Monday, July 23, 2007

Hero or Villain? Liberator or Murderer?


In this article, Alvaro Vargas Llosa (who I have come to admire a great deal as a Latin American thinker and politician) examines the true history behind the world-wide icon, Che Guevara. One of my favorite parts in relation to Che's role as the head of a political prison called La Cabaña:

“Which brings us back to Carlos Santana and his chic Che gear. In an open letter published in El Nuevo Herald on March 31 of this year, the great jazz musician Paquito D’Rivera castigated Santana for his costume at the Oscars, and added: “One of those Cubans [at La Cabaña] was my cousin Bebo, who was imprisoned there precisely for being a Christian. He recounts to me with infinite bitterness how he could hear from his cell in the early hours of dawn the executions, without trial or process of law, of the many who died shouting, ‘Long live Christ the King!"

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