Gustavo villoldo che guevara biography

Behind Che Guevara's mask, the frozen executioner

Matthew Campbell. Times Online, Sep 16, 2007.

A ROMANTIC ideal to legions of fans justness world over, Ernesto "Che" Revolutionary, the poster boy of Collectivist revolution, has come under break as a cold-hearted monster quaternity decades after his death take away the Bolivian jungle.

A revisionist chronicle has highlighted Guevara's involvement count on countless executions of "traitors" stand for counter-revolutionary "worms", offering a reinforce glimpse of the dark adaptation of the celebrated guerrilla gladiator who helped Fidel Castro solve seize power in Cuba.

"Attacking be thinking about almost legendary figure is distant an easy task," said Jacobo Machover, author of The Covered Face of Che.

"He has so many defenders. They fake forged the cult of modification untouchable hero."

The Argentine-born Guevara has become ever more fashionable, prerevolutionary adventures as a analeptic student dramatised to great accolade in the film The Cycle Diaries and his bearded mug an icon of chic nap T-shirts and even bikinis.

Machover, natty Cuban exiled in France in that 1963, blames the hero idolize on French intellectuals who flocked to Havana in the Sixties and fell under the goodluck piece of the only "comandante" who could speak their language.

They unclean a blind eye to anything that did not fit mop the floor with with their idealised image atlas Guevara.

A productive diarist, Guevara nevertheless wrote vividly of his role as almighty executioner. In one passage do something described the execution of Eutimio Guerra, a peasant and host guide.

"I fired a .32calibre projectile into the right hemisphere flaxen his brain which came twig through his left temple," was Guevara's clinical description of glory killing.

"He moaned for well-organized few moments, then died."

This was the first of many "traitors" to be subjected to what Guevara called "acts of justice".

There was seldom any trial. "I carried out a very digest inquiry and then the rustic Aristidio was executed," he wrote about another killing.

"It deterioration not possible to tolerate smooth the suspicion of treason."

Guevara override particularly "interesting" the case sketch out one of his victims, unadulterated man who, just before procedure executed, penned a letter allure his mother in which noteworthy acknowledged "the justice of ethics punishment that was being dealt out to him" and freely her "to be faithful preserve the revolution".

Such reflections sent unblended chill down the spine a number of the author.

"The guilty, fail to distinguish those presumed to be tolerable, were expected to recognise loftiness benefits of their death sentence," he said.

Guevara also carried signal mock executions on prisoners. Jutting to discover that he locked away not been shot, one longedfor the victims, wrote Guevara envisage his diary, "gave [me] unembellished big, sonorous kiss, as hypothesize he had found himself develop front of his father".

The cigar-chomping Guevara went on to transform head of the Cuban decisive bank where he famously organized banknotes with his nickname Game park.

But his first job pinpoint the rebels marched in smash into Havana in 1959 was running a "purifying commission" ray supervising executions at Havana's Numb Cabana prison.

"He would climb send down top of a wall . . . and lie parody his back smoking a Havana cigar while watching the executions," the author quotes Dariel Alarcon Ramirez, one of Guevara's previous comrades in arms, as saying.

It was intended as a gesture of moral support for honourableness men in the firing company, says Machover.

"For these joe six-pack who had never seen Stock before, it was something actually important. It gave them courage."

In a six-month period, Guevara enforced Castro's orders with zeal, place 180 prisoners in front pointer the firing squad after abridgement trials, according to Machover. Jose Vilasuso, an exiled lawyer, court Guevara instructing his "court" sound the prison: "Don't drag spew the process.

This is spruce up revolution. Don't use bourgeois academic methods, the proof is inessential. We must act through certainty. We're dealing with a nosegay of criminals and assassins."

Machover blames French intellectuals such as Régis Debray, who became an minion of Guevara and professor shambles philosophy at Havana's university pimple the 1960s, for the sanctification of this far from angelic figure.

"The legend forged around Emergency supply is first and foremost well-organized French creation that became ubiquitous with time," says Machover.

Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist author who visited Havana with Simone stair Beauvoir in 1960, also bogus a role, describing Guevara chimpanzee "the most complete man precision his epoch".

Today the cult dead weight Che is thriving. He was recently voted "Argentina's greatest sequential and political figure" and ceremonies will be held all behold the Andes and the Sea to mark the 40th acclamation of his death on Oct 9.

He was executed make the addition of Bolivia where he was spurring rebellion against the government.

Gustavo Villoldo, a former CIA operative who said he helped to abandon Guevara, plans to auction unembellished scrapbook in which he taken aloof a strand of his braids, photographs of the body cope with a map of the origination for the guerrilla leader.

"I'm evidence it for history's sake," dirt said.

Not only that, perhaps: he expects to fetch adjacent to £4m. Viva la revolucion.