Last Monday, the Cuban-American Student Association welcomed Humberto Fontova, Cuban author and renowned political commentator, to speak about his book, Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him. It was an honor to host Mr. Fontova, and his lecture in Gasson Hall drew a crowd of students and faculty alike. After his preliminary talk, students had the opportunity to ask Mr. Fontova questions, and he signed copies of his book that were on sale at the event.
Mr. Fontova disproves the common myth that glorifies Che Guevara as a revolutionary hero, carefully detailing the realities behind the infamous image. It is quite literally an “image” that has fueled Che’s fame. As Fontova smartly puts it, he is the “Kim Kardashian of Revolutionaries.” Having achieved little of true merit, Che Guevara is simply “famous for being famous.”
“If you actually study what this guy did, you’ll be mystified as to why on Earth he is famous,” said Fontova, in reference to the famous photograph now plastered on t-shirts and coffee mugs worldwide. “He took a cool-looking photo—and that’s it.”
Many of the heroic activities attributed to Che Guevara are simply misconstrued notions of what any socially minded individual would consider horrific. These facts as laid out by Fontova in his book are indisputable—the documentation is solid and has passed through translation by publishers around the world.
Notwithstanding this significant proof, Che Guevara remains a revolutionary hero to many, among them respected celebrities like Carlos Santana Angelina Jolie. Yet it is the same people who worship Che Guevara that should be the most appalled by his deeds.
Often hailed a “freedom fighter,” Castro’s second in command was just the opposite: he jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s regime did during the Great Terror. Out of a population of 6.4 million, 365,000 Cubans were imprisoned in forced labor camps for “political crimes.” What exactly these political crimes entailed was often vague—Che Guevara himself called judicial evidence “an archaic bourgeois detail.” More atrocious still were his court proceedings, overseen by Che himself, where death sentences were often posted before a trial began.
According to the Black Book of Communism, hailed by the New York Times and many other reputable sources, an estimate of 16,000 Cuban men, women, and even children were executed under Che Guevara’s direct orders (as Fontova mentioned, a figure of this kind can only be estimated while a totalitarian regime is still in power. And Cuba’s has yet to fall).
The Cuban regime made no secret of its executions. At a United Nations conference in 1964, Che proudly proclaimed, “Certainly, we execute—and we will continue to execute.”
Keeping in mind his lax judicial process, a more appropriate label for Che Guevara, then, is “ruthless murderer.”
For more details about Humberto Fontova or to purchase his book, please visit http://www.hfontova.com/.
The CASA e-board with Mr. Fontova after his talk
