“The 60′s were a leap in human consciousness. Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Che Guevara, Mother Teresa, they led a revolution of conscience. The Beatles, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix created revolution and evolution themes. The music was like Dali, with many colors and revolutionary ways. The youth of today must go there to find themselves.”
— Which just might be the first time in recent history that the names of Che Guevara and Mother Teresa were ever spoken back to back, and both positively.
Che would find the juxtaposition rather astonishing himself, since he’s been quoted as saying, “In fact, if Christ himself stood in my way, I, like Nietzsche, would not hesitate to squish him like a worm.
And Che would be immensely proud of the rock and roll-admiring “youth of today:”
Not that ignorance, willful or otherwise, is exactly rare on the topic of Cuba or Che Guevara. When Carlos Santana and Eric Burdon, (among many other rockers) smugly sport their elegant Che t-shirts they plug a regime that in the mid to late 60’s rounded up “roqueros” (Cuban rock & roll fans) and long hairs en masse, and herded them into prison camps for forced labor under a scorching sun. These young prisoners’ “counter-revolutionary crimes” often involved nothing more than listening to music by The Animals and Santana.
When Madonna camped it up in her Che outfit for the cover of her American Life CD, she plugged a regime that criminalized homosexuals and anything smacking of gay mannerisms. In the mid 60’s the crime of effeminate behavior got thousands of youths yanked off Cuba’s streets and parks by secret police and dumped in prison camps with “Work Will Make Men Out of You” in bold letters above the gate (the one at Auschwitz’ gate read: “Work Will Set You Free) and with machine gunners posted on the watchtowers. The initials for these camps were UMAP, not GULAG, but the conditions were identical.
No doubt though, the sanitary conditions at these “camps of concentration,” as these particular youth gatherings might be called, were (and are) rather reminiscent of Woodstock, so they’ve got that going for them.
(H/T: Big Hollywood)
Not that ignorance, willful or otherwise, is exactly rare on the topic of Cuba or Che Guevara. When Carlos Santana and Eric Burdon, (among many other rockers) smugly sport their elegant Che t-shirts they plug a regime that in the mid to late 60’s rounded up “roqueros” (Cuban rock & roll fans) and long hairs en masse, and herded them into prison camps for forced labor under a scorching sun. These young prisoners’ “counter-revolutionary crimes” often involved nothing more than listening to music by The Animals and Santana.
When Madonna camped it up in her Che outfit for the cover of her American Life CD, she plugged a regime that criminalized homosexuals and anything smacking of gay mannerisms. In the mid 60’s the crime of effeminate behavior got thousands of youths yanked off Cuba’s streets and parks by secret police and dumped in prison camps with “Work Will Make Men Out of You” in bold letters above the gate (the one at Auschwitz’ gate read: “Work Will Set You Free) and with machine gunners posted on the watchtowers. The initials for these camps were UMAP, not GULAG, but the conditions were identical.
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