First, to refresh your memory as to Che’s vile nature, an excerpt from an article, The Killing Machine: Che Guevara, from Communist Firebrand to Capitalist Brand, by Álvaro Vargas Llosa I linked to a while ago,
Guevara might have been enamored of his own death, but he was much more enamored of other people’s deaths. In April 1967, speaking from experience, he summed up his homicidal idea of justice in his “Message to the Tricontinental”: “hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine.” His earlier writings are also peppered with this rhetorical and ideological violence. Although his former girlfriend Chichina Ferreyra doubts that the original version of the diaries of his motorcycle trip contains the observation that “I feel my nostrils dilate savoring the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood of the enemy,” Guevara did share with Granado at that very young age this exclamation: “Revolution without firing a shot? You’re crazy.” At other times the young bohemian seemed unable to distinguish between the levity of death as a spectacle and the tragedy of a revolution’s victims. In a letter to his mother in 1954, written in Guatemala, where he witnessed the overthrow of the revolutionary government of Jacobo Arbenz, he wrote: “It was all a lot of fun, what with the bombs, speeches, and other distractions to break the monotony I was living in.”
Guevara’s disposition when he traveled with Castro from Mexico to Cuba aboard the Granma is captured in a phrase in a letter to his wife that he penned on January 28, 1957, not long after disembarking, which was published in her book Ernesto: A Memoir of Che Guevara in Sierra Maestra: “Here in the Cuban jungle, alive and bloodthirsty.” This mentality had been reinforced by his conviction that Arbenz had lost power because he had failed to execute his potential enemies. An earlier letter to his former girlfriend Tita Infante had observed that “if there had been some executions, the government would have maintained the capacity to return the blows.” It is hardly a surprise that during the armed struggle against Batista, and then after the triumphant entry into Havana, Guevara murdered or oversaw the executions in summary trials of scores of people—proven enemies, suspected enemies, and those who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In January 1957, as his diary from the Sierra Maestra indicates, Guevara shot Eutimio Guerra because he suspected him of passing on information: “I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain…. His belongings were now mine.” Later he shot Aristidio, a peasant who expressed the desire to leave whenever the rebels moved on. While he wondered whether this particular victim “was really guilty enough to deserve death,” he had no qualms about ordering the death of Echevarría, a brother of one of his comrades, because of unspecified crimes: “He had to pay the price.” At other times he would simulate executions without carrying them out, as a method of psychological torture.
The proposed Galway monument to Che is indeed an obscene piece of propaganda, encompassing social media:
The commemorative sculpture will be entirely funded by the Cuban and Argentine Embassies and a design by Simon McGuiness will now go before the Galway City Council’s Working Group for approval.
Simon McGuinness told the Galway City Tribune that the image is a “total homage” to Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick’s iconic 1968 Che poster, which was based upon a photograph by Alberto Korda.
“It has three plate glass panels of varying heights which represent man, image and ideal,” Mr McGuinness explained.
The monument will feature a number of interactivity features and people visiting it will be able to use their phones to have a photograph taken at the statue and uploaded onto Facebook.
A planned WiFi feature at the monument will allow visitors to access videos and surf the Che Guevara website. They will also be able to post messages on the website.
As of now, however, The Mayor of Galway says she will not support plans to erect a monument of Che Guevara in the city.
