“As told by (Che Guevara biographer Oesterheld) in the graphic biography “Life of Che,” Guevara’s story is about values far deeper than communism — the same values that, in fact, have inspired people around the world to express support for Ukraine,” writes Etelka Lehoczky in The New York Times this week.
“Oesterheld’s Guevara calls for economic and political fairness, self-determination for little countries and the need to keep big countries in check,” continues the glowing review of a recently unearthed biography of dead communist terrorist Che Guevara by dead communist terrorist Héctor Germán Oesterheld, who was presumably “disappeared” during Argentina’s “dirty war” in the 70’s.
“Foreign reporters — preferably American — were much more valuable to us than any military victory,” snickered Che Guevara in his diaries. “Much more valuable than recruits for our guerrilla force were American media recruits to export our propaganda.”
At the time Che was snickering about Herbert Matthews of The New York Times, who essentially operated as a propaganda adjunct to the Castro brothers and Che Guevara’s KGB-directed guerrilla group. As evident from this week’s New York Times book review, the names have certainly changed but the propaganda services continue.
"One Thousand Killed in 5 days of Fierce Street Fighting! Commander Che Guevara appealed to Batista troops for a truce to clear the streets of casualties. Guevara turned the tide in this bloody battle and whipped a Batista force of 3,000 men," beamed a New York Times article on Jan. 4, 1959, while depicting the famous “battle” of Santa Clara in central Cuba, where The Times crowned Che Guevara with his immortal Napoleonic fame.
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Che’s own diaries later revealed that his forces (which actually numbered a few dozen) had suffered exactly ONE casualty (a rebel named “El Vaquerito”) during this Caribbean Stalingrad, as depicted by The New York Times!
True to New York Times' form, during this “battle,” the paper didn’t have a reporter within 300 miles of Santa Clara. Instead, it relied on trusty Cuban Castroite “correspondents.” Your humble servant interviewed several participants and eye-witnesses (on both sides) to this “battle” and their consensus came to about five to seven casualties total for this Caribbean Gettysburg, as depicted by The New York Times—which is to say, about the same as the gunfire casualties during a slow weekend in Chicago or Baltimore.
Not that Che and Fidel were unappreciative of the help:
“To our American friend Herbert Matthews with gratitude. Without your help, and without the help of The New York Times, the revolution in Cuba would never have been," said Fidel Castro while pinning a medal on NY Times reporter Herbert Matthews April, 1959.
In fact, nothing remotely describable as a guerrilla war was taking place in Cuba in the late 1950’s. You’d never guess it from The New York Times, CBS and the others who “embedded” with Castro and Che’s ‘guerrillas” but the only genuine guerrilla war in Cuba during the 20th century raged during the early 1960’s and was waged mostly by Cuba’s working class and farmers against the Castro brothers, Che Guevara and their Soviet masters.
Farm collectivization was no more voluntary in Cuba than in the Ukraine. And Cuba’s kulaks had guns–at first anyway. Then the Kennedy-Khrushchev pact left them defenseless against Soviet tanks, helicopters and flame-throwers, while Che lent a hand and cheered this appalling Soviet imperialism, same as he had cheered the Soviet slaughter of Hungarian freedom-fighters in 1956-57, denouncing them all as “Fascists!” And “CIA agents!”
This ferocious guerrilla war, waged 90 miles from America's shores, might have taken place on the planet Pluto for all you'll read about it in the mainstream media or see about it from Hollywood. To get an idea of the odds faced by those betrayed rural rebels, the desperation of their battle and the damage they wrought, you might revisit Tony Montana during the last 15 minutes of "Scarface."
Che had a very bloody (and typically cowardly) hand in this slaughter, one of the major anti-insurgency wars on this continent. Many of these anti-communist guerrillas were executed on the spot upon capture, a Che specialty. "We fought with the fury of cornered beasts," is how one of the lucky few who escaped described this desperate freedom fight against the Soviet occupation of Cuba through their proxies Fidel and Che.
In 1956 when Che linked up with Fidel, Raul, and their Cuban chums in Mexico City, one of them (now in exile) recalls Che railing against the Hungarian freedom-fighters as "Fascists!" and cheering their extermination by Soviet tanks.
In 1962, Che got a chance to do more than cheer from the sidelines. He had a hand in the following: "Cuban militia units commanded by Russian officers employed flame-throwers to burn the palm-thatched cottages in the Escambray countryside. The peasant occupants were accused of feeding the counterrevolutionaries and bandits." At one point in 1962, one of every 17 Cubans was a political prisoner. Fidel himself admits that they faced 179 bands of "counter-revolutionaries" and "bandits."
Mass murder was the order in Cuba's countryside. It was the only way to decimate so many rebels. These country folk went after the Reds with a ferocity that saw Fidel and Che running to their Soviet sugar daddies and tugging their pants in panic. That commie bit about how "a guerrilla swims in the sea which is the people, etc." fit Cuba's anti-Fidel and Che rebellion to a T. So in a relocation and concentration campaign that shamed anything the Brits did to the Boers, the gallant Communists ripped thousands of Cubans from their ancestral homes and herded them into concentration camps on the opposite side of Cuba.
But leave it to The New York Times to somehow hail Che as a champion of “self-determination for little countries.” That Che Guevara answered to a KGB case-officer since 1956, declared that “the answer to the world’s problems lie behind the iron curtain,” declared that he “came to communism thanks to Daddy Stalin”—all of this makes the New York Times review not merely ignorant or ironic but extremely obscene in the manner of classic KGB propaganda.
Further highlighting the sentimental claims in The New York Times’ book review as among the most asinine in print—even for such an asininity-provoking theme as Che Guevara—the Castro brothers and Che Guevara all had the same KGB case-officer (Nikolai Leonov) as did KGB Lieut. Col. Vladimir Putin, currently busy exemplifying his KGB/Stalinist pedigree.
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