Hatred ?

When I was much younger and was first looking into bookstore windows one of the best sellers was Mine Enemy Grows Older by Alexander King. I had no idea what it was about but I loved the title, the idea that you could go through life with an undying enemy. That he didn’t defeat you, nor you him, you just glared at each other from across the street as the years rolled on. I feel that way about Che Guevara T-shirts.

There he is the face that landed on a million chests. The jaunty beret, the wind swept curls, the eyes turned firmly on the future. Folks just don’t look down a little lower to see that he’s wading in a river of blood up to his knees.

You see, after Fidel, Che and Raoal took Cuba, and all that could get out got out, it was time to grab what was left. First the comrades from the Sierra Mastre like Huber Matos, gone to the growth of the Party. Then the large land holders and industrialists had to go.  We couldn’t have them working the sugar plantations, the nickel mines, the rum distilleries and the great cigar rolling firms for their own profit, now could we. Then they began to treat the island as an unbroken horse, they would ride her till she bucked no more and was broken to the saddle, then they would ride her until she was broken to the plow.

The peasants and small holders held on as long as they could, but a militia without a stiffening backbone of soldiers can only last so long. Some died in the bush and some in the fields, on the land their grandfathers left them. The rest were captured and brought back to Havana to the great prison there. Here the death penalties were handed down and the prisoners awaited their fate.

Those who have seen Paths of Glory know what a firing squad is like. The prisoner stands before the soldiers, and the squad follows the commands.

“Load, Shoulder arms, Ready, Aim Fire,” at the command the triggers are pulled and the prisoner drops. But there is one thing you might not have known. Only one soldier has a load in his rifle, all the rest shoot blanks. That’s so the load of guilt doesn’t get to heavy, especially if there are just too many sixteen-year-old boys with their fathers waiting in the wings. So Che had his office just one floor up from the killing ground so he could deliver the coup de grace. That was the last shot making sure the prisoner was dead. A nine mm to the head and the job was done, his favorite Czech Tokarev doing the job.

After the counter revolution was crushed, Che travelled the world. To the Congo with Laurent Kabila, on to Vietnam and General Giap, then back to Bolivia to put his well published revolutionary theory of the Foko into effect. The idea was to gather a core of revolutionaries in any country that was ripe. To this core a gathering of the committed could rally, and the Revo would be on. Bake to Mao’s Laws and presto-changeo, another “People’s Republic.”

Only one problem, Che was a man of 1493, the Indios of Bolivia were from 1491. He knew no Quechua; they didn’t care for his Spanish. They had no problem with the government, and no desire to create one. So he bounced around the country, bumping into walls, till they tracked him down and killed him.

At the end he tried to get back to Cuba, “They will pay you if I am freed,” he said. One wonders, did he feel he would be the dancing monkey in a traveling revolutionary road show?  At the end his last photo shows what the last photos of Billy the Kid, and Dillinger show, just another load of clay sliding back into the mud from where we all come.

So that’s my hatred, not of the folks who wear the shirt, they have no idea. Nor of the ones that print them, they have no idea either. Just that this blood thirsty bastard gets off scot free. JimG33