by Jerry Curtis

Created on: May 05, 2007   Last Updated: May 14, 2007

Most people are familiar with the heroic logo-portrait of Ernesto "Che" Guevara. We've seen it on tee-shirts as a stencil of Che's head - wispy beard, long hair protruding from below a black beret adorned with a single star. The campy in-crowd and quirky "rebels" and pop icons like Carlos Santana are fond of referring to Che as their inspiration. There has never been any shortage of adulation and romanticism of Che in our major media outlets.

"Exposing The Real Che Guevara And the Idiots Who Idolize Him," (Penguin Books, New York, 2007), on the other hand, exposes the dark side of a man, who was more a monster than an inspiration. Those who lived in Cuba during the late 1950's and 1960's have a much different opinion of Che. One such person is Humberto Fontova, the book's author, whose childhood memories are of his family's leaving Cuba in 1961. Just as his mother, father, and two siblings were about to board the plane, and after the "milicianos" had relieved his mother and sister of their jewelry, his father was yanked out of line. Frantic with worry, his mother nevertheless decided to board the plane with t he children not knowing if she would ever see her husband again.

Happily, weeks later, Fontova's family reunited in New Orleans after the father had managed to secure his release from Castro's jails. Other relatives of Humberto, his cousin Pedro for example, were not so fortunate. Pedro, like so many people in Cuba during 1961, disappeared. After inquiries of a local parish priest, the family found out that Pedro died of "a heart attack." Pedro, a fervent Catholic activist, "often spoke against the regime during his religion classes (and)the regime responded in the customary manner" by torturing and beating Pedro to death.

The author, as one can surmise by the second part of the title, "And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him," is no fan of Che Guevara, the founder and main proponent of the police state of communist Cuba along with its supporting secret police. Fontova makes no effort to hide his bias, and he pulls no punches. He admits that his book "will expose you to many eyewitness accounts of Che Guevara's cruelty, cowardice, and imbecility.

The subtitle also speaks volumes of Fontova's disdain for Che's fans and followers. Alluding to Angelina Jolie's Che tattoo, Fontova - tongue in cheek hopes that his book "will succeed in some degreeif it prompts [her] to question if her tattoos, as her website claims, are really a reflection of her personality.' If

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