Adventures of a Gringa

mexicaning and moral dilemma

This is from yesterday. I forgot to publish it until now. Oops.

Today Eli's hostel threw a Mexican party, a birthday celebration for the hostel owner's niece. The hostel owner's mom lived in Mexico for a good portion of her life and she made REAL MEXICAN FOOD which I inhaled, lips burning, nose running and all. Oh. Real Mexican food--black beans and guacamole and pico de gallo and clay pots full of amazing Mexican goodness. They even had a homemade pinata! And I was very touched when the semi-Mexican mom gave me a goodie bag. I haven't received one since I was maybe eight years old. This one contained: fifteen pieces of candy, a pencil, a stencil, a whistle, a top, a small horn, plastic vampire teeth, and a notepad. I also got a bag of "sweet popcorn" which tastes a lot like cereal.

So there's a British guy staying at the hostel who put a thick manuscript at the front desk with the following note on top: "This is a book I'm working on. Please read it and leave comments. Thanks." There used to be a page at the back for people to write comments, but I noticed it was missing today. I asked one of the other hostel people if she'd read it, and she said she had and had told the guy that she thought it got off topic too much and she thought he'd come off as very arrogant. So I decided to read it myself.

It was the first few chapters of his world travels, talking about quitting his high-powered job, his departure and his first destinations in Africa. It was like reading a diary, plus some completely out of place anecdotes about his past travels and experiences before his current trip. It was, simply, awful. So I decided to be honest, since, if you haven't noticed already, I am very much in the "honesty is the best policy" boat. I guess I didn't think it through that well, since I decided to write: "With all due respect, I think you should stick to finance, because this is not publishable." When I told Eli, his face darkened and he said, "You can't say that!!" After growing up as a dancer, in a fairly cruel world, where everything is very black and white and people are very straight up with you, I guess I've lost a little bit of compassion. I also thought of the part of "The Motorcycle Diaries" when Che tells his doctor friend that his novel is full of cliches and "basically unreadable" and that he should stick to what he does best in medicine. The doctor thanks him, since everyone, including Che's friend, had lied to him to butter him up.

I have a new baby card to write, and I'm going to write a thank you for the Mexican mom, so maybe I can rub off some of the bad karma I just created for myself.

Also, my friends left today and I didn't get to say goodbye, but they told me that they'd be back and that they loved Eli. Who doesn't?

October 8th: The Anniversary of Che's Death

On October 8, 1967, Che was shot in a mountain town in Bolivia by Bolivian troops backed by the CIA, ending his life at just 39 years old. Brazil's VEJA magazine and Discovery Latin America both did specials on him, as well as a Discovery special on Fidel Castro.

The VEJA article seeks to demonstrate that Che was a total failure and that his fame was created more by myth than by truth. Some interesting things it mentioned:

• In his youth, Che was known as "el chancho" or "the pig" because he didn't like to shower and always smelled bad
• The quote "Hay que endurecerse, pero sin perder la ternura jamas," attributed to Che, has never been proven to be an original saying of Che's; however, the author claims that this is his most famous quote, which it definitely isn't (" If you tremble indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine." " I would rather die standing up, then live life on my knees.)
• When Che was killed, he was so dirty and hairy and gross from living in the forest that his killers cleaned and shaved him before taking pictures and video to prove he was dead.
• Che's face has appeared in such places as a bikini on Brazilian model Gisele's ass, Mike Tyson's torso, and Maradona's bicep

The Discovery special didn't really shed any new light on Che, but spent a lot of time detailing his failures also. The VEJA article ends: "The Che myth constitutes a new wall that has prevented, until now, the correct observation of the most disastrous events of contemporary history in the Americas. It's time for this wall to fall."

The other thing I didn't like about the article was a fact they included that, "After the fall of the Berlin Wall, communism would be remembered above all as the responsible ideology for 100,000,000 deaths." It's like saying sex is responsible for thousands of deaths each year. Pulling a ridiculous statistic out of your ass like that is just bad journalism.

Anyway. Che may not have achieved his goals but he inspired generations of people who wanted (and want) to change the status quo and to fight against injustice, inequality, and poverty. His life may have been controversial, but his struggle was not in vain.

If you're interested in the real story behind Che, check out declassified documents from the National Security Archives, housed in my alma mater GWU, about what really happened in Bolivia.