When Communists part ways
I have been under immense pressure to keep a timeline from the editor to write an obituary on Fidel Castro, whom I have adored ever since my college days in the tumultuous sixties when he walked into the life and times of our generation in Kerala.
It was simply difficult to write, sitting in Kerala, with such a sense of numbness in the mind, watching the television pictures and listening to the accounts of the bullet ridden bodies of two ‘Maovaadis,’ Canada Goose online shot canada goose store down by the police in cold blood.
buy canada goose jacket Those were haunting images. The incident took place on November 24 in the canada goose coats on sale Nilambur forests of the northern district of Malappuram. buy canada goose jacket
canada goose coats Fidel’s passing away within a day or two of the cold canada goose black friday sale blooded killing in Kerala took the mind back to another painful memory of the youth, stacked away carefully in the attic of the mind another ‘encounter’ resulting in the death of Che Guevara, the icon of our youth, in the vastness of the Bolivian forests in 1967. canada goose coats
canadian goose jacket Che was shot 9 times five times in the legs, once in the right shoulder and arm, and once in the chest and throat. canadian goose jacket
canada goose black friday sale But according to media reports, one of the Maovaadis, Ajitha (46), was shot 19 times, while seven bullets canada goose clearance sale were recovered from the dead body of the other person Kuppuswamy (61) who was a Central Committee member of the Maovaadis pantheon. canada goose black friday sale
The forensic experts reportedly found that Ajitha’s organs, including lungs, were shredded to pieces. Canada Goose Outlet 13 bullets had apparently pierced her body.
Che too canada goose outlet was a ‘misguided’ Communist. He too was shot, although unarmed and in captivity already, by the death squad of the Bolivian dictator Rene Barrientos.
cheap Canada Goose Herein lies the cardinal difference Kerala has buy canada goose jacket a Communist government. canada goose uk black friday Chief Minister Pinarayi canada goose Vijayan has therefore done the right thing by ordering a ‘magisterial inquiry’ into cheap canada goose uk the killing. cheap Canada Goose
canada goose The Maovaadis were born as mainstream Communists,but left the fold for ‘new battlefronts under other skies,’ as Che once wrote in his farewell letter to Fidel on April 1, 1965, as he took leave of Havana, after formally resigning his positions in the leadership of the Cuban Communist Party, his post as minister https://www.canadagooseisverige.com in the government, his rank of commander and even his Cuban citizenship. canada goose
Two years ago, while sitting and brooding on a bench in a desolate ill kept garden full of wild shrubs surrounding buy canada goose jacket cheap the obscure villa in Mexico City where Leon Trotsky had lived out the final years of his life in exile before the brutal assassination in 1940 at the hands of an axe wielding Spanish Communist (and probable agent of Josef Stalin), the Canada Goose sale very same ineffably painful thought had occurred to me why uk canada goose the parting of ways between Communists becomes so painful to watch.
Canada Goose sale Che’s letter is an infinitely sad one. Many versions are available even today Canada Goose Online why Che took leave of Fidel and Havana or, put differently, why cheap Canada Goose Fidel let him go, and why he didn’t order the rescue team that was kept in readiness to mount the mission when news trickled in about Che’s capture in an ambush. Canada Goose sale
Che’s letter gives a vague hint, perhaps, of the crux of the matter when he juxtaposed in a subtle way himself Canada Goose Jackets answering the call of the revolution and discharging ‘the responsibility of being a Cuban revolutionary’ with Fidel’s responsibility as the head of Cuba; canada goose uk outlet the canadian goose jacket surge of his feeling of ‘fulfilling the most sacred of duties: to fight against imperialism wherever it may be’ with Fidel’s practical commitments as the father figure of the Cuban nation.
canada goose clearance Che’s expertise in guerrilla war had proved decisive in the repeated successes that Castro’s army won in battle after battle against Cuba’s dictatorial regime under Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s. canada goose clearance
canada goose clearance sale But then, Che also had a habit of ordering prisoners executed without trial and could be merciless toward adversaries and enemies. canada goose clearance sale
canada goose store On the other hand, the poverty canada goose clearance and social injustices Che witnessed sparked his radical beliefs, as the notes testify from his odyssey when he took a pause from medical studies in 1952 to travel through South America with a friend on a motorcycle notes which eventually turned into his memoir The Motorcycle Diaries. canada goose store
Canada Goose Jackets In the 1960s, Castro broke with other Latin American leftists by actively promoting revolution across the continent. He was young, seductively attractive, and very charismatic and refreshing. Canada Goose Jackets
Guerilla movements were soon flourishing all over Latin America.
The peak came in 1979 canada goose uk shop when the Sandinistas came to power in Nicaragua through revolution. But that turned out to be a flash in the pan, and in the coming years, Cuban revolution began losing appeal when it transpired that the huge Soviet subsidies only had kept the country’s economy floating without which the social sectors wouldn’t be affordable.
Of course, once the Cold War ended and the Soviet uk canada goose outlet Union was disbanded and the subsidies were long gone, Cuba’s economic and social model came Canada Goose Coats On Sale under critical scrutiny as a role model for other countries.
canada goose coats on sale Nonetheless, Castro has remained an inspiration and is a highly respected figure all across Latin America except that it is in a new modern context. canada goose coats on sale
What did I notice two years ago while visiting Latin America, during my conversations with Communist activists drawn from all over the continent?
Canada Goose online Succinctly put, Castro’s appeal to young Latin American leftists today is different now than it was in the 1960s and 1970s. Canada Goose online
To be sure, Castro had become an iconic figure over the decades. For the Latin Americans, though, he symbolised a figure mostly of Latin American nationalism and anti Americanism. The youth adored him for that.
Of course, everyone I met knew Castro was not a quintessential revolutionary. They also were profoundly sceptical whether the Cuban experience would survive, but they still simply could not bring themselves to imagine they could ever even think of Havana having a regime other than the one it had.
Canada Goose Outlet To my mind, Castro’s huge appeal in Latin America and elsewhere in the world ultimately lies in the fact that he stood up to the Americans. Canada Goose Outlet
canada goose deals This appeal continues, since the image of the United States has suffered in Latin America and in other parts of the world in the recent decade. canada goose deals
buy canada goose jacket cheap However, looking ahead beyond that, it becomes difficult canada goose coats to be judgmental about Castro’s legacy at this point in time, because there are huge uncertainties about the future of the Cuba that he built buy canada goose jacket cheap.