Who Was Chè Guevara?

How many times have you seen someone wearing a Chè Guevara T-shirt?  Just the other day, I ran into a person with such a T-shirt.  I could not help but think that the person had no idea who Chè Guevara was or what he stood for.  I get a feeling that people who wear such T-shirts, just think that the Chè icon is just another "cool" clothing option that makes them fit in with the crowd.

Let's cut to the chase.  Who was Chè?  Was he a hero, a charismatic figure, a villain or a brutal thug?  If you look into the history of this person you will find that he was a cold blooded murderer, a communist, a henchman of Fidel Castro and a criminal of the worst kind.  A few facts:

• He was born Ernesto Lynch; his parents were Spanish and Irish.  He later changed his name to fit his ambition as a communist revolutionary. After graduating from medical school in 1953 he decided that what he really wanted to do was  fight in communist rebellions anywhere he could find one,

• After a failed attempt to stir up trouble in Guatemala, he fled to Mexico where he met Fidel Castro, who was on ice there waiting to return to Cuba and take over from the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in the Cuban communist revolution of 1959.  While fighting with Castro in Cuba Chè hones his killing instinct and discovers that he loves killing. In an article by David W. Thornton published by Yahoo, he is described like this: "Che' becomes Castro's chief lieutenant and then the comandante of one of the largest guerilla bands. He is ruthless, frequently executing suspected traitors quickly and dispassionately. In a 1957 letter to his first wife (he remarried to a fellow guerilla in 1959), Che' writes, "I'm here in Cuba's hills, alive and thirsting for blood." In a letter to his father, he writes, "I really like killing." Che's instructions to a subordinate are simple: "If in doubt, kill him."
• Thornton further describes the extent of his bloodthirsty mania this way: "He is placed in charge of La Cabana prison, where the majority of the executions take place. According to the Black Book of Communism, by the mid-1960s, 14,000 Cubans have been executed without fair trials. 500,000 Cubans were incarcerated in labor camps. At one point, in 1961, one of every 19 Cubans was a political prisoner. Che' plays a major role in developing Castro's penal system and defends the executions publicly in 1964 after he had ceased to command the prison. He even dismisses his victims as "all CIA agents" before his death in 1967."

This is just a short list of his many attributes.  There is much more.  So, next time you see someone wearing a Chè T-shirt, ask him or her if he/she knows who that man on his/her T-shirt was.