Challange: Che seen as the Grinch

That's fairly easy. Well, maybe not so easy in psychological terms, but technically, just have Che stay on Cuba. He willstill be a high-profile person and subject to a lot of cult of personality, but instead of becoming a martyr to an ideal whose realisation he will not live to see, he inherits Castro's mantle after a CIA bullet strikes home.

Che is a hardline ascetic, not a bon-vivat intellectual like Castro, and Cuba becomes much less 'nice' under him. High-profile mock-Maoist efforts to change public consciousness drive hundreds of thousands of otherwise amenable Cubans into exile while ever larger camps house the antisocial, the undesireable and unassimilable. The USSR drops him sometime in the late 70s. The Cuban regime eventually collapses in 1989, three years after his death, and Ernesto Guevara becomes a symbol of brutal oppression and Big Brother totalitarianism who turned a happy and moderately well-to-do Caribbean island into a Spanish-speaking version of Haiti. Many older Cubans and left-wing Americans wistfully speculate what might have been had Castro lived.
 

ninebucks

Banned
Except Che Guevara's reputation for heroism is well-earned. After the Cuban revolution, he chose not to accept some secure ministry, but rather went out into the world to fight the popular struggles of other peoples, and while doing that, he was martyred by a covert action of the United States.

Any views he may have held that detract from the above view can easily be overlooked by considering those views in the historical context, so what if he supported the censorship of Rock'n'Roll? So did many public and private authorities in the democratic Western world.

I also take issue with the blogger's claim that it is only by spending your time exclusively with a country's dissidents that you can understand what a country is really like. Anyone who tries to describe Castro's Cuba as a totalitarian police state is pretty divorced from reality.
 
Except Che Guevara's reputation for heroism is well-earned. After the Cuban revolution, he chose not to accept some secure ministry, but rather went out into the world to fight the popular struggles of other peoples, and while doing that, he was martyred by a covert action of the United States.

Nobody dubt a whole range of peoples personal bravery and still think they are assholes. Hitler won a freking medal fighting for an army of another country for example.

Edit: This is, of course, argument by Hitler but he and some other nazis was the first example I could come up with. Another, and no compairasons to Hitler in this case, example would be anybody signing up for the Vietnam with a chance to get out of it. But I dubt all that many saw them as heros and we are talking about the same era.

Any views he may have held that detract from the above view can easily be overlooked by considering those views in the historical context, so what if he supported the censorship of Rock'n'Roll? So did many public and private authorities in the democratic Western world.

And how long did Tipper Gore manage to go with her censorship?

I also take issue with the blogger's claim that it is only by spending your time exclusively with a country's dissidents that you can understand what a country is really like. Anyone who tries to describe Castro's Cuba as a totalitarian police state is pretty divorced from reality.

He personally witnessed something. Generally, does that count for something?
 
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I'll dispute the idea that he went into the world to fight popular struggles of other peoples. Precisely his defeat in Bolivia, witch lead to his ilegal execution, was in good measure because he failed to rally support from the Bolivian rural lower classes. His forces were found because he was denounced by some poor Bolivian peasant. However I will agree that the perception of his military actions were/(somewhat) are what you describe, which is what matters in the end.
But, back on topic, keeping him in a powerful position in Cuba could easly let him out of the T-Shirts. Providing also that the USA's government takes a less confrontational, more insidius and cunning approach to the Cuban Revolution. What I mean is no embargo (which for instance involved no more Hollywood movies exported to Cuba), no Pigs Bay, et all. Instead, fill them with music and films about the American Dream/Way of Life, support dissidents inside the islands and so on. Instead of playing it with the so-called "hard" power, use "soft" power instead. While it might or might not work to undermine the regime, it's not going to give the Revolution the opportunity to be seen that Anti-American/(so-called) Anti-Imperialist since the USA isn't openly opposing it. Hence, the Che's image isn't imbued in that Antiimperialistic, independentist (arguable, I don't agree that it's real, but it's perceived that way) idea. I'm not saying it's going to make the Cuban Revolution fall, I'm just saying that it will undermine the Che's image, which is what we are talking about.
As for "taking the rock music away" I don't see how/why. It was the establishment that the Che fought the "side" that opposed Rock & Roll. What would he gain? Playing it smart, it isn't as some Iranian fanatic muslims nowadays want to portrait: "the evol American cultural imperialism", playing it smart is using a music that young people adore to spread one's cause
 
Except Che Guevara's reputation for heroism is well-earned. After the Cuban revolution, he chose not to accept some secure ministry, but rather went out into the world to fight the popular struggles of other peoples, and while doing that, he was martyred by a covert action of the United States.

Any views he may have held that detract from the above view can easily be overlooked by considering those views in the historical context, so what if he supported the censorship of Rock'n'Roll? So did many public and private authorities in the democratic Western world.

Yeah, and many didn't. It's not like Che didn't have viable alternatives. The man was born the same year as Walter Mondale, Andy Warhol, Noam Chomsky, Stanley Kubrick, Burt Bacharach, Maya Angelou, Serge Gainsbourg, Fats Domino, and Roger Vadim. I don't think any of those people supported censoring rock 'n' roll. There was an ideological fence and he chose which side of it he was on. He is without excuse.

Che was a piece of shit who fought bravely for a rotten cause.
 
If you don't want to change Che Guevara while at the same time you want to change his worldwide perception after his death, what you seem to need is to change entire societies.
 
He's already seen that way by Bolivians but for the rest of the world either communism is completely discredited because they start World War 3 or all military figures are discredieted.
 
Che's popularity in the US is largely linked to the anti-Vietnam-war movement. If we can shorten the war and improve its public perception, the anti-war movement will have less of a lasting impact on popular opinion.

Che died in October 1967. The Tet Offensive started January 31, 1968. IOTL, Tet was a military disaster for VC and NVA, but a major public relations coup because it was a massive attack that caught American and South Vietnamese forces by surprise and acheived temporary gains that required months of ugly, bloody, televised fighting to reverse, starkly contrasting with the US military's public relations message.

As our POD, let's suppose US military intelligence notices preperations for Tet and connects the dots, and they convince Westmoreland of their conclusions. Westmoreland does two things -- he tones down the PR and specifically does not say in an interview in November that North Vietnam is incapable of a major offensive, and he has American troops in South Vietnam prepare to defend against a major offensive.

When the Tet offensive starts, it's met be a prepared and alert American and South Vietnamese military and is an even bigger disaster for North Vietnam than in OTL and fails to acheive even temporary local victories. Moreover, Tet is perceived by the American public to be a major disaster for North Vietnam, and the US is able to credibly threaten a major counteroffensive which North Vietnam is in no position to defend against.

The Vietnam war ends in a negotiated cease-fire in mid-1968, rendering the anti-war movement moot. Without opposition to the war as a catalyst, the popularity of communist icons doesn't take hold as strongly as IOTL, and quickly fades away. To the contrary, American success in Vietnam bolsters public oppostion to communism, and communist guerrillas like Che are seen in an extremely unflattering light. We could even have a popular movie about Che's life (highlighting his crimes) made in 1969 or 1970 to exploit the desire of many Americans to emphasize what we achieved at great cost by halting the spread of communism.
 
I see his strange popularity in the West as dying out. More and more people are aware of what a monster he was, practically everyone who doesn't just wear a t-shirt with his image because it's cool.
 
Another easy way to make a monster out of Che is to simply have the CIA attempt to demonize him. ie, they falsify reports about one of his terrorist attacks that killed dozens of innocent people. The CIA uses its contacts to get the report into the Media, and suddenly Che goes from a Martyr to a terrorist in the public eye. Or maybe something like this did happen, and all you need is to have a man who was close to him write a book about it.

And does anyone else find it amusing that a man who spent his life fighting for against imperialistic capitalism now has his image printed onto a T-shirt and mass produced for corporate profit? Oh, the irony.
 

Deleted member 5719

He's already seen that way by Bolivians but for the rest of the world either communism is completely discredited because they start World War 3 or all military figures are discredieted.

Don't know which Bolivia you're on about. Last time I was there he was next thing to a national hero.
 

HJ Tulp

Donor
Except Che Guevara's reputation for heroism is well-earned. After the Cuban revolution, he chose not to accept some secure ministry, but rather went out into the world to fight the popular struggles of other peoples, and while doing that, he was martyred by a covert action of the United States.

.

Are you talking about some other Che? 'Cause Che Guevara was a minister untill he screwed up so much that Fidel wanted him out of there.
 
Don't know which Bolivia you're on about. Last time I was there he was next thing to a national hero.

I read an article by a Bolivian Indian that explictly stated that most Bolivians didn't give a damn about Che Guevera-they were mainly Cuban guerrillas and some teenagers who like Che anyway.
 
Why would the Bolivians dislike him? There's a socialist Indian revolution going on in the country after all.

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