Chile Forum

You guys are old

Donnybrook wrote:I can't decide if I think the Che would think it wonderfully ironic that he was being used to market the Mercedes or if he would be horrified.

He would have bomb the shit out of the factory and driven out on an SLK with the top down smoking a cigar and posing with an AK on his hip. That's what the world is missing, a flamboyant terrorist.

chernandez wrote:You guys are old

Yes - Some of us are old enough to have been doing the lock-and-load even before the Che got his hands cut off in 1967.

If it wasn't for the time spent in Miami, I would only know Che as the guy on the t-shirts.

chernandez wrote:If it wasn't for the time spent in Miami, I would only know Che as the guy on the t-shirts.

Attila the Hun? Joseph Stalin? Slobodan Milosevic? Vlad the Impaler? Pol Pot? Any of those names figure into your education?

Wait... you went to public school in the US, right?

As one who has taught in both private and public schools in the USA I can say that, no, the more interesting chaps in history are not included in the curriculum. Apparently US history ends with WWII.
On another note: Che got his hands chopped off? Did this happen in Africa?

momof3 wrote:
On another note: Che got his hands chopped off? Did this happen in Africa?

Yes, you did teach in the US.

patagoniax wrote:

momof3 wrote:
On another note: Che got his hands chopped off? Did this happen in Africa?

Yes, you did teach in the US.

patagoniax wrote:

chernandez wrote:If it wasn't for the time spent in Miami, I would only know Che as the guy on the t-shirts.

Attila the Hun? Joseph Stalin? Slobodan Milosevic? Vlad the Impaler? Pol Pot? Any of those names figure into your education?

Wait... you went to public school in the US, right?

Yep, yep, yep, no clue. El Che was not really studied beyond the cursory mention when learning about the Cuban revolution, which was barely discussed. Going through school in the latter years of the cold war, we mostly focused on the Cuban missile crisis. It was not until college, with the wannabe Communists, where I really got to understand his involvement in the revolucion and other "incidents". So yeah, Che did not quite fit in my education as much as let's say Stalin, who rarely gets credit for being a fucking psycho murderer of millions.

chernandez wrote: Che did not quite fit in my education as much as let's say Stalin, who rarely gets credit for being a fucking psycho murderer of millions.

There are reasons for that.

During the 1930s and 1940s both the UK and the US "progressives," which included many writers (including Hemingway) and their publishers, actively or otherwise supported Stalin and often turned a blind eye to the pogroms. This attitude remained in the UK through the 1950s. We would do well to remember the difficulty that George Orwell had in finding UK publishers for his works that were interpreted as being critical of Stalin. Unsurprisingly, many of the "progressives" of the education industry in both North America and the UK still maintain a code of minimal exposure of the atrocities of Stalinism. The Che is simply heir to this treatment.

How does all this relate to Chile? The Che was dead by the time that Allende was elected. Yes, but he did spend some "formative time" in Chile in the 1950s, and many Chilean communists never let anyone forget that El Che is "theirs" as well.

Regarding El Che's hands: Guevara was killed in 1967 under orders from the Bolivian government (the CIA had wanted him alive since he would have been a valuable intelligence asset, albeit an uncooperative one). If I remember correctly, a couple of days after his death his hands were cut off and sent to Bs As for positive identification, this being before DNA was commonly used. Since El Che had a previous criminal record and the Argentine authorities had his fingerprints, matching the amputated hands/fingers with the police prints provided fairly conclusive determination of the identity.

Meh, I still don't know how to edit the quote function! So, as best I can do, Patagoniax wrote:

"And near that ferry is where I met the young Mercedes (la française, from Lyon) who lived with me in Vancouver back then"

It's a big world, but sometimes not so much... In Vancouver, did you know a fellow from Minnesota named Dave Biery? Not me, another Dave.

Cheers!
Dave

patagoniax wrote:

chernandez wrote: Che did not quite fit in my education as much as let's say Stalin, who rarely gets credit for being a fucking psycho murderer of millions.

There are reasons for that.

During the 1930s and 1940s both the UK and the US "progressives," which included many writers (including Hemingway) and their publishers, actively or otherwise supported Stalin and often turned a blind eye to the pogroms. This attitude remained in the UK through the 1950s. We would do well to remember the difficulty that George Orwell had in finding UK publishers for his works that were interpreted as being critical of Stalin. Unsurprisingly, many of the "progressives" of the education industry in both North America and the UK still maintain a code of minimal exposure of the atrocities of Stalinism. The Che is simply heir to this treatment.

Alas, progressives did support Stalin but as a counterweight to Hitler who they viewed as the greater of the two evils. It seems you have conveniently overlooked the fact that Hitler lost WWII on the Eastern front, otherwise we might all be speaking German. And, yes, Stalin was responsible for mass murder (as was Hitler and the other despots you have mentioned) ergo his infamous quip when discussing the pogroms, "... fewer Russians, but better Russians."

Che was a 'true' revolutionary leader and it is an affront to compare him with Stalin and the others.

john wrote:

patagoniax wrote:

chernandez wrote: Che did not quite fit in my education as much as let's say Stalin, who rarely gets credit for being a fucking psycho murderer of millions.

There are reasons for that.

During the 1930s and 1940s both the UK and the US "progressives," which included many writers (including Hemingway) and their publishers, actively or otherwise supported Stalin and often turned a blind eye to the pogroms. This attitude remained in the UK through the 1950s. We would do well to remember the difficulty that George Orwell had in finding UK publishers for his works that were interpreted as being critical of Stalin. Unsurprisingly, many of the "progressives" of the education industry in both North America and the UK still maintain a code of minimal exposure of the atrocities of Stalinism. The Che is simply heir to this treatment.

Alas, progressives did support Stalin but as a counterweight to Hitler who they viewed as the greater of the two evils. It seems you have conveniently overlooked the fact that Hitler lost WWII on the Eastern front, otherwise we might all be speaking German. And, yes, Stalin was responsible for mass murder (as was Hitler and the other despots you have mentioned) ergo his infamous quip when discussing the pogroms, "... fewer Russians, but better Russians."

Che was a 'true' revolutionary leader and it is an affront to compare him with Stalin and the others.

The UK progressives continued to support Stalin long after Hitler was gone. This was the principal reason (mentioned earlier) that Orwell had trouble getting published in UK - not because of a poverty of quality material but because of the resistance of the UK publishers to printing what was perceived to be critical of Stalinism.

I suppose that we can't compare the Che with Stalin. The former tended to murder people up close and personally, with his own weapons, getting blood spatter on those signature green fatigues. The Che's diaries contain gruesome descriptions of how he personally killed those people. And I suppose we can't compare the mere several thousand that the Che murdered with the several million that Stalin had killed. And how the progressive/liberal education industry has tidily kept that messy part of history away from the classrooms.