Of course, it was a lot more complicated than that. Reading about Che and Fidel Castro training some 40 volunteers on a ranch outside Mexico City, in preparation for their invasion of Cuba, I am reminded more of "Lord of the Flies" than I am of King Arthur's roundtable.
Che would lead these all-day marches around the ranch, sometimes with little water and no food, to get the troops ready for the rigors of war, and one guy sat down in the trail and said, screw this. I'm not gonna do this crap.
Then they had a big debate about whether to execute him for insubordination. They had a court martial.
Hey, I want to say, give these guys a break. They are only volunteers. Fidel and his brother Raul voted to kill him, but Che talked them out of it. Later, supposedly, they did find a spy and kill him and bury him out there, on the ranch.
These guys remind me of children playing cowboys and Indians, only with real guns.
I suppose, since they won, a lot of people admire Che and Fidel. And history is written by the winners. But I didn't find these guys admirable. At first.
I do think the Latin American dictators, like Batista and Trujillo, created these revolutionaries, through their brutal and repressive policies. They tortured people and locked up anybody who didn't agree with them.
So in a way, Batista brought about his own downfall.
I'm glad I wasn't there. I don't think I would have joined either side.
And the USA? What a joke. We were on the wrong side, protecting our business interests and those of the United Fruit Company.
We were not heroic either.
-- Roger
© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle
If you want to read more, here is a good article:
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