[NYTr] Widow Has Her Say on Che Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 19:43:34 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Bill Koehnlein The New York Daily News - Oct 1, 2007 http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/r_m/2007/10/01/2007-10-01_widow_has_her_say_on_che.html [go to the link above; nice pics of Che and Aleida] OR: http://tinyurl.com/24ufpl - [this tinyurl might make it easier-NYTr] Rush & Molloy Widow has her say on Che An intimate memoir of Che Guevara by his widow is making the rounds of New York publishers this week as the 40th anniversary of his death approaches. Aleida March tenderly describes the man behind the revolutionary icon in her manuscript, "Evocation." Her book details her experiences falling in love, marrying and raising four children with Guevara, who was killed in Bolivia at age 39. March, the second wife of the Argentine-born rebel, was convinced to finally tell her story by respected Italian filmmaker Alessandro Cecconi. She reveals that after a romance that began when they were guerrilla comrades in the Cuban revolution, Che wanted their 1959 wedding to be small and private. But Raul Castro found out and threw a big party. Unfortunately, he neglected to invite his own brother, Fidel, who was miffed. "Nobody told Fidel, because of the clandestine way in which the party was planned, and he arrived complaining that nobody had invited him," March writes. "He left soon afterward." Che gave his bride a bottle of Flor de Roca perfume by Caron, "which, of course, I never forgot," she reminisces. But Che wouldn't let her keep the many gifts sent to them, giving them away to the poor. "On his trips, he would receive gifts from his hosts, some of them very expensive," March writes. "He would get presents for me as well, and he would give them away if he considered them too ostentatious." She was given a color TV only to see Che pass it on to a factory worker. "And back then, it was sort of an unimaginable item," March says, adding: "Once, after a trip to Algeria, he received a barrel of an excellent wine. When he arrived home, he told me to give it to the army barracks near our home. I would not always unconditionally obey his mandates. Knowing that wine was one of the few treats he allowed himself, I kept five liters." Che had a dry sense of humor, she writes, adding that he once teased her in a postcard from Morocco, "I was planning to stay faithful to you, but you should see these Moorish girls!" One of the most heart-rending stories March tells is how Che dressed in disguise to visit his own children before a secret trip to Bolivia to foment revolution there. "When the kids arrived, I introduced them to an Uruguayan old man, 'Ramon' [Che], a 'friend' of dad's. They never imagined this 60-year-old man could be their daddy," March writes. "For both Che and me, it was an extremely painful moment. "The kids played with 'RamC3n' all day. Then, Aleidita [then 7] hit her head after running wild, and Che [a physician] took care of her. Soon afterwards, she came to me to tell me a secret he could overhear: 'Mommy, this man is in love with me!' Che was captured by CIA-led Bolivian soldiers on Oct. 9, 1967, and killed the next day after telling his executioner, "Shoot, coward. You are only going to kill a man." ... [Note that this soldier was recently given free cataract surgery and his sight restored, courtesy of the Cuban/Venezuelan "Operation Miracle" eye surgery program in Bolivia. See: "Cuban Doctors Restore Sight of Che's Killer" - The Guardian 10/2/07 http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20071001/069401.html -NY Transfer] Last word on Che Guevara: The Brecht Forum (451 West St.) will mark the 40th anniversary of his death with an Oct. 9 forum featuring rare film clips, photos and conversation with Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez, Scribner editor Colin Robinson and authors Tariq Ali, Greg Grandin and Peter Kornbluh. Also invited are Gael GarcC-a Bernal, who played Che in "The Motorcycle Diaries," and Benicio del Toro, who plays him in two movies Steven Soderbergh is shooting. [Note that Gonzalez, Grandin, Kornbluh and del Toro are in Bold Face; the rest are in regular type. --BK] === Bill Koehnlein bill@toplab.org "My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." --George W. Bush, May 1, 2003 "...I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult, and that we would prevail. Well, it has been difficult--and we are prevailing." --George W. Bush, June 28, 2005 "Our cause in Iraq is noble and necessary....America is engaged in a new struggle that will set the course for a new century. We can and we will prevail." --George W. Bush, January 10, 2007 "Prevailing in Iraq is not going to be easy." --George W. Bush, March 19, 2007 "[My son] Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives." --Cindy Sheehan, May 28, 2007 +U.S. military fatalities through May 1, 2003: 140 +U.S. military fatalities through June 28, 2005: 1743 +U.S. military fatalities through January 10, 2007: 3017 +U.S. military fatalities through March 19, 2007: 3217 +U.S. military fatalities as of October 2, 2007: 3807 (this figure exceeds the number of people killed in all of the incidents that occurred on September 11, 2001) +Iraqi civilian fatalities through May 1, 2003: 1982 +Iraqi civilian fatalities through June 28, 2005 (estimated by IraqBodyCount.net): 22,563 B 25,560* +Iraqi civilian fatalities through January 10, 2007 (estimated by IraqBodyCount.net): 53,101 B 58,704* +Iraqi civilian fatalities through March 19, 2007 (estimated by IraqBodyCount.net): 59,326 B 65,160* +Iraqi civilian fatalities as of October 2, 2007 (estimated by IraqBodyCount.net): 74,431 B 81,119* +Iraqi civilian fatalities as of July 2006 (estimated by The Lancet): 654,965 *These figures are based on the number of fatalities cited in various news reports and have been criticized, with much justification, for not giving an accurate assessment of the real civilian death count. A much more rigorous and statistically-reliable study, conducted by teams from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and Al-Mustansiriya University, and published in The Lancet (the British medical journal) in the Fall of 2004, put the figure at around 100,000 civilians dead. However, that data had been based on "conservative assumptions", according to research team leader Les Roberts, and the actual count at that time was credibly assumed to be significantly higher. For example, The Lancet study's data greatly underestimated fatalities in Fallujah due to the surveying problems encountered there at that time. Most recently, a second Lancet study, released on October 10, 2006, now indicates that 654,965 "excess" deaths of Iraqi civilians have occurred since the outbreak of the aggression and genocide committed by the United States against the people of Iraq. Sources: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ http://icasualties.org/oif/ http://www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1338749,00.html http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/Iraq_war.html http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6271 http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20041025/008279.html http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us Our main website: http://www.blythe.org List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr =================================================================