Quantum Forest

As expected, it took only a few days to receive a reply to my letter to the paper defending Che Guevara’s legacy. It had the typical arguments: Cuba is a democracy, Chávez is great, Cuban doctors are saving the world, etc. Ah, and I should know my history. I replied the following:

Duncan Meerdig (Letters, June 17) defends the legacy of Ernesto Guevara. He states that I should know my history. I think it is funny when armchair revolutionaries discuss life (particularly my life) in such abstract terms.

I was born in Latin America, and lived in three of its countries for twenty nine years. I had the ‘luck’ of living under right wing and left wing tyrannies: despite of claimed ideological differences they are two sides of the same coin. My family suffered exile, I have friends who were tortured and killed: all in the name of ‘the revolution’. Dissent and independent thinking was crushed, university lecturers dismissed, imprisoned and some times killed (and Che is used as a symbol of a university, what an irony).

The actions of this ‘Latin American hero’, followers and imitators have costed millions of displaced lives, thousands of deaths and the destruction of the economies of many countries. These countries include Cuba under Castro and Venezuela under Chávez. Venezuela is an interesting case, where the proportion of people under the line of poverty has increased despite rising oil (its main export) prices.

Mr Meerdig’s democracy has managed to have the same leader for 46 years. Little surprise when people have elections with a single party to choose from. Fidel Castro is head of state, head of government, first secretary of the communist party, commander in chief of the armed forces and member of the National Assembly of People’s Power; the ultimate approach to democracy.

Guevara started the ‘tradition’ of imprisoning dissidents and other ‘deviants’, including homosexuals, practitioners of minor religions and rebels. This practice would be later extended by the Cuban government to HIV AIDS victims and mental health patients. Guevara signed thousands of execution orders while being in a position of power.

Luckily, people in Latin America now know better and in many countries we have a resurgence of democracy, despite of Che Guevara’s heroic influence.