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Che remembered 40 years after death
AP on Yahoo ^ | 10/5/07 | Alvaro Zuazo - ap

Posted on 10/05/2007 7:20:14 PM PDT by NormsRevenge

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia - 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 the Argentine revolutionary was hardly a heroic figure in his final moments.

The man that Gen. 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 in an interview with The Associated Press Thursday night.

Decades after he gave up a comfortable middle class life in Argentina to foment armed rebellion, Guevara still inspires and infuriates people around the world.

He is an icon for fans who have made his death scene a tourist trap. His face is instantly recognizable, a one-dimensional image on posters and T-shirts that either celebrate or mock his revolutionary ideals.

Prado is bitter that Guevara still gets so much global attention four decades later. He's angry that Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales plans to honor Guevara but not the 55 soldiers who died putting down his attempted revolution in Bolivia.

Che "wasn't someone to inspire terror or anything, but simply to be pitied," he said.

Castro has put a 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, then 39, 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. Prado said he wasn't present when Guevara was shot.

"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."

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 traveled with Che 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 did not flinch after Castro and his rebels 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 honor him Monday 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. Cuba also planned a gathering of 1,500 people playing chess — Guevara's favorite game.

In Bolivia, Che fans were gathering in the jungle where he was captured and in La Higuera, where he was killed. A new Che statue is being built in his native Argentina, Venezuela is holding an art and music festival in his honor, and students were painting huge Che portraits in Mexico City's subway.

Guevara's image is ubiquitous in Cuba, where a giant stylized rendering of his face oversees Havana's Plaza of the Revolution. 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 being a taskmaster insistent on austerity.

"He was demanding of everyone and practiced being a personal example," wrote Tirso Saenz, an adviser when Guevara served as Cuba's Industry Minister. Once, Guevara and other ministry officials were served fat, juicy steaks during a severe food shortage. Steaks are a treasured meal for Argentines, but Guevara became incensed and ordered it all removed.

"What is this?" Saenz quoted Guevara as saying in his biography. "No one is touching this meat. Take it away."

Leftists still cherish the image of the dogmatic Marxist wearing a beret, a determined gaze and an unkempt beard. But anti-communists hate what he stood for.

One such man is Cuban exile and former CIA operative Gustavo Villoldo, now living in Florida, who hopes to profit from a lock of hair snipped from the slain rebel's head in Bolivia. Now 71, Villoldo said he kept the hair and other items in a scrapbook since participating in that mission. Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas is auctioning them off on Oct. 25-26.

The auction has generated much discussion among Cuban exiles. Some fear a Che fan will buy them and put them on reverent display.

Prado said that after Guevara surrendered in the jungle to his squad of 70 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 the next day. He would have been 79 this year.

_____

Associated Press Writer Anita Snow in Havana contributed to this report.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: cheguevara; cubanrevolution; remembered

Children play on a sculpture of Cuba's Argentine-born revolutionary leader Ernesto 'Che' Guevara in La Higuera village in Bolivia, Friday, Oct. 5, 2007. The 40th anniversary of Guevara's death is this Oct. 8, 2007. (AP Photo/Dado Galdieri)


1 posted on 10/05/2007 7:20:16 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
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A man walks past a mural depicting revolutionary heroes including late rebel leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Havana October 3, 2007. Forty years after he was captured by soldiers in a Bolivian jungle and executed the next day, the Argentine-born Ernesto "Che" Guevara is still a national hero in Cuba where he joined Fidel Castro in an armed uprising that ousted a U.S. backed dictator in 1959. Picture taken October 3, 2007. REUTERS/Enrique De La Osa (CUBA)


2 posted on 10/05/2007 7:20:44 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ... Godspeed ... ICE’s toll-free tip hotline—1-866-DHS-2-ICE ... 9/11 .. Never FoRget!!!)
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To: NormsRevenge

By all accounts che was a cry baby pos that deserved at least what he got.


3 posted on 10/05/2007 7:24:46 PM PDT by monkeycard (There is no such thing as too much ammo.)
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To: NormsRevenge

Bummer we can’t kill the SOB again, the way he killed so many. Better yet, by “bunga.”


4 posted on 10/05/2007 7:27:40 PM PDT by VR-21
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To: NormsRevenge
Guevara was shot the next day. He would have been 79 this year.

ROTFL! American T-shirt capitalists have made a fortune off of this bozo's image! He has to be spinning in his grave! If he hadn't got shot, I wonder how old he would have been NEXT YEAR at this time. LOL! Liberals! Ya gotta love 'em. Guevara is their main man! Especially when they are undergoing their lobotomies in our so-called colleges and universities.

5 posted on 10/05/2007 7:27:45 PM PDT by FlingWingFlyer (This U.S. Army veteran supports Rush! Reid, Pelosi, Murtha, and Harkin can all kiss my @$$.)
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To: NormsRevenge
Cuban schoolchildren start their daily classes by pledging: "Pioneers for communism. We will be like Che!"

I certainly hope not!


6 posted on 10/05/2007 7:27:51 PM PDT by OCC
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To: NormsRevenge

7 posted on 10/05/2007 7:33:39 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (~~~Jihad Fever -- Catch It !~~~ (Backup tag: "Live Fred or Die"))
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To: OCC

Che was a mass murderer.


8 posted on 10/05/2007 7:33:50 PM PDT by tdewey10 (Can we please take out iran's nuclear capability before they start using it?)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

Thanks! I was just gonna ask if anybody had the twitchey pic.. lolol


9 posted on 10/05/2007 7:35:02 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ... Godspeed ... ICE’s toll-free tip hotline—1-866-DHS-2-ICE ... 9/11 .. Never FoRget!!!)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

That’s the picture I was waiting for! LOL!


10 posted on 10/05/2007 7:42:17 PM PDT by FlingWingFlyer (This U.S. Army veteran supports Rush! Reid, Pelosi, Murtha, and Harkin can all kiss my @$$.)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

I love that picture! It is so Monty Python-esque.


11 posted on 10/05/2007 7:48:58 PM PDT by Pining_4_TX
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To: fieldmarshaldj

he looks better than ever. cant wait for Fidel pics.


12 posted on 10/05/2007 7:49:35 PM PDT by tired1 (responsibility without authority is slavery!)
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To: NormsRevenge

13 posted on 10/05/2007 7:59:10 PM PDT by rlmorel (Liberals: If the Truth would help them, they would use it.)
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To: NormsRevenge

First Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid ,and then Che Guevara teaches us all a valuable lesson. Don’t mess with the Bolivian Army.


14 posted on 10/05/2007 8:19:12 PM PDT by Hillarys Gate Cult (The man who said "there's no such thing as a stupid question" has never talked to Helen Thomas.)
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To: NormsRevenge
"Don't shoot, I'm Che."

Translation: "Don't you know who I am?"

15 posted on 10/05/2007 9:26:04 PM PDT by Free State Four
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To: NormsRevenge

16 posted on 10/05/2007 9:34:23 PM PDT by elizabetty ("Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." .Ralph Waldo Emerson)
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To: Free State Four
LOL..."dont shoot, I'm Che"

translation:

"don't shoot, I'm a narcissistic bully, give me a chance to manipulate you"

even at the end he manipulated the Bolivian general into having pity (what a sucker), but it didn't work that time, ha-ha

17 posted on 10/05/2007 10:56:17 PM PDT by KTM rider (Free Mexico ....Viva La Revolucion)
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To: NormsRevenge
Three things for now............

"The following day, October 9, 1967, at noon, they executed him in cold blood," Castro said.............I guess kangaroo courts (communist terrorist military tribunals) and summary executions are not "cold blooded"...........

It appears that Associated Press writers Zuazo and Snow conveniently forgot to include the part about the abject suffering of millions under the Castro/Che model of communist utopia..............untold yet again...........

The school children (Pioneers of Communism) sadly are probably oblivious to the fact that the "hero" they salute every morning in school (Guevara) was instrumental in placing the boot heel of totalitarianism firmly upon their tender little throats.......

18 posted on 10/05/2007 11:00:02 PM PDT by AwesomePossum
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To: NormsRevenge
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
19 posted on 10/06/2007 12:28:10 AM PDT by preacher (A government which robs from Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul.)
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