Che Guevara's Rendezvous with Justice
By: Humberto Fontova
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, October 17, 2008
41
years ago this week (Oct.9, 1967) in Bolivia, Ernesto "Che" Guevara
got a major dose of his own medicine. Without trial, he was declared a murderer,
stood against a wall and shot. Historically speaking, justice has
rarely been better served.
The predictable outlets are gushing forth with the predictable tributes. From
Reuters to the AP and from the Los Angeles Times to MSNBC, you will search these
"news stories" in vain for any mention of the fully documented
details of Che's capture and death.
The sources for these "gallant crusaders for the truth" (as Columbia
School of Journalism heralds its graduates) were — as usual — the propaganda
ministers of a Stalinist regime.
"Don't Shoot! I'm Che! I'm worth to you more alive than dead!" This
sniveling shout was heard by the two Bolivian soldiers when they confronted Che
and his guerrilla charge Willi. Che immediately dropped his fully loaded
weapons and started his whimpering. (That's two Bolivian soldiers
against two armed guerrillas, by the way.)
The Bolivian commanders duly documented these details in the official reports
of their anti-guerrilla campaign. These records, the MSM — from Madrid to Manila
and from Buenos Aires to New York — treat in the same manner that Dracula
treated a cross — nay, in the manner the ACLU treats a cross.
Unsurprisingly, The New York Times had a correspondent in the Cuban city of
Santa Clara for the teary commemoration at Che's mausoleum this week, where
Raul Castro presided and a solemn message from Fidel was read. Castro referred
to his regime's chief executioner as, "a flower that was plucked from his
stem prematurely."
Nary a hint from these intrepid, investigative news agencies that Fidel Castro
was himself the main agent of that "plucking."
And nary a mention, amidst all the adulation, of the one genuine accomplishment
in Che Guevara's life: the mass-murder of defenseless men and boys. At
everything else Che Guevara failed abysmally, even comically.
So allow me to spoil the party. Upon arriving in Havana on January of 1959
after an utterly bogus guerrilla war, Che Guevara immediately recognized the
moat around Havana's La Cabana fortress as a handy-dandy execution pit. At
Babi-Yar Hitler's SS had to dig one. Here Che Guevara had one ready made.
In 1961 a 20 year-old boy named Tony Chao Flores took his place at the
execution stake, but he hobbled to it on crutches. He'd taken 17 bullets from
their Czech machine guns when the Castroites captured him. On the way to the
execution stake at the old Spanish fort turned to a prison and execution ground
by Che Guevara, Tony was forced to hobble down some cobblestone stairs. Tony
tumbled down the long row of steps and finally lay on the cobblestones at the
bottom, writhing and grimacing. One of Tony's bullet-riddled legs had been
amputated at the hospital, the other was gangrened and covered in pus. The
Castroite guards cackled as they moved in to gag Tony with their tape.
Tony watched them approach while balling his good hand into a fist. Then as the
first Red reached him — BASH!! right across his eyes.
"I'll never understand how Tony survived that beating," says
eyewitness Hiram Gonzalez who watched from his window on death row, screaming
in helpless rage at the Communist guards. The crippled Tony was almost killed
in the kicking, punching, gun-bashing melee but finally his captors stood off,
panting and rubbing their scrapes and bruises. They'd managed to tape the battered
boys mouth, but Tony pushed the guards away before they bound his hands. Their
commander nodded, motioning for them to back off.
Now Tony started crawling towards the splintered and blood-spattered execution
stake about 50 yards away, pushing and dragging himself with his hands as his
stump of a leg left a trail of blood on the grass. As he neared the stake he'd
stop and start pounding himself in the chest. His executioners seemed
perplexed. The crippled boy was trying to say something. But his message was
muzzled by the gag the gallant friend of George McGovern made obligatory for
his thousands of execution victims.
Tony's blazing eyes and grimace said enough. But no one could understand the
boy's mumblings. Tony kept pushing himself, shutting his eyes tightly from the
agony of the effort. His executioners shuffled nervously, raised their rifles,
lowered them. They looked towards their commander who shrugged. Finally Tony
reached up to his face and ripped off the tape that George McGovern's sparkling
dinner companion required for his condemned.
The 20 year-old freedom-fighter's voice boomed out. "Shoot me RIGHT
HERE!" roared Tony at his gaping executioners. His voice thundered and his
head bobbed with the effort. "Right in the CHEST!" Tony yelled.
"Like a MAN!" Tony stopped and ripped open his shirt, pounding his
chest and grimacing as his gallant executioners gaped and shuffled. "Right
HERE!" he pounded.
On his last day alive, Tony had received a letter in jail from his mother.
"My dear son," she counseled. "How often I'd warned you not to
get involved in these things. But I knew my pleas were vain. You always
demanded your freedom, Tony, even as a little boy. So I knew you'd never stand
for communism. Well, Castro and Che finally caught you. Son, I love you with
all my heart. My life is now shattered and will never be the same, but the only
thing left now, Tony . . . is to die like a man."
"FUEGO!!" Castro's lackey yelled the command and the bullets
shattered Tony's crippled body, just as he'd reached the stake, lifted himself
and stared resolutely at his murderers. But Castro's firing squads usually
murder a hero who is standing. The legless Tony presented an awkward target. So
some of the volley went wild and missed the youngster. Time for the coup de grace.
Normally it's one .45 slug that shatters the skull. Eyewitnesses say Tony
required . . . POW!-POW! . . . POW! — three. Seems the executioner's hands were
shaking pretty badly. But they finally managed. The man Time magazine's hails
among the "heroes and icons of the Century" had another notch in his
gun. Another enemy dispatched — bound and gagged as usual.
Castro and Che were in their mid-30s when they murdered Tony. According to the
authoritative "Black Book of Communism" their firing squads riddled
another 14,000 bound and gagged freedom-fighters. Many (perhaps most) of their
murder victims were boys in their late-teens and early 20s. Some were even
younger. Carlos Machado and his twin brother Ramon were 15 when they spat in
the face of their communist executioners and died singing their national anthem
as lustily as they cursed Che Guevara's Internationale. Their dad collapsed
from same volley alongside them.
Compare Carlos and Tony's death to Guevara's capture: "Don't shoot!"
whimpered the arch-assassin to his captors. "I'm Che! I'm worth more to
you alive than dead!"
Then ask yourselves: who's face belongs on T-shirts worn by youth who fancy
themselves, rebellious, freedom-loving and brave?
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