Che Guevara

Che Guevara: A False Idol

Many adolescents adorn Che Guevara’s image on t-shirts, hats and apparel; they even put posters of him on their wall in their college dorms, not knowing what he stood for. They believe he fought for the people, which he did, but only to an extent. The world has been brainwashed into thinking that Che Guevara was admirable, as admirable as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or Gandhi. As this essay will show, however, Martin Luther King and Gandhi were true revolutionaries, while Che Guevara was nothing more than a murderous thug, as some historians have accurately observed. Che Guevera is seen by many as a hero in history. He freed the Cuban people from their dictator, Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar. Che and Fidel Castro, together, equally distributed the land among the Cuban people. They nationalized the telephone company and brought down rates by fifty percent, and abolished facilities separating blacks from whites(Casteneda). During his vicious campaigns to impose communism on countries throughout Latin America, Che Guevara trained and motivated the Castro regime's firing squads that executed thousands of men, women and children (Douglas). He did more bad than good to the countries he tried to revolutionize. He created more political strife among their people and, in turn, incited riots, forcing people to choose a political stance and become enemies with their once friends. Before Che was killed, he gave these last words to his captors: “Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.” What kind of “man,” as Che personifies himself, kills innocent people? He was not a martyr as some portray him. The violent tactics Che used to achieve social change in Latin America were unjust. In some books, he goes down as a hero, when in fact, he was a murderer. Unlike Che Guevara, Dr. Martin Luther King used peaceful, non-violent protests, sit-ins, and boycotts to fight for what they believed must be changed. Che believed that violence was almost a...