Ernesto "Che" Guevara has always been sympathetic and even mysticism by many people due to fighting which took part in Cuba, but many people forget the trail of blood left in its wake. The big lie that holds the aura of romantic, dreamer and visionary surrounding the Argentine guerrilla bloodthirsty, not held by any side to review the history and see that it was just a ruthless murderer. Guevara, at the beginning of the Cuban revolution, was the visible head of many of the trials of which more than 500 people were shot. People can forgive and forget, but history does not, it is enough review to see who is who, and Guevara not what many think.
The fish dies by the mouth, famously said that exactly fits some people's attitudes. In this regard, we begin with some phrases spoken by the guerrilla Ernesto "Che" Guevara. With regard to the peasant, Guevara said that no matter how small or poor, no matter how much you have helped the revolution and fought for it, if it comes to raising capital, must be "eliminated." For Che, that capitalism was simply defending the piece of land to poor farmers had to live, which was collectivized for socialist Cuba.
In his famous "Message to the Tricontinental" (published under the title "Create two, three ... many Vietnams, That is the slogan ") Che wrote:" Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes beyond the natural limitations of human beings and makes an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine . Our soldiers have to be like, a people without hatred can not vanquish a brutal enemy. "
much was said at the time that Guevara was a very cold, very agile head but also analytical, but in extreme cases was acting too harshly and made decisions very much against human rights. In Sierra Maestra, Guevara also imposed his personality to show strict against acts of indiscipline, of betrayal and criminals, not only in their own troops, but also with respect enemy soldiers and peasants who inhabited the area. This aspect was evident on February 17, 1957, when they discovered that one of the guerrillas, Eutimio War, was a traitor who had given the enemy the situation of the group, which allowed the army to bombard the peak position in Caracas and then ambush in the Altos de Espinosa, putting them on the verge of final defeat. Fidel Castro decided that it would be shot for treason, but does not specify who would be executed. Given the general indecision was Che Guevara who was executed by a shot in the head, showing a cold and hardness against crimes in wartime they would famous. In Santa Clara
Che Guevara gave the order to shoot the police chief, Cornelio Rojas, among other detainees. Colonel Joaquín Casillas, who was convicted in 1948 for killing Jesus Menendez union and then released, was arrested and killed.
Ernesto Guevara was also part of the group consisting of Antonio Núñez Jiménez, Pedro Miret, Alfredo Guevara, Vilma Espin, Oscar Pino Santos and Second Ceballos, operating since the beginning of the revolution in the utmost secrecy, behind Fidel excluding government Castro. This group met every night in the house where Guevara in Tarara, a beach resort near Havana. The group worked under the supervision of Fidel Castro and was intended to develop and define key laws, such as land reform and creation of INRA, acting like a real shadow government.
One of the first decisions the new government, were the revolutionary trials as part of the process known as Wastewater Treatment Commission against people considered war criminals or closely associated with the Batista regime, and later new opponents as the Commander of the Second National Front Escambray, Jesus Carreras Zayas, accused of supporting a rebellion in 1960. Between January and April 1959, about a thousand were reported and prosecuted by summary trials of which 550 were shot. Ernesto Guevara in his capacity as head of the cabin during the first months of the revolution, was in charge of the trial and execution against the prisoners in the fortress. Guevara's personal opinion about the shootings was publicly exposed before the United Nations on December 11, 1964: "We must say here that is a known truth, that we have always expressed to the world: shootings, yes, we shot , shoot them and continue by shooting as necessary. Our struggle is a struggle to death. We know what the result of a losing battle and worms need to know what the outcome of the battle lost in Cuba today. "
To this end Guevara established a judicial system with courts and an appellate court under his presidency, who developed his performance in public hearings with prosecutors, defense attorneys and witnesses. The legitimacy of the revolutionary trials and executions by the Cuban government are the subject of intense debate frontally opposing those who sympathize with the Cuban Revolution of those who oppose him
The other face
Unfortunately, Che Guevara trail of blood left in Cuba as it relates their opponents. The trail of blood appeared first in the province of Las Villas, Cuba's central region and ending in La Cabaña prison in Havana. The storming of the city of Santa Clara was bloody for his opponents. In this battle the Che lost only one man in his column, the Cowboy, a young fighter who was a protege of Celia Sanchez, but he had some injuries. During the battle, a group of soldiers took refuge in a hotel in the center of the city finally surrendered. Many prisoners were summarily executed. Put before the firing squad without trial or mercy. These executions took place in front of photographers, journalists and cameras film. The prisoners, in many cases, were young peasants who had joined the army as a last resort of unemployed and were known as "casquitos."
In Havana, Che was appointed head of the military camp at La Cabaña. This former barracks, was used as a prison from the time when Cuba was a colony of Spain. More than a military garrison, was known as a prison. When it was built in the eighteenth century, had a great strategic defensive. In the twentieth century, was a landmark that a place of military importance. The new weapons and aircraft had become obsolete, from the standpoint of war. The Shack, soon gained fame dire: An overcrowded prison and execution center day and night.
The "Heroic Guerrilla", became head of the prisons and executions. In the early months of 1959, The Shack was selected for this purpose, to be well apart, but in the city of Havana and not very accessible to the public. The prisoners came from all parts of Havana and some provinces. Che was not sentenced to imprisonment or death. Was simply following orders without protest, excuses and pride. A member of his column, an American, known by the name of Herman, he acted as head of one of the firing squad. This guy used a gun to the form of "cowboys" of the American West, and was responsible for giving the coup de grace. Herman, like spinning the gun, macabre, in his index finger and blow the gun barrel after firing. He was referring to the Shack, "as their hunting ground" or "shooting his private field." Know how and when this cruel guy came and disappeared from Cuba: an adventurer. In those months, Herman was part of the troops of Che.
Several people who visited the office of Che in La Cabaña, where you saw the place of execution, were invited by him to accompany him to witness the them from his window. Paradoxically, the implementation of Major Humberto Sori Marin, comrade in arms of Che in the Sierra Maestra, was similar to his, then in Bolivia. Sori Marin had separated from the revolution and was plotting against Castro. Weeks before the Bay of Pigs landing, was caught with other conspirators in a clandestine meeting. There was a meeting with bullets Castro's secret police and Son Marin fell badly wounded. Immediate death sentence in La Cabaña, Sori Marin was unable to stand for his injuries. Was virtually brought to the place of execution, tied to a stake and executed. Che you can not discuss his bravery in the battlefield, and finished the fight cruelty. Many estimate that more than two thousand people were executed at La Cabaña. I accept the most conservative of this calculation and took the number in half: 1000.
When Che was appointed President of Banco Nacional de Cuba, circulated a joke that he liked to repeat. "Fidel met with his closest collaborators and said he needed a lead economist for the Banco Nacional de Cuba, and asked if there was an economist in the group. Che Fidel raised his hand and made him in office. After the meeting came Fidel Che and said he did not know you were an economist. Che said surprised, I am not, I thought you asked if there was a Communist at the meeting, so I raised my hand. "
Being President of the National Bank, Che was haughty, arrogant and contemptuous. He entertained visitors and staff, dressed in dirty fatigues and put the boots on the desk, talking with them. He once told an officer looked surprised and attention Che boots on the desk. "What a view, I have no socks? I do not use underwear. "I do not know if expressed by Che was true or not. Perhaps it was a theatrical way to treat their visitors. In practice, decisions of the National Bank were made by two serious economists Cuban Communist Party: Regino Boti and Professor Carlos Rafael Rodriguez. People trained, friendly and very conservative in dress and speech.
What many saw as the height of arrogance was that Guevara signed the bank notes to Cuba with his nickname, "Che." However, if Che behaved in this way, Castro permitted. But the old-guard Communists and their Soviet allies did not share his thoughts and ways.
All executions are done by my express orders
Castro Guevara was appointed commander of the fortress of La Cabaña in Havana after Batista fled Cuba, where he served from January to September 1959, and Wastewater Treatment Commission official, to implement the revolutionary terror. In an appearance on the TV channel 6 in February 1959, Che stated that "The Shack all executions are done by direct orders from me." Here he presided over hundreds of executions in summary trials and even a sympathetic biographer Jorge Castañeda, in his book "Companion: The Life and Death of Che Guevara", said that "were conducted without respect for the hard work of justice."
Luis Ortega, in his book I I'm Che! relates what Che says Duque Estrada: "You have to work at night, the man offers less resistance at night than day. In the quiet night the moral strength weakens. Make night interrogations. No need to make many inquiries to shoot one. What you need to know is if necessary shot. Nothing more. The accused must always be given the opportunity to make their defense before the shot. And this means, you understand well, you should always shoot the defendant, no matter what has been their defense. Make no mistake about this. Our mission is to give due process to anyone, but to make the revolution, and we must begin by the procedural safeguards same. "
Vilaboa Napoleon, a member of the July 26 Movement and adviser to Che in La Cabaña, recounts the execution of José Castaño Quevedo, director of the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities (BRAC), against whom no criminal charges and weighed that led to Che's office: "As he turns around his table and chair where he was the military, Che took the gun 45 and killed him right there with two gunshot wounds to the head."
Eight more former political prisoner Pierre San Martin, an eyewitness to the cold blooded murder of a child between 12 and 14 years of age carried out by Che Guevara on the strength of Shack in 1959: "... the crisp sound of the iron door was opened, while throwing a person into the already crowded cell .... What did you do?, Asked almost in unison. With his face bloodied and bruised, he stared at us in response: to defend my father not to kill him, I could not help it, I killed the sons of bitches. Near the wall where the executions, with hands on his waist, paced from side to side the abominable Che Guevara. Gave the order to bring the boy first, and sent him to kneel in front of the wall ... The boy disobeyed the order, with an unnamed courage the infamous character replied: "If you kill me will have to do as you kill the men, standing, and not as a coward, kneeling."
Walking behind the boy replied Che, "with which you are a brave lad "... pulled his gun gave him a shot in the neck that nearly severed her neck." executions
Guevara at 15
During the first three months of the revolution Cuba had 568 executions by firing squad instead. Even the New York Times admits, the journalist of the daily Hart Phillips, a "400 in the first two months." The journalist Tetlon The London Daily Telegraph writes, "sometimes worked four courts simultaneously, without lawyers or witnesses, coming to judge, considering the death penalty, 80 people in joint trials." Court proceedings were shameless farces that shocked and disgusted to all who witnessed it.
Jorge Castaneda in his biography of Guevara, mentions that the late Father Iñaki de Aspiazu, a Basque Catholic supporter of the revolution, spoke of 700 victims. Luis Ortega wrote in his book "I am Che Guevara sent 1.897 men to the firing squad. In his book "Che Guevara: A Biography," Daniel James writes that Che admitted to ordering "several thousand" executions during the first years of the Castro regime. Felix Rodriguez, an ex-CIA, who participated in the capture of Che Guevara in Bolivia, told Vargas Llosa who faced Che after his capture taunted the "plus or minus 2.000" executions for which he was responsible along his life. "He said they were all CIA agents and did not dispute the figure." In contrast to the Nuremberg Trials, after the Second World War, of 24 Nazi leaders accused of war crimes only applied the death penalty for 11 of them.
homophobic
Che had a major role in establishing the first labor camp in Guanahacabibes Peninsula in western Cuba, which was launched in late 1960, to confine people who had not committed any crime subject to punishment by law , revolutionary or otherwise. Che defended the initiative saying: "We only send to Guanahacabibes those borderline cases that we are not sure they should be imprisoned .... Guanahacabibes we send people should not go to jail, people who have committed crimes against revolutionary morals, to a greater or lesser degree ... "
" This camp was the precursor to the eventual systematic confinement, since 1965 in the province of Camagüey, of dissidents, homosexuals, Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Afro-Cuban priests, and other dross like that, under the banner of the Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP). Crowded buses and trucks, the "unfit" would be transported at gunpoint to the concentration camps organized on the basis of Guanahacabibes model. Some would never return, others would be raped, beaten, or mutilated, and most would be traumatized for life, as Néstor Almendros's wrenching documentary "Improper Conduct", it showed the world a couple of decades ago. "
Che homophobia manifests itself in the sign placed at the entrance to the labor camp, where confined to homosexuals, which read "Work will make you men,''replied the slogan" Work will set you free "used in Nazi concentration camps. Homosexual behavior intended to correct the stringent punishments in order to alter that social deviance, which does not constitute a crime punishable by law.
and hateful
Guevara at 18
By instinct murderer is cowardice, as evidenced by the incidents with the guerrilla Sotús and commander Jorge Carreras. And hateful behavior that always showed Ernesto Guevara during his lifetime, sometimes clashed with his attitude a bit hesitant and determined flojona for personal confrontation that his skin was in danger. That's when it caused Sotús insubordinate, and Carrera will challenge him to duel. Che was reduced to a minimum. With the latter retaliated by witnessing his execution in the cabin, the site of the challenge.
also confessed: "I really am not an economist." His speech at the Bank and the Ministry of Industries, was a total disaster. It was also a guerrilla, as demonstrated in Africa and Bolivia. His reaction when he was arrested, he was a rat, not a hero. In the end does not release his men from the commitment to resist until death. He, however, decide to give up and not die fighting as befits a hero, trying to convince his captors by telling them that was worth more alive than dead.
The traitor
Guevara Mario Vargas Llosa, in an article about Ernesto Guevara says: "A being who becomes a legendary history is not judged by rational criteria, but through acts of faith and hope. This is the case Ché. " Is known of his betrayal in Mexico, when future expeditions are arrested, informs his captors the names of all who are in the camp, in sharp contrast with Colonel Bayo Albet who like to claim, he replied: "I will not participate or lend me a note accusing names ... none or that poke you on our movement, which is the entire Cuban nation. "
The exiled Cuban journalist José Ignacio Rasco said the relationship between Castro and Che is the same as he witnessed in Cuba: "I know the fear I felt before Fidel Castro. When I went to the palace to protest the closure of the Universidad de Villanueva, by law 11 - witnessed the scene where Castro was relentless haughtily as he timidly is subjected. Castro sent him on expeditions, such as the Congo or Bolivia, to keep him from power and make it fail. In Venezuela or Guatemala had no involvement in revolutionary in their younger days, but became a bohemian terrible raids Burguesito own spoiled youth of pandillitas neighborhoods in several Latin American countries. It was his first wife, Hilda Gadea, the virus that infected the Marxist, more slanted to the Soviet bloodthirsty always at his altar wall in La Cabaña. It was sadistic behavior with their victims and families of them, enjoyed having fun with the tragedy of others' wives and children of prisoners political or shot with hurtful jokes and bloody. "
The irony of the photo
The famous photograph of Guevara was taken by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960. The Italian publisher Gian Giacomo Feltrinelli was discovered in one of his trips to Havana. Alberto Korda is the gift.
After Guevara's death, Feltrinelli, the end employer-printed millions of posters. Photo toured the world and was the symbol of the movement juveniles 68 and later the entire left well as criminal groups.
But gains were to Feltrinelli, or Korda and Cuba were profitable. Feltrinelli, who died in the early seventies, got a little over $ 5 million from the sale of posters of Che. Now the iconic image control that is lost: either the use and commercial use. It is the irony of someone struggling against capitalism but in the end its image was part of the system he wanted to eradicate.
