WHAT MR. DEL TORO CAN'T DEFEND:

Hollywood filmmakers blind to Che Guevara's brutality (Guy Sorman, February 02, 2009, The Australian)

Trained as a medical doctor in Argentina, he chose not to save lives but to suppress them. After he seized power, Che put to death 500 "enemies of the revolution" without trial, or even much discrimination.

Castro, no humanist himself, did his best to neutralise Guevara by appointing him minister for industry. As could be expected, Che applied Soviet policies to the Cubans: agriculture was destroyed and ghost factories dotted the landscape. He did not care about Cuba's economy or its people: his purpose was to pursue revolution for its own sake, whatever it meant, like art for art's sake.

Indeed, without his ideology, Che would have been nothing more than another serial killer. Ideological sloganeering allowed him to kill in larger numbers than any serial killer could imagine, and all in the name of justice. [...]

But suppose we judge this Marxist hero by his own criteria: did he actually transform the world? The answer is yes, but for the worse. The communist Cuba he helped to forge is an undisputed and unmitigated failure, much more impoverished and much less free than it was before its "liberation". Despite the social reforms the Left likes to trumpet about Cuba, its literacy rate was higher before Castro came to power, and racism against the black population was less pervasive. Indeed, Cuba's leaders today are far more likely to be white than they were in Batista's day.

Beyond Cuba, the Che myth has inspired thousands of students and activists across Latin America to lose their lives in foolhardy guerilla struggles. The Left, inspired by the siren call of Che, chose armed struggle instead of elections. By doing so, it opened the way to military dictatorship.

Latin America is not yet cured of these unintended consequences of Guevaraism. Indeed, fifty years after Cuba's revolution, Latin America remains divided.

Those nations that rejected Che's mythology and chose the path of democracy and the free market, such as Brazil, Peru, and Chile, are better off than they ever were: equality, freedom, and economic progress have advanced in unity. By contrast, those nations that remain nostalgic for the cause of Che, such as Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, are at this very moment poised on the brink of civil war.