Read Online Exposing the Real Che Guevara by Humberto Fontova - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Humberto Fontova
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Never mind that he wrote the truth, and as eloquently as ever.
There were hints that shortly before his suicide, Hemingway’s infatuation with Castro and Che had begun to ebb. Did it happen when several thousand Cubans in his province were dragged from their homes and imprisoned or riddled with bullets by firing squads?
In For Whom the Bell Tolls , Hemingway seems to excuse communist massacres as “necessary murder.” No, his crush on the gallant revolutionaries started ebbing when Papa found that this “pure and beautiful” revolution made it difficult for him to repair the pump on the gigantic swimming pool of his Cuban estate.
Hemingway might have thanked Cuba’s minister of industries at the time, Che Guevara, for the scarcity of pool pump parts (though most Cubans were already thanking him for the scarcity of other items, such as food). Then Papa got singed by the very flames he had helped ignite. His Finca Vigia outside Havana—paid for, we may assume, from royalties earned extolling Spanish communists in For Whom the Bell Tolls —was finally stolen by Cuban communists, his fishing buddies.
If anyone ever fit the description of the effete bourgeois latifundista whom Che claimed to scorn (though the term perfectly described his own family), it was Ernest Hemingway himself. Had Papa been in a less fashionable line of business, Che would have made short work of him.
4
From Military Doofus to “Heroic Guerrilla”
Che waged a guerrilla campaign where he displayed outrageous bravery and skill.
— Time MAGAZINE, HAILING ITS “HEROES AND ICONS OF THE CENTURY”
Che’s most famous book is titled Guerrilla Warfare . His famous photo is captioned “Heroic Guerrilla.” His Hollywood biopic is titled Guerrilla . And his most resounding failure came precisely as guerrilla warrior. There is no record of his prevailing in any bona-fide battle. There are precious few accounts that he actually fought in anything properly describable as a battle.
Had Ernesto Guevara de la Serna y Lynch not linked up with a Cuban exile named Nico Lopez in Guatemala in 1954, who later introduced him to Raul Castro and his brother Fidel in Mexico City, he might have continued his life as a traveling hobo, mooching off women, staying in flophouses, and scribbling unreadable poetry. Che was a revolutionary Ringo Starr, who, by pure chance, fell in with the right bunch and rode their coattails to world fame. His very name, “Che,” was given him by the Cubans who hobnobbed with him in Mexico. Argentines use the term “Che” much as Cubans use “chico,” or Michael Moore fans use “dude.” The term has an Italian rather than a Spanish pedigree. The Cubans noticed Ernesto Guevara using it, so it stuck. Fidel Castro recruited his new friend to serve as the rebel army’s doctor (on the strength of his bogus credentials) before their “invasion” of Cuba. On the harrowing boat ride through turbulent seas from the Yucatan to Cuba’s Oriente province in a decrepit old yacht, the Granma, a rebel found Che lying comatose in the boat’s cabin. He rushed to the commander. “Fidel, looks like Che’s dead!”
“Well, if he’s dead, then throw him overboard,” replied Castro. 1 Guevara, suffering the combined effects of seasickness and an asthma attack, stayed on board.
Baptism of Fire
Guevara’s condition did not immediately improve upon landfall. At one point, he declared: “Doctor! I think I’m dying!” 2 That was “doctor” himself, Ernesto Che Guevara, gasping to fellow rebel (and bona-fide physician) Faustino Perez during their Cuban baptism of fire. The Castro rebels had landed in Cuba three days earlier on the Granma from Mexico. The Cuban army, alerted by a peasant who didn’t seem to recognize his self-appointed liberators, had ambushed them near a cane field in a place named Alegria del Pio.
In Che’s Havana-published diaries (primary source for most of his biographers and media stories), he uses slightly
There were hints that shortly before his suicide, Hemingway’s infatuation with Castro and Che had begun to ebb. Did it happen when several thousand Cubans in his province were dragged from their homes and imprisoned or riddled with bullets by firing squads?
In For Whom the Bell Tolls , Hemingway seems to excuse communist massacres as “necessary murder.” No, his crush on the gallant revolutionaries started ebbing when Papa found that this “pure and beautiful” revolution made it difficult for him to repair the pump on the gigantic swimming pool of his Cuban estate.
Hemingway might have thanked Cuba’s minister of industries at the time, Che Guevara, for the scarcity of pool pump parts (though most Cubans were already thanking him for the scarcity of other items, such as food). Then Papa got singed by the very flames he had helped ignite. His Finca Vigia outside Havana—paid for, we may assume, from royalties earned extolling Spanish communists in For Whom the Bell Tolls —was finally stolen by Cuban communists, his fishing buddies.
If anyone ever fit the description of the effete bourgeois latifundista whom Che claimed to scorn (though the term perfectly described his own family), it was Ernest Hemingway himself. Had Papa been in a less fashionable line of business, Che would have made short work of him.
4
From Military Doofus to “Heroic Guerrilla”
Che waged a guerrilla campaign where he displayed outrageous bravery and skill.
— Time MAGAZINE, HAILING ITS “HEROES AND ICONS OF THE CENTURY”
Che’s most famous book is titled Guerrilla Warfare . His famous photo is captioned “Heroic Guerrilla.” His Hollywood biopic is titled Guerrilla . And his most resounding failure came precisely as guerrilla warrior. There is no record of his prevailing in any bona-fide battle. There are precious few accounts that he actually fought in anything properly describable as a battle.
Had Ernesto Guevara de la Serna y Lynch not linked up with a Cuban exile named Nico Lopez in Guatemala in 1954, who later introduced him to Raul Castro and his brother Fidel in Mexico City, he might have continued his life as a traveling hobo, mooching off women, staying in flophouses, and scribbling unreadable poetry. Che was a revolutionary Ringo Starr, who, by pure chance, fell in with the right bunch and rode their coattails to world fame. His very name, “Che,” was given him by the Cubans who hobnobbed with him in Mexico. Argentines use the term “Che” much as Cubans use “chico,” or Michael Moore fans use “dude.” The term has an Italian rather than a Spanish pedigree. The Cubans noticed Ernesto Guevara using it, so it stuck. Fidel Castro recruited his new friend to serve as the rebel army’s doctor (on the strength of his bogus credentials) before their “invasion” of Cuba. On the harrowing boat ride through turbulent seas from the Yucatan to Cuba’s Oriente province in a decrepit old yacht, the Granma, a rebel found Che lying comatose in the boat’s cabin. He rushed to the commander. “Fidel, looks like Che’s dead!”
“Well, if he’s dead, then throw him overboard,” replied Castro. 1 Guevara, suffering the combined effects of seasickness and an asthma attack, stayed on board.
Baptism of Fire
Guevara’s condition did not immediately improve upon landfall. At one point, he declared: “Doctor! I think I’m dying!” 2 That was “doctor” himself, Ernesto Che Guevara, gasping to fellow rebel (and bona-fide physician) Faustino Perez during their Cuban baptism of fire. The Castro rebels had landed in Cuba three days earlier on the Granma from Mexico. The Cuban army, alerted by a peasant who didn’t seem to recognize his self-appointed liberators, had ambushed them near a cane field in a place named Alegria del Pio.
In Che’s Havana-published diaries (primary source for most of his biographers and media stories), he uses slightly
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