Beyond Rightist Lies, The Real Legacy of Che Guevara

Beyond Rightist Lies, The Real Legacy of Che Guevara

By Steven Argue

I posted the following response at the “Activists” site in defense of the legacy of Che Guevara. A series of writings have been posted in opposition to Liberation News at that site.
http://allactivists.tribe.net/thread/95ca19a9-4594-4204-95c2-88cd31a8c00e

And Glen the troll strikes again. Earlier he was blaming "progressives" for homelessness and public urination. In reality it is capitalism that causes homelessness.

Here Glen makes the absurd statement, "I'm sure all those peasants Che murdered were happy for the help."

Che never murdered any peasants, but he did save a lot of their lives. He started out as a doctor traveling throughout Latin America, giving medical care to the poor.

Che Guevara was in Guatemala as a doctor in 1954 when the CIA overthrew the Democratically elected Arbenz government. That government was seen as a threat to the profits of the Rockefeller family's United Fruit Company because Arbenz advocated land reform. So U.S. imperialism overthrew Arbenz and put a long series of military dictatorships in power that tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of peasants and kept the people in extreme poverty. At the time of the CIA intervention in Guatemala, Che advocated that Arbenz should arm the people to resist, but Arbenz was not a revolutionary socialist and refusing to arm the people was his downfall.

Later Che was in Mexico when he met a dissident in exile, exiled by the U.S. backed Batista dictatorship in Cuba. The name of that young dissident was Fidel Castro. The Batista dictatorship had murdered tens of thousands of people, many of them student activists.

Castro and Che and a number of other Cuban revolutionaries set out in a boat called the Granma from Mexico for Cuba, armed and ready to lead the insurrection against Batista. The day they were set to arrive a general strike was called in Cuba, but the Granma got caught in stormy waters and arrived three days late. When they arrived Batista knew they were coming and most were killed. Che, Fidel, and a few others managed to escape and make their way into the rural Cuban mountains. There the peasants fed them and they began to build the revolutionary army that overthrew Batista in 1959.

Upon taking power the Cuban revolution, as in any true revolution, liquidated the old power structure. A new revolutionary government was built and the murderers and torturers of the Batista government were put on trial. Eight hundred were executed for their crimes.

Before the Cuban Revolution, Rockefeller’s United Fruit Company owned much of the land. Peasants starved in the off-season and lacked medical care and access to education. When the Cuban revolution came to power in 1959, Fidel Castro’s promise of land reform was quickly carried out. This made Cuba an enemy of the United States government, and the Cubans have never been forgiven since. Later a broader socialist revolution in the economy was carried out.

In addition to land reform the Cuban revolution has provided free access to good healthcare, education for kids even in the most remote rural areas, free education through the university levels, an elimination of hunger, an end to legal discrimination and segregation that existed against Blacks, women’s rights including birth control and free abortion on demand, environmental policies that the World Wildlife Fund says are the only passing policies on global warming in the world, and a promotion of culture.

For the vast majority of the Cuban people today their lives are much-much better than they were under the Batista government. They are a highly educated people doing much better. For a small minority, the wealthy, that profited from the misery of capitalism, their lives got worse. Most of them are now living in Miami. In Cuba, the Cuban people still come out in their millions at rallies in support of the revolution and socialism.

Che didn’t kill peasants, he doctored them, and when he decided that wasn’t enough, he fought along side them to better their conditions. In contrast the US government has murdered millions of peasants through puppet dictatorships, and additional millions murdered directly by the US government in Korea and Vietnam.

After helping lead the Cuban Revolution, Che was caught and murdered by CIA and Green Beret trained, equipped, and led Bolivian soldiers in 1967.

Yet the model of Che’s revolutionary self-sacrifice and dedication continues to live on and inspire new generations of socialist revolutionaries. Likewise, Che’s dedication to socialism, including providing medical care to the poor, lives on with the Cuban revolution.

It is interesting that tiny poor Cuba under a U.S. economic blockade is able to provide good healthcare for everyone. Cuba, unlike the United States, does not let people die in the emergency rooms without treatment or turn sick people away from receiving healthcare because they lack insurance. Cuba has taken the profit out of illness and injury and provide healthcare as a human right.

Likewise, while the United States is sending military troops to set up death squad governments in Iraq and Haiti and to intervene in Afghanistan, the Phillipines, and prop up the death squad government of Colombia, Cuba instead sends doctors. Cuban doctors save lives. They are on the ground in a number of countries providing regular care, and they are also sent to countries in emergencies. A few years back Cuba sent doctors to Central America after a bad hurricane and saved many lives. Likewise they offered to send doctors to New Orleans immediately after Katrina, they were well trained in dealing with that type of situation and would have saved lives, but Bush refused to let them in. A similar thing happened with the Nicaraguan government refusing entry, but that government let the Cuban doctors in due to protests.

While I have important arguments with the Cuban government in saying that revolutionary socialism must be democratic as well as on the essential nature of the Theory of Permanent Revolution in the international program; it would be the height of socialist sectarianism not to recognize the significant gains that have been made through the Cuban revolution.

U.S. Hands Off Cuba!

End the Economic Blockade!

For The Right of US Citizens to Travel To Cuba!

U.S. Out Of Guantanamo!

For National Healthcare in The United States!

End US Imperialism Through Socialist Revolution!


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