I decided this week that my dorm room was looking a little bland, so I went into town to purchase some wall decorations to enhance the ambiance. While strolling around for a bit in the poster shop on Main Street, trying to find a funky new art painting or a stereotypical picture of a band I liked, I came across a striking image a large poster of a Cuban flag with the face of Ernesto "Che" Guevara drawn on the front of it.
I had seen this image before, even on Dartmouth's campus. Last year, a flyer combining Guevara's recognizable propaganda photo with that of President Barack Obama's "Hope" campaign, was used by the Dartmouth Political Union to portray our president as a revolutionary and to rally support for Obama to align with Arab Spring rebels. Such glorification is highly misguided Guevara was a Cuban revolutionary who was responsible for the murders of thousands of Cubans, yet students wear his portrait thinking that this insurgent was a champion of human rights and freethinking.
The poster is the exemplification of the way that popular culture and modern idealism has fostered ignorance of the reality of Guevara's life. In 1959, Fidel Castro and Guevara overthrew the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, completing the Cuban Revolution. With promises to bring justice to Cubans and democratic ideals, Castro became the tyrannical leader of Cuba, where his regime still reigns.
According to research by the Cuba Archive Project, Guevara was Castro's chief executioner and was appointed commander of La Cabaa, the fortress where political prisoners were held and killed. The exact number of Guevara's victims is unknown, but he did acknowledge numerous executions all without due process. Castro and Guevara were revered as revolutionaries, yet became the originators of one of the largest refugee crises in recent memory.
Despite having been a tyrant with a complete disregard for human life or civil rights, Guevara's revolutionary conviction makes him an appealing figure in the eyes of ambitious "wannabe" revolutionaries around the world. Guevara was known as a "rebel with a very specific cause" and is referred to as a guerrilla who fought against oppressive regimes in Latin America. He became a symbol for youthful rebellion against evil.
Nevertheless, the Bolivian government executed Guevara 44 years ago. Had he lived 50 more years, I am confident that Guevara would be compared much sooner with Col. Moammar Gadhafi than with Obama. Retaining his tyrannical rule for nearly 42 years, Gadhafi sacrificed his citizen's civil rights and democratic freedoms, keeping the Libyan population weak and powerless in an attempt to prevent uprisings. Just last week, Gadhafi was executed by rebel troops.
During the Libyan revolution of 2011, Gadhafi and his regime hid behind human shields and media censorship while organizing massacres, torturing captured rebels and executing his own soldiers who refused to participate. Gadhafi had become a ruthless leader, but started his regime in Libya in a fashion similar to Guevara in Cuba he was a talented and passionate revolutionary.
Why is Che Guevara glorified by our youth? Guevara, along with Castro and other leaders of the Cuban Revolution, was a tyrant who shattered the lives of many. His image is offensive to those who have personally suffered from the crimes of his ideology, yet it is culturally acceptable in the United States to put his face on posters and t-shirts. To think that individuals in the United States, the most well known example of democracy and capitalism in the world, show support for a totalitarian communist seems ignorant and hypocritical.
I am not denying that it is possible to admire an individual for his good deeds. One could state with some conviction that Guevara had respectable ideals in that he actively fought against oppressive regimes. However, he eventually became his own worst enemy when he assumed a key role in his own tyrannical creation, communist Cuba.
As Dartmouth students, we should make an effort to become more informed of world issues past and present. We should worry a bit less about "looking cool" with an obscure rebel leader on our dorm room posters and consider how that man reached his fame through taking innocent lives and oppressing civil rights under the disguise of "freedom and revolution."
