Who was Che Guevara?  Well, if you want the truth, he was a cold-blooded killer.

As Fidel Castro’s brutal executioner, it was his job to purge Cuba of those pesky citizens that questioned his new Marxist regime. Without trials or any evidence of guilt, Che lined up his victims and put bullets in the back of their heads.  Those lucky enough to be spared immediate execution were relocated to the labor camps where many Cuban citizens would suffer the brutal conditions that he created.  His apologists, and there are many of them, call him a revolutionary, but Che himself said: “revolutionaries must become cold-blooded killing machines motivated by pure hate.”

Yet, despite the truth about Che Guevara, he remains an icon on the Left.  Hollywood has made two movies about him: the first: Motorcycle Diaries (produced by the Castro loving Robert Redford) was marketed as: “an inspiring and thrilling adventure that traces the youthful origins of a revolutionary spirit.”  One critic, aware of the truth had this to say about the movie: “it is as if someone were to make a film about Adolf Hitler by portraying him as a vegetarian who loved animals...this would be true, but rather beside the point."  The second movie: “Che” is being promoted with the tag line: “He fought for the people.”  I’m sure the children of the innocent men he murdered would disagree.

Che's popularity goes beyond Hollywood though.  The image of his face adorns everything from t-shirts to posters to souvenirs.  The New York Public Library sold a Che Guevara watch in their gift shop.  That is until so many Cuban-Americans complained that they removed it. Burlington Coat Factory ran an ad campaign not to long ago that featured a teenager wearing a t-shirt with Guevara’s face on it.  A store in Los Angeles sells baby onesies featuring Guevara's image.  The ad reads: “Now even the smallest rebel can express himself…”  When confronted with complaints, the store owner responded: “The onesie is one of our top sellers.  The Che image is trendy right now.”  It sure is.  I myself watched an interview on MTV last year with a famous rap artist wearing his Che t-shirt proudly.  Even one of Barack Obama’s campaign offices in Houston displayed a large poster of Che during the campaign.  (Barack did the call the poster inappropriate but did not demand it be taken down.)

The question remains: do those who display the Che Guevara image know the truth about him or have they just been re-educated by the likes of Robert Redford, MTV and the New York Public Library?  Paul Berman recently wrote in Slate: “Che was an enemy of freedom, and yet he has been erected into a symbol of freedom.  He helped establish an unjust social system in Cuba and has been erected into a symbol of social justice.  He stood for the ancient rigidities of Latin-American thought, in a Marxist-Leninist version, and he has been celebrated as a freethinker and a rebel."

When asked about the Che Guevara t-shirt phenomenon, Cuban American writer and historian, Humberto Fontova, explains the folly of it:

“In the Cuban Revolution, Che combined the roles Beria played earlier for Stalin and Himmler for Hitler.  But he’s a rock star.  I’ve asked dozens of his t-shirt wearers, and that’s what they tell me. Others think he was some kind of social worker, a Peace Corps type, at worst, a somewhat misguided idealist…Here’s a "guerrilla hero" who in real life never fought in a guerrilla war.  When he finally brushed up against one, he was routed.  Here’s a cold-blooded murderer who executed thousands without trial, who claimed that judicial evidence was an "unnecessary bourgeois detail," who stressed that "revolutionaries must become cold-killing machines motivated by pure hate," who stayed up till dawn for months at a time signing death warrants for innocent and honorable men, whose office in La Cabana had a window where he could watch the executions – and today his T-shirts proudly adorn people who oppose capital punishment!

Here’s communist Cuba’s first "Minister of Industries," whose main slogan in 1960 was "Accelerated Industrialization!" Whose dream was converting Cuba (the hemisphere, actually) into a huge state-run bureaucratic-industrial ant farm – and he’s the poster boy for greens and anarchists who scream and rant against industrialization!

Here’s a plodding paper-pusher, a notorious killjoy, an all-around fuddy-duddy – "I have no friends and no woman," declared this dolt and sourpuss, "my friends are friends only so long as they think as I do politically." Here’s a humorless teetotaler who imposed a no-booze, no-gambling regime under penalty of his very severe enforcement in towns like Santa Clara which his "column" overran from Batista’s forces – and you see his T-shirt on MTV’s Spring Break revelers!

Che excelled in one thing: mass murder of defenseless men. He was a Stalinist to the core, a plodding bureaucrat and a calm, cold-blooded – but again, never in actual battle – killer. The estimates of those he murdered without trial run from 600 to 2500. And Che often applied the coup de grace with his own pistol.”

Re-writing history is always dangerous. The motives behind it are even more dangerous. The legacy of Che Guevara is being re-told by Castro sympathizers and Marxist apologists. Cuban Americans are confused and concerned by the exaltation of such an evil man. I am too.

According to Jay Nordlinger of the National Review, in his article: “Che Chic”, a prominent Cuban American lunched with a famous and powerful actor to discuss a movie that tells the truth about Guevara. The actor was entirely sympathetic, but said it simply could not be done.

We all need to ask ourselves why?

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