Tim Blair

WHO'S YOUR DADDY?

Che Guevara's daughter is in Australia to make money selling a book of her father’s stupid writing -- and to complain about the commercialisation of Che’s image. The Age provides some free publicity:

For millions, Guevara represents freedom, youth and the idea of rising up and being strong enough to change the system we live in. But who was the real Che?

Answer: He was an interrogator of elderly goat wranglers:

OCTOBER 7, 1967: The last entry in Che’s diary is recorded exactly eleven months since the inauguration of the guerrilla movement. The guerrillas run into an old woman herding goats. They ask her if there are soldiers in the area but are unable to get any reliable information. Scared that she will report them, they pay her 50 pesos to keep quiet. In Che’s diary it is noted that he has "little hope" that she will do so.

Way to go, Che. We now return to The Age’s worshipful report:

Aleida Guevara, his eldest daughter, is now touring the world to separate the myth from the man. It is a personal journey as much as a political one ... She bears a remarkable resemblance to her father and like him, she has studied medicine. Che was passionate about the future of young people. Aleida, 42, expresses her passion for youth through her work as a pediatrician at a children's hospital in Havana, where she lives.

And where others die after summary trials. How, by the way, do bullshit phrases like “personal journey as much as a political one” and “passionate about the future of young people” make it past a conscious editor?

She shares her father's idealism about creating a world free from oppression and is a prominent figure in the anti-globalisation movement ...

Which explains the world tour.

Visiting Australia for the first time, she is promoting a new book, Che Guevara Reader, a collection of her father's writing. Asked if she tries to be like her father, Aleida replies: "Everyone in Cuba has that commitment - to try to be like Che."

True enough. Che, after all, left Cuba.

On October 1967, 39-year-old Guevara was gunned down in the jungle by US-backed Bolivian troops. Aleida was seven at the time. She has only "very small memories" of her father, but she remembers his warmth, tenderness and capacity to love. The rest of the picture is filled in by stories that her mother told her and through her enduring friendship with Fidel Castro, whom she calls "uncle".

Puke.

Aleida says she didn't really know her father "physically and personally" but she recalls the lessons he taught her. "The most important one was to try to understand another human being, even though you may not be sure of what's going on. And even when you are sure, be as delicate as possible with that other person."

While you are shooting that other person in the face.

In 1965 he wrote to his children: "If you ever have to read this letter, it will be because I am no longer with you . . . your father has been a man who acted on his beliefs and has certainly been loyal to his convictions."

Every murderer “acts on his beliefs”. Manson was “loyal to his convictions”. Big deal, Mr Philosopher Warrior.

Since his death, Aleida has maintained an affectionate relationship with Castro. "It's like a relationship of a father and daughter; whatever I don't understand, I ask him to explain it to me . . . I demand that he explains."

”Tell me, Uncle Dictator, why did you imprison the homosexuals?”

The 76-year-old Cuban president has been in power for 44 years. During much of that time American trade and travel embargos have crippled the island's economy.

But you don’t want globalisation!

She is an unwavering member of the Cuban Communist Party and she does not question Castro's leadership.

Maybe that's why she’s alive and able to be interviewed by The Age.

In a clear message to the Bush Administration that Cuba will not tolerate efforts by the US to build a dissident movement in Cuba, the Castro regime this year sentenced at least 36 dissidents charged with opposing Castro to up to 27 years' jail - the toughest political crackdown in decades.

There's a sure way to strike fear into Bush’s heart: imprison your own citizens.

Aleida is angry the dissidents have received worldwide attention while five Cubans jailed in Miami on conspiracy and spying charges remain largely ignored. She claims they were not given a fair trial.

Presumably she said that with a straight face.

She is committed to carrying on her father's fight for freedom for the oppressed by travelling the world and telling people about the real Che Guevara.

So why isn’t she trying to kill us imperialist scum -- you know, like Daddy did -- instead of pushing “Chicken Soup for Idiot Marxists” in the bourgeois press? Some commitment.

Posted by Tim Blair at July 2, 2003 02:27 PM