Enc:
Open letter to
Carlos Santana by Paquito D’Rivera, March 25-2005
Hello,
Santana:
I
found out, through our friend Raul Artiles, that you’ll be performing
in Miami soon; I find this rather ill-advised, since not too long ago
you committed the faux-pas of appearing at the “Oscar Awards” ceremony,
brandishing, with pride, an enormous crucifix over a tee-shirt with
that archaic and stereotyped image of “The Butcher of the
Cabaña,” the moniker given to the lamentable character known as
Ché Guevara by those Cubans who had to suffer his tortures and
humiliations in that nefarious prison
One
of these Cubans was my cousin Bebo, imprisoned there just for being a
Christian. He recounts to me on occasion, always with infinite
bitterness, how he could hear, from his cell, in the early hours of
dawn, the executions without prior trials or process of law, of the
many who died shouting, “Long Live Christ The King!”
The
guerrilla guy with the beret with the star is something more than that
ridiculous film about a motorcycle, my illustrious colleague, and to
juxtapose Christ with Ché Guevara is like entering a synagogue
with a swastika hanging from your neck; it’s also a harsh blow in the
face of that Cuban youth from the 60’s, who had to go into hiding to
listen to your albums which the Revolution, and the troglodite
Argentinian and his cohorts, dubbed as “imperialist music” (i.e. Rock
& Roll)
I
can’t find all the words to express my indignation over your
irresponsible attitude, but believe me that in spite of all, as an
artist I always wish you luck. And you’re going to need it, Carlos. Especially in Miami.
Sincerely,
Paquito
D’Rivera
CHE’S MOTORCYCLE
FOLLIES © 2004 ABIP
by Agustín
Blázquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton
Jaime Costas
recently said Che “didn’t know how to ride a motorcycle!”
And Jaime would know because he participated in Castro’s
1953 ill-fated assault on the Moncada Barracks and was aboard the
Granma expedition with Che Guevara, Castro and his brother Raul to
infiltrate into Cuba to fight Batista.
Costas, now in
his seventies, made that comment on September 29, 2004, in New York
City during the presentation of his book of his memoirs answering a
question from the audience about the movie “The Motorcycle Diaries”
(Robert Redford, its executive producer, is an unapologetic Castro
collaborator). Costas knew Castro, Raul
and Che personally for many years.
He added that he
“unequivocally” knows that detail because on various occasions he went
motorcycling around Havana with Castro and his comrades and “Che never
went along with them even when asked to accompany them.
All he did was sheepishly wave ‘good-bye’, because he
didn’t know how to ride a motorcycle!”
A person present
at this presentation commented, “Ah, the mythmaking of the left that
ceaselessly lionizes Che! Pretty soon,
they'll have him coming down on a cloud!”
Another person
acquainted with the history of the Cuban revolution said to me, “It is
good to know that but please inform the Harley-Davidson Corporation
before they put him [Che] in a commercial.
“I might add that
Dr. Guevara, like all his fellow comic-book characters, is essentially
mythical, or at least fictional.
“Although he was
there in person, Guevara was so disconnected from the actual facts of
the so-called Cuban Revolution as to be, in a sense, quite pathetic. He interpreted a Cuban soap opera as if it had
been the Iliad. He projected Mao's
epic Long March onto the battle for the provincial capital of Santa
Clara, Cuba, in effect a cakewalk made possible by the money with which
Julio Lobo and other fellow Cuban magnates bought out Batista's
miserable army.
“So, when he
tried to replicate that in Bolivia and the Bolivian army fought back -
incidentally, in far tougher terrain than Cuba's - Guevara's operation
rapidly unraveled and he ended up like a side of beef on the counter of
a Bolivian kitchen, a fate none other of his fellow extreme leftie
loonies has deemed fit to emulate.
“The problem with
Guevara is that he is not a positive, life-enhancing myth, but a
completely counterproductive one which feeds the worst and most
destructive impulses in the Latin American mind - what I call
‘political sophomorism’ combined with an adolescent's grasp of the
world and a nihilistic yearning for martyrdom (and even some good old
fashioned Argentine necrophilia). Remember
that Guevara's canonization began with that infamous shot of him dead,
looking like Christ by Mantegna.
“Guevara was
catastrophic for Cuba, and would have been catastrophic for Latin
America but for his early transit.
“Guevara is
actually laughable, and the sadness of it all is that no one has done
to him what Michael Moore did to Bush, that is, a good spoof.
“We treat him
like a legend, a Promethean, almost tragic figure, instead of what he
really was: a no-good physician, a Mickey Mouse with a beret, an
Argentine spoiled youngster that almost by accident walked into - we
can no longer say he motorcycled his way into - a political swindle
aspiring to be called a revolution.
“Treat him for
what he was--he even looked a bit like-- the Cuban Revolution's own
Cantinflas.”
This comparison
with Cantinflas, the late famous Mexican comic movie star, evoked my
memories of when I met Che Guevara in 1963 when I was in the cast of a
movie being filmed in Cuba’s Sierra Maestra Mountains.
One afternoon Che
came to pay us a visit at the barracks we were staying.
I was within a foot from him. And
I was utterly disappointed by that unremarkable little man (who was
very photogenic) and most women in Cuba at that time were fawning over
him as some sort of movie star. Actually,
his raggedy mustache was similar to the one sported by Cantinflas. I found him so uninteresting that in the diary
I was keeping of those says I dedicated only one sentence to him.
The Washington
Times in the Business section on September 25, 2004, pg. C10, published
an article about Che paraphernalia being offered for sale.
In addition of being offensive to Cuban Americans who
knew who Che really was, the article promoted and generated interest in
those merchandises among the less informed, insensitive and ignorant
Americans. Meanwhile, Hollywood is putting
together yet another movie about Che and Benicio del Toro, may be
playing him.
I made the
comment to an American friend as to how the left in America keeps
offending Cuban Americans with impunity. I
said, “Can you imagine what would happen if T-shirts, articles, books
and movies idolizing Hitler were produced and promoted in the U.S.?”
He replied, “Well
of course the neo-nazis have a lot of Hitler stuff you can buy on eBay.”
I said, “The
difference between the neo-nazis on eBay and the cult of the criminal
Che, is that the later is in the main stream, in the open, from schools
to universities and promoted by the media” - even by The Washington
Times!
While, admittedly
not as romantic as the myth, the reality about Che is that he was
unwanted by Castro and did not have any place to go.
Castro sacrificed the inept Che for his own personal and
political benefit. He eliminated Che from
Cuba, enabling the creation of a false admirable myth that he must
continuously, actively support in order to maintain and as a result
make a lot of good propaganda and money for his regime.
Castro turned a liability into an asset.
Che has a long
and documented criminal history. It was
Che, in the Sierra Maestra Mountains of Cuba, years before Castro’s
1959 triumph, who revealed his fascination with cruelty by asking to be
the executioner who kept the troops in line.
At the onset of
the revolution on January 1, 1959, Castro appointed Che in charge of La
Cabaña fortress in Havana. There,
execution squads flourished under Che’s command, assassinating, in
mass, those perceived as enemies of the revolution.
Che ordered that women and children visiting his
prisoners be paraded in front of the execution wall, gruesomely stained
with blood and brain parts. All of this
was well publicized in Cuba in order to spread fear throughout the
population. The surviving ex-prisoners of
the infamous La Cabaña fortress remember Che as a “mass
murderer.”
The myths that
surround Che are much more interesting than the man; problem is, they
simply do not resemble reality.
In February 1959,
Che began training foreign guerrillas and terrorists in Cuba. His first guerrilla attack (planned with the
brothers Fidel and Raul Castro) was to “liberate” Panama in April 1959. But by May 1, he suffered a humiliating defeat
by Panama’s National Guard. On June 14,
1959, Fidel Castro sent Che’s guerrillas to the neighboring island of
the Dominican Republic to fight against dictator Trujillo.
But Che’s guerrillas again failed miserably.
After this second
fiasco in June 1959, Castro sent Che to tour third world countries. After his return, Castro put him in charge of
the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA), Industries Division
and later, as President of the National Bank (where he signed the
currency “Che”). He proved himself inept
for those assignments as well and Castro reassigned him again.
On October 29,
1959, Castro sent Che to communist countries to establish commercial
ties, negotiating the initially secret sale of sugar to the Soviet
Union. He made trade agreements with
Czechoslovakia, China and North Korea, announcing on September 10,
1960, that Cuba “had received arms from Czechoslovakia."
In 1965, Castro
sent Che as far away as possible. This
time to “liberate” Africa. After Che’s
failure in Africa, he was summoned to Havana for two days of secret
conversations with Castro. He was then
sent back to Africa with 200 Cuban soldiers to help a Congolese leftist
group. After he failed there, in late
1965, he secretly returned to Cuba, leaving his soldiers behind. Che was kept hidden all through 1966.
Obviously, Castro
needed to carefully get rid of him, but all of his attempts to get Che
involved in international wars of “liberation” and get him killed and
converted into a martyr had failed.
As secretly as he
returned to Cuba, Che left again in September 1966, sent by Castro on
another international mission. He went to
Prague and then on to Paraguay, where disguised as a businessman, he
traveled by plane to Bolivia.
Along with 17
Cubans (clandestinely smuggled into Bolivia), he began organizing a
guerrilla movement. But he was able to
recruit only 15 Bolivians. By the end of
March 1967, Castro stopped supplying Che’s guerrillas.
The last contact with Havana was in July 1967.
Denounced by the
peasants and Indians in the region (who never supported his intrusion),
Che and his guerrillas were finally apprehended by the Bolivian army on
October 7, 1967. As we all know Che was
executed and Castro at last had the martyr he was longing for. His amputated hand is proudly displayed in the
Museum of the Revolution in Havana.
Out of Castro’s
way, the cruel and inept Che could be heralded now as a big hero. Finally, Castro was free to create an
international legendary myth. Che’s image
flooded Cuba and posters began to appear in the domain of the academic
left: colleges and universities of the U.S. and the free world in order
to attract the romantics and uninformed. As
with much communist misinformation, it worked! We
still have fools displaying posters and wearing Che’s junk offending
his victims.
For heaven sake,
there is more hatred from the left in America directed against Richard
Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush than against a real bad guy and
a mass murderer: Che Guevara.
I have not seen
in our learning centers an urge for romantic and misleading
presentations about criminals like Charles Manson, David “Son of Sam”
Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc. Why Che?
© 2004 ABIP
Agustin Blazquez,
Producer/director of the documentaries
COVERING CUBA, CUBA: The Pearl of the Antilles, COVERING
CUBA 2: The Next Generation & COVERING CUBA 3: Elian
presented at the 2003 Miami Latin Film Festival and the 2004 American
Film Renaissance Film Festival in Dallas, Texas and the upcoming COVERING
CUBA 4: The Rats Below
Author with
Carlos Wotzkow of the book COVERING AND DISCOVERING and
translator with Jaums Sutton of the book by Luis Grave de Peralta
Morell THE MAFIA OF HAVANA: The Cuban Cosa Nostra.
For a preview and information on the
documentary and books click here: ABIP
