The boy had fought back against Communists who arrested his father. Later, San Martin watched Che personally execute him: “Che raised his pistol, put the barrel to the back of the boy’s neck, and blasted. The shot almost decapitated the young boy.”
Unsurprisingly, Che’s bravado wasn’t on display when he was captured in Bolivia in 1967. Like plenty of Communist thugs before him, he went out like a coward. “Don’t shoot!” he whimpered. “I’m Che!”
In his book, Fontova visits Miami’s Cuban Memorial, which honors victims of the Castro regime. Elderly Cubans often go there to mourn relatives who died in prisons or in mass executions.
Fontova describes a common scene. “Still escorted by her grandson, the grandmother crosses the street slowly and silently. They run into a dreadlocked youth coming out of a music store. His T-shirt sports the face of her husband’s murderer. They turn their heads in rage to the store window. They see the mass-murder’s face again—this time on a huge poster…The poster reads, ‘Fight Oppression!’”
For young people who reject the real political oppression still brutally enforced in Cuba and other socialist hellholes, I encourage you to join Young America’s Foundation in observing “No More Che Day” on October 9th. No More Che Day is a day to remember victims of the Castro regime, from Che’s time to the present. (For more information, visit YAF’s student activism page at www.yaf.org/students.aspx)
Of course, rebuking a left-wing hero won’t go over well with your professors. But at least you’ll stand apart from the conformists who think the perfect complement to their iPods and fashionably disheveled hair is a T-shirt glorifying a mass murderer.