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| Che Guevara scolds the U.S. before the UN in 1964. |
Flashback
President Chavez’s UN Rant Has Cuban Roots
By CHRISTOPHER WINDHAM
Last year, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sharply criticized the United States and President Bush before the United Nations General Assembly. Chavez, among other things, questioned the U.S.’ commitment to peace and accused Washington of exploring world domination. He even likened President Bush to the devil during his well-received speech in New York.
While the speech drew a standing ovation and headlines across the world, it wasn’t the first time a foreign leader openly attacked the U.S. on the UN floor.
On December 11, 1964, Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, who is better known to today’s generation through hip-hop inspired t-shirts and the movie “Motorcycle Diaries,” strongly denounced the U.S.’ aggressive foreign policies and its treatment of poor blacks and Latinos. Guevara made the speech before the 19th United Nations General Assembly.
Only four months had passed since the Civil Rights Act was enacted. And the tension surrounding the efforts by blacks for equal rights helped set the tone for a portion of Guevara’s speech that he devoted to discrediting the U.S.’ role as world humanitarians.
“Those who kill their own children and discriminate daily against them because of the color of their skin, those who let the murderers of blacks remain free -- protecting them, and furthermore punishing the black population because they demand their legitimate rights as free men… how can those who do this consider themselves guardians of freedom?” Guevara said.
Guevara also suggested the U.S. civil rights movement should be examined on the world stage – though he acknowledged that the UN lacked the authority to shape U.S. domestic policy.
“The time will come when this assembly will acquire greater maturity and demand of the United States government guarantees for the life of the Blacks and Latin Americans who live in that country, most of them U.S. citizens by origin or adoption,” he said.
Guevara, an Argentine doctor, was part of the Fidel Castro-led group that overthrew Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Guevara was killed in the Andes Mountains by U.S.-trained Bolivian soldiers in 1967.
Peter McLaren, a professor of education at the University of California Los Angeles, who has studied Guevara’s life and ideology, says Guevara’s remarks reflect his fierce opposition to racism, which he saw as closely linked to capitalism. The criticism also reflected, McLaren says, his admiration for civil rights leader Malcolm X, who Guevara sent a letter of solidarity to while in New York for the speech.
Since blacks and Latinos were homogenized under the common umbrella of poverty and racism, Guevara “saw them as brothers and sisters in the common fight against imperialism and as potential warriors in the struggle for socialism,” McLaren says.
It’s not a secret that President Chavez is a great admirer of Guevara and Castro. He may have had their earlier UN speeches in mind before delivering his address, McLaren says.
Days after his UN speech, Chavez appeared in a Harlem church, pledging to double the amount of discounted heating oil available to poor Americans in 17 states through a program he launched a year earlier. NEXT |
