Che Guevara (1928 – 1967) sat behind an enormous, elaborate wooden desk, where he signed more than three thousand death warrants, an enthusiasm surpassed only by his pleasure he took in watching the executions, some of which took place in the nearby courtyard. First to go were the Cuban army leadership, undefeated in battle; then the “Trotskyites” real or imagined; then everyone else Che had taken a dislike to; finally anyone who had resisted, and, more than likely, anyone who had witnessed what had really occurred during his “glorious” military victories. He was, after all, the Perfect Man, and his whim became the highest moral censure.
He fancied himself a military genius, and Che’s fictional heroism in largely imaginary battles of the Revolution. Most of these battles happened only in the pages of the New York Times — “yellow journalism” works both ways. Fawning coverage by the NYT’s who turned Castro, the bumbling faux-rebel who couldn’t read a map, into “far and away the greatest figure in the nation-wide opposition to President Fulgencio Batista…. No figure has attained this stature in Cuba since the struggle for independence against Spain.” And, regrettable, much of the establishment fell into line behind the “newspaper of record.”
The Castro-Guevara strategy was very clever, even if it had little to do with military ability. The rebels waited in the Sierra Maestra, granted exclusive interviews to eager journalists, recruited bored thugs, through occasional skirmishes created the impression of continuous revolutionary struggle against the Batista regime, waited for popular discontent to erupt, and then marched “victorious” into Havana, after bribing arriving soldiers to not fight at the “Battle” of Santa Clara.
A little bit of cynicism might have been expected after taking over the country; like the Castros, Guevara seized himself a villa, and could have continued to live the life of luxury that most absolute rulers and their henchmen enjoy. But Che craved power, adoration, and revenge; and he believed his own press releases. (And as the Castros’ third wheel, the brothers were happy to accommodate his recklessness, as long as it was far from Cuban soil.) Yes, indeed, he was a messiah, a socialist man of a new type, delivered to this earth to free the third world, and a military genius! He thus wrote a tome called On Guerilla Warfare, based on who knows what, and set off for Africa to liberate it, an experience that led to quick and humiliating defeat in the Congo, from which he learned nothing. His arrival in Bolivia — a second Simon de Bolivar! — was greeted with apathy, and his failure to connect with the left-wing workers and peasants, who had already won land reform and universal suffrage in their 1951 revolution (and who probably saw him for the coddled, joyless teacher’s pet that he was) was a fatal error. With his gun loaded, and the genuine soldiers under his command still putting up a fight, Che put his hands up when surrounded, begging “I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!”
Whoops. Not to the Castros, he wasn’t. He was executed the next day. Che should have been paying attention to what happened to his fellow revolutionaries Huber Matos (20 years in prison without trial after opposing Cuba’s shift towards the Soviet Union), Camilo Cienfuegos (killed in a mysterious plane crash after being sent to arrest Matos and concluding he was blameless), Humberto Sori Marin (shot in 1961 as a counterrevolutionary), and Mario Chanes de Armas (jailed the same year on the same imaginary charges), not to mention Che’s American ally William Morgan (shot, traitor to the revolution, etc.). Like the others, Che apparently was unable to peep behind the curtain; the premises of the revolution were as fake as its battles. From the beginning, it had been about power for Fidel, and nothing else.
I lost the name of the author of this essay.
The Bolivian they got no offers to release Che and did not want a long protracted trial. They asked for a volunteer to execute him. The executioner hesitated a moment from pulling the trigger, Che has been reported saying, “I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.” He was shot nine times so when the body was shown to the press it looked like he was killed in a shoot out.
Years later a General told others of a mass grave where a body was identified as Che from its cloths but without any hands.

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