The Cult of Che

Setting the record straight on Che Guevara

Popular culture and history have mixed to create a picture of Che Guevara, or Che, that has many young American’s, indeed many young people all over the world, excited about the charismatic revolutionary. Who could not get excited about the legend of a man who uttered these words. “Better to die standing, than to live on your knees.”

With a volumes of quotes and snippets of words, the great machine that is the Communist/Socialist ideal has made Che into a folk hero and a rallying point for the young idealist of the 21st century.

But sadly many young idealist, like the ones before them, are enamored of the mystic of the legend that is Che, and are being duped into believing a philosophy that history has proven to be defunct.

And will they then be taken under the wing of some pretender to the legend of Che Gurevra, given a AK-47, and told to overthrow their local government, all in the name of freedom and for Che.


“Better to die standing, than to live on your knees.”

I must admit I really like this quote, it’s something you think that George Washington might have said during the American Revolution. It’s speak to us that we would rather die than to live under a tyrannical government. Let look at a few more of Che’s quotes, the ones that the T-Shirt makers don’t tell you about.

“In fact, if Christ himself stood in my way, I, like Nietzsche, would not hesitate to squish him like a worm”

“It's a sad thing not to have friends, but it is even sadder not to have enemies.”

What a nice man! How could you not love someone that would “Squish Jesus”

But more than words make the man, what about his deeds, lets have a look.

Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …

Gee what a nice guy, I wonder how you get a picture of him on a T-Shirt ordering 25 Cuban dissents to be shot in the head? I guess that wouldn’t sell, the truth must be harder to put of a T-Shirt.

Let’s talk about the truth for a minute. The modern-day Cult of Che blinds us not just to the past but also to the present. Right now a tremendous social struggle is taking place in Cuba. Dissident liberals have demanded fundamental human rights, and the dictatorship has rounded up all but one or two of the dissident leaders and sentenced them to many years in prison. Among those imprisoned leaders is an important Cuban poet and journalist, Raúl Rivero, who is serving a 20-year sentence.

Yep you have to watch out for those poets they are nothing but trouble. In reality poets are very powerful people, that’s why Castro has put him in prison. The poor man wants nothing more than the very rights that the Che T-Shirt wearing kids take for granted or are ignorant of how others have fought and died so that they could live the life that they do.

I just thought that they should know who was on their shirt and who was in prison, and why.