Things you should know about Che Guevara before you wear a t-shirt with his face on it.
By James Bartholomew
You never know when the face of Che Guevara is going to appear in front of you. The last time I came across him was in the lobby of a hotel in Kandy in the highlands of Sri Lanka. There he was with that determined, heroic look under a dashing beret with a red star badge. This dominating poster of Guevara was unironically positioned on the wall above the capitalist till where the hotel took payment.
The famous photo was taken by a professional photographer, Alberto Korda, during a funeral in Havana in 1960. 1 Korda knew he had taken a good one. He kept a print of it on his wall. Some years later, he was visited by an Italian communist who wanted a photo of Guevara to promote the man and his cause. Korda suggested this image and was willing, in most cases, to forego any copyright fees. And thus began the spread of the famous image around the world.
Wearing a t-shirt with this photo on it is an economical way to suggest that you are a something of a rebel. This appeals to a huge number of people to the extent that Amazon offers a choice of over 140 different t-shirts with this exact photo – starting for as little as £8.99. And yet, before you click “buy”, you should know a few things about the man.
An Argentinian by birth, Guevara went to Cuba in 1956 to join the revolution there. He fought with Fidel Castro’s rebels in the jungle and when the group took power in 1959, Guevara was made Chief Judge of the Revolutionary Tribunals and the first Commandant of the La Cabaña prison in Havana.
What was his attitude to court procedure? “We do not use bourgeois legal methods; evidence is secondary. We must proceed to convict.” 2
Thus, using no proper court procedure, he ordered the execution of at least 63 political prisoners during his five months in charge of La Cabaña and more afterwards.3 Some of the executions were televised to make sure that everyone knew that resistance meant death. He has been called “Castro’s executioner”. Fidel Castro may well have chosen him for this role because Guevara enjoyed killing. He told his father that he did. 4 He once wrote: “Crazy with fury, I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls into my hands. My nostrils dilate while savouring the acrid odour of gunpowder and blood”.
Prison cell at La Cabaña prison where Guevara was the Commandant.
Stories of his cruelty and sadism abound. When he was running La Cabaña prison, a boy – about 14 years old – was shoved into a communal cell. 5 He explained to the other prisoners that all he had done was try to defend his father who had been arrested. A little later, the guards took the boy away. Then, outside, they saw Guevara “strutting around the blood-stained execution yard with his hands on his waist, barking orders”.
The boy was taken there. Guevara shouted at the boy, “kneel down!”. The boy bravely refused, saying, “If you are going to kill me, you’ll have to do it while I’m standing!”. Guevara didn’t care. He took out his pistol, held the barrel at the boy’s neck and fired. The boy was almost decapitated.
An example of his sadism is the case of Rosa Hernandez, the mother of a seventeen-year-old youth condemned to death. She went to La Cabaña prison and begged for a meeting with Guevara. Guevara agreed. “Come right in señora. Have a seat!” he said. He listened silently while she desperately pleaded the innocence of her son. Then Guevara picked up the phone and, right in front of her, gave the order that her son should be executed that night. Mrs Hernandez became hysterical with grief and was dragged out by the guards.
Guevara was not kind to animals any more than to humans. During his days as a guerrilla in Bolivia, he was riding a mule one day and was heard shouting, “Move it! Move it! Move it! Goddamit!” He kicked the mule brutally but it would move no faster. Then Guevara got off the mule and pulled out his dagger. He shouted, “I said move it! Move it! Move it!” and, with each exclamation, he plunged the dagger into the mule’s neck until it fell down dead. 6 One can only wonder at what sort of crazed egocentricity led to such behaviour.
Many people may not be aware that concentration camps were part of Castro’s regime. One the jobs which Castro gave to Guevara’s was founding Cuba’s first concentration camp: Guanahacabibes. The camp had the motto, “Work makes you men”. 7 It is grimly reminiscent of the sign above the entrance to Auschwitz: “Work sets you free”. Guevara said, “We send to Guanahacabibes people who have committed crimes against revolutionary morals”. What were the so-called “crimes against revolutionary morals”? They included drinking, practising a religion and homosexuality. Castro was at the punishment end of an intolerant totalitarian state.
Guevara’s contempt for human life was evident in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis. In 1962, the Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles in Cuba and only removed them as a result of threats by the United States which resulted in a deal. Soon after, Guevara told the British Daily Worker newspaper, “If the missiles had remained, we would have used them against the very heart of the United States, including New York. We must never establish peaceful coexistence. We must walk the path of victory even if it costs millions of atomic victims!” He reveals extraordinarily little empathy for other human beings.
For a time, Guevara had a role in managing Cuban industry. He visited a government shoe factory and demanded to know why the shoes were no good. 8 People were refusing to buy them. The factory foreman said it was because the Russian glue holding the uppers to the soles was no good. Previously they had used American glue which worked properly. Guevara had been the one who had banned use of the American glue.
The foreman invited Guevara to see for himself. He gave him a shoe from the assembly line. Guevara pulled at the sole which came off in his hands. He demanded to know why this inferior glue had not been reported to the Ministry of Industries. “We did, repeatedly,” replied the foreman, “but nothing happened”.
Guevara ordered his men to arrest the foreman. He was never seen again. We can reasonably assume that he was killed. He could not bear to be crossed.
Unfortunately for Cuba, Guevara had a substantial role in changing the Cuban economy. He framed Cuba’s agrarian reforms. The biggest farms were expropriated with little or no compensation and were distributed to agricultural workers and cooperatives. Production quickly fell from around 5 million tons of sugar a year in the 1950s to 3.6 million in 1963. 9 Guevara also sought to develop crops and industries apart from Cuba’s main crop, sugar. But this project failed and Cuba became desperately short of foreign exchange. Guevara’s policy was abruptly reversed. 10
Other roles he had in running the economy were head of the Department of Industrialisation and President of the National Bank of Cuba.
Prior to the revolution, Cuba had been one of the most successful economies in the region, ranking seventh out of 47 countries in Latin America. By 2001, Cuba had sunk to being the third poorest. 11 The average wage a few years ago was still only $30 to £40 a month. 12 Even allowing for the subsidised food which people can obtain with their ration booklets, this is desperately poor compared with, say, Mexico and Brazil where the average wages were $500-$600 and $700-$800 respectively. Many residents in Cuba are rescued from even worse poverty by the $5billion a year sent to them by expatriates. 13 Even now, after some grudging relaxation in monopolistic state control, the government struggles to provide its people with essential foodstuffs and there have been electricity blackouts.
Some argue that the Cuban economy has done badly since the Castro revolution because of American sanctions. But there has been no embargo on Cuban trade with Europe. After the revolution, Churchill continued to puff on his favourite Romeo y Julieta and La Aroma de Cuba cigars. Europe is Cuba’s biggest overall export market followed by China. Sugar was and is an international commodity which can be sold around the world. For a long time after the revolution, the Soviet Union paid Cuba a price for its sugar so far above the market price that it amounted to a subsidy of US$2.5bn a year. 14 But Cuba’s ability to produce sugar has collapsed. It was once the biggest sugar exporter in the world. Now it has to import it.
The truth is that Guevara was a loathsome man: a vain sadist and bloodthirsty killer who helped create a brutal dictatorship in which freedom of the press, freedom of speech and democracy were all crushed. He was explicitly opposed to all those things. He helped to set the Cuban economy on a path to poverty – a poverty which continues to this day.
To wear an image of Guevara’s face is, at best, to show ignorance of the facts. The only alternative explanation for wearing it is that the wearer puts more value on a handsome face than what the man behind the face actually did.
James Bartholomew is the Director of the Museum of Communist Terror.
This is a revised version of an article which appeared in the Spectator on 28th October, 2024: Che Guevara was a sadist | The Spectator.
Critical select bibliography
There appears to be no authoritative biography of Che Guevara.
Che Guevara – A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson is the biography that probably most widely purchased. This 754-page book has the benefit of a great deal of research. However, the author declares at the beginning “My sole loyalty in this book is to Che Guevara”. It was written with the “total cooperation” of Guevara’s widow and the help of an official of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee. It is, unsurprisingly, a complimentary account of his life and, despite all its research, does not include much of the content in the article above. Sometimes the author appears to accept without question the claims of Guevara without obtaining views or information from opponents or the relatives of those whom Guevara killed or had executed.
To hear those voices, it is necessary to look at other books such Che Guevara’s Forgotten Victims by Maria Werlau, This slim volume has the benefit of the work of Cuba Archive which has documented the executions which took place at La Cabana prison and elsewhere. It includes testimony by the relatives of those killed or executed.
Exposing the real Che Guevara – and the useful idiots who idolize him by Humberto Fontova is obviously critical of Guevara. It includes, as mentioned in this article, the testimony of Rosa Hernandez.
A Tale of Two Economies: Hong Kong, Cuba and the Two Men who Shaped Them by Neil Monnery is a rare account of the economic performance of Cuba under communist rule. Most commentators seem to take little interest the economic performance, especially if they seek to admire Castro and his regime. The book has detailed statistics and charts which make to difficult to think that the regime has been anything other than disastrous for the economic well-being of the vast majority of Cuban people.
Cuban Economic Performance in Retrospect by Frank W. Thompson, Review of Radical Economics, vol37, no.3, summer 2005 also contains a wealth economic statistics. It argues that the economic underperformance of Cuba is due to domestic factors not to the United States embargo.
Against All Hope by Armando Valladares is one of the best-known books relating to communist regimes. The author describes over twenty years in Castro’s prisons.
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1. The Story Behind Che’s Iconic Photo by Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, November 3, 2016, Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/
travel/iconic-photography-che-guevara-alberto-korda-cultural-travel-180960615/
2. Maria Werlau, Che Guevara’s Forgotten Victims, p7.
3. Ibid, p8.
4. Humberto Fontova, Exposing the Real Che Guevara pp86,87.
5. Ibid, p72.
6. Ibid, p104.
7. Human Progress website, “The Truth about Che Guevara”. https://humanprogress.org/the-truth-about-che-guevara-racist-homophobe-and-mass-murderer/
8. Humberto Fontova, Exposing the Real Che Guevara, p148.
9. Neil Monnery, A Tale of Two Economies: Hong Kong, Cuba and the Two Men who Shaped Them, p134.
10. Ibid, p135.
11. Cuban Economic Performance in Retrospect by Frank W. Thompson, Review of Radical Economics, vol37, no.3, summer 2005, p312. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/
abs/10.1177/0486613405279027
12. https://www.timecamp.com/average-salary/cuba/ 1.3 Neil Monnery, A Tale of Two Economies, p174. 14. Ibid, p138
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