Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Hero or zero? Bolivian general takes aim at Che's reputation

Hero or zero? Bolivian general takes aim at Che's reputation
ALVARO ZUAZO IN SANTA CRUZ

FIDEL Castro insists Ernesto 'Che' Guevara could never have been taken
prisoner 40 years ago if his gun hadn't malfunctioned.

But the retired Bolivian general who led the mission to capture him says
that the Argentine revolutionary was hardly a heroic figure in his final
moments.

The man General Gary Prado remembers - sad, sick, hungry, dressed in
rags and alone in the jungle - simply dropped his gun and surrendered,
saying, "Don't shoot, I'm Che."

"He wasn't the figure of the heroic guerrilla," Prado recalled last week.

In contrast to the iconic rebel celebrated by Guevara's fans, who have
made his death scene a tourist trap, the man Prado captured "wasn't
someone to impose terror or anything, but simply to be pitied".

Prado is bitter that Guevara gets so much global attention four decades
later. He is angry that left-wing Bolivian president Evo Morales plans
to honour Guevara and not the 55 soldiers who died putting down his
attempted revolution in the country, an effort Prado dismissed as a
foreign invasion.

Castro has put a more noble spin on the death of his fellow
revolutionary and close friend, calling Guevara "not a man who could
have been taken prisoner" with a working gun.

"Wounded and without a weapon they were able to hold him and take him to
a small town nearby, La Higuera," Castro told Spanish writer Ignacio
Ramonet for the book 100 Hours With Fidel.

"The following day, October 9, 1967, at noon, they executed him in cold
blood," Castro said.

Prado said the order to kill Guevara came not from the CIA operatives
who joined his soldiers, but from Bolivia's president, who wanted to
avoid a trial that would give Guevara a global platform to spread his views.

What is indisputable is that ever since, Guevara has continued to
inspire and infuriate people around the world.

"Why did they think that by killing him, he would cease to exist as a
fighter?" Castro asked in 1997, when Guevara's remains were finally laid
to rest in Cuba amid thundering cannons.

"Today he is in every place, wherever there is a just cause to defend."

Guevara's face is instantly recognisable today, a one-dimensional image
on posters and T-shirts that either celebrate or mock his revolutionary
ideals.

Those who knew him personally remember a complex character - sardonic
and demanding of himself as well as others.

"He always did what he said he was going to do," said Alberto Granados,
who travelled with Guevara across South America on a broken-down
motorcycle in 1952, a trip portrayed in the hit 2004 movie The
Motorcycle Diaries.

"That's why he is still timely," added Granados, who is now in his 80s
and lives in Havana.

Guevara's Cuban enemies, now living in exile, remember a man who didn't
flinch after he and the Castro brothers came to power. It was Guevara
who oversaw the military tribunals and subsequent firing squad
executions of hundreds of people - military, police and other officials
of the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

Cuba will honour him tomorrow with a ceremony at the tomb where his
remains are kept, beneath a gigantic bronze statue built in his image in
Santa Clara, where Guevara oversaw a decisive victory for the Cuban rebels.

Castro personally oversaw the ceremony 10 years ago, Cuba's last major
commemoration of Guevara's death. Now ailing and out of public view, he
was not expected to attend this year, although his designated successor,
Raul Castro, may appear.

Ceremonies are also planned in Bolivia. Guevara's fans were yesterday
gathering in the jungle where he was captured, and in La Higuera, where
he was killed. A new statue is being built in his native Argentina,
Venezuela is holding an art and music festival in his honour, and
students were painting huge portraits of Guevara in Mexico City's subway.

Cuba also planned concerts, a photo exhibit and a gathering of 1,500
people playing chess - Guevara's favourite game.

Guevara's image is ubiquitous in Cuba, where a giant stylised rendering
of his face oversees Havana's Plaza de la Revolución. Cuban
schoolchildren start their daily classes by pledging: "Pioneers for
communism. We will be like Che!" Those who knew him personally would
consider that difficult. They recall him as a taskmaster, insistent on
austerity.

"He was demanding of everyone and practised being a personal example,"
wrote Tirso Saenz, an adviser when Guevara served as Cuba's industry
minister.

Prado said that when Guevara surrendered in the jungle to his squad of
Bolivian soldiers, he asked what they planned to do with him, and that
they initially told him he would be put on trial.

"I'm worth more to you alive than dead," Prado remembers him responding.

Guevara was shot dead the next day. He would have been 79 this year.

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=495&id=1601672007

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