Che Guevara Material

Ducked · February 16, 2012, 2:25am

Have a class or two on El Che coming up. Anyone know of any video material (apart from The Motorcycle Diaries, which I can probably get hold of) that might be available?

You’d think there’d be lots of biographical documentaries, but I can’t remember seeing any.

(Long time ago I read an account by an American merc pilot who worked for Castro, which gave an interestingly un-flattering picture of Che, though I can’t remember title or author. I dunno how objective he was but he seemed very pissed that they “turned out” to be commies. )

StuartCa · February 16, 2012, 2:28am

There is a really long couple of films that I’ve seen in Carrefour (not for about a year) and it’s simply called Che en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_(film.

I wish I’d bought it when I saw it, so if you do find a copy locally I’d like to know.

adikarmika · February 16, 2012, 2:58am

topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-true … e-guevara/

Ducked · February 16, 2012, 3:04am

Thanks. Didn’t know about that.

TainanCowboy · February 16, 2012, 5:46am

Information on the real Ernesto Guevera:

therealcuba.com/MurderedbyChe.htm

A PDF link to See a list of the documented victims of che Guevara in Cuba, from 1957 to 1959, Compiled by Cuba Archive as of September 30, 2009

from Humberto Fontova, who has written much about the ‘fascination’ that has surfaced about “Che”:

Che Guevara: Assassin and Bumbler – by Humberto Fontova

Che Guevara; Guerrilla Doofus and Murdering Coward

Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him

From Cuba Tradition . com:

Humberto Fontova

A good video:(youtube)

Che Guevara (Ernesto Guevara de la Serna) - The Real Story

Thia material should provide some of the often missing facts about the Argentine mass murderer who was a useful tool to Fidel Castro.

If you’re going to teach…teach the truth.

Guenna Suerte’

finley · February 16, 2012, 8:04am

If you read his biography (autobiography? - can’t recall) he does come across as a bit of a dick, especially during the years he’s trying to stir up some revolutionary fervour in various South American peasants with the help of a ragtag bunch of ‘guerrillas’ and some worn-out horses. OTOH that’s a bloody long book, much of it tedious, so it’d take a while to read. He’s one of those characters best described as “complex”. Capable of great insight, sympathy and intelligence, while being simultaneously capable of cruelty and general disregard for others (even his friends), utter stupidity and mercurial thoughtlessness, and bumbling incompetence. Certainly a good topic for discussion.

Ducked · February 16, 2012, 8:18am

If you read his biography (autobiography? - can’t recall) he does come across as a bit of a dick, especially during the years he’s trying to stir up some revolutionary fervour in various South American peasants with the help of a ragtag bunch of ‘guerrillas’ and some worn-out horses. OTOH that’s a bloody long book, much of it tedious, so it’d take a while to read. He’s one of those characters best described as “complex”. Capable of great insight, sympathy and intelligence, while being simultaneously capable of cruelty and general disregard for others (even his friends), utter stupidity and mercurial thoughtlessness, and bumbling incompetence. Certainly a good topic for discussion.[/quote]

Annoyingly, I bought a “coffee table” stylee biography (lots of pictures and not too much text) in a charity shop last summer in Edinburgh, but I was carrying a lot of stuff back and didn’t think I’d have further use for it, so I gave it back to the shop once I’d read it.

Think it might have been this one, though they all have “that” picture so I’m not sure

http://www.dreamlines.ie/products/ENTBK/9780753709009

I remember Africa and Bolivia being described as fairly unimpressive performances (though tough gigs for an asthmatic). Can’t remember the mass-murderer aspect being covered much, so they may have glossed or ignored it.

It featured prominently in the US merc’s account.

TheGingerMan · February 19, 2012, 3:07pm

First off, as this thread is still is the forum “Teaching English in Taiwan”, I have to ask:
Why a class on Che?
It’s an interesting topic, to be sure, but more for the spinoff elements than anything else. Here’s a chap whose reputation trickle on down has become a torrent above and beyond anything that he actually achieved in his lifetime.
If that is the topic, well, one would deserve ample audio punishment for even bringing such a subject to a bunch of young punk that know not even a semblance of sentience, or a pound of pain.

Musical interlude following…

“…Rebellion rushing down the wrong road, storm blowing down the wrong tree…”


Hitler would have loved Che, as a fellow ruthless confrontational manipulating schemebagger wot realizes the power of a few determined kameraden, and repeating some brand new lie involving a familiar victim to a vacuous populace.

Hardly a fellow mass murderer, though he was apparently adept  at rampant elimination.
But so what? He was eliminated himself, due to hubris. Far better that, than if he had succeeded in his self-appointed mission. Thankfully, the Congo experience taught him nothing, he was sought and destroyed.
If only to keep the likes of him from being labelled an intellectual.

Ducked · February 19, 2012, 3:41pm

[quote=“TheGingerMan”]First off, as this thread is still is the forum “Teaching English in Taiwan”, I have to ask:
Why a class on Che?
It’s an interesting topic, to be sure, but more for the spinoff elements than anything else. Here’s a chap whose reputation trickle on down has become a torrent above and beyond anything that he actually achieved in his lifetime.
If that is the topic, well, one would deserve ample audio punishment for even bringing such a subject to a bunch of young punk that know not even a semblance of sentience, or a pound of pain.

[/quote]

Why not? Don’t you answer your own question above?

Other possible answers would be:

(a) Because I say so, and its my class. (b) Because he’s in the text book. American English File 3.
[/quote]

I disagree with Icon for the most part

A) it’s not your class, it’s your students class

B) I usually find the topics and people in textbooks to be of little interest to students. There will be initial interest because che is a recognizable symbol but once it becomes a latin American history lesson they will become bored. The other problem is that a lot of the good Che material is in Spanish and subtitled in English. You aren’t improving listening skills with that material.

My thoughts on Che: he stood up against people that were doing terrible things but his ‘sucesses’ made things worse for everyone, rich and poor. And he did the same terrible things that his opposition was doing. I’m not sure how he can be idolized other than he does look pretty cool on a T-shirt.[/quote]

A) No, it is his class. I fundamentally disagree with this whole notion of the teacher as merely a facilitator, or whatever the current parlance is. In his case, his students are actually adults, so I think the dynamic should be slightly different there, though the teacher should still obviously be the teacher. In children’s classes, my attitude is simply this: you’re the child, you don’t get an opinion.

B) As he said, “You can’t build a syllabus on “I like play computer.” and if all you have to go on as a starting point is the revolutionary chique merchandising, then that’s better than nothing.”

I personally wouldn’t give a lesson on Che to kids because it’s probably way beyond them and because it would probably end up being highly ideological one way or the other. However, what I think is probably the worst thing about the EFL industry in this country (which goes from the sublime to the ridiculous when contrasted with the rest of the education system here) is that the foreigner is expected to have everyone fully amped at all times. Then everyone complains that kids have short attention spans. Here’s a novel (or old, depending upon your perspective) approach to being a student: Sit down, shut the fuck up and listen because you might learn something from someone older than you.

So, whilst I may disagree with the OP politically, I don’t accept this wholesale adoption of the Western folly of it being about the kids. Kids wouldn’t know shit from clay on the best of days. Would we let them run the national economy? How about trade talks? What about running a nuclear reactor? Yet we want them to have a partial or major say in curriculum selection and pedagogical design? Madness.

Abacus · February 20, 2012, 1:48pm

This isn’t really what I was suggesting. This reminds me of a rather extreme example when I was subbing at a school. The manager showed me the material and she was so proud of the Nelson Mandela reader that the students were reading. She talked about it forever but in the end it was something that she loved. When I asked them some simple questions from the previous pages they had no idea what I was talking about. It’s okay to share things that you’re passionate about but you have to make sure that the students are interested. If you think that means I’m suggesting a bunch of computer game topics then you’ve misread.

If you want to do a 30-40 minute part of the class on Che that sounds great. However it sounds like the OP is looking for enough material to fill several classes. This is really unnecessary unless you are doing a significant amount of Latin American history and that will be boring. For a 30-40 minute class you can use the merchandising aspect and maybe read through an interesting part of the motorcycle diaries and touch a little on what Che became and why he is an icon. I find Che’s early life fascinating. But it also sounds like Che’s story is going to be told incorrectly (he’s a hero). I think he started out with great intentions but he did some awful things and put some relatively awful people in power or attempted to.

Ducked · February 20, 2012, 3:15pm

I havn’t planned this yet in any detail, I’m just trawling for material and ideas at the moment, but (to the extent that I’ve thought of it at all) we’ll possibly do whatever it says to do in the textbook, (don’t have it to hand) as an introduction, showing a bit of documentary stuff/motorcycle diaries/merchandising, then I’ll allocate them individually different parts of the guys short life, and get them to do individual presentations (this is a small class) on them, perhaps considering such 5W questions as:

What did he do?
Why did he do what he did?
What did he achieve?
(What did the revolutionary movement achieve, if anything?)
Was he good or bad?

Was he a hero?

We might have to have some discussion on what that means first to set parameters. Of course in one sense its indisputable that he is/was a hero. The argument (which I might be able to elicit in an initial or later discussion) is, did/does he deserve to be?

I could point them here, but it goes on a bit, so I’ll probably just give them some of the URL’s. It’ll be interesting to see if they’re sophisticated enough to realise that CIA field agents/Cuban exiles/US ambassadors/left wing politicians/historians might have thier own agenda relative to the facts. I’ll probably have to initially establish that he’s a controversial figure otherwise they’re very likely to be uncritical either way.

In the textbook, IIRC, Che is used as an intro to a more general discussion/exploration of “heroes”. They give brief biographies of half a dozen examples. Could go with them, or I could get them to pick thier own examples.

With most of my classes anything like this’d just be a cut and paste fest, but at least some of this lot are usually better than that, and I can nail the CnP posse during discussion.

I did something vaguely along those lines with Hemingway last year (Cuban connection) and it didn’y go too badly, though I had the Michael Palin series as backup for that.

(OTOH they were mostly amazingly crap at telling me what happened in The Old Man and The Sea but you can’t, of course, get most students to read A BOOK, even in a bilingual edition. )

GuyInTaiwan · February 21, 2012, 3:16am

Abacus: I think I did misread you. I concede the points and apologise.

Ducked · February 21, 2012, 4:36am

Since you’re both quoting me I feel emboldened to intrude on your dispute.

I don’t know if you misread Abacus, but you didn’t, as far as I could tell, suggest that Abacus was arguing for a bunch of computer game topics.

You quoted my mention of “I like play computer”, which I intended to convey my difficulty (despair?) in finding topics of interest to Taiwan yoof.

I THINK this difficulty is real, and perhaps not restricted to me, but that doesn’t mean that Abacus, and perhaps lots of other talented teachers, can’t transcend it.

If I was trying this topic with younger students (average age of this lot is, I think, around 30) I’d probably start with "Che as Logo". Perhaps get them to go shopping and find some examples, (Assuming there’s that much out there.I don’t really know) interview the shopkeeper or passers-by and ask them what they thought of it and what they knew about it. They nearly all have access to video recording kit these days.

Then (depending on how much you felt it would stretch), you could do some (probably not all) of “The Legend Behind The Logo”, “The Journey Before The Legend” (Motorcycle Diaries. This could be partly or mostly a virtual travelogue, “delicious food” “famous sights” stylee). “The Journey Into Legend.” (Cuba, Congo, Bolivia) “The Man/Truth Behind The Legend” and probably etc. Lots of stuff you could do. Some of it might work.

TainanCowboy · February 21, 2012, 5:08am

Ducked -

So,

are you going to tell the kiddies about his personal role in mass murder of prisoners?
are you going to tell them about his chosing his office in the Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña overlooking the courtyard where prisoner executions were held?
are you going to tell the kiddies about him personally torturing prisoners?
are you going to tell the kiddies about his words during his final battle with Bolivian soldiers?
[i]"In fact: on his second to last day alive, Che Guevara ordered his guerrilla charges to give no quarter, to fight to the last breath and to the last bullet. With his men doing exactly that, Che, with a trifling flesh leg-wound (though Soderbergh’s movie depicts Che’s leg wound as ghastlier than Burt Reynolds’ in Deliverance,) snuck away from the firefight, crawled towards the Bolivian soldiers doing the firing—then as soon as his he spotted two of them at a distance, stood and yelled: “Don’t Shoot! I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!”

“Che as a logo” is a good starting point in explaining the development of a cultural icon based on manipulated history.

Good for you telling them the truth about this murdering monster - here is a personal quote of his for your students:

“Hatred is the central element of our struggle! Hatred that is intransigent…hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him violent and cold- blooded killing machine…We reject any peaceful approach. Violence is inevitable.
To establish Socialism rivers of blood must flow!
The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus we’ll destroy him! These hyenas are fit only for extermination.
We must keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm!
The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”

I guess it’s hard to fit all that on a t-shirt…

for more on his “revolutionary accomplishments”:

Che Guevara; Guerrilla Doofus and Murdering Coward

GuyInTaiwan · February 21, 2012, 5:23am

Ducked: I conceded the points because I think Abacus made some good points and I think even if not quite as you mentioned, I was still probably misinterpreting him, as he pointed out. It was a rare instance of me not arguing for the sake of arguing.

Abacus · February 21, 2012, 5:41am

to be fair I was a little vague. I think that some teachers (people in general) get so caught up in their personal hobbies that they force it on students (or their friends). This must be an extremely mature high level class according to Ducked plans.

I don’t think it’s a bad idea to share stuff like this. I had some 9th graders read an excerpt from Anne Frank’s diary and then I explained some of the history behind it. I didn’t dwell on it too long but I talked about why they were hiding, the concentration camps, how many people died and the war. It of course tied in with American Headway’s awful ending to their 3rd (last in the series?) book. Death. they liked this a lot more but I only gave a brief overview of everything. Most people in general find history very boring after the general overview.

Ducked · February 21, 2012, 12:33pm

to be fair I was a little vague. I think that some teachers (people in general) get so caught up in their personal hobbies that they force it on students (or their friends). This must be an extremely mature high level class according to Ducked plans.

I don’t think it’s a bad idea to share stuff like this. I had some 9th graders read an excerpt from Anne Frank’s diary and then I explained some of the history behind it. I didn’t dwell on it too long but I talked about why they were hiding, the concentration camps, how many people died and the war. It of course tied in with American Headway’s awful ending to their 3rd (last in the series?) book. Death. they liked this a lot more but I only gave a brief overview of everything. Most people in general find history very boring after the general overview.[/quote]

I just recently saw the film for the first time, and was surprised how good it was, especially the economy of the dream scene with which it conveyed some of the horror of the Lager