Was Che Guevara a hero?

[ButterflyBlood]

Poll question: Was Che Guevara a hero?

I'm curious what the more moderate folks here say. I've seen people bash him here before, which I find odd.

[bemildred]

1. It seems clear, if you know his life history, that

he was neither power hungry nor venal, and he died fighting
for what he believed in. How is that not a hero? OTOH, he
clearly misjudged the situation in Bolivia.

[ButterflyBlood]

4. well he was backstabbed by Castro

n/t

[bemildred]

5. Does that mean he's not a hero? nt

[ButterflyBlood]

7. no, I think he was

I'm just referring to him misjudging the situation in Bolivia. It wasn't really his fault.

[JHBowden]

6. What is heroic about that?

Now, I'm thinking heroic in the Greek sense, not in the martyr Christian sense.

[bemildred]

10. I don't think Che was a hero in the Homeric mode.

Not his style at all. He was a hero in the mode of a
lot of Latin American heros, who fought for social equity
and justice against long odds and mostly lost, and sometimes
won, and were often stabbed in the back. A few of them
might have measured up with Homeric heroes, Sandino in
Nicaragua, l'Overture amd Desallines in Haiti, I could
probably dig up a few more, but Che was not that sort of
guy.

[Webster Green]

2. Of course he was......he was killed by the CIA

and Bolivian soldiers who were trained by the CIA. He was fighting the elitists, so he had to go.

[Michael Costello]

3. Che was in Miami for a little while...

...I think he worked odd jobs and so forth. He met a lot of people in the Latino expatriate community. I guess Miami is full of upper middle class right-wing Cuban expatriates now, but when he visited it was less so, from my reading of one account he met with a lot of like-minded people.

[Paragon]

8. Benicio del Toro will be playing "Che"...

...in a movie by that title directed by Steven Soderbergh. Should be fantastic. Remember, Del Toro won his Oscar for his performance in Traffic.

[Minstrel Boy]

9. del Toro should be great.

And the movie should be a step up from Che! Omar Sharif was bad enough in the title role, but Jack Palance as Fidel? Yikes.

Best of all, look for the documentary Ernesto Che Guevara, The Bolivian Diary. Fascinating and inspiring.

[TexasMexican]

11. Che was a failure

he never sucessfully caused revolution in other countries the way Castro did on his own.

White liberals just slapped his face on shirts and made him trendy.

[electroluxs]

12. He was a murderer of innocents

Just because he was a leftist does not justify his crimes.

[bemildred]

13. Did you mean "Thug"?

Usually it's "thug" or maybe "extremist" or "radical".
But "thug" is better. "Terrorist" is very popular these
days, but that might be sort of an anachronism.

[bigbillhaywood]

14. Who exactly, and how were they innocent? nt

[rumguy]

15. Bush is a murderer of innocents too

How does that make you feel? Tell me: what is it like to have blood on your hands? Do you infect everything you touch?

[Fenris]

16. He has to be - he's on a million t-shirts.

:eyes: