Che Guevara’s UNESCO Honor Slammed by Florida Lawmaker

Che Guevara’s manuscripts were added to the UNESCO Heritage Program, but a U.S. lawmaker was appalled by the move.
Che Guevara’s UNESCO Honor Slammed by Florida Lawmaker
A man wearing a T-shirt with the portrait of Ernesto "Che" Guevara in San Jose on May 1, 2011. (RODRIGO ARANGUA/AFP/Getty Images)
Jack Phillips
7/23/2013
Updated:
7/18/2015

Che Guevara’s manuscripts were added to the UNESCO Heritage Program, but a U.S. lawmaker was appalled by the move.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florida, panned the addition of the “The Life and Works of Ernesto Che Guevara” to UNESCO’s “Memory of the World Register.”

“UNESCO continued its longstanding tradition of making a mockery of its own institution when it opted to venerate and memorialize the life of a blood thirsty, murderous sadist, Che Guevara, by including his works as an entry in its ‘Memory of the World Register,’” she wrote.

Guevara, a former Cuban communist leader, is possibly best known for the stylized images of his face that have been used on T-shirts and posters years after his death in 1967. But rights groups say that he was tortured and killed during the Cuban revolution.

She suggested that the United States pull funding from the organization.

“This decision is more than an insult to the families of those Cubans who were lined up and summarily executed by Che and his merciless cronies but it also serves as a direct contradiction to the UNESCO ideals of encouraging peace and universal respect for human rights,” she added.

The Associated Press reported on Saturday that Guevara’s “Motorcycle Diaries” and writings from when he was in Bolivia were included in the UNESCO register.

Guevara has been described as the chief executioner for the Castro regime.

Humberto Fontova, the author of the book “Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him,” told the Epoch Times in an interview 2009 that celebrities wear shirts with his image because they “think he’s a rock star. They have no idea who he was.”

“Most of the people singing his praises nowadays would be thrown in the labor camps by Che Guevara himself. He was a totalitarian. He was not a libertarian. He praised Stalin and he idolized Stalin and he tried to reproduce Stalin’s Russia,” he said.

Fontova described him as a “puppet” and “too stupid to do anything else. … He was a sadist. Some of the boys he executed were 17 and 18 years old. He executed them personally.”

Jack Phillips is a breaking news reporter with 15 years experience who started as a local New York City reporter. Having joined The Epoch Times' news team in 2009, Jack was born and raised near Modesto in California's Central Valley. Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/jackphillips5
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