Following in the footsteps of (among many other flower-children) Stephen Stills, Bonnie Raitt, Chrissie Hynde, Jimmy Buffet, and Carole King (who in 2002 serenaded Fidel Castro with a personal “You’ve Got a Friend”) guitar legend Jimmy Page made the pilgrimage to Fidel Castro’s fiefdom this week.

To Led Zeppelin’s former guitarist the visit probably seemed, not only fitting, but long overdue. Cuba was, after all, the first nation ruled by bearded long-hairs. Jean Paul Sartre, after all, hailed Cuba’s Stalinist rulers as “les Enfants au Pouvoir” (the children in power). Fidel Castro, after all, spoke at Harvard in 1959 on the same bill as pioneer beatnik Allen Ginsberg.

Remove the wispy beard and beret from the (late, thanks to Fidel Castro) revolutionary icon on those posters and t-shirts and you’ve got Jim Morrison of The Doors. Remove the cowboy hat from the (late, thanks to Fidel Castro) Revolutionary icon Camilo Cienfuegos and you’ve got Grateful Dead’s Gerry Garcia. Circa 1959, Raul Castro with his blond shoulder-length locks was a ringer for Joe Walsh circa Hotel California. These Cuban Stalinists were on the cutting edge of fashion. They pre-empted the Haight Ashbury look by a decade.

Castro’s captive (literally!) media, reports that Jimmy Page’s visit: “included tours of historic sites, and purchases of souvenirs such as the famous photograph of Che Guevara.”

In an interview with the BBC last year, Oscar and Cannes-winner Benicio del Toro explained the painstaking intellectual exertion that inspired his Che-mania: “I hear of this guy, and he’s got a cool name, Che Guevara! Groovy name, groovy man, groovy politics! So I came across a picture of Che, smiling, in fatigues, I thought, ‘Dammit, this guy is cool-looking!’”

In all likelihood, similar intellectual toil inspired Jimmy Page’s recent souvenir shopping spree in Havana.

For his role as Che Guevara in Steven Soderbergh’s movie Che, Benicio del Toro was recently honored by the peace-loving crowd in Hollywood and Cannes. For headlining their Concert for Peace. Jimmy Page was recently honored with the “Global Peace Award from the United Nations’ Pathway to Peace organization.

“We reject any peaceful approach! “declared the souvenir icon of the Concert for Peace’s honoree “Violence is inevitable! To establish Socialism rivers of blood must flow! If the nuclear missiles had remained (in Cuba) we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”

“Hatred is the central element of our struggle!” raved this icon of flower-children. “Hatred that is intransigent….Hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him violent and cold- blooded killing machine… My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any surrendered enemy that falls in my hands! We must keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm!”

In fact, Jimmy Page should know that many Cuban youths “tuned-in and turned-on” to (smuggled) Led Zeppelin music in the 60’s and 70’s. But rather than meet with his Cuban fans, Jimmy was hosted by apparatchiks of the Stalinist regime that jailed and brutalized them en masse.

In a famous speech in 1961 Che Guevara denounced the very “spirit of rebellion” as “reprehensible.” “Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates” commanded the KGB –mentored Guevara. “Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.”

Cuban “roquero” of the time Charlie Bravo recalls the process: “When Castro’s goons caught me with a Led Zeppelin record, they led me to a Stairway alright—but at bayonet-point and this stairway hardly led to Heaven, instead it led down into a dark jail cell.”

On the orders of Jimmy Page’s smiling hosts, Charlie was joined by tens of thousands of Cuban youths. A few years earlier the hundreds of Soviet KGB and East German STASI “consultants” who flooded Cuba in the early 60’s, found an extremely eager acolyte in Che Guevara. By the mid 60’s the crime of a “rocker” lifestyle—long hair, blue jeans, etc.–or effeminate behavior got thousands of youths yanked off Cuba’s streets and parks by secret police and dumped in prison camps with “Work Will Make Men Out of You” in bold letters above the gate and with machine gunners posted on the watchtowers. The initials for these camps were UMAP, not GULAG, but the conditions were quite similar.

Today the world’s largest image of Jimmy Page’s souvenir icon adorns Cuba’s headquarters for Cuba’s KGB-trained secret police, a gang of Communist sadists who jailed and tortured at a rate higher than Stalin’s own KGB and GRU—and many of their victims were guilty of nothing worse than listening to music by Jimmy Page.

Steven Soderbergh made certain his new movie, “Che,” about the life of revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, couldn’t be attacked — at least on a factual level. (CNN Entertainment, January 1, 2009)

“I didn’t mind someone saying, ‘Well, your take on him, I don’t really like,’ or ‘You’ve left these things out and included these things.’ That’s fine,” Soderbergh said. “What I didn’t want was for somebody to be able to look at a scene and say, ‘That never happened.’ “(CNN Entertainment, January 1, 2009)

Well, Mr Soderbergh (and CNN), pull up a chair.

Soderbergh’s movie shows Che Guevara steely-eyed and snarling with defiance during his capture. Why, only seconds before, Che’s very M-2 carbine had been blasted from his hands and rendered useless by a fascist machine gun burst!

Then the bravely grimacing Guevara jerks out his pistol and blasts his very last bullets at the approaching hordes of CIA-lackey soldiers!

The (typical) viewer gapes at the spectacle. His eyes mist and lips tremble at Soderbergh and del Toro’s impeccable depiction of such undaunted pluck and valor.

OK, but just where did Soderbergh and del Toro—utterly obsessed with historical accuracy–obtain this version of Che’s capture?

Why the notoriously shrewd and canny, the immensely suspicious and cagey, the infamously clever and perspicacious, Steven Soderbergh transcribed this sterling and utterly indisputable account of Che’s capture exactly as penned by: Fidel Castro!

And you yokels who think that the testimony of a Communist dictator should merit the same skepticism as that of, say, a U.S. industrialist, have obviously never been subject to Soderbergh’s multiple-Oscar-nominated Erin Brockovich.

Why the man who mentored Soderbergh’s film for impeccable historical honesty is also on record for the following testaments:

“Again I STRESS! I am NOT A COMMUNIST!  And Communists have absolutely no influence in my nation!” (Fidel Castro, April 1959)

“Political power does interest me in the least! And I will NEVER assume such power!” (Fidel Castro, April 1959)

But as evidenced by Steven Soderbergh’s films, the author of these proclamations merits his version of Che’s capture transcribed on the silver screen as gospel. As for any skeptics…? Hah! Only those insufferable Tea-Partiers could conceivably swallow the laughable propaganda questioning Che’s heroism and Fidel Castro’s integrity and honesty!

Fidel Castro, you see, wrote the forward to Che‘s Diaries wherein this Davy Crocket-esque-at-the-Alamo version of events appears. These diaries were published in Castro’s Cuban fiefdom by the Stalinist dictator’s very own propaganda ministry. So lest they unwittingly fudge their film’s historical accuracy, Soderbergh and co-producer Benicio Del Toro were scrupulous in repeatedly visiting Castro’s Stalinist fiefdom to get the unvarnished truth straight from Castro’s own propaganda ministry!

On the other hand, a mental defect, diagnosed by my physician as “not believing Communist dictators, especially after living under them,” led your humble servant here, while researching my book, to dig-up and study the actual records of the men actually on the scene of Che Guevara’s capture, and who today live in places where they need not fear Castro’s firing squads and torture chambers for the crime of telling the truth.

As might be expected, (but mostly by Tea-Partiers and other such yokels,) this mental defect led to the discovery of major “discrepancies” between Soderbergh and del Toro’s Fidel Castro-mentored film and the historical truth.

In fact, on his second to last day alive, Che Guevara ordered his guerrilla charges to give no quarter, to fight to the last breath and to the last bullet. With his men doing exactly that, Che, with a trifling flesh leg-wound (though Soderbergh’s movie depicts Che’s leg wound ghastlier than Burt Reynolds’ in “Deliverance”) snuck away from the firefight, crawled towards the Bolivian soldiers doing the firing, then as soon as his he spotted two of them at a distance, stood and yelled: “Don’t Shoot! I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!”

His captor’s official Bolivian army records that they took from Ernesto “Che” Guevara:  a fully-loaded PPK 9mm pistol. And the damaged carbine was an M-1—NOT the M-2 wrote he was carrying in his own diaries. The damaged M-1 carbine probably belonged to the hapless guerrilla charge, Willi, who Che dragged along—also to his doom.

But it was only after his (obviously voluntary) capture that Che segued into full Eddie-Hasquell-greeting-June-Cleaver-mode. “What’s your name, young man?!” Che quickly asked one of his captors. “Why, what a lovely name for a Bolivian soldier!”

“So what will they do with me?” Che, desperate to ingratiate himself, asked Bolivian Captain Gary Prado. “I don’t suppose you will kill me. I’m surely more valuable alive…. And you Captain Prado!” Che commended his captor. “You are a very special person!… I have been talking to some of your men. They think very highly of you, captain!.. Now, could you please find out what they plan to do with me?”

From that stage on, Che Guevara’s fully-documented Eddie Haskell-isms only get more uproarious (or nauseating). But somehow none of these found their way into Soderbergh’s film.

And oh!  Didn’t Che Guevara mount his steed and grab his lance as the (self-appointed) liberator of South America’s indigenous peoples fro  exploitation by the continents’ Europeans descendants?

Well, based on this picture, taken by the men who captured and killed him—Che’s message seemed woefully under-appreciated by his intended “beneficiaries.” I only note one obviously European-descendent person in the picture.

The Wolfman is far darker than the original. Where once random chance turned Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) into a werewolf, fate turns his modern remake, Lawrence (Benicio Del Toro), into the stuff nightmares are made of. 

In The Wolf Man, Larry Talbot returns home to visit his father after spending years away from home. While there, he meets a town beauty, Gwen (Evelyn Ankers). When he tries to defend one of Gwen’s friends from a werewolf, he is bitten. In turn he becomes a werewolf himself. Not long after, it becomes apparent that both his human, and animal side, are after Gwen. 

In its 2010 reboot, Lawrence Talbot, a Shakespearian actor and the second son of Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins), is returning from a long absence in America to Talbot Castle in Blackmoor, England. But from the start the film’s focus is much darker. Lawrence is returning because his elder brother’s body was found mutilated by a terrible beast—the third finding of its kind. He returns to a castle laid waste by time, adorned with the heads of African beasts, trophies of Sir John’s. Upon arrival he meets his late brother’s fiancée, Gwen (Emily Blunt), who he slowly falls for. But his investigation into his brother’s death, and a bite he sustains when trying to find the raging creature haunting the forests nearby, reveal a darker side to himself and his past—from which he can’t escape. 

Remakes are wonderful case studies of changing culture. In early decades of film, black and white reels depicted for the first time the strange tales of werewolves, vampires, mummies and Frankenstein’s monster. And while a viewing today fails to shock, the creative vision and, in The Wolf Man’s case for example, the story originality are still apparent. 

Today’s Wolfman takes everything to the next level. Horror has ceased to be horror in the classic sense, when audiences were terrified by the look of the beast they saw. Today’s culture is desensitized to such images, and horror now focuses on excessive blood and gore to convey its horrific messages. Filmmakers also use quick movements to scare audiences now. Wolf Man and Wolfman are a perfect example. In the remake, werewolves tear the insides out of their victims, rip limbs off of bodies and maul their victims in bloody displays that are never suggested, always shown. 

The storyline also takes a darker route. Where a detective in Wolf Man only suggests that Larry should be examined psychiatrically, Lawrence is admitted to a psychiatric hospital—the same hospital he was placed in after seeing his mother’s dead body as a child. In the hospital, doctors “treat” him through various torture methods. 

But Universal remained true to certain aspects of its first vision. English fog abounds in both films, and Wolfman is so drained of bright colors (blood red is the most vibrant, as the grass is a pale green and the sky is ever filled with clouds darkening the sun and hiding the full moon’s light) that the film retains an almost black and white feel. In addition, with all the digital effects used to create convincing werewolves, the faces remained surprisingly similar to the original Wolf Man werewolf face. 

Wolfman boasts a strong acting talent. Hopkins plays the estranged father well, though Del Toro would have done better to focus less on his American accent and more on his acting. Both let a darker side flow through them very convincingly. 

The film was strong, with good dialogue and well-constructed imagery. One of the most intriguing changes from the original was the addition of Inspector Abberline (Hugo Weaving). Abberline seems more fascinated with the wolf man idea than intent on killing the creature, at least at first. This fascination comes from another case that Abberline worked on, the Jack the Ripper case—the violence of which paralleled that of the wolf man. In the end, the investigation brings Abberline closer to the wolf man than he ever thought he’d be, and his final expressions let audience members form their own opinions on his thoughts about it. 

Of note is a comment that Blunt’s character makes in the film: “It is said there is no sin in killing beasts, only in killing a man. But where does one begin and the other end?” Stories of terrible murders abound. So at what point does a person cross over into something monstrous, capable of committing such crimes? And what drives them to that point? It comes after being fueled by something other than the autumn moon, to be sure. 

One such criminal, the late serial killer Ted Bundy, gave a final interview to psychologist Dr. James Dobson the day before his execution in 1989. He talked about a key factor that led him down his violent path: pornography, which some call a harder addiction to break from than cocaine. In that interview, Bundy warned about the dangers of hard-core pornography. While he took full responsibility for his actions, his addiction pushed him down the terrible path. In his interview, he claimed he felt like possessed when he murdered his victims. Further, Bundy said, “I’ve lived in prison for a long time now, and I’ve met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence. Without exception, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography—deeply consumed by the addiction.” 

While views on pornography abound, in Hollywood there is really only one view openly portrayed: it’s not a big deal. Even the protagonists of films such as the American Pie movies enjoy pornography, and the women in the films could care less. But a recent study by the Family Research Council shows that pornography damages families in non-violent ways as well. 

Whether you believe the last words of a serial killer is up to you. But while Hollywood is inspecting a plethora of social issues, it might do well to examine pornography too.

Determined to find, capture and kill whatever beast offed his brother, Lawrence has not only traveled back to his birthplace and its haunting memories, but now has to confront his father head-on for murdering his mother and ward off area townspeople who fear he’s become a beastly ‘wolf man’ himself after surviving a a vicious bite from the monster. Through it all, his primary battle is to maintain his strong sense of decency and underlying humanity from slipping away forever.

Sounds like a heady mix of action and emotions, doesn’t it? Thankfully, “The Wolfman” largely delivers on its promises – particularly through the moving performance and powerfully expressive eyes of Oscar-winning actor Benicio del Toro (“Traffic”), who rebounds from a mostly hitless past decade to sink his teeth (ok, pun intended) into the role of Lawrence Talbot and add genuine gravitas to a tragic character. It also features a strong, yet slightly oddball, performance from Anthony Hopkins, who has also suffered more than his share of box-office setbacks in the last few years but digs into the role of Lawrence’s father Sir John Talbot with the menacing glee of his famed Dr. Hannibal Lecter enjoying a dinner of Chianti and fava beans.

While rising star Emily Blunt (“The Devil Wears Prada,” “Young Victoria”) is on hand as the deceased brother’s girlfriend who starts to fall for Lawrence as well, it is Hugo Weaving as Scotland Yard Inspector Abberline who nearly steals the show from everyone with his cocky cool, able athleticism and dryly sarcastic line readings.

The real stars of the show, however, are the technical armies behind the camera lens, who establish a fully realized world in which the film’s rich and nearly incessant moonlight reveals stunning details of an expansive city in 1890, Victorian-era, England. Special effects master Rick Baker, who won a Best Makeup Oscar for his work on the cult classic “An American Werewolf in London” back in 1981, puts del Toro through his gruesome transformations – including some foot and toe shots that will make you wish you hadn’t ordered the jumbo size popcorn. In an interesting touch, the clergy in the film are a bit hysterical in preparing their worried followers for each full moon, but are overall shown respectably, while del Toro is seen in prayer – complete with sign of the Cross – as he agonizes over his fate. Perhaps these brief Christian-friendly moments can be chalked up to the historic era of the film, but they are nice gestures to see nonetheless.

Add in a great, perfectly evocative offbeat-orchestra score by Danny Elfman, and some spectacular and gruesomely funny showdown scenes between the wolfman and his oppressors, and you’ll find an entertaining film akin to 1999’s Tim Burton-Johnny Depp collaboration “Sleepy Hollow”: a film that may not terrify often, but is consistently tantalizing and fun to watch. Just be forewarned that the ample body counts include decapitations and the loss of many, many limbs among the townspeople; however, much of that bloody action is shot in enough shadow and with enough speed that it doesn’t become too gross for enjoyment and ensures the film remains tasteful (this time, no pun intended).

“The Wolfman’ marks not only a comeback and second chance for del Toro and Hopkins, but a great artistic leap forward for effects-whiz director Joe Johnston (“Jumanji,” “October Sky,” “Jurassic Park III”). Here’s hoping they use that second chance wisely.

Companies truly interested in making a profit don’t behave this way, which is why there’s never been a New Coke 2, much less a New Coke 14. And yet, Universal doubles down on more anti-Americanism using the fig-leaf of “based on a true story” to hide their malicious intentions which — to anyone paying attention — are always exposed by which “true stories” they choose to drop in theaters all over the world.

Here’s the New Yorker description of the book “Green Zone” is based on:

There the Halliburton-run (and Muslim-staffed) cafeteria served pork at every meal—a cultural misstep typical of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which had sidelined old Arab hands in favor of Bush loyalists. Not only did many of them have no previous exposure to the Middle East; more than half had never before applied for a passport. While Baghdad burned, American officials revamped the Iraqi tax code and mounted an anti-smoking campaign.

No real need to read beyond “Halliburton.”

But there appears to be trouble in MattDamonLand. Hidden deep within Universal’s announcement that Benicio del Toro’s “Wolfman” (the two-part story of a hairy revolutionary determined to overthrow Transylvania) has been moved to February, comes this:

Universal has moved the release of Paul Greengrass’s Matt Damon–starring Iraq-war drama (and former ostensible Best Picture contender) Green Zone from this fall all the way to March 12. Why? Maybe it’s no good! But more likely, after the box-office failures of Land of the Lost, Public Enemies, and Brüno, Universal just couldn’t withstand another flop in 2009 (and Green Zone, about the fruitless search for WMDs, hardly seems like a blockbuster).

Yanking this from award season (when Oscar-buzz was probably the best hope to not look foolish for making it in the first place) and dumping it in the dog days of March, signals a major lack of confidence. One is left to wonder how Damon likes those apples.

But only now is Universal worried “Green Zone” will flop, even though production began in January of 2008, long after it became obvious this genre was box-office poison. But there were only five Iraq floppers then. Maybe it does take thirteen.

Actually, it doesn’t matter how many fail. This is an ideological war, not a drive for profit.

Ultimately, no one knows how “Green Zone” will do at the box office. Maybe, like the Iraq War, it will prove its harshest critics wrong and end up a successful venture worth the investment.

Che Guevara, Bolivia, September 8, 1967.

“No rapport had been established with the locals…” Anderson, p. 722

As I said in part one of my review of Soderbergh’s “Che,” The film gives us no idea of what happened after the Cuban Revolutionary government took power. Quite a lot did happen. We all know about the Bay of Pigs invasion, which deserves its own four-hour movie, hopefully directed by someone other than Soderbergh. We also all know that hundreds of thousands of people left Cuba in the early 1960s. People have never stopped leaving.

What’s less known to outsiders is that under Castro’s command, the Cuban Revolution began, very early on, to eat its own. The highest rank in the Revolutionary army was then the rank of “Comandante.” Here’s what happened to a few Revolutionary Comandantes:  In October 1959, Comandante Huber Matos, who is omitted from this film, criticizes the influence of Communists in the Revolutionary Government, and tenders his resignation. He is arrested, and serves twenty years in prison, during which time he endures severe torture. The dashing Comandante Camilo Cienfuegos is killed in an airplane crash within a week of the arrest of Huber Matos. The wreckage has never been found. Matos, who along with Camilo flanks Fidel in the famous photographs of Fidel’s entry into Havana, is among many who have never accepted the plane crash story. In March of 1961, Comandante William Morgan, of Cleveland, Ohio, also omitted from this film, is arrested and executed.

Revolutionaries were now being eliminated as well, not just Batistianos. In this dangerous atmosphere of Revolutionary cannibalism, Che recklessly blasted the Soviet Union in a speech in Algiers in 1965. Guevara was famously an admirer of Mao; Fidel in those days was firmly in the Soviet column, and with good reason: the Soviets were pumping massive amounts of capital into Cuba. In Cuba, when you disagree with Fidel, guess who wins? Che’s attack on the absolutely vital Soviet Sugar Daddy was nothing short of foolish.

Without knowledge of these important events, largely omitted from the film, one simply cannot observe Guevara’s Bolivian debacle from an informed perspective.

Furthermore, we have to understand that the Cuban Revolution has always lied, beginning in the fifties with the notorious “we are not communists” (and yes, even Guevara told this whopper, telling Abuelo, my grandfather, that he believed in democracy, and that there would be elections within six months of the overthrow of Batista) all the way through to 2006’s “Raul will be temporarily in charge.” The official account, which this movie rehashes, of the Bolivian campaign, is therefore suspect.

However, a sliver of truth does manage to peek through the darkness of disinformation in a scene in which Guevara, asthmatic, undernourished, gaining no traction in his insurgency against the Bolivian government and unable to make his horse move another inch, slides off of the poor creature and begins stabbing her. (This event, by the way, apparently really happened). Some in the audience moaned empathetically, as if the whole thing was so, so sad: first, el Vaquerito, now the horse! Yes, the incident is sad, but it’s not merely sad. It’s abnormal, terrifying. What kind of sadist stabs a horse just because he can’t make it walk? The answer is this: the same kind of sadist that presides over a gulag in which executions are carried out with dreadful, cold efficiency.

And Che did preside over a gulag. He was the first Revolutionary Comandante in charge of La Cabaña fortress, the old Spanish fort that became ground zero in the Cuban gulag archipelago. My father was home from college for the Christmas holidays of 1958-59, and he, a friend and Abuelo visited Che Guevara at La Cabaña on or before January 5th, 1959. As they were driven to Guevara’s office, Dad heard multiple volleys of rifle fire. Wondering why rifles were being fired, when after all the war was over, Dad asked a Captain Sanchez, who was driving them to the main barracks where Guevara had his office, “Captain, what are those shots?” Sanchez replied, “Ah, we’re shooting those sons of bitches,” meaning officers and soldiers of Batista’s army. Che had taken charge of La Cabaña on January 3rd. Again, hardly time for due process. Before long, the prison cells of La Cabaña began to fill not with Batistianos, but with former comrades of Fidel and Che. My cousin, Oscar Plá began his odyssey through the Cuban gulag at the age of 15, in October of 1961, and finally emerged for good at the age of 33; his initial incarceration was in La Cabaña. Oscar knew no fewer than eight Revolutionary Comandantes in La Cabaña.

In prison Oscar got to know several people who had direct contact with el Che. Two, Bernardo Paradela, and Raul Venta del Mazo, both veterans of the struggle against Batista who later turned against the Revolution, were hung upside down for over a month and interrogated. Guevara came to taunt them every single day of their ordeal. Oscar gave me the name of another man whom he had met in Gallery Seven of La Cabaña, a man who had been a Revolutionary Postal Service bureaucrat with whom Guevara had quarreled, then personally sentenced to torture. This poor wretch had lost fifty pounds in 30 days; he was never well liked by the other prisoners because even as a political prisoner he remained a committed ideological communist. The man was released only after Guevara was killed in Bolivia. This fellow is apparently still in Cuba; I have found a phone number for the man, which I am not going to call. Nor am I going to print his name. These are just three men; according to Sociologist Juan Clark, the population of political prisoners in Cuba in the 1960s swelled to 60,000, among them, women and children.

This is why the most jarringly false moment in the film comes in the first half when someone mentions Stalinists in the Cuban Communist Party. Guevara asks, “Stalinists?” as if to say subtextually, “Hold on here, there are Stalinists in this movement? Listen buddy, I ain’t down with no Stalinists.” This is an absolute howler, inanity of a very low order. Che Guevara was in fact the most Stalinist of all the early Revolutionary Comandantes, with the exception of Raul Castro himself. There is a reason why Guevara was put in charge of La Cabaña, and not Camilo, or Huber Matos. But there’s no room for this ugly reality in Soderbergh’s film about Guevara, whom we are led to believe was kind as Saint Francis of Assisi. But back to Bolivia.

Cinematically speaking, the problem with the Bolivian portion of the film is that there is simply not two hours of movie to be squeezed from this disaster. If the first two hours of the film are boring, the second two are stuporific.

Historically speaking, Guevara’s attempt to incite an insurrection among the Indigenous people of the Ñancahuazú region could never have succeeded. Many of these people didn’t speak Spanish, and the Cuban guerrillas did not speak the Guaraní dialect of the region. One can only imagine what the Indigenous Bolivians thought of the loud, smelly, bearded foreigners who suddenly appeared in their midst: “Saludos, comrades, we’re here to liberate you. Do you have anything to eat? Listen, don’t tell anyone you saw us, or we’ll kill you. By the way, I am not Che Guevara. What’s that? Oh, you don’t speak Spanish?”

Things deteriorated from there. No less than the now-exiled Dariel Alarcon, codenamed “Benigno” in Bolivia, and one of only three survivors of the expedition, today believes that Fidel set Che and the rest of his guerrillas up for failure, and death. He also has interesting things to say about the death of Camilo Cienfuegos.*

The grim photos of Guevara’s emaciated corpse stretched out in a washbasin lead one to wonder how long would it have taken for Guevara to simply starve in Bolivia. Contrast that with the pictures of the happy, healthy guerrillas who rolled into Havana in January of 1959. Photos of Fidel in particular are hilarious. He’s a good 60 pounds overweight. Whatever “the Cuban experience” as Guevara referred to the guerrilla war of 1956-1959 was, it was nothing like Bolivia, and Guevara’s experiences in Cuba in no way prepared him for what he encountered in South America.

At the end of the film, a Bolivian soldier asks Guevara if there was religion in Cuba. Guevara answers that yes, there are many religions in Cuba. Guevara’s answer here is, ahem, incomplete, and I wish to address this issue. Apparently, the Bolivian government and military had told the peasantry, and the soldiers, that under a Cuban-style regime, the Bolivian people would not be free to practice their religion. Soderbergh would have us believe that this is some vile calumny against the Cuban Revolution. In fact, religious persecution in Cuba at the time was a terrifying reality. From training fire hoses on a group of twelve to fourteen year old girls on their way into the Church of La Caridad del Cobre, a place sacred to Cubans since the 1600s, to teach Catechism class (this happened to my cousin Oscar’s wife, Miriam) to the internment of thousands in the UMAP camps of 1965 – 1968, where Jehova’s Witnesses in particular had it very rough, tortured with fire ants until they renounced their faith, religion was under fire in Cuba.

A more honest answer from Che would have been, “yes, there is religion in Cuba, but we’re doing everything we can to get rid of it.” The Bolivians had every right to fear for their religion, and their culture, under a Cuban-type regime.

At the end of the film, the Bolivians treat Che Guevara to exactly the same justice that the real Ernesto Guevara gave to Villaya, almost eight years earlier. Not exactly a miscarriage of justice.
I have just one more thing I’d like to say about Mr. Soderbergh and Mr. Del Toro. I don’t mean this maliciously, as I think that the experience would be very good for the emotional, intellectual and artistic growth of these two men. I wish that Mr. Soderbergh and Mr. Del Toro could live in Cuba, not as the pampered VIPs that they are when they visit today, but as Cubans do, with no United States Constitutional rights, with ration cards entitling them to tiny portions of provisions that the stores don’t even stock anyway, with chivatos surveilling them constantly. How long would it be before Mr. Soderbergh started sizing up inner tubes, speculating on the durability and buoyancy of them, asking himself, could I make the crossing on that? How long before Mr. Del Toro started gazing soulfully at divorced or widowed tourist women, hoping to seduce and marry one of them and get out? Only then could they see why this insipid, frivolous and pretentious movie they have made is nothing less than an insult to millions of people, who really do live like that, and who’ve lived like that their entire lives.

Maybe then, they could put their considerable talents into making a Cuba movie worth watching.
The world so needs to take off those dumb Che t-shirts, and grow up. We face serious problems, and totalitarianism isn’t a solution to any of them, even when it’s dressed up in a beret and given a wispy beard, flowing locks and a surly stare, and looks really, really cool.

By the fall of 1960 my father had changed his mind about Castro. My uncles Jorge and Ricardo came to the States in September 1961, Abuelo and Abuela got out in November. They all moved into a small house on North Street in Baton Rouge. Dad started his own consulting firm. Jorge went to work at a department store in Baton Rouge called Godchaux’s, Ricardo graduated from Baton Rouge High, and they both went on to LSU. All three of the Lima boys became not only Americans, but full-on gumbo-eating Louisianans who married and had families and successful businesses of their own. Dad married a woman with deep roots in South Louisiana, and together they raised a family of four children, of which I am the first. Dad says, “your mother is fixin’ to make some jambalaya” with a Cuban accent. Mom learned to cook black beans so tasty that Cuban-born women ask for her recipe. Nowhere but in America do cultures collide so deliciously. Abuelo was too much of a fighter to be anything other than a cheerful man; he was not a bitter man, but all his life he felt betrayed by the Revolution, which had promised free elections and a return to the Constitution of 1940.

Abuela to her last day hated beards on men.

I was out for a walk in the cool of a Southern California evening with my soon-to-be-three-year-old daughter, the great-grandchild of José Francisco Lima, and the calamitous events of now more than fifty years ago, that so shaped who I am today came into my head. How fortunate we are to be able to walk down the street and talk to each other without having to worry about being overheard by a snitch, without having to show up at public demonstrations and pantomime a revolutionary ardor that after more than half a century, nobody really feels anymore. How fortunate we are to be free of the caprices of angry, vain men who think that they are entitled to shoot people and confiscate their property. How fortunate we are, to have been born in a country where freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the right to due process are assured all of us thanks to the United States Constitution.

We didn’t have to build a raft and brave the Gulf of Mexico to get here. We lucked out: we were born here. We won the lottery. I certainly didn’t deserve to. Nobody can possibly deserve to. All we can do is thank God for it, and try to be worthy of it, by living a good life. Gratitude. Gratitude to be a free man, married to a lovely free woman, who has given me a beautiful daughter, who will grow up in a free country. Gratitude is what the Cuban experience taught me. I have a deep sense of how fortunate we as Americans are because I am just one generation removed from firing squads and re-education camps. And for creating that nightmare world of totalitarian Cuba, which I remember with a shudder even though I was spared the experience firsthand, I must credit Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, and Ernesto Guevara Serna, “el Che.”

*The Complete Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara, Daniel James, 1968, Stein & Day

**If you speak Spanish and want to hear what Dariel Alarcon aka Benigno has to say, I urge you to watch the following video:

***If you would like to read more about political prisoners and human rights abuses in Cuba, I direct you to Armando Valladares’ “Against All Hope,” “Contra Toda Esperanza” in Spanish.