The Economist offers a piece
on a liberal think-tank’s efforts in Argentina to remove tributes to Che Guevara,
a mass murderer in Communist Cuba and a failed Communist revolutionary who was
executed by the Bolivian Army in 1967.
Che Guevara was born in
Rosario, then Argentina’s second-largest city, in 1928 but did not stay long.
Less than a year later his family moved away. Yet his birthplace has not
forgotten the left’s warrior-saint. A red banner marks the posh apartment block
where he was born. A four-metre-high (13-foot) bronze statue stands in Che
Guevara Square. The city council finances CELChe, a centre devoted to the study
of his life, and celebrates “Che week” around his birthday in June. CELChe will
stage a concert to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death on October
9th.
Not everyone in Rosario
thinks the bereted revolutionary, who was captured by soldiers in Bolivia and
killed on the orders of the country’s pro-American dictator, deserves such
reverence. Fundación Bases, a liberal think-tank based in the city, has launched
a petition to persuade the city council to remove the monuments. The martyr was
himself a killer, says Franco Martín López, the institute’s director. Guevara
was second-in-command to Fidel Castro, whose Cuban revolution killed more than
10,000 people. “No one here has any idea about the massacres committed during
the revolution,” Mr López laments.
You can read the rest of the
piece via the below link:
You can also read my
Counterterrorism piece on the hunt and capture of Che Guevara via the below
link:
