jazz
April 6th, 2005, 10:11 AM
a friend forwarded this to me:
OPEN LETTER TO WETA THE WASHINGTON, DC LOCAL PBS TELEVISION STATION
Ms. Sheryl Lahti, Director of Audience Services
WETA Channel 26
2775 South Quincy Street
Arlington, VA 22206
703 998-3407
<mailto:Slahti@weta.com> Slahti@weta.com
Dear Ms. Lahti,
Please read the article below so you can see why the image of Che is so insulting and offensive to Cuban Americans.
Sincerely,
Agustin Blazquez
Writer & filmmaker
Silver Spring, MD
<mailto:ABIP.USA@verizon.net> ABIP.USA@verizon.net
cc. Michael Pack and John Prizer of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Humberto Fontova, Myriam Marquez, Orlando Sentinel, NewsMax, LaurenceJarvik OnLine, some U.S. Representatives, Paquito D'Rivera and various publications
Che at the Oscars
by Humberto Fontova*
Did you catch Carlos Santana's grand entrance at the Oscars?
Well, the famed guitarist couldn't contain himself. He stopped for the photographers, smiled deliriously and swung his jacket open. TA-DA! There it was: Carlos' elegantly embroidered Che Guevara t-shirt. Carlos' face as the flashbulbs popped said it all. "I'm so COOL!" he beamed. "I'm so HIP! I'm so CHEEKY! So SHARP! So TUNED IN!"
Tune in to this, Carlos: in the mid 1960's Fidel and your charming t-shirt icon set up concentration camps in Cuba for, among many others, "anti-social elements" and "delinquents." Besides Bohemian (Haight-Ashbury, Greenwich Village types) and homosexuals, these camps were crammed with "roqueros," who qualified in Che and Fidel's eyes as useless "delinquents."
A "roquero" was a hapless youth who tried to listen to Yankee-Imperialist rock music in Cuba.
Comprende, Carlos? Do you see where I'm going with this, Carlos?
Yes, Mr Santana, here you were grinning widely-- and OH-SO-hiply!-- while proudly displaying the symbol of a regime that: MADE IT A CRIMINAL OFFENSE TO LISTEN TO CARLOS SANTANA MUSIC! You IMBECILE!!
True, you didn't hit it big 'till Woodstock in 1969, at a time when Che had already received a heavy dose of the very medicine he gallantly dished out to hundreds of bound and gagged men and boys , some as young as fourteen. This means the first inmates of his concentration camps were probably guilty of the heinous crime of listening mainly to the Beatles, Stones, Kinks, etc. But the regime Che helped set up kept up the practice of jailing "roqueros" well past the time when you were hot on the rock charts, Carlos.
Lest we get carried away with merely laughing at your stupidity, I'll pass along the thoughts from Cuban music legend, Paquito D'Rivera. He wrote his recent letter to you in Spanish. "My command of English wouldn't allow me to fully express my indignation" at your cheeky Oscar gig, he explained. Seems that Mr D'Rivera had relatives among those your t-shirt icon jailed, tortured and murdered. In closing, Mr D'Rivera wishes you good luck in your professional endeavors. He says you'll need it, considering that you'll soon be playing a gig in Miami.
A Cuban gentleman named Pierre San Martin was also among those jailed by the gallant Che. A few years ago he recalled the horrors in a El Nuevo Herald article. "32 of us were crammed into a cell" he recalls. "16 of us would stand while the other sixteen tried to sleep on the cold filthy floor. We took shifts that way. Actually, we considered ourselves lucky. After all, we were alive. Dozens were led from the cells to the firing squad daily. The volleys kept us awake. We felt that any one of those minutes would be our last."
"One morning the horrible sound of that rusty steel door swinging open startled us awake and Che's guards shoved a new prisoner into our cell. His face was bruised and smeared with blood. We could only gape. He was a boy, couldn't have been much older than 12, maybe 14.
"What did you do?" We asked horrified. "I tried to defend my papa," gasped the bloodied boy. "I tried to keep these Communist sons of b**tches form murdering him! But they sent him to the firing squad."
Soon Che's goons came back, the rusty steel door opened and they yanked the valiant boy out of the cell. "We all rushed to the cell's window that faced the execution pit, " recalls Mr San Martin. "We simply couldn't believe they'd murder him!"
"Then we spotted him, strutting around the blood-drenched execution yard with his hands on his waist and barking orders--the gallant Che Guevara." Here Che was finally in his element. In battle he was a sad joke, a bumbler of epic proportions (For details see Fidel; Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant) But up against disarmed and bloodied boys he was a snarling tiger.
"Kneel Down!" Che barked at the boy.
"ASSASSINS!" We screamed for our window. "MURDERERS!! HOW CAN YOU MURDER A LITTLE BOY!"
" I said: KNEEL DOWN!" Che barked again.
The boy stared Che resolutely in the face. "If you're going to kill me," he yelled. "you'll have to do it while I'm standing! MEN die standing!"
" COWARDS!--MURDERERS!..Sons of B**TCHES!" The men yelled desperately from their cells. "LEAVE HIM ALONE!" HOW CAN...?! "And then we saw Che unholstering his pistol. It didn't seem possible. But Che raised his pistol, put the barrel to the back of the boys neck and blasted. The shot almost decapitated the young boy.
"We erupted. We were enraged, hysterical, banging on the bars."MURDERERS!--ASSASSINS!" His murder finished, Che finally looked up at us, pointed his pistol, and BLAM!-BLAM-BLAM! emptied his clip in our direction. Several of us were wounded by his shots."
To a man (and boy) Che's murder victims went down in a blaze of defiance and glory. So let's recall Che's own plea when the wheels of justice finally turned and he was cornered in Bolivia.. "Don't Shoot!" he whimpered. "I'm Che ! I'm worth more to you alive than dead!"
This swinish and murdering coward, this child-killer, was the toast of the Oscars.
*******************
*Humberto Fontova is the author of <http://www.regnery.com/regnery/050210_fidel.html> Fidel; Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant, described as "absolutely devastating. An enlightening read you'll never forget." By David Limbaugh. "A remarkable book," says Newsmax' Phil Brennan. "An eye-opener. Fontova explodes myth after myth." Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart says, "Humberto Fontova has done a great service to all those who wish to discover the truth about the only totalitarian dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere." David Horowitz says: "Humberto has performed a valuable service to the cause of decency and human freedom. Every American should read this book."
LaurenceJarvikOnline
<http://laurencejarvikonline.blogspot.com> http://laurencejarvikonline.blogspot.com
A blog about interesting ideas, things, people, and events.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Agustin Blazquez is Angry With His Local PBS Station...
Here's why, the Cuban-American filmmaker sent us a copy of his complaint:
Ms. Sheryl Lahti, Director of Audience Services
WETA Channel 26
2775 South Quincy Street
Arlington, VA 22206
703 998-3407
Slahti@weta.com
Dear Ms. Lahti,
On Saturday, March 26, 2005, while watching "Viewer Favorites" on your public television station, I was shocked and offended by the singer Eric Burton - formerly of the group "The Animals" - wearing a Che Guevara shirt while performing a song on a segment of your presentation.
As a Cuban American, as a writer and a filmmaker, I am acquainted with the Che as a mass murderer who executed, without trial, many Cubans at La Cabaña fortress in Havana as well as in the Sierra Maestra Mountains before 1959.
Below I enclose a recent open letter from the famous saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera to the famous guitarist Carlos Santana who sported a Che t-shirt while performing at the last Oscar Awards ceremony.
Below D'Rivera's letter I am enclosing one of my published articles, this one about Che.
It is shocking that your educational public television station is not aware of Che's criminal record and let pass such an insensitive and offensive display of disrespect to Che's victims and the Cuban American community in the U.S. If Mr. Burton had worn a Hitler shirt, he wouldn't have been presented - rightfully so - in order not to offend the Jewish victims and Holocaust survivors.
I think your public television station should apologize.
Sincerely,
Agustin Blazquez
Writer & filmmaker
Silver Spring, MD
ABIP.USA@verizon.net
cc. Michael Pack and John Prizer of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Paquito D'Rivera and various publications
************************************************** ***
Open letter to Carlos Santana
by Paquito D'Rivera
March 25-2005
Hello, Santana:
I found out, through our friend Raul Artiles, that you'll be performing in Miami soon; I find this rather ill-advised, since not too long ago you committed the faux-pas of appearing at the "Oscar Awards" ceremony, brandishing, with pride, an enormous crucifix over a tee-shirt with that archaic and stereotyped image of "The Butcher of the Cabaña," the moniker given to the lamentable character known as Ché Guevara by those Cubans who had to suffer his tortures and humiliations in that nefarious prison.
One of these Cubans was my cousin Bebo, imprisoned there just for being a Christian. He recounts to me on occasion, always with infinite bitterness, how he could hear, from his cell, in the early hours of dawn, the executions without prior trials or process of law, of the many who died shouting, "Long Live Christ The King!"
The guerrilla guy with the beret with the star is something more than that ridiculous film about a motorcycle, my illustrious colleague, and to juxtapose Christ with Ché Guevara is like entering a synagogue with a swastika hanging from your neck; it's also a harsh blow in the face of that Cuban youth from the 60's, who had to go into hiding to listen to your albums which the Revolution, and the troglodite Argentinian and his cohorts, dubbed as "imperialist music" (i.e. Rock & Roll)
I can't find all the words to express my indignation over your irresponsible attitude, but believe me that in spite of all, as an artist I always wish you luck. And you're going to need it, Carlos. Especially in Miami.
Sincerely,
Paquito D'Rivera
************************************************** ****************************
CHE'S MOTORCYCLE FOLLIES © 2004 ABIP
by Agustín Blázquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton
Jaime Costas recently said Che "didn't know how to ride a motorcycle!" And Jaime would know because he participated in Castro's 1953 ill-fated assault on the Moncada Barracks and was aboard the Granma expedition with Che Guevara, Castro and his brother Raul to infiltrate into Cuba to fight Batista.
Costas, now in his seventies, made that comment on September 29, 2004, in New York City during the presentation of his book of his memoirs answering a question from the audience about the movie "The Motorcycle Diaries" (Robert Redford, its executive producer, is an unapologetic Castro collaborator). Costas knew Castro, Raul and Che personally for many years.
He added that he "unequivocally" knows that detail because on various occasions he went motorcycling around Havana with Castro and his comrades and "Che never went along with them even when asked to accompany them. All he did was sheepishly wave 'good-bye', because he didn't know how to ride a motorcycle!"
A person present at this presentation commented, "Ah, the mythmaking of the left that ceaselessly lionizes Che! Pretty soon, they'll have him coming down on a cloud!"
Another person acquainted with the history of the Cuban revolution said to me, "It is good to know that but please inform the Harley-Davidson Corporation before they put him [Che] in a commercial.
"I might add that Dr. Guevara, like all his fellow comic-book characters, is essentially mythical, or at least fictional.
"Although he was there in person, Guevara was so disconnected from the actual facts of the so-called Cuban Revolution as to be, in a sense, quite pathetic. He interpreted a Cuban soap opera as if it had been the Iliad. He projected Mao's epic Long March onto the battle for the provincial capital of Santa Clara, Cuba, in effect a cakewalk made possible by the money with which Julio Lobo and other fellow Cuban magnates bought out Batista's miserable army.
"So, when he tried to replicate that in Bolivia and the Bolivian army fought back - incidentally, in far tougher terrain than Cuba's - Guevara's operation rapidly unraveled and he ended up like a side of beef on the counter of a Bolivian kitchen, a fate none other of his fellow extreme leftie loonies has deemed fit to emulate.
"The problem with Guevara is that he is not a positive, life-enhancing myth, but a completely counterproductive one which feeds the worst and most destructive impulses in the Latin American mind - what I call 'political sophomorism' combined with an adolescent's grasp of the world and a nihilistic yearning for martyrdom (and even some good old fashioned Argentine necrophilia). Remember that Guevara's canonization began with that infamous shot of him dead, looking like Christ by Mantegna.
"Guevara was catastrophic for Cuba, and would have been catastrophic for Latin America but for his early transit.
"Guevara is actually laughable, and the sadness of it all is that no one has done to him what Michael Moore did to Bush, that is, a good spoof.
"We treat him like a legend, a Promethean, almost tragic figure, instead of what he really was: a no-good physician, a Mickey Mouse with a beret, an Argentine spoiled youngster that almost by accident walked into - we can no longer say he motorcycled his way into - a political swindle aspiring to be called a revolution.
"Treat him for what he was--he even looked a bit like-- the Cuban Revolution's own Cantinflas."
This comparison with Cantinflas, the late famous Mexican comic movie star, evoked my memories of when I met Che Guevara in 1963 when I was in the cast of a movie being filmed in Cuba's Sierra Maestra Mountains.
One afternoon Che came to pay us a visit at the barracks we were staying. I was within a foot from him. And I was utterly disappointed by that unremarkable little man (who was very photogenic) and most women in Cuba at that time were fawning over him as some sort of movie star. Actually, his raggedy mustache was similar to the one sported by Cantinflas. I found him so uninteresting that in the diary I was keeping of those says I dedicated only one sentence to him.
The Washington Times in the Business section on September 25, 2004, pg. C10, published an article about Che paraphernalia being offered for sale. In addition of being offensive to Cuban Americans who knew who Che really was, the article promoted and generated interest in those merchandises among the less informed, insensitive and ignorant Americans. Meanwhile, Hollywood is putting together yet another movie about Che and Benicio del Toro, may be playing him.
I made the comment to an American friend as to how the left in America keeps offending Cuban Americans with impunity. I said, "Can you imagine what would happen if T-shirts, articles, books and movies idolizing Hitler were produced and promoted in the U.S.?"
He replied, "Well of course the neo-nazis have a lot of Hitler stuff you can buy on eBay."
I said, "The difference between the neo-nazis on eBay and the cult of the criminal Che, is that the later is in the main stream, in the open, from schools to universities and promoted by the media" - even by The Washington Times!
While, admittedly not as romantic as the myth, the reality about Che is that he was unwanted by Castro and did not have any place to go. Castro sacrificed the inept Che for his own personal and political benefit. He eliminated Che from Cuba, enabling the creation of a false admirable myth that he must continuously, actively support in order to maintain and as a result make a lot of good propaganda and money for his regime. Castro turned a liability into an asset.
Che has a long and documented criminal history. It was Che, in the Sierra Maestra Mountains of Cuba, years before Castro's 1959 triumph, who revealed his fascination with cruelty by asking to be the executioner who kept the troops in line.
At the onset of the revolution on January 1, 1959, Castro appointed Che in charge of La Cabaña fortress in Havana. There, execution squads flourished under Che's command, assassinating, in mass, those perceived as enemies of the revolution. Che ordered that women and children visiting his prisoners be paraded in front of the execution wall, gruesomely stained with blood and brain parts. All of this was well publicized in Cuba in order to spread fear throughout the population. The surviving ex-prisoners of the infamous La Cabaña fortress remember Che as a "mass murderer."
The myths that surround Che are much more interesting than the man; problem is, they simply do not resemble reality.
In February 1959, Che began training foreign guerrillas and terrorists in Cuba. His first guerrilla attack (planned with the brothers Fidel and Raul Castro) was to "liberate" Panama in April 1959. But by May 1, he suffered a humiliating defeat by Panama's National Guard. On June 14, 1959, Fidel Castro sent Che's guerrillas to the neighboring island of the Dominican Republic to fight against dictator Trujillo. But Che's guerrillas again failed miserably.
After this second fiasco in June 1959, Castro sent Che to tour third world countries. After his return, Castro put him in charge of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA), Industries Division and later, as President of the National Bank (where he signed the currency "Che"). He proved himself inept for those assignments as well and Castro reassigned him again.
On October 29, 1959, Castro sent Che to communist countries to establish commercial ties, negotiating the initially secret sale of sugar to the Soviet Union. He made trade agreements with Czechoslovakia, China and North Korea, announcing on September 10, 1960, that Cuba "had received arms from Czechoslovakia."
In 1965, Castro sent Che as far away as possible. This time to "liberate" Africa. After Che's failure in Africa, he was summoned to Havana for two days of secret conversations with Castro. He was then sent back to Africa with 200 Cuban soldiers to help a Congolese leftist group. After he failed there, in late 1965, he secretly returned to Cuba, leaving his soldiers behind. Che was kept hidden all through 1966.
Obviously, Castro needed to carefully get rid of him, but all of his attempts to get Che involved in international wars of "liberation" and get him killed and converted into a martyr had failed.
As secretly as he returned to Cuba, Che left again in September 1966, sent by Castro on another international mission. He went to Prague and then on to Paraguay, where disguised as a businessman, he traveled by plane to Bolivia.
Along with 17 Cubans (clandestinely smuggled into Bolivia), he began organizing a guerrilla movement. But he was able to recruit only 15 Bolivians. By the end of March 1967, Castro stopped supplying Che's guerrillas. The last contact with Havana was in July 1967.
Denounced by the peasants and Indians in the region (who never supported his intrusion), Che and his guerrillas were finally apprehended by the Bolivian army on October 7, 1967. As we all know Che was executed and Castro at last had the martyr he was longing for. His amputated hand is proudly displayed in the Museum of the Revolution in Havana.
Out of Castro's way, the cruel and inept Che could be heralded now as a big hero. Finally, Castro was free to create an international legendary myth. Che's image flooded Cuba and posters began to appear in the domain of the academic left: colleges and universities of the U.S. and the free world in order to attract the romantics and uninformed. As with much communist misinformation, it worked! We still have fools displaying posters and wearing Che's junk offending his victims.
For heaven sake, there is more hatred from the left in America directed against Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush than against a real bad guy and a mass murderer: Che Guevara.
I have not seen in our learning centers an urge for romantic and misleading presentations about criminals like Charles Manson, David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc. Why Che?
© 2004 ABIP
Agustin Blazquez, Producer/director of the documentaries
COVERING CUBA, CUBA: The Pearl of the Antilles, COVERING CUBA 2: The Next Generation & COVERING CUBA 3: Elian presented at the 2003 Miami Latin Film Festival and the 2004 American Film Renaissance Film Festival in Dallas, Texas and the upcoming COVERING CUBA 4: The Rats Below
Author with Carlos Wotzkow of the book COVERING AND DISCOVERING and translator with Jaums Sutton of the book by Luis Grave de Peralta Morell THE MAFIA OF HAVANA: The Cuban Cosa Nostra.
OPEN LETTER TO WETA THE WASHINGTON, DC LOCAL PBS TELEVISION STATION
Ms. Sheryl Lahti, Director of Audience Services
WETA Channel 26
2775 South Quincy Street
Arlington, VA 22206
703 998-3407
<mailto:Slahti@weta.com> Slahti@weta.com
Dear Ms. Lahti,
Please read the article below so you can see why the image of Che is so insulting and offensive to Cuban Americans.
Sincerely,
Agustin Blazquez
Writer & filmmaker
Silver Spring, MD
<mailto:ABIP.USA@verizon.net> ABIP.USA@verizon.net
cc. Michael Pack and John Prizer of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Humberto Fontova, Myriam Marquez, Orlando Sentinel, NewsMax, LaurenceJarvik OnLine, some U.S. Representatives, Paquito D'Rivera and various publications
Che at the Oscars
by Humberto Fontova*
Did you catch Carlos Santana's grand entrance at the Oscars?
Well, the famed guitarist couldn't contain himself. He stopped for the photographers, smiled deliriously and swung his jacket open. TA-DA! There it was: Carlos' elegantly embroidered Che Guevara t-shirt. Carlos' face as the flashbulbs popped said it all. "I'm so COOL!" he beamed. "I'm so HIP! I'm so CHEEKY! So SHARP! So TUNED IN!"
Tune in to this, Carlos: in the mid 1960's Fidel and your charming t-shirt icon set up concentration camps in Cuba for, among many others, "anti-social elements" and "delinquents." Besides Bohemian (Haight-Ashbury, Greenwich Village types) and homosexuals, these camps were crammed with "roqueros," who qualified in Che and Fidel's eyes as useless "delinquents."
A "roquero" was a hapless youth who tried to listen to Yankee-Imperialist rock music in Cuba.
Comprende, Carlos? Do you see where I'm going with this, Carlos?
Yes, Mr Santana, here you were grinning widely-- and OH-SO-hiply!-- while proudly displaying the symbol of a regime that: MADE IT A CRIMINAL OFFENSE TO LISTEN TO CARLOS SANTANA MUSIC! You IMBECILE!!
True, you didn't hit it big 'till Woodstock in 1969, at a time when Che had already received a heavy dose of the very medicine he gallantly dished out to hundreds of bound and gagged men and boys , some as young as fourteen. This means the first inmates of his concentration camps were probably guilty of the heinous crime of listening mainly to the Beatles, Stones, Kinks, etc. But the regime Che helped set up kept up the practice of jailing "roqueros" well past the time when you were hot on the rock charts, Carlos.
Lest we get carried away with merely laughing at your stupidity, I'll pass along the thoughts from Cuban music legend, Paquito D'Rivera. He wrote his recent letter to you in Spanish. "My command of English wouldn't allow me to fully express my indignation" at your cheeky Oscar gig, he explained. Seems that Mr D'Rivera had relatives among those your t-shirt icon jailed, tortured and murdered. In closing, Mr D'Rivera wishes you good luck in your professional endeavors. He says you'll need it, considering that you'll soon be playing a gig in Miami.
A Cuban gentleman named Pierre San Martin was also among those jailed by the gallant Che. A few years ago he recalled the horrors in a El Nuevo Herald article. "32 of us were crammed into a cell" he recalls. "16 of us would stand while the other sixteen tried to sleep on the cold filthy floor. We took shifts that way. Actually, we considered ourselves lucky. After all, we were alive. Dozens were led from the cells to the firing squad daily. The volleys kept us awake. We felt that any one of those minutes would be our last."
"One morning the horrible sound of that rusty steel door swinging open startled us awake and Che's guards shoved a new prisoner into our cell. His face was bruised and smeared with blood. We could only gape. He was a boy, couldn't have been much older than 12, maybe 14.
"What did you do?" We asked horrified. "I tried to defend my papa," gasped the bloodied boy. "I tried to keep these Communist sons of b**tches form murdering him! But they sent him to the firing squad."
Soon Che's goons came back, the rusty steel door opened and they yanked the valiant boy out of the cell. "We all rushed to the cell's window that faced the execution pit, " recalls Mr San Martin. "We simply couldn't believe they'd murder him!"
"Then we spotted him, strutting around the blood-drenched execution yard with his hands on his waist and barking orders--the gallant Che Guevara." Here Che was finally in his element. In battle he was a sad joke, a bumbler of epic proportions (For details see Fidel; Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant) But up against disarmed and bloodied boys he was a snarling tiger.
"Kneel Down!" Che barked at the boy.
"ASSASSINS!" We screamed for our window. "MURDERERS!! HOW CAN YOU MURDER A LITTLE BOY!"
" I said: KNEEL DOWN!" Che barked again.
The boy stared Che resolutely in the face. "If you're going to kill me," he yelled. "you'll have to do it while I'm standing! MEN die standing!"
" COWARDS!--MURDERERS!..Sons of B**TCHES!" The men yelled desperately from their cells. "LEAVE HIM ALONE!" HOW CAN...?! "And then we saw Che unholstering his pistol. It didn't seem possible. But Che raised his pistol, put the barrel to the back of the boys neck and blasted. The shot almost decapitated the young boy.
"We erupted. We were enraged, hysterical, banging on the bars."MURDERERS!--ASSASSINS!" His murder finished, Che finally looked up at us, pointed his pistol, and BLAM!-BLAM-BLAM! emptied his clip in our direction. Several of us were wounded by his shots."
To a man (and boy) Che's murder victims went down in a blaze of defiance and glory. So let's recall Che's own plea when the wheels of justice finally turned and he was cornered in Bolivia.. "Don't Shoot!" he whimpered. "I'm Che ! I'm worth more to you alive than dead!"
This swinish and murdering coward, this child-killer, was the toast of the Oscars.
*******************
*Humberto Fontova is the author of <http://www.regnery.com/regnery/050210_fidel.html> Fidel; Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant, described as "absolutely devastating. An enlightening read you'll never forget." By David Limbaugh. "A remarkable book," says Newsmax' Phil Brennan. "An eye-opener. Fontova explodes myth after myth." Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart says, "Humberto Fontova has done a great service to all those who wish to discover the truth about the only totalitarian dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere." David Horowitz says: "Humberto has performed a valuable service to the cause of decency and human freedom. Every American should read this book."
LaurenceJarvikOnline
<http://laurencejarvikonline.blogspot.com> http://laurencejarvikonline.blogspot.com
A blog about interesting ideas, things, people, and events.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Agustin Blazquez is Angry With His Local PBS Station...
Here's why, the Cuban-American filmmaker sent us a copy of his complaint:
Ms. Sheryl Lahti, Director of Audience Services
WETA Channel 26
2775 South Quincy Street
Arlington, VA 22206
703 998-3407
Slahti@weta.com
Dear Ms. Lahti,
On Saturday, March 26, 2005, while watching "Viewer Favorites" on your public television station, I was shocked and offended by the singer Eric Burton - formerly of the group "The Animals" - wearing a Che Guevara shirt while performing a song on a segment of your presentation.
As a Cuban American, as a writer and a filmmaker, I am acquainted with the Che as a mass murderer who executed, without trial, many Cubans at La Cabaña fortress in Havana as well as in the Sierra Maestra Mountains before 1959.
Below I enclose a recent open letter from the famous saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera to the famous guitarist Carlos Santana who sported a Che t-shirt while performing at the last Oscar Awards ceremony.
Below D'Rivera's letter I am enclosing one of my published articles, this one about Che.
It is shocking that your educational public television station is not aware of Che's criminal record and let pass such an insensitive and offensive display of disrespect to Che's victims and the Cuban American community in the U.S. If Mr. Burton had worn a Hitler shirt, he wouldn't have been presented - rightfully so - in order not to offend the Jewish victims and Holocaust survivors.
I think your public television station should apologize.
Sincerely,
Agustin Blazquez
Writer & filmmaker
Silver Spring, MD
ABIP.USA@verizon.net
cc. Michael Pack and John Prizer of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Paquito D'Rivera and various publications
************************************************** ***
Open letter to Carlos Santana
by Paquito D'Rivera
March 25-2005
Hello, Santana:
I found out, through our friend Raul Artiles, that you'll be performing in Miami soon; I find this rather ill-advised, since not too long ago you committed the faux-pas of appearing at the "Oscar Awards" ceremony, brandishing, with pride, an enormous crucifix over a tee-shirt with that archaic and stereotyped image of "The Butcher of the Cabaña," the moniker given to the lamentable character known as Ché Guevara by those Cubans who had to suffer his tortures and humiliations in that nefarious prison.
One of these Cubans was my cousin Bebo, imprisoned there just for being a Christian. He recounts to me on occasion, always with infinite bitterness, how he could hear, from his cell, in the early hours of dawn, the executions without prior trials or process of law, of the many who died shouting, "Long Live Christ The King!"
The guerrilla guy with the beret with the star is something more than that ridiculous film about a motorcycle, my illustrious colleague, and to juxtapose Christ with Ché Guevara is like entering a synagogue with a swastika hanging from your neck; it's also a harsh blow in the face of that Cuban youth from the 60's, who had to go into hiding to listen to your albums which the Revolution, and the troglodite Argentinian and his cohorts, dubbed as "imperialist music" (i.e. Rock & Roll)
I can't find all the words to express my indignation over your irresponsible attitude, but believe me that in spite of all, as an artist I always wish you luck. And you're going to need it, Carlos. Especially in Miami.
Sincerely,
Paquito D'Rivera
************************************************** ****************************
CHE'S MOTORCYCLE FOLLIES © 2004 ABIP
by Agustín Blázquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton
Jaime Costas recently said Che "didn't know how to ride a motorcycle!" And Jaime would know because he participated in Castro's 1953 ill-fated assault on the Moncada Barracks and was aboard the Granma expedition with Che Guevara, Castro and his brother Raul to infiltrate into Cuba to fight Batista.
Costas, now in his seventies, made that comment on September 29, 2004, in New York City during the presentation of his book of his memoirs answering a question from the audience about the movie "The Motorcycle Diaries" (Robert Redford, its executive producer, is an unapologetic Castro collaborator). Costas knew Castro, Raul and Che personally for many years.
He added that he "unequivocally" knows that detail because on various occasions he went motorcycling around Havana with Castro and his comrades and "Che never went along with them even when asked to accompany them. All he did was sheepishly wave 'good-bye', because he didn't know how to ride a motorcycle!"
A person present at this presentation commented, "Ah, the mythmaking of the left that ceaselessly lionizes Che! Pretty soon, they'll have him coming down on a cloud!"
Another person acquainted with the history of the Cuban revolution said to me, "It is good to know that but please inform the Harley-Davidson Corporation before they put him [Che] in a commercial.
"I might add that Dr. Guevara, like all his fellow comic-book characters, is essentially mythical, or at least fictional.
"Although he was there in person, Guevara was so disconnected from the actual facts of the so-called Cuban Revolution as to be, in a sense, quite pathetic. He interpreted a Cuban soap opera as if it had been the Iliad. He projected Mao's epic Long March onto the battle for the provincial capital of Santa Clara, Cuba, in effect a cakewalk made possible by the money with which Julio Lobo and other fellow Cuban magnates bought out Batista's miserable army.
"So, when he tried to replicate that in Bolivia and the Bolivian army fought back - incidentally, in far tougher terrain than Cuba's - Guevara's operation rapidly unraveled and he ended up like a side of beef on the counter of a Bolivian kitchen, a fate none other of his fellow extreme leftie loonies has deemed fit to emulate.
"The problem with Guevara is that he is not a positive, life-enhancing myth, but a completely counterproductive one which feeds the worst and most destructive impulses in the Latin American mind - what I call 'political sophomorism' combined with an adolescent's grasp of the world and a nihilistic yearning for martyrdom (and even some good old fashioned Argentine necrophilia). Remember that Guevara's canonization began with that infamous shot of him dead, looking like Christ by Mantegna.
"Guevara was catastrophic for Cuba, and would have been catastrophic for Latin America but for his early transit.
"Guevara is actually laughable, and the sadness of it all is that no one has done to him what Michael Moore did to Bush, that is, a good spoof.
"We treat him like a legend, a Promethean, almost tragic figure, instead of what he really was: a no-good physician, a Mickey Mouse with a beret, an Argentine spoiled youngster that almost by accident walked into - we can no longer say he motorcycled his way into - a political swindle aspiring to be called a revolution.
"Treat him for what he was--he even looked a bit like-- the Cuban Revolution's own Cantinflas."
This comparison with Cantinflas, the late famous Mexican comic movie star, evoked my memories of when I met Che Guevara in 1963 when I was in the cast of a movie being filmed in Cuba's Sierra Maestra Mountains.
One afternoon Che came to pay us a visit at the barracks we were staying. I was within a foot from him. And I was utterly disappointed by that unremarkable little man (who was very photogenic) and most women in Cuba at that time were fawning over him as some sort of movie star. Actually, his raggedy mustache was similar to the one sported by Cantinflas. I found him so uninteresting that in the diary I was keeping of those says I dedicated only one sentence to him.
The Washington Times in the Business section on September 25, 2004, pg. C10, published an article about Che paraphernalia being offered for sale. In addition of being offensive to Cuban Americans who knew who Che really was, the article promoted and generated interest in those merchandises among the less informed, insensitive and ignorant Americans. Meanwhile, Hollywood is putting together yet another movie about Che and Benicio del Toro, may be playing him.
I made the comment to an American friend as to how the left in America keeps offending Cuban Americans with impunity. I said, "Can you imagine what would happen if T-shirts, articles, books and movies idolizing Hitler were produced and promoted in the U.S.?"
He replied, "Well of course the neo-nazis have a lot of Hitler stuff you can buy on eBay."
I said, "The difference between the neo-nazis on eBay and the cult of the criminal Che, is that the later is in the main stream, in the open, from schools to universities and promoted by the media" - even by The Washington Times!
While, admittedly not as romantic as the myth, the reality about Che is that he was unwanted by Castro and did not have any place to go. Castro sacrificed the inept Che for his own personal and political benefit. He eliminated Che from Cuba, enabling the creation of a false admirable myth that he must continuously, actively support in order to maintain and as a result make a lot of good propaganda and money for his regime. Castro turned a liability into an asset.
Che has a long and documented criminal history. It was Che, in the Sierra Maestra Mountains of Cuba, years before Castro's 1959 triumph, who revealed his fascination with cruelty by asking to be the executioner who kept the troops in line.
At the onset of the revolution on January 1, 1959, Castro appointed Che in charge of La Cabaña fortress in Havana. There, execution squads flourished under Che's command, assassinating, in mass, those perceived as enemies of the revolution. Che ordered that women and children visiting his prisoners be paraded in front of the execution wall, gruesomely stained with blood and brain parts. All of this was well publicized in Cuba in order to spread fear throughout the population. The surviving ex-prisoners of the infamous La Cabaña fortress remember Che as a "mass murderer."
The myths that surround Che are much more interesting than the man; problem is, they simply do not resemble reality.
In February 1959, Che began training foreign guerrillas and terrorists in Cuba. His first guerrilla attack (planned with the brothers Fidel and Raul Castro) was to "liberate" Panama in April 1959. But by May 1, he suffered a humiliating defeat by Panama's National Guard. On June 14, 1959, Fidel Castro sent Che's guerrillas to the neighboring island of the Dominican Republic to fight against dictator Trujillo. But Che's guerrillas again failed miserably.
After this second fiasco in June 1959, Castro sent Che to tour third world countries. After his return, Castro put him in charge of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA), Industries Division and later, as President of the National Bank (where he signed the currency "Che"). He proved himself inept for those assignments as well and Castro reassigned him again.
On October 29, 1959, Castro sent Che to communist countries to establish commercial ties, negotiating the initially secret sale of sugar to the Soviet Union. He made trade agreements with Czechoslovakia, China and North Korea, announcing on September 10, 1960, that Cuba "had received arms from Czechoslovakia."
In 1965, Castro sent Che as far away as possible. This time to "liberate" Africa. After Che's failure in Africa, he was summoned to Havana for two days of secret conversations with Castro. He was then sent back to Africa with 200 Cuban soldiers to help a Congolese leftist group. After he failed there, in late 1965, he secretly returned to Cuba, leaving his soldiers behind. Che was kept hidden all through 1966.
Obviously, Castro needed to carefully get rid of him, but all of his attempts to get Che involved in international wars of "liberation" and get him killed and converted into a martyr had failed.
As secretly as he returned to Cuba, Che left again in September 1966, sent by Castro on another international mission. He went to Prague and then on to Paraguay, where disguised as a businessman, he traveled by plane to Bolivia.
Along with 17 Cubans (clandestinely smuggled into Bolivia), he began organizing a guerrilla movement. But he was able to recruit only 15 Bolivians. By the end of March 1967, Castro stopped supplying Che's guerrillas. The last contact with Havana was in July 1967.
Denounced by the peasants and Indians in the region (who never supported his intrusion), Che and his guerrillas were finally apprehended by the Bolivian army on October 7, 1967. As we all know Che was executed and Castro at last had the martyr he was longing for. His amputated hand is proudly displayed in the Museum of the Revolution in Havana.
Out of Castro's way, the cruel and inept Che could be heralded now as a big hero. Finally, Castro was free to create an international legendary myth. Che's image flooded Cuba and posters began to appear in the domain of the academic left: colleges and universities of the U.S. and the free world in order to attract the romantics and uninformed. As with much communist misinformation, it worked! We still have fools displaying posters and wearing Che's junk offending his victims.
For heaven sake, there is more hatred from the left in America directed against Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush than against a real bad guy and a mass murderer: Che Guevara.
I have not seen in our learning centers an urge for romantic and misleading presentations about criminals like Charles Manson, David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc. Why Che?
© 2004 ABIP
Agustin Blazquez, Producer/director of the documentaries
COVERING CUBA, CUBA: The Pearl of the Antilles, COVERING CUBA 2: The Next Generation & COVERING CUBA 3: Elian presented at the 2003 Miami Latin Film Festival and the 2004 American Film Renaissance Film Festival in Dallas, Texas and the upcoming COVERING CUBA 4: The Rats Below
Author with Carlos Wotzkow of the book COVERING AND DISCOVERING and translator with Jaums Sutton of the book by Luis Grave de Peralta Morell THE MAFIA OF HAVANA: The Cuban Cosa Nostra.