Ernesto Guevara: Savior or Menace?

[Phier]

It was also known as the whorehouse of the Caribbean. The American journalist David Detzer, in 1950´s describes:
"Brothels flourished. A major industry grew up around them: Government officials received bribes, policemen collected protection money. Prostitutes could be seen standing in doorways, strolling the streets, or leaning from windows. One report estimated that 11,500 of them worked their trade in Havana. Beyond the outskirts of the capital, beyond the slot machines, was one of the poorest, and most beautiful countries in the Western world"

Like many prostitutes who ply their trade in the darkened bars and discos near Havana’s tourist hotels, Maria says she does not go out every night. But whenever money gets tight and her 12-year-old son is hungry, she puts on a red miniskirt, puts rouge on her lips and heads for El Conejito bar, a thinly disguised rendezvous point.
“Most of the tourists come to look for girls, tobacco, you know, the things they cannot get in their country,” she said. “They say the Cuban girls are very hot.”
Maria, who is 36 and insisted that her last name not be published, said she worried about contracting AIDS and forced her clients to use condoms, every time. She is knowledgeable about the disease, having learned about it through the government’s anti-AIDS program, and she was tested twice during a stint in jail last year for prostitution. Since then, she said, she voluntarily gets tested regularly at the free health clinics.
A decade after an economic collapse forced thousands of young women and men into prostitution, Cuba has become something of an anomaly in Latin America: a destination for sex tourists where AIDS has yet to become an uncontrollable pandemic.

and

SEX TOURISM AND CHILD PROSTITUTION IN CUBA


Communist Cuba is attempting to right its economic problems by permitting the sexual trade of its children for badly needed monetary resources.

....

Some reports suggest girls will sell sex acts for less than $10 and sometimes for as little as $3. Inexperienced women and girls can be persuaded and/or tricked into spending a whole night with a client for the cost of a meal, a few drinks or small gift. “Habitual sex tourists state that it costs them less to spend two weeks indulging themselves in Cuba than it does in other centers of sex tourism, such as the Philippines and Thailand. (O’Connell Davidson, p.41).

Sex tourism is often a means to satisfy very specific sexual preferences. Many men choose to travel to particular destinations because they know that it is possible to pursue their tastes more cheaply and safely. Pedophiles are an obvious example of this type of sex tourist, but more common are men who have a preference for experiencing multiple, anonymous sexual encounters with teenagers and women in their early 20s.

Sexual access to girls between the ages of 14 and 16 is not difficult to attain, and girls between the ages of 16 and 18 are very accessible. More disturbing still, such tourists are paying older Cuban women and men, often prostitutes themselves, to procure 14 and 15-year old boys and girls for them.

and

Cuba has several advantages that entice tourists for sex tourism and above all for
Europeans who are the majority of tourists in Cuba. Spanish, Italian, Germany, English,
and Canadian male tourists come to Cuba to take advantage of the affordable price of
prostitutes. In 1999, sex tourists could spend about $10 for a sexual encounter and if they
wanted a sex worker’s company throughout the evening for dinner and a disco or a bar
that would be only $30-$40 (Wonders, 2001, p.563). During the date the women provide
caring attention with a friendly attitude. While the sex tourists stay in Cuba, they can
enjoy these kinds of high class privileges which they are not able to have in their home
countries due to high costs that only a limited number of top echelon high society males
can pay for. Additionally, tourists know that it is safer to buy sexual services, since
paying for sex in Cuba incurs less risk of being arrested, penalized or fined by authorities
compared to in their countries (Karsseboom, 2003).

So thats not working out so well these days.

[ivan_the_terrible]

Batita's Cuba was actually considerably more developed than its fellow Caribbean nations. However, the Revolution has made life much better for the peasants and people who lived and worked in the rural areas. I have been to Cuba and the most enthusiastic members of the "Juntas de Defesa" were rural workers. I have issues with a country were engineers have to work as cab drivers, but it's not like the place is a hellhole.

This is what I've heard as well. It's good to get confirmation from someone who has actually seen it with their own two eyes though.

[Phier]

Well as long as the poorest farmers are doing better, then obviously it was worth the murder, oppression, boat people, and retardation of the nation

[ivan_the_terrible]

What do you mean by retardation of the nation?

[Lost Sultan]

Well as long as the poorest farmers are doing better, then obviously it was worth the murder, oppression, boat people, and retardation of the nation

What do you mean by retardation of the nation?

Nothing he does not know what he is talking about. His nation is actually more retarded than Cuba literacy wise.. (The literacy is now 99 percent in Cuba, it was 40% in Batista's regime. But who cares about reading right? At least that time they had Bordello's and Myer Lansky. The good old days...)

Now you wanna go to a Caribbean nation where capitalism reigns free and people enjoy the freedoms and liberties Phier and his fellow Americans enjoy, go to Haiti. Now that's a paradise... Cubans need to learn lessons from the Haitian quality of life.

[Tiberios]

Nothing he does not know what he is talking about. His nation is actually more retarded than Cuba literacy wise.. (The literacy is now 99 percent in Cuba, it was 40% in Batista's regime. But who cares about reading right? At least that time they had Bordello's and Myer Lansky. The good old days...)

So their litteracy rating is good, so what. They are still decades behind other nations on several other areas, including standards of living.

[Phier]

Nothing he does not know what he is talking about. His nation is actually more retarded than Cuba literacy wise.. (The literacy is now 99 percent in Cuba, it was 40% in Batista's regime. But who cares about reading right? At least that time they had Bordello's and Myer Lansky. The good old days...)

Now you wanna go to a Caribbean nation where capitalism reigns free and people enjoy the freedoms and liberties Phier and his fellow Americans enjoy, go to Haiti. Now that's a paradise... Cubans need to learn lessons from the Haitian quality of life.

Excellent they can read the state approved books!

Last week, the Cuban government announced that ordinary Cubans will not be allowed to have Internet access in the short term, even though the government authorised ordinary citizens to buy computers and own mobile phones on 1 April 2008.
After last month’s announcement, we were hopeful that Fidel Castro’s brother, Raul Castro, would be keen to break the communications and digital divide in Cuba. Currently, Cuba has an estimated fixed line penetration of 10% and some 200,000 computers connected to the Internet for a population of almost 11.5 million inhabitants.


Now isn't that just spiffy. Its only a matter of years before they get to 1987!

[Oswald von Wolkenstein]

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[Che]

There are people that will defend Che to the end

I'd rather just respect him to the end.

And I'm just curious, why do you see him as murderer?

[SonOfOdin]

I have nothing against him, my dad has a t-shirt of him and I joke around him calling him : COMMIE!!!
But seriously, love him or hate him...you gotta admire his courage and determenation

[antares24]

There are people that will defend Che to the end as well as those who will condemn him as nothing but a terrorist, but I think that there is more to him than people realize. He was undoubtedly misguided and naive in some of his endevours but does this really make him a terrorist? What of the many people which he effected for the better? What of the noble ideas which he believed in and died for? Does it mean nothing that he wished for nothing more than for man to be completely free from tyranny and to be united in a moral cause rather than divided for material want? I live by the idea that a man should be judged by what he does over his whole life and not what he does at one time, If a man were to make mistakes but having made them in pursuit of a better life for others, then should they not be judged in regards to their whole life rather than just the "gritty" parts? Regardless of any of these measures of his life it is certain his legacy will continue on and Cuban school children will continue to begin the day by pledging "We will be like Che."

I dislike him, as i dislike every revolutionary who had his hands full of blood, and in the end what he achieved for this? At least there are example of others who drawed blood but achieved something. He only got a despotic regime in Cuba, poverty for the people he wished to "liberate", and chaos and destabilization in the other countries where he fought.

But i dislike much more his supporters who seem to idolize him without actually knowing nothing about him, talking about him as a shining example of a "warrior fighting for the poor" "against the rich capitalist pigs" "fighter for the third world" etc etc

I really find funny the bratty spoiled kids here in the west who like and idolize him without realizing what gave them all the material wealth they enjoy, and i find the fact that his face has become a brand to sell a huge irony.

[Ludicus]

So thats not working out so well these days.

Well, the American blockade worked quite well:
U.S. report admits blockade of Cuba causes suffering ...(from the American Association for World Health study)

The document asserts "a humanitarian catastrophe has been averted only because the Cuban government has maintained a high level of budgetary support for a health-care system designed to deliver primary and preventative health care to all of its citizens. Cuba still has an infant mortality rate half that of the city of Washington, D.C."

Let´s hear Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, April 11, 2000:

"Cuba's achievements in social development are impressive given the size of its gross domestic product per capita. As the human development index of the United Nations makes clear year after year, Cuba should be the envy of many other nations, ostensibly far richer. [Cuba] demonstrates how much nations can do with the resources they have if they focus on the right priorities - health, education, and literacy."

Cuba's achievements in providing health Care and education to the general public are better that those of many developed countries.
There may be some question over Fidel Castro's achievements in providing economic success, or democracy to Cuba in the last forty five years or so. However Cuba's record on providing egalitarian health care and education to the masses have generally been agreed as a success story, even by Castro's old enemy the United States.

Robert N. Butler, president of the International Longevity Center in New York and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author on aging, says:

Health and education are two achievements of the Cuban revolution, and they deserve some credit despite the government’s poor record on human rights.

[Phier]

Cuba is a ing anecdote - it's like using Haiti as an argument against Capitalism. Give it up.

Thank you but your response had nothing to do with the post I was responding to or to my response. If you will carefully reread you will find the concept was that prostitution was very bad pre-revolution. This was being used as a 'good' thing the revolution did, it got rid of prostitution. The problem is that when Cuba's sugar daddy, the USSR, closed its doors, Cuba went from mostly poor to very poor again, and the sex trade is alive and well in Cuba, for far cheaper than you would find in those evil capitalist nations to boot.

Sweet, beautiful women, for $30 USD a night, a real bargain

Well, the American blockade worked quite well:
U.S. report admits blockade of Cuba causes suffering ...(from the American Association for World Health study)

Remember all of Cuba's problems are due to the US amiright?

[Ludicus]

Remember all of Cuba's problems are due to the US amiright?

Of course not.
But things can only get better with the end of the blockade.
During 40 years, US blockade was rationalized on the basis that Cuba was a treath to US national security. Some (good) reasons where the alliance with the S. Union, suport for revolutionary forces in America Latina and Africa (eg Angola), Cuba expropriation of US property in the island, and a few more. But Soviet Union non longer exists, US has formal diplomatic relations with the countries of the former Soviet block, and China, a communist country. Cuba is no danger to US. According to a study, from the American Center for Defense Information Study, Cuba spends on its military in one year what the U.S. spends in ten hours. It seems that Cuba poses no economic/military threat to the U.S.
In the last seven years, UN condemned the blockade, and recently by a vote of 157-2.

[Keravnos]

Cuban revolution against a dictator in 1959.

"Our revolution is endangering all American possessions in Latin America. We are telling these countries to make their own revolution."
— Che Guevara, October 1962 [17]

Then Che is killed trying to achieve his revolutionary world. I say good riddance. He must have seen that all his former "companeros" ended up living in wealth and splendor, whereas the people didn't see a change in their lives.

Who rules Cuba right now? A dictator. Many houses are just patched up from 1959, so as many cars. People don't have the right to vote, are imprisoned if they doubt the dictatorship in charge (let's call it for what it is, shall we?)

As Phier mentioned, (+rep for that) prostitution is on the rise, as well as sexually transmitted diseases.

If Cuba had remained a capitalistic society, the dictatorship would eventually ended and Cuba would now be a liberal democracy, enjoying a much better standard of living and a greater prosperity than today's botched experiment.

Therefore Ernesto Guevara, for all his good intentions, must be classified as a menace. By his actions he condemned his people to living in a failed society, that the vast majority wants out of, but can only achieve it via another revolution, unless the current ruling family of Cuba allows some sort of reforms.

[Ludicus]

People don't have the right to vote

The Chinese exercise they right to vote?
Well, China is a communist country. Blockade China.

would now be a liberal democracy, enjoying a much better standard of living

Who knows, but:
Haiti is a semi presidential republic. Dominican Republic, a representative democracy. Are they enjoying a better standard of live?
As Kofi Annan mentionated (rep + for that, dear Ex -United Nations Secretary General)
Again, in bold:
"Cuba's achievements in social development are impressive given the size of its gross domestic product per capita. As the human development index of the United Nations makes clear year after year, Cuba should be the envy of many other nations, ostensibly far richer. [Cuba] demonstrates how much nations can do with the resources they have if they focus on the right priorities - health, education, and literacy."

"As Phier mentioned, (+rep for that) prostitution is on the rise, as well as sexually transmitted diseases"

As Ludicus mentionated, before the revolution,"It was also known as the whorehouse of the Caribbean".
There are 50,000 women from the Dominican Republic (representative democracy) overseas in the sex industry - the fourth highest number in the world, after Thailand (electoral democracy) Brasil (democracy) and Phillipines (presidential government)
And remember this: for a long time US supported the dictator Trujillo. And take some time to read the history of prostitution in Porto Rico.

[Starlightman]

Viva la Revolucion

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I think we saw all people all over the world how "democratic" goverments fix all the "problems"...GOD HELP US.....

I agree with Ludicus here...+rep

[KaerMorhen]

nothing but a terrorist bathed in blood of many

[Knight of Heaven]

nothing but a terrorist bathed in blood of many

Yeah right so George Bush, And bin laden.
Anyway dont give that lame reason he was a soldier, off course he killed. And it was fighting opression who also did torture and killing.

[ivan_the_terrible]

If Cuba had remained a capitalistic society, the dictatorship would eventually ended and Cuba would now be a liberal democracy, enjoying a much better standard of living and a greater prosperity than today's botched experiment.

Now you can't possibly know this. Have you visited the alternative future?

Therefore Ernesto Guevara, for all his good intentions, must be classified as a menace. By his actions he condemned his people to living in a failed society, that the vast majority wants out of, but can only achieve it via another revolution, unless the current ruling family of Cuba allows some sort of reforms.

Again you can only guess what the "vast majority wants". And the standard of living for most Cuban people has increased with the Revolution: better education, better healthcare, less poverty, etc. It's far from a failed society. Certainly less failed than Batista's Cuba.