Alive and blood thirsty (comments on the Che influence over chavismo)

This Sunday Milagros Soccorro regales us again with one of those fabulous articles who expose so well the moral and intellectual misery of those who work for Chavez. This time she uses the trivia of a monument for Che Guevara placed in the pass of Pico del Aguila. The reason? Well, apparently Che stopped there during his youth travel (probably to take a pee because it is a rather very cold area and the road on a motor bike is long). Since there is little other connection between the Che and Venezuela, the sycophancy of chavismo had to find something to glorify about the Che, to go along the lines of Chavez professed admiration for that well known criminal.

In that article Milagros comments on the destruction of the monument by some natives who were not impressed by the initiative. But more importantly she tells us how the Chavez regime turns its servants into amoral characters, promoting their self abasement in their pursuit to please the leader. As a subsidiary question one can also wonder how come in almost any government the guys in charge of culture are usually rather mediocre when not failed "culture makers" themselves. Under chavismo, they are of the failed variety, with a touch of banditry as you will read. Original article in Spanish here.

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Alive and blood thirsty

By Milagros Socorro for El Nacional

Learning that the monument to Che Guevara had been destroyed on October 18, ten days after his inauguration in Pico del Aguila, the Minister of Culture, Francisco Sesto, responded to the fact ensuring that the government would replace the stele as often as necessary. And if we are to take seriously the manifesto of the Frente Patriotico del Paramo (FPP, or Paramo Patriotic Front) - author, according to its own statement, of the demolition- such is its determination not to allow that space to become permeated with the example of Argentine guerrilla (to which the Front refers as a cold-blooded murderer and a failed official in whichever position the Cuban revolution summoned him) it is likely that the Ministry of Culture will spend the next few months inaugurating new versions of the stele, which will entail expenditures of an amount we do not know but that should not be negligible. Naturally, to the cost of the stele -a kind of tombstone made of crystal- must be added the travel expenses of the Cuban ambassador, who was present at the first inauguration and we can be sure will not miss the following invitations, with meals included, to the beautiful Andean landscape.

In the statement of Sesto there is the implicit prospect of spending the necessary millions for each rebuilding of the monument to Guevara, which, as revealed by his own calculations, will be systematically demolished. Never mind that the community, or a certain group from Merida, are refusing the imposition of a tribute to Che Guevara, to whom they owe no gratitude and of whom they have, as we saw, the worst references. That does not matter. There is money for that.

Whatever it costs. This should not surprise us. Sesto is not exactly a model of frugality in the administration of public resources. Rather he has demonstrated that he disposes of them in more than irresponsible ways. That was demonstrated by the publication of a book of his, entitled “Designs with the head elsewhere”, which consists of the unlikely collection of doodles he scrapped while he was attending work meetings. This incredible lack of sagacity and, as they would say in Caracas, “ubicatez” [N.Ed.: sense of where you stand], was published in an edition of 600 pages, paid by the State. What does it cost him, thus, to start a fist fight with the FPP, which already warned its rejection of Guevara and its preference for the figure of the popular artist Juan Felix Sanchez, "an artist of the páramo and an example of humility, love and wisdom."

At the same press conference, Sesto said that the destruction of the stele was proof that Guevara "is alive." And the official is not out of place. If Ernesto Guevara was able, forty years after his death, of giving us some manifestation of life it would be through violence. Although, of course, the pulverization of the monument cannot be compared with the murders that Guevara perpetrated with his own hands, which were many, most cruel and documented by his own hand, shaking with enthusiasm writing them down in his diary and letters. In a letter dated January 28, 1957, Guevara wrote to his mother to reassure her about the rumor that he had been killed. "Dear Vieja [N.Ed.: familiar for Mom]," he says, "here, from the Cuban jungle, alive and thirsty for blood I write these Marti-like lines " (Che Guevara, a revolutionary life, Jon Lee Anderson, Anagrama, Caracas, 2007). [N.Ed.: martiana, Marti-like, from Marti, Cuban poet and independence hero]

Next to Sesto was the Deputy Minister of Culture for Human Development, Ivan Padilla Bravo, who used the occasion to show his horror in front of terrorism.

"Those who acted," said Padilla Bravo, "did with treachery, in darkness, with all these characteristics that are present in the most sordid crimes ...". And who is Ivan Padilla Bravo? Why a bureaucrat of the culture ministry is so aware of the features present in most sordid crimes? Perhaps because Ivan Padilla Bravo participated in the kidnapping of a man and demanded money (is there a more sordid crime?). He was arrested on July 22, 1976, at the playground Paramaconi, at the San Bernardino end of Avenida Boyaca, where he was preparing himslef, together with an accomplice, to collect part of the ransom for the kidnapping of American industrial William Frank Niehous, who he had been subjected to captivity on February 27, 1976. And they would keep him kidnapped for more than three years

-The end-