What Che Hath Wrought

French philosopher and economist Guy Sorman on "the incarnation of what revolution and Marxism really meant in the 20th century" — Was Che Guevara a romantic? "Che was no humanist.... Che could kill with a shrug.... Indeed, without his ideology, Che would have been nothing more than another serial killer." More:

But suppose we judge this Marxist hero by his own criteria: did he actually transform the world? The answer is yes -- but for the worse. The communist Cuba he helped to forge is an undisputed and unmitigated failure, much more impoverished and much less free than it was before its "liberation." Despite the social reforms the left likes to trumpet about Cuba, its literacy rate was higher before Castro came to power, and racism against the black population was less pervasive. Indeed, Cuba's leaders today are far more likely to be white than they were in Batista's day....

Indeed, 50 years after Cuba's revolution, Latin America remains divided. Those nations that rejected Che's mythology and chose the path of democracy and the free market, such as Brazil, Peru, and Chile, are better off than they ever were: equality, freedom, and economic progress have advanced in unity. By contrast, those nations that remain nostalgic for the cause of Che, such as Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, are at this very moment poised on the brink of civil war.