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Handsome Caudillos
- Red Hen Press
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46 Handsome Caudillos Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy. —Che Guevara Tengo una remera del Che y no sé por qué, I have a Che t-shirt and I don’t know why. —Contemporary Argentine saying I see the red shirt at the peace rally and think of my parents who left everyone and every thing they knew and loved save for the coin forgotten in my brother’s baby jacket. Men like me in Cuba failed the test of this symbol’s manhood, were called “Western perversions” were imprisoned and made to labor. Thousands, like these assembled, were rounded up in the middle of the night driven to the far countryside to cut sugarcane for a revolution’s economic quotas. Tio Alberto’s eyes go blank when he speaks of the price he paid: three years of forced hard labor to work like a dog in the sun for the privilege of leaving his own country. 47 I think of the chain of caudillos that promised one thing and delivered another. ...