OK, I’m not challenging you-I rather believe that Castro planned that Che wouldn’t come back alive, because I love to hear about double crosses in politics, and this fits my scenario. At any rate, what sources are you for saying this? I know that it would be impossible to really verify, given that Castro wouldn’t come right out and confess,so, the best we can really hope for is expats who were close, or something like that. I had read one book, IIRC it had ‘Useful Idiots’ or something similar in the title. Do you have other sources? If so, I’d like to read them.
OTOH, I have also heard that Castro was just glad to get Che the eff out of Cuba because he was screwing up the economy so badly. As I said, I like to read political dirty dealing, so, anything you have would be helpful.
No, Comrade-as the nectar of the flower is to the bee, so the venti mocka non-fat nutmeg extra hazelnut shot frapuccino is to the laboring peasant who rests after toiling under the hot sun to bring food, land and peace to his countrymen.
This wasn’t quite so prosy as I had wanted, but I had to get it off quick…
I can’t offer proof. But Castro was moving close to the Soviet Union as he needed Soviet economic assistance. Guevara was a much more radical figure and he had spoken out publicly against Khrushchev and the Soviets for not being radical enough. Plus Castro was looking to make himself the undisputed face of Cuban communism and he wouldn’t have wanted another charismatic figure distracting away attention.
When Guevara went off to Africa and Bolivia he found the local communist organizations wouldn’t support him which placed him in an exposed position. He was almost captured in the Congo and he was caught and killed in Bolivia.
One possibility is that Khrushchev had decided that Guevara would best serve the communist cause as a martyr who could no longer question authority. Castro, who needed Khrushchev and had his own reasons to wish an end to Guevara, agreed to sent him off to the front. The Soviets could have then told the local communists to keep their distance and just let events take their natural course.
I knew that he’d PO’d Fidel, but I didn’t know that he was giving K a bunch of crap.
He must have been a bigger dork than I had thought!
BTW, I had also read that he wasn’t crap as a warrior, Castro’s forces won just because everybody, and I mean everybody, hated Batista, and his soldiers deserted because nobody gave a crap, not because of the great fighting force assembled against them.
Oh!! Thanks so much, then. I’m sorry – I didn’t pick up on that at all. I appreciate the reaction, though – my personal politics are very much anti-Castro and anti-Che, so if the piece comes off fair, I did my job.
He said Khrushchev bungled the Cuban Missile Crisis. In Guevara’s opinion, the Soviets should have defied the Americans even at the risk of a nuclear war. He said Cuba was “a people ready to sacrifice itself to nuclear arms, that its ashes might serve as a basis for new societies.”
Sorry, no direct cite, but I read that Castro arranged for all of Guevara’s plans to be “found” by Bolivian Army intelligence-which is why Guevara walked into an ambush and was killed.
