Kult
Wie es scheint, läßt der in Kürze bevorstehende Geburtstag (Todestag? Egal.) von Ernesto Guevara bei seinen Anhängern und Anhängerinnen bereits die Oxytocin-Konzentration im Blut in bedenkliche Höhen schnellen und die armen Leute ganz rollig werden, politisch jedenfalls. Da ist kein Personenkult zu pompös, keine Eloge zu peinlich, um aus einem Stalinisten und vielfachen Mörder einen Befreiungskämpfer und ein politisches Vorbild zu machen.
Höchste Zeit, mal wieder auf eine drei Jahre alte Kolumne von Paul Berman hinzuweisen, der die Dinge etwas klarer sieht:
Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution’s first firing squads. He founded Cuba’s “labor camp” system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che’s imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for “two, three, many Vietnams,” he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: “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. This is what our soldiers must become …”— and so on.
[...]
I wonder if people who stand up to cheer a hagiography of Che Guevara, as the Sundance audience did, will ever give a damn about the oppressed people of Cuba—will ever lift a finger on behalf of the Cuban liberals and dissidents. It’s easy in the world of film to make a movie about Che, but who among that cheering audience is going to make a movie about Raúl Rivero?
Nein, der Text wird nicht alt. Allerdings sollte der nächste Post doch ein Nachruf sein, oder? Schließlich ist heute tatsächlich jemand von Bedeutung von uns gegangen.
Für die, die Spanisch verstehen, hier noch ein Film: Che: anatomía de un mito.
I go a long way with anyone who says that the peronality cult around Che Guevara is blown way out of proportion. However, the article in Slate quoted here misses the point in a number of ways.
Whatever Che Guevara may have been guilty of, for sereval million Cubans he remains a hero, as much today as 50 years ago when the revolution took over from a discredited, corrupt and oppressive dictatorship that even the US did not want to support any longer. The article claims that he created neither freedom nor social justice – maybe, but where in Latin America did you find freedom and social justice in the 50s and 60s? The history of the “democratic” countries on the continent are by and large an endless series of military coups, brutal dictatorships, civil wars, abject poverty and social unrest and inequality. And Cuba is so much worse because of Che Guevara? Worse than what happened at ESMA or in Chilean prisons in the 70s and 80s? I don’t condone any of the violence and oppression brought on by socialist revolutionaries but the backlash from right wing dictatorships and their lackeys was just as bad if not worse.
Nobody has to love Che Guevara. But if the Cuban population at large considers him a hero for what he did for them in the 50s in a fight that was not his own, then who are you to say it shouldn’t be so?
Paul Berman does not like the movie “The Motorcycle Diaries”. Fine, but what does that have to do with the concept of freedom and social justice and the history of Latin America? And by the way, a guayabera is not a black tie but the traditional Cuban white, short sleeved shirt worn untucked. If Paul is waxing about Cuban dissidents and their poetry he should at least get the translation right.
So you’re saying Guevara wasn’t that bad because other regimes were also bad? Sorry, this doesn’t convince me. I am gay; if I had lived in Cuba in the times of the Revolution I would have been sent to a Gulag. Excuse me if I find this inacceptable. And why should I respect the Cuban sentiments towards Guevara? Those cowards lived under Castro for decades without overthrowing him, they deserve no respect.
Those cowards lived under Castro for decades without overthrowing him, they deserve no respect.
*Klatsch, klatsch, klatsch*
(Bitte nicht mit Applaus verwechseln, das ist das Geräusch der flachen Hand mit der ich mir gerade vor die Stirn schlage.)
Herr Posener hat sich auch zum Thema geäußert.
http://www.dradio.de/dkultur/sendungen/politischesfeuilleton/676079/
If only a hero like Che would arrive and overthrow Castro… oops
Er hatte das Glück, jung zu sterben. Wäre Castro in Bolivien getötet und Guevara Maximo Lider geworden, wäre eben Fidel der große Star (OK, für manche ist er es trotzdem).
Aber der totalitäre Che ist nur eine Facette. Es gibt auch noch den Apokalyptiker, der einem Bin Ladin alle Ehre gemacht hätte.
http://che-mart.com/
Be a non-conformist because everybody else is!
Kult, Teil 2…
Auch Richard Herzinger kontrastiert den populären Heldenmythos mit dem historischen Ernesto Guevara, dem todessüchtigen Stalinisten:
In Guevaras Forderung, die Revolution müsse selbst um den Preis von Millionen Opfern in einem Atomk…
@Patrick:
No, I am saying that it is somewhat ridiculous to accuse Guevara of not creating freedom or social justice in Latin America when at the time both concepts were very elusive in almost all other Latin American countries as well (and in may ways they remain elusive to this day…).
To answer your question: You should respect Cuban sentiments towards Guevara simply because Cubans have just as much right as you to decide who they like or dislike. Doesn’t mean you have to agree…
And to call the Cuban people as a whole “cowards” because they did not overthrow Castro in more than 4 decades is frankly quite arrogant, unbecoming and silly.