Wow, my second Che Guevara-related post in less the 12 hours. The picture I took last fall outside the Joan F. Arai Middle School on Chicago's North Side. The lettering reads "Uplift Social Justice."
Andy Garcia knows see the real Che. And as Front Page Magazine's Lloyd Billingsley writes in his review of the Garcia-directed The Lost City, "El Che" was not "Uplifting Social Justice" in a way reasonable people see it.
In The Lost City, Fidel Castro appears as himself in newsreel footage. We do get to see Che Guevara, played by Jsu Garcia, who bears a remarkable likeness to the upper-class Argentine Stalinist whose mug adorns so many T-shirts. We also see Guevara rather casually executing people, though nothing on the scale of what actually happened. As Andy Garcia explained to an interviewer:
"You know, this is what Che was doing in Cuba. He was the tribunal judge after the revolution and he was executing people left and right and a lot of them without a trial."
Garcia is right on the money. By some counts, Che Guevara sent 1,897 men to the firing squad. Though not conveying the sense of a mass executioner, the portrayal of Che Guevara is more accurate that anything in The Motorcycle Diaries. Some people have gotten the message. Tim Grierson writing in L.A. Weekly, of all places, said that "Garcia deserves credit for his lack of self-indulgent flourishes, and for his sharp criticism of so-called freedom-fighting icons like Che Guevara."
Much of the Hollywood entertainment establishment, unfortunately, is in love with Che. Let's hope the film by the Cuban-born Garcia changes that.
Related Che Guevara post: Immigration rallies legacy: National Guard to the border
Technorati tags: Che Guevara el Che Cuba castro Fidel Castro cubana Andy Garcia Movies Hollywood Chicago Chicago Public Schools
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