*Ø* Che: nice cheekbones

Shame about the concentration camp

Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!
Che Guevara; Motorcycle Diaries

June 14, 1928 Ernesto (Che) Guevara (d. 1967), Argentinian-born Stalinist revolutionary who fought with Castro in Cuba, and in Bolivia; commonly extolled as a hero despite his authoritarian and bloodthirsty ideology and crimes against humanity.

Guevara's first position in the ruthless Communist Cuban dictatorship was that of comandante of La Cabana Fortress in Havana. There he had jurisdiction over the notorious 'war criminals' trials, which allegedly resulted in the execution of 600 civilian and military officials.

Many individuals imprisoned at La Cabana, such as poet and human rights activist Armando Valladares, who worked in the new revolutionary government, allege that Guevara took particular and personal interest in the interrogation, torture, and execution of prisoners. Guevara also assisted Raul Castro in purging and reorganizing the national army to make it the "principal political arm of the people's revolution".

For me, it meant 8,000 days of hunger, of systematic beatings, of hard labor, of solitary confinement and solitude, 8,000 days of struggling to prove that I was a human being, 8,000 days of proving that my spirit could triumph over exhaustion and pain, 8,000 days of testing my religious convictions, my faith, of fighting the hate my atheist jailers were trying to instill in me with each bayonet thrust, fighting so that hate would not flourish in my heart, 8,000 days of struggling so that I would not become like them.
Armando Valladares

The famous '60s image of Guevara was taken from a photo from March, 1960 by lifelong communist Alberto Korda. The eyes of the revolutionary have been altered by an unknown person to give him a more saintly and courageous look ...


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