Ernesto Guevara: Savior or Menace?

[Phier]

Yep. They are surprisingly good.
By the way, Cuba has a superb health care system, the envy of most Latin American countries; however, the blockade on Cuba has made antibiotics (particularly new ones) a scarce commodity; and also desinfectants, rubber gloves, syringes/needles, anesthetics. New equipment in medical technology is occasionally available through private groups (eg. Canada) and some special medical supplies through visitors when they visit Cuba (for scholarly purposes)

While the US is the easiest trading partner, its not like Cuba is landlocked inside the US. The idea that the embargo (its NOT a blockade) has anything to do with it is a cop out. Last time I checked you can buy rubber gloves from Mexico and many other nations who allow trade.

[Prodigal]

A terrible person who is glorified by marxists to sound like he never did all of those bad things.

[Ludicus]

While the US is the easiest trading partner, its not like Cuba is landlocked inside the US. The idea that the embargo (its NOT a blockade) has anything to do with it is a cop out..

Embargo/blockade.

The embargo as it affects medicine, scientific technology, textbooks and periodicals is a virtual world-wide blockade vigorously enforced by the United States

Last time I checked, you can buy...

Check again, my friend.

While developing innovative medicines, and techniques for delivery of services, the Ministry of Public Health and hospitals must literally shop around the world paying exorbitant rates to obtain supplies, often secretly, that are, quite simply, available but unaccessible ninety miles away

To paraphrase Woody Allen: Everything you want to know and are afraid to read (j/kidding) Let´s look at the recent past -1997:
Cuban health care and the U.S. embargo (1997)
A detailed description of the Cuban health care.

Some highlights

Labeling Cuba a threat to U.S. national security has provided Washington with the rationale to include medicine and basic food within the framework of the embargo making it "abundantly clear that economic sanctions are, at their core, a war against public health."(2) Indeed, because the embargo prohibits products that contain any U.S. component or material from being exported to Cuba from third countries, including products based on U.S. design and technology, and because most major new drugs are developed by U.S. pharmaceutical companies, Cuba has access to only a small percentage of the new medicines available on the world market.
The embargo as it affects medicine, scientific technology, textbooks and periodicals is a virtual world-wide blockade vigorously enforced by the United States. The minutia of enforcement, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, "are all-encompassing. The interdicted trade includes visits by medical delegations and the mailing of medical journals....Because of the embargo the Cuban health care system exists within a frame of political and social contradiction. It is one of the jewels of the revolution, yet it is handicapped by the fierceness of the embargo and the fury of U.S. enforcement"

The medical technology developed by Cuban researchers certainly far exceeds that spawned in other third world countries and in many cases matches, even sometimes surpasses, developments in the West
The significance of Cuba's initiatives in this area is matched by its public health care system and the attention devoted to the primary health of its citizens. Impressive too is the fact that the United States, in violation of any human rights standard, is doing what it can to spoil, even destroy the medical advances made by Cuba, and that whatever success is achieved is accomplished despite the menacing effects of the Cuban embargo

In Cuba the effects of the embargo's prohibitions are pernicious. Pharmacies are largely empty of stock as most antibiotics are either unavailable or in very short supply (1)
Chlorination equipment and replacement parts for water pumping stations purchased decades ago from U.S. companies are laborious to obtain leading to an increase in the incidence of intestinal infections. Chemotherapy drugs, which are largely under U.S. patent, are in short supply...The sale of such commodities is limited under the various acts of the embargo and third countries are hesitant to run afoul of the United States since so much more trade and commerce takes place with it. Because gasoline is in such short supply, and travel is expensive and difficult, patients in the interior often find that they cannot travel to hospitals where services are performed. Everything from film for mammography units to maintaining mobile hospital vans is affected by the embargo. Because Cuba is a poor country, with a limited budget and hobbled by agricultural shortfalls, the embargo's ramifications on the health care system are enormous. According to the New England Journal of Medicine U.S. sanctions were the immediate cause of an epidemic of 50,000 cases of optic and peripheral neuropathy between 1991 and 1993, and the Ministry of Public Health had to initiate a crash program of importing multiple-vitamin supplementation for the Cuban people.(17) Although Cuba seeks to purchase supplies abroad, even when it can the embargo "seriously affects medical costs. Medicuba, responsible for maintaining the island's medical supplies ... spends $6 million for medical air and sea freight alone. If the same products were obtained in nearer markets, transport costs would be only $1 million to $2 million." In sum, according to the American Journal of Public Health "the embargo has contributed to the deterioration in the quality of health care and has exacerbated undernutrition by raising the cost of medical supplies and food to the island."

(1)Personal note: especially the new ones- my last post.

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International Law, Human Rights & Embargo:
EC stated, in 1992:

The European Community and its member states are seriously concerned about the reinforcement by the U.S. Congress of,the trade embargo against Cuba. Furthermore, the Act`s proposed sanctions for vessels that enter a port in Cuba would be in conflict with longstanding rules on comity end international law, and adversely affect international Shipping as well as the European Community’s trade with the United States. . . . Although the EC is fully supportive of a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba, it cannot accept that the U.S. unilaterally determines and restricts EC economic and commercial relations with any foreign nation which has not been collectively determined by the United Nations Security Council as a threat to peace or order in the world of nations.’

Human Rights Violations Precipitated by the US. Embargo on Sales of Medicines to Cuba

While the extraterritorial aspects of the CDA have outraged the international community and provoked much opposition, the primary focus of this report is the human suffering precipitated by the restrictions on sales of medicines to Cuba. The CDA’s provisions, which serve to cut off Cuba’s international supply of medicines and medical equipment, violate the acceptable parameters established by customary international law for trade embargoes as well as human rights guarantees enshrined in international human rights agreements to which the U.S. is bound.

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Finally:

The embargo is the perfect example used by anti-Americans everywhere to expose the hypocrisy of a superpower that punishes a small island while cozying to dictators elsewhere."

Moises Naim On The Obssession With Cuba | (2009)
Moises Naim, editor in Chief of Foreign Policy magazine.

[Augment]

Funny how its mostly religious people that hate him.

[CobraStallone]

Anything that goes against the american imperialism is fine by me, not that I am particularly anti-american or anything, but back then they were meddling were they were not supposed to. And if anyone disagrees with this, well the CIA did killed el che in Bolivia didn't they?

[Keravnos]

That is what whole justice system is about.We punish people for the things they do for once.If a man killed another man he will be punished.It does not matter if he was very good for the rest of his life.

I agree. Therefore I have to ask what should Justice decree on Pol Pot?
Pol Pot gave an interview slightly before he died in which he told" My conscience is clear".
The same Pol Pot who killed millions of his fellow countrymen.

The combined effects of slave labor, malnutrition, poor medical care, and executions resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 to 2.5 million people, approximately 21% of the Cambodian population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot

Or in another interview...

Phnom Malai was the location where in 1981 Pol Pot made his famous declarations denying guilt for the brutalities of the organization he led:
[Pol Pot] said that he knows that many people in the country hate him and think he’s responsible for the killings. He said that he knows many people died. When he said this he nearly broke down and cried. He said he must accept responsibility because the line was too far to the left, and because he didn’t keep proper track of what was going on. He said he was like the master in a house he didn’t know what the kids were up to, and that he trusted people too much. For example, he allowed [one person] to take care of central committee business for him, [another person] to take care of intellectuals, and [a third person] to take care of political education.... These were the people to whom he felt very close, and he trusted them completely. Then in the end ... they made a mess of everything.... They would tell him things that were not true, that everything was fine, that this person or that was a traitor. In the end they were the real traitors. The major problem had been cadres formed by the Vietnamese.

-Pol Pot is blaming everyone else but himself for what happened. This should be evidence enough on himself, his own mental state and the terrible crimes his own unique "brand" of communism produced.

I have to wonder, however. If Ernesto Guevara was such a nice guy, good rebel and all that, "T-shirt super seller" extraordinaire, against all the bad guys, etc. how could he not have seen something like the above happening? Hadn't the same atrocities happened in Stalinist USSR? The only difference I can see between Pol Pot and Stalin, so far as the atrocities are concerned, is the fact that Pol Pot was about to get caught and to avoid that he possibly killed himself.

The only justification I can give is that Che indeed didn't know about the Gulags or the millions perished in them and he genuinely believed he could do more in life than make the Castros the richest family in Communist Cuba and sell millions of T-shirts in western world disillusioned teenagers.

The point remains, however, that this is all he ever did.

[★Bandiera Rossa☭]

I agree. Therefore I have to ask what should Justice decree on Pol Pot?
Pol Pot gave an interview slightly before he died in which he told" My conscience is clear".
The same Pol Pot who killed millions of his fellow countrymen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot

Or in another interview...


-Pol Pot is blaming everyone else but himself for what happened. This should be evidence enough on himself, his own mental state and the terrible crimes his own unique "brand" of communism produced.

I have to wonder, however. If Ernesto Guevara was such a nice guy, good rebel and all that, "T-shirt super seller" extraordinaire, against all the bad guys, etc. how could he not have seen something like the above happening? Hadn't the same atrocities happened in Stalinist USSR? The only difference I can see between Pol Pot and Stalin, so far as the atrocities are concerned, is the fact that Pol Pot was about to get caught and to avoid that he possibly killed himself.

The only justification I can give is that Che indeed didn't know about the Gulags or the millions perished in them and he genuinely believed he could do more in life than make the Castros the richest family in Communist Cuba and sell millions of T-shirts in western world disillusioned teenagers.

The point remains, however, that this is all he ever did.

Keravnos, I do not believe he really did know of all these atrocities, Whenever he went to Russia he was always sent to the rich city areas and away from the poor majorities (Which he was told did not matter) Che himself was against Totalitarianism (Which I believe had much to do with his estrangement from Cuba prior to leaving for Bolivia) This has no doubt been shown by his criticism of Russia, Albania,Yugoslavia, and the rest of the Soviet bloc for their authoritarianism.

[Oswald von Wolkenstein]

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[Knight of Heaven]

And that prove he was a racist how??? Can you read and understand what says on that lines?? oh please, maybe he was writing what he saw! dont you think? Im amazed how people are so swift in judging people. Can you read his mind? Do you put that text on the context? And the time it was made?


lame...

[Oswald von Wolkenstein]

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[Knight of Heaven]

Racism is Racism and Che Ernesto Guevara was a racist, get over it or don't but don't deny his own words.

Im only denying your interpretation. that is all. I neither like the man neither hate him, what i dislike is poor evidence, suporting a poor argumentation. dont you think this is a litle basic?

[Oswald von Wolkenstein]

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[Magno]

Show him the reference source, otherwise it isn't good evidence.

[Knight of Heaven]

O.K. So this is poor evidence?:

"The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations."

That's a clear example of racism.

It's from the Motorcycle Diaries - that was already mentioned and is common knowledge - of course people who idolize Guevara tend to know absoinglutely nothing about him - including not knowing even his own works. .

Im not idiolazing Guevara far from it, i dont like idiolizing people. And has i actualy have already read the book years ago that i know that your argument is lame, that line dont prove he was a racist, often those lines are used as propaganda against Che guevara, with no better fundaments, and only the people who belive blindly that he was evil "commie" , and know nothing who he was and what he stood for go for it. Comom... lets be racional.
Anyone who had read the book knows this pretty well. And anyone who actualy understood it and was able to put a DIARY in his proper context. He was writing his vison of the world, from his own eyes, from his own perspective at that time influenced by his culture at that particular time. And you should know he was very young when wrote that. In 1952, im pretty sure every midle class citezan from argentina, or USA, would think similar regarding Africans, and jews etc. You honestly would say to me that in the 50s any comom people would think diferently?, comom even today there is people like that, not becouse they know its not right, but becouse its part of their culture. but luckly, sometimes there is people, like Che, who goes against the flow and change the perspective of things. (he didnt do it alone). It was Che but it could be any important historic figure you name it. Now i will idiolize it for that? No, but i will recognize his importance? YES

Its funny people calling him racist, and how the things he did in the book then contradict that acertion. And he off course later on did terrible things, i wont deny that, but the thing that people must understand he wasnt the only couse for that to happen. He might helped to destroy lives, but also save a great manny.
And also understand he was also a product of his time and culture. Just like anyone else.

" Words that do not macth in deeds, are unimportant" -Ernesto Che guevara

[★Bandiera Rossa☭]

People would just as easily say that about Gandhi, Churchill, you name it.. And really if you wish to call Guevara a racist against the blacks, could you please explain to me why he would fight along side Africans in the Congo?

"You say that the magistrate's decision is unsatisfactory because it would enable a person, however unclean, to travel by a tram, and that even the Kaffirs would be able to do so. But the magistrate's decision is quite different. The Court declared that the Kaffirs have no legal right to travel by tram. And according to tram regulations, those in an unclean dress or in a drunken state are prohibited from boarding a tram. Thanks to the Court's decision, only clean Indians or colored people other than Kaffirs, can now travel in the trams."
“We believe as much in the purity of race as we think they do, only we believe that they would best serve these interests, which are as dear to us as to them, by advocating the purity of all races, and not one alone. We believe also that the white race of South Africa should be the predominating race.”
“The petition dwells upon ‘the co-mingling of the coloured and white races’. May we inform the members of the conference that, so far as the British Indians are concerned, such a thing is practically unknown? If there is one thing, which the Indian cherishes, more than any other, it is the purity of type. Why bring such a question into the controversy at all?”

M.K Gandhi

[Oswald von Wolkenstein]

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[Doctor]

I do not see how a guy who enjoyed executing people could be a saviour. He is a murderer and monster and helped replace a bad government with one that is even worse.

[Nietzsche]

People would just as easily say that about Gandhi, Churchill, you name it.. And really if you wish to call Guevara a racist against the blacks, could you please explain to me why he would fight along side Africans in the Congo?

Power > Principles

[Ludicus]

The passages I quoted

Here is the entire quote:

Discrimination and poverty unite the black and whites in the daily fight for survival.
But their different ways of approaching life separate them completely; the black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspiration.

But I was playing devils advocate on that point

Well...
Jefferson’s 1787 essay, Notes on the state of Virginia
p. 155:

I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.

Lincoln, fourth debate with Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.

[ivan_the_terrible]

O.K. So this is poor evidence?:

"The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations."

That's a clear example of racism.

It's from the Motorcycle Diaries - that was already mentioned and is common knowledge - of course people who idolize Guevara tend to know absoinglutely nothing about him - including not knowing even his own works. .

He's only saying that the blacks he has seen drink more and don't work as hard as europeans. "Inherently inferior" is your own interpretation.

I could just as easily advance an interpretation that the differences are cultural/enviornmental: "...the European has a tradition of work and saving..."

I can see how it could be interpreted as racist, but you have to admit that alternate interpretations are possible.