Deconstructing Che

Steve H., at Hog on Ice linked to an essay by Agustín Blázquez on Val Prieto's site about Che Guevara:

"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."

The Cuban revolution and the post-revolutionary career of Che Guevara are things I know very little about: this essay was fascinating in part because I know so little about him and his accomplishments. What little I'd heard was from the hero-worshipping branch of academia, and so, not really strongly based in fact.