[NYTr] Che: Hasta la victoria siempre - A thousand beats

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[See also below: a sour-grapes wishful-thinking item from Reuters
about how Che Guevara's  "legacy is fading."  Right... Which is why
thousands all over the world are honoring him, quoting his works,
why Ocean Press continues to publish his theoretical and strategic
writing, and why -- even in Pakistan -- on the weekend of yet another
fraudulent dictatorship "election" -- the first article below appears. 

The newly elected democratic governments in Latin America have emerged
for many reasons, and out of years of struggle and revolutionary
education. The complete failure and bankruptcy of the neo-liberal
policies imposed by the US is also high on the list. Th growing
awareness and rising political power of the poor and the indigenous in
Latin America IS the legacy of Che Guevara and of the example of the
Cuban Revolution, and its influence is growing, not fading, all the
time. Which is precisely why armed struggle has not been necessary in
the early years of the 21st century: the Empire has no way to win an
armed conflict. The Monster is entirely over-extended, and it learned in
Guatemala, el Salvador, etc. that if they do not negotiate, armed
struggle will just continue until it triumphs, as it did in Vietnam.
When it comes to insurgency and guerrilla warfare, Che wrote the
book -- literally. 

The nature of the beast has not changed. But it is weakening after
"One, two, three, many Vietnams," as Che said.  Iraq is just one more.
Venceremos! -NY Transfer]


StopNATO via mart


In honor and remembrance of Ernesto 'Che' Guevera
Murdered  by the CIA - October 9, 1967


Daily Jang (Pakistan) - Oct 7, 2007
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=75029

Hasta la victoria siempre:

A hundred beats

by Fatima Bhutto

Forty years ago in La Higuera, Bolivia, an executioner stood poised to
make a kill. He lifted his gun to shoot and for a brief moment,
hesitated. "Shoot, you coward, you are about to kill a man." Replied
the man in his crosshairs. His name was Ernesto Che Guevara.

His murder, at the hands of the Bolivian military and their CIA
backers, was hailed as a coup for the tyrants of history but in truth
it was a rebirth. Che Guevara's uncompromising struggle and ideals of
social action and resistance were not to be extinguished; they were not
felled that day in La Higuera. Rather, the revolutionary romanticism
and political rebellion inspired by Che Guevara has since spread across
the stratosphere, surpassing time and symbolism.

Today, as his 40th death anniversary approaches, we remember Che not as
those who feared his message would want us to remember him -- safely
ensconced on Swatch watches and tee shirts -- but as a political force
whose ideals remain, alive and vibrant even though embattled and
rigorously contested, to this very day.

First, we remember Che in the world. We remember him as he is seen and
felt across much of the Third World, the south, where the promise of
socialist revolution, endogenous economic development, and political
emancipation draws new breath. On her first visit to Venezuela, Aleida
Guevara, Che's eldest daughter and a physician based at the William
Soler Children's Hospital in Havana, met President Hugo Chavez to
discuss the free healthcare offered across his country.

"Welcome back", President Chavez said to Aleida, who was quite certain
that she had mentioned this was in fact her first visit to Venezuela.
"It's my first time here", she replied slowly, repeating herself. "You
have always been here," said President Chavez even more slowly.

Under the Bolivarian Revolution, the Venezuelan people have embarked
upon a 21st century model of socialism, one that provides medical care
and education as an inalienable right while reclaiming sovereignty and
economic dignity. In Chile, free from the ghosts of Pinochet, the
country is ruled by a former prisoner of conscience, a woman who broke
the silence about the dirty repression carried out by the military
dictatorship that killed Salvador Allende, Che Guevara's compatriot and
comrade. We remember Che as they remembered him in the streets of
Santiago, Chile, where they gathered to mourn his murder by proclaiming
'No lo vamos a olvidar!' We will not let him be forgotten.

In Nicaragua the right wing oligarchy's grip on the country was broken
last year by none other than a former Sandinista rebel leader. In
Ecuador again, big business could not buy the elections, and the
triumphant socialist Rafael Correa has vowed to cleanse his country of
elitist corruption and political malfeasance. In Bolivia, the president
has nationalised the country's oil and gas reserves -- the second
largest in South America -- and booted aside the (multinational)
economic pirates who pillaged his land for so very long. Evo Morales,
an indigenous Bolivian and a simple, humble man, made one change to the
Presidential Palace when he moved in: he hung a portrait of Che Guevara
in his office. There is more, there will be more, much more to come.

Second, we remember Che through Cuba, his adopted home. Cuba's amazing
doctors, who travel the world bringing healthcare to those whose
countries deny them their most basic right, recently treated a man
named Mario Tetan in Bolivia. Mario Tetan was going blind due to old
age and cataracts and it was only through the services provided by the
Cuban doctors that he could be treated. Mario Tetan was that
executioner from forty years ago. Mario Tetan is the man who murdered
Che Guevara, a man not facetiously thought of as Cuba's patron saint.
'Forty years after Mario Tetan attempted to destroy a dream and an
idea, Che returns to win yet another battle' read the headlines of
Granma, the Communist Party newspaper in Havana.

We remember Che and his perseverance through the struggle of the Cuban
Five, held unjustly in American jails. The five, Antonio Guerrero,
Fernando Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino and Rene Gonzalez
were in Miami monitoring anti-Cuban exile groups. They were in Miami,
in the words of their noted attorney Leonard Weinglass, to track the
terrorist activities of several exile groups that had previously
attacked innocent civilians in Cuba (as well as bombing a Cuban
airliner in 1976). The Cuban Five were rounded up, not having committed
any crimes, and charged with conspiracies. They were handed life
sentences -- sentences based not on any actual wrongdoing but on
imaginary and fanciful conspiracies -- and have been held in maximum
security prisons without contact with their government or their
families for the last nine years despite a 2005 ruling of the Eleventh
Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta that declared the original (non)
legal proceedings null and void, called for a new free and fair trial
and revoked their unjust sentences. Amnesty International has

criticised the American government for their human rights violations of
the Cuban Five, MPs in England lobbied former prime minister Tony Blair
to raise the issue of the Cuban Five through his government (he
didn't), and nine Nobel prize laureates, including Desmond Tutu, Harold
Pinter, Jose Saramago and Nadine Gordimer, wrote an open letter to
former US attorney-general Alberto Gonzales insisting that nothing
justifies the arbitrary incarceration of the Cuban Five and demanding
their "immediate liberation". You can sign the petition for their
release at www.freeforfive.org.

Lastly, we remember Che Guevara through his words. In his last letter
to his children he wrote: "If one day you must read this letter, it
will be because I am no longer among you. You will almost not remember
me and the littlest ones will remember nothing at all. Your father has
been a man who acted according to his beliefs and certainly has been
faithful to his convictions. Grow up as good revolutionaries. Study
hard to be able to dominate the techniques that permit the domination
of nature. Remember that the revolution is what is important and that
each of us, on our own is worthless. Above all, try always to be able
to feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part
of the world. It is the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary."

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WISHFUL-THINKING & DISINFO DEPARTMENT:

Reuters - Oct 5, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSKIM55790620071005?sp=true

Che Guevara's legacy fading with the years

By Eduardo Garcia

LA PAZ (Reuters) - Forty years after his death, Ernesto "Che" Guevara is
still revered by many in Latin America but his calls for armed
insurrection and class warfare now seem outdated in a region that has
largely embraced democracy.

A new generation of socialist leaders has come of age since the
Argentine-born guerrilla leader was captured in the Bolivian jungle and
executed on October 9, 1967.

Those new socialists -- Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Ecuador's Rafael Correa
and Bolivia's Evo Morales -- all pay homage to Che and are happy to
perpetuate the romantic image of the dashing outlaw with flowing locks
and a soldier's beret.

Some of their goals are the same with all three imposing much stronger
state control over the oil and gas industries.

But unlike Guevara, they all sought and found power peacefully through
the ballot box. Their buzz words are resource nationalism and indigenous
rights, not dialectical materialism and Marxism.

Latin America has changed radically since Guevara's era. The civil wars
and military dictatorships which once ravaged the region have in most
cases ended, allowing for democratic change that makes armed revolution
redundant.

"In the 1960s and 1970s, people rightly took up arms to change a
system, a model, in search of justice and equality," Bolivian President
Morales told Reuters this week when asked about Guevara's legacy. "But
these are different times."

Morales, who is Bolivia's first democratically-elected indigenous
president, has a portrait of Guevara made of coca leaves on the wall of
his presidential palace in La Paz and speaks of the guerrilla leader in
reverential tones.

"After 40 years, Che is still a symbol of liberation, of sovereignty,
dignity and above all of justice and equality," said Morales, who is
expected to attend commemorative ceremonies this weekend in the remote
region of Bolivia where Guevara was captured by U.S.-backed soldiers and
executed.

But such reverence is perhaps on the wane.

COLD KILLER?

Only last month, a new biography, "The Hidden Face of Che," depicted
Guevara as a cold-hearted killer who oversaw executions and presided
over a "purifying commission" in Havana after helping Fidel Castro
seize power in Cuba in 1959.

Brazil's most widely read weekly news magazine Veja published a highly
critical article on the cult of Guevara this month entitled "Che -- The
Farce of the Hero."

In Venezuela, President Chavez lauds Guevara but has named his own
socialist revolution after South America's 19th century liberator Simon
Bolivar, not Guevara.

In Ecuador, President Correa has sung songs in public in tribute to
Guevara but says his government is concerned with present day problems
and not the struggles of the 1960s.

"Che was one of the greatest Latin Americans in history, but ours is
21st Century socialism," Correa told Reuters in a recent interview in
New York.

"We don't believe in class war or dialectical materialism. We believe
it's possible to bring about profound, radical, socialist change using
current structures, democratic means."

Armed rebel movements have put down their guns across the region in
recent years. Only Colombia's guerrillas are still a powerful force,
and they have become increasingly active in smuggling cocaine.

"THE MOST FAMOUS FACE IN THE WORLD"

Although he no longer inspires admirers to insurrection, Guevara is a
potent anti-establishment symbol for some born long after he was
fomenting revolution from Cuba to the Congo.

"I think his stance is pretty interesting, although it's a shame that
rather than starting a revolution in our country he went elsewhere,"
said Noelia Gabriel, a 23-year-old student on the streets of Buenos
Aires this week.

Guevara is still a merchandiser's dream. "The most famous face in the
world," as it has been dubbed, is still reproduced endlessly on
T-shirts, mugs, magazine covers -- even bikinis.

The 2004 hit film "The Motorcycle Diaries," which chronicled Guevara's
formative trip through South America in 1952, helped bring his legacy
to a younger audience, but it also perhaps altered it, portraying him
as a sometimes naive idealist rather than a seasoned ideological
warrior.

A commemorative concert marking the 40th anniversary of his death is
planned in the Chilean capital Santiago and hundreds of Che acolytes
will likely join Morales at events in Bolivia.

Perhaps the most poignant ceremony will take place in Santa Clara, Cuba,
where Guevara won a famous battle during the Cuban revolution and where
his bones now lie.

In a sign of how the years pass, taking Guevara's legacy with them, his
old comrade-in-arms Castro is not expected to attend. Castro, 81, has
not appeared in public since he stepped aside as president after
undergoing emergency intestinal surgery 14 months ago and he is thought
unlikely to return to power.

) Reuters 2006. All rights reserved.