalin was really a "conservative", all those Jim Crow racist dems were really modern conservatives, etc.
Is there anything more predictable than leftists "awarding" their heroes to the "right" after the lefty heroes become less...."heroic" over time?
Also Jeremiah Wright like Jesse , were often guests of pineiros security service.
Is true that he once played catch (wink, wink) with Castro?
JohnDBandit: "I really do not get the appeal of this guy. He was a ruthless, murdering, true leftist."
Full stop.
That WAS the appeal of the guy for the left.
JohnDBandit said...
I really do not get the appeal of this guy. He was a ruthless, murdering, true leftist.
No. You have him pegged.
What you don't understand are the leftists.
Wandered round and round in circles while the "people" deserted him person by person. He died knowing he was a failure, though a deadly one at that. Fuck him, his memory and his twisted buffoon followers.
Those in the photo were then murdered by Castro hitmen
They should have shot him in the back.
"Anyone who compares Guevara to any current day American political leader should be ashamed."
We just don't get why his portrait hangs on so many of their walls.
Jose_K said...
Those in the photo were then murdered by Castro hitmen
Is that true,or just ironic?
Drago- it's called a joke.
He is dead Jim.
He has rung down the politbureau and joined the comintern invisible.
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