Che Guevara: Hero or Villan?

Post Reply New Topic

A Cuban doctor abroad earns 400 dollars a month. If I remember correctly, the government of Angola pays 70,000 dollars for two years worth of service per doctor. A prostitute really doesn't have to work that much to earn 400 dollars either.



It has become to easy for the government to blame the embargo. The embargo haven't prevented the Castro family from buying luxury cars or the hotels from buying flat screen televisions.

Edit: No EU countries are allowed to follow the Helms-Burton act. Furthermore, neither Canada nor most (if any) Latin-American countries follows it. The American embargo itself doesn't cover food, medical equipment and some types of IT equipment. Computers sold in Cuba do for instance have Intel CPUs and run Microsoft Windows, but some entertainment feature (eg. Xbox Live or MSN) doesn't work.

The PRC won't do business with anyone who has diplomatic ties to Taiwan, but Taiwan is still on par with Western-Europe.



Correct, but when the US goernment does something wrong, they never admit it. They have the same not-my-fault policy as Apple.

Yes, but it is $35 to $40 a month back in Cuba depending on their specialization. $400 dollars a month (10 times more), every month for 24 months is a boatload of money, especially once you convert it to the peso, which gives much more buying power than CUC.

Jineteras aren't necessarily who you think they are. There are some women who do it full time, where it has become their profession. $20-$50 a night is accurate if it's only going to be that night, if it is a one-time thing. However, that (ONS) does not seem to be the majority, it tends to work a little differently.

Many of them are normal women trying to find a way to pay their way for themselves or their families, who otherwise hold good and very respectable jobs. Many of them many have a couple of yumas they see every time they are in the country, and when they're not in the country some of them still send a little bit of money. When they are in the country, often the arrangement means that she will be seeing the guy the entire time he is here (for a set amount of weeks). Sometimes it's payment is not done in money, but in gifts. It all depends. It's kind of a running joke there that if you don't have at least one girl friend who is jinetera, then you're not really a cuban.

Especially for those who have a yuma for a number of weeks, the $50 a night thing is nowhere near accurate, it would be much less, and is paid bit by bit as they go along. People don't like to call it "prostitution", even if that's exactly what it is. Nor do many of them like to "feel" like it is that, so often they try to avoid that as much as possible, which also helps them rationalize it to themselves afterwards. They like to treat it like they have a regular cuban girlfriend every time they are in Cuba. This is still technically prostitution, but nobody (either the guy or the girl involved) actually want to call it that.

http://www.cutv.ws/documentary/watch-on ... The-Fight-

Che was a Commie thug.

ruveyn

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. It's all relative to the cultures involved.

Che was a nationalist hero. However, he was also, like everyone else, a flawed human being.

He was a Stalinist, with Maoist influences, and hence would probably put me in a labour camp of some sort. He was also deeply homophobic, and so on. Regardless, in the context of his actions and the society he grew up with, I'mma have to say hero.

Che's benefit to the aspects of Geurilla warfare, all instance of who he was aside, are a testament to his contribution to the idea of warfare in general.

Edited: Retraction

Hitler was as paramount to certain types of military strategy(Mobile infantry and armour -- The Blitzkreig), the same could be said for Napoleon (I think Stonewall Jackson in the americas even carried around a book containing many of Napoleon's strategies of Annihilation). Both of which were horridly misguided, and generally disliked historically, and guilty of many more war crimes, Im sure many of which the exact nature will never be known.

Last edited by compiledkernel on 04 Aug 2012, 11:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

Che was a thug. His ideology does not excuse his immorality. Both a left wing criminal and a right wing criminal are criminals.

ruveyn

Why is it so hard to draw any sort of line? It's a matter of intent and means. A "freedom fighter" that blows himself up in a crowded area is obviously not gaining any strategic advantage from it.

Quite the opposite. Suicide bombings can be very demoralizing to, say, an occupant force. Also purely militarily effective, as for example Syria has shown.

One could say the same about Hitler. He was very flawed, but he regained German rights by abrogating the unjust and vicious Versailles Treaty. Had he stopped with getting the Rhineland back from France he would have been hailed as the greatest statesman in German history.

ruveyn

The individual isn't, because he's dead. Perhaps his cause is.

Meanwhile, in capitalist Africa....

The difference was, Che made no attempt to systematically exterminate a race of people on the sole basis of their ethnicity.

You can argue the metaphysics or the point about numbers all you want but there remains a severe distinction between mass murder and attempted genocide.

Not being a conventional socialist I will neither attempt to defend or condemn Che however I get quite irate reading some of the ill founded statements on ideologies which the posters concerned have little understanding of.

Neither did Hitler or his buddies until the end of 1941. Their first attempt was to eject the Jews from Germany, but no one else would take the except for the few that could get to the U.S. or Palestine. Eventually, the Brits gave into to Arab pressure and put a stop to Jewish emigration to Palestine.

ruveyn