Humberto Fontova has written a sad and compelling book, Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him, about the damage that has been inflicted on the nation of Cuba by Fidel Castro and his obedient minion, Ernesto “Che” Guevara.  The following is a short review.

“The “Useful Idiots” (a term copped from Joseph Stalin describing Westerners who were fooled by the fabrication of Communism’s triumphs) that the author refers to are folks like Eleanor Clift, Angelina Jolie, Carlos Santana, Johnny Depp, the New York Times, Ivy League professors, and anybody else who idolizes Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara. We can’t leave out Jean-Paul Sartre from this list either. Sartre describes the book-burning Argentine as “not only an intellectual, he was the most complete human being of our time – our era’s most perfect man.”
The author was seven years old when his family left Cuba in 1961. He gives many first-hand accounts from those who knew Che and opposed him and his take-over of the island nation.

Cuba, in 1958, boasted the third highest level of consuming protein in the entire Western Hemisphere. By 1962, the citizens were living on daily rations that were less than slaves had in 1842. Slaves got 8 ounces of meat, chicken, and fish while Castro doled out 2 ounce servings of protein. Slaves enjoyed 16 ounces of starches, modern Cubans took in 6.5 ounces.

Startling to me, Cuba welcomed more than one million immigrants from Spain and an additional sixty-five thousand from the United States from 1903 to 1957. In fact, this made Cuba the leader in immigration per capita in the Western Hemisphere including the United States and those that entered through Ellis Island!

Records show that 5,911 businesses were confiscated by the Communists. Fontova says this numbered theft totaled $2 billion and only took two weeks of machine-gunning havoc to accomplish.

To give just one example of the breadth of despair and destruction that was being served by the Marxist regime, the Cuba Archive Project accounts for a total of 107,805 deaths attributable to Castro and Che’s rise to power. Cuba’s total population at the time was only 6.4 million. In World War II France during the time that Hitler was running rough shod, 173,260 French civilians died…from forty million citizens. How could Nelson Mandela say that Che was “an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom.”

Fontova’s book is an excellent introduction to what Castro and Che did to Cuba.  It has sparked an interest in me to read something more in-depth about Cuba’s history…preferably with a nice bottle of scotch in a waft of exquisite aroma provided by a Cohiba (made in the Dominincan Republic, of course).  According to the author, both of these men were hell-bent on launching nuclear warheads and detonating 500 kilos of TNT on Black Friday on New York City.  Now why would anyone want to do that?

John

P.S.  To read an article from Fontova about Bob Beckel’s support of Che’s actions in Cuba click on this link.  It goes to the Townhall website.