Born into a leftwing, aristocratic family, Che was to become one of the most celebrated of brutal killers.
It is not that he participated in revolution. It is how he prosecuted the revolution. The jsutice that Che meted out to his victims might be understood by those victims of Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, Stalin or Hitler. Innocent people whose sole crime was to look wrong, or be born at the wrong time to the wrong people.
Today, the press tend to glorify left wing killers. Unbalanced reporting leads to the lucky, ignorant, victims who survived such persecution to say "But he was a strong leader." Or "He looks ok to me."
Good riddance.
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from wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevarra
Che Guevara remembered 40 years after his death
By Rigoberto Diaz in Cuba
LEFTIST leaders and sympathisers marked the 40th anniversary of the death of revolutionary icon Ernesto Che Guevara today in Cuba, where he is buried, and Bolivia, where he was killed in 1967.
Cuba's Acting President, Raul Castro, led the main event under a giant bronze statue of the guerrilla fighter in the town of Santa Clara, some 300 kilometres (186 miles) east of Havana.
Convalescing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, 81, was absent, but a homage he penned was read in public. The Argentine-born doctor-turned-guerrilla was "a flower torn up prematurely by the stem. I bow my head to pay tribute - with respect and gratitude - to the exceptional warrior," Castro wrote.
Guevara's Argentine widow Aleida March, 71, attended the event, along with his four children Aleida, Camilo, Celia and Ernesto. Guevara had a daughter with his first wife, a Peruvian revolutionary, both of whom are dead.
Loudspeakers also blared an October 3, 1965 recording of Castro reading a farewell letter that Guevara wrote as he prepared to join the guerrilla war in the Congo.
Guevara's youngest son, Ernesto, honoured his father by roaring by on a bright red motorcycle along with 37 members of Cuba's Harley-Davidson motorcycle club.
The drive-by memorialised Guevara's ride across Latin America in the early 1950s on his Norton 250, immortalised in the book - recently turned into a movie - The Motorcycle Diaries.
Guevara fought a key battle in Santa Clara in 1958 during the Cuban revolution. In 1997 Castro buried Guevara's remains in this town after his bones were discovered in Vallegrande, Bolivia, where soldiers executed him after he was captured in 1967 as he tried to spread Marxist revolution to South America.
In Vallegrande, at the main Bolivian event, leftist President Evo Morales told a crowd of 3000, including a former guerrilla fighter from Cuba and leftists from six nations, that Che will be remembered "for his political ideology and for giving his life for others".
"This struggle continues, as long as there is capitalism, as long as neo-liberalism does not change," Mr Morales said as the crowd roared in support.
The leftist Venezuelan Government honoured Che by unveiling a monument at Pico del Aguila, some 4000 metres (13,100 feet) above sea level in western Venezuela.
"This is a sacred place," said Culture Minister Francisco Sesto, noting that both Che and 19th century liberator Simon Bolivar visited the site.
In Miami, the capital of the rabidly anti-Castro Cuban exile community, the views on Che were not as positive.
"He is the symbol of anti-Americanism, of violence. I don't think he should be remembered for anything good," said Felipe Salinas, a resident of Miami's Little Havana.
"Like many people," said Maria Carrera, another exile who left Cuba a decade ago, "I was a Che fanatic. But since I arrived in Miami I don't defend him any more. Here we receive information, which does not happen in Cuba, about Che ordering many executions."
Che is a complex person that blends legend and reality, said Uva de Aragon, a Cuban-American academic at Florida International University.
"We'll still have to wait many years for history to deliver a definite judgement on Che, when the passions of both sides have passed," she said.
Born in the Argentine city of Rosario, Guevara was shocked to witness the economic disparity of the region during his travels across Latin America in 1952 and 1953.
Guevara met Castro in Mexico in 1955, and quickly joined the uprising against then Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. By the time the revolution triumphed in January 1959, Guevara was a key player.
The guerrilla leader was convinced that violence was necessary to overturn the unjust social order in Latin America.
After leaving Cuba and leading a group of Cuban revolutionaries fighting with Marxist guerrillas in the Congo, Guevara travelled to Bolivia, arriving in late 1966.
He led a small clutch of rebels for 11 months trying to spread revolution, but found little support.
The Bolivian army and two Cuban-American US Central Intelligence Agency agents captured an ill Guevara in the village of La Higuera, and executed him on October 9, 1967. He was 39.
Rally ... demonstrators commemorate the 40th anniversary of Argentine-born guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara's death at his birthplace of Rosario, 310km north of Buenos Aires. Che Guevara was executed by the Bolivian army in the jungle village La Higuera, near Vallegrande on October 9, 1967 / Reuters
from Andrew Bolt
An academic gives Che Guevara all the damnation he can muster for personally executing prisoners and class enemies as he helped to install one-party police state and beggar Cuba with a totalitarian political economy:
Asked to comment on Guevara, Jeff Browitt, Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies at the University of Technology Sydney, said:
"Now we all know the good things about Che, but let’s look at a couple of problems: the New Man had no room for the New Gay Man and besides that, Che contributed towards the silencing of critics of the Revolution … and if one thing undermines revolutionary gains it is the unwillingness to listen to internal criticism."
If Che had got more in touch with his gay side and consulted a little more, he’d have been perfect.
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