"Of Dogs and Revolutionaries." Topic

A loose end from another thread:

Dn jackson:

Well it took a little time but I got to the bottom of it.
Before and after Che Guevara was put in charge of the La Cabana Prison there was an executioner there named Herman Marks.

"In La Cabana, Marks would bring his pet dog to work with him," recalls former political prisoner, Robert Martin Perez, who suffered 28 years in Castro's Gulag (over three times as long as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Natan Scharansky spent in the Soviet Gulag) "a huge dog that looked like a German shepherd/ hound cross of some kind. He followed Marks everywhere."

This was the dog which you were incorrectly assigning to Che Guevara. This is the animal which Humberto Fontova describes as liking up the blood after the firing squads had finished the vicious work. Now the real kicker is the identity of Herman Marks which is revealed in this testimony by the chaplain at La Cabana Prison named Javier Arzuaga:

Javier Arzuaga, the Basque chaplain who gave comfort to those sentenced to die and personally witnessed dozens of executions, spoke to me recently from his home in Puerto Rico. A former Catholic priest, now seventy-five, who describes himself as "closer to Leonardo Boff and Liberation Theology than to the former Cardinal Ratzinger," he recalls that:

"… there were about eight hundred prisoners in a space fit for no more than three hundred: former Batista military and police personnel, some journalists, a few businessmen and merchants. The revolutionary tribunal was made of militiamen. Che Guevara presided over the appellate court. He never overturned a sentence. I would visit those on death row at the galera de la muerte. A rumor went around that I hypnotized prisoners because many remained calm, so Che ordered that I be present at the executions. After I left in May, they executed many more, but I personally witnessed fifty-five executions. There was an American, Herman Marks, apparently a former convict. We called him "the butcher" because he enjoyed giving the order to shoot. I pleaded many times with Che on behalf of prisoners. I remember especially the case of Ariel Lima, a young boy. Che did not budge. Nor did Fidel, whom I visited. I became so traumatized that at the end of May 1959 I was ordered to leave the parish of Casa Blanca, where La Cabaņa was located and where I had held Mass for three years. I went to Mexico for treatment. The day I left, Che told me we had both tried to bring one another to each other's side and had failed. His last words were: "When we take our masks off, we will be enemies."

Yes, Herman Marks was an American convict and revolutionary.

Now the testimony states that Che presided over 55 executions but the chaplain did not stay for the full five months that Che Guevara was in charge of the appellate tribunal at La Cabana Prison. The best figure I can track down for the full number of executions ordered under his mandate is about 115 killed. During the same five month period Che Guevara is believed to have prevented the executions of almost one-hundred souls. While 115 victims is a high number it is nowhere near the CIA agent Felix Rodrigues' estimation of 2,000 and Humberto Fontova's astronomical figure of 14,000 victims.
Rod Robertson.

As a Yank … I'm not a real fan of Che' … but that may just be me ?

Trying hard to think of what this has to do with miniature wargaming.

Oh, please. There's a lotta junk hanging out from under *that* fig leaf these days.

Legion 4:
The purpose of this was not to promote Che Guevara or to excuse him for what he did and is responsible. The purpose was to correct misinformation on a related thread, but since I had agreed not to post more on that thread, I had to make the clarification and correction here.
All the leadership of the Cuban Revolution were brutal as were the Batista leadership. Your position on Che is perfectly valid and probably a great deal more realistic than the hero on tee-shirts and teenagers' posters.

Iuscaloosa:
It has very little to do with wargaming. It was an attempt to correct incorrect information posted in a previous thread. If it annoys you, look away! There is no one correct or orthodox opinion on TMP. Many threads on this forum have little or nothing to do with miniatures directly but everything to do with the historical context in which wargames are set.

zippyfusenet:
I am not clear on what you mean so I will not comment.

Cheers.
Rod Robertson.

Understand Rod … When one studies Guerilla Warfare and insurgencies, Che' always comes up … along with Mao.

Your position on Che is perfectly valid and probably a great deal more realistic than the hero on tee-shirts and teenagers' posters.

Yes, as I said I read a little about Che' … The whole tee-shirt and poster thing is just a another indication of youth being mis-informed, etc. … again. And yes, when it comes to the Cuban Revolution, before, during and after. There is a lot of blood on many hands on all sides. It is the nature of many Revolutions as we know.