Barnes & Nobles glorifies Che Guevara in the heart of Miami

Last Thursday, I went into the Barnes & Nobles bookstore at Miracle Mile, Coral Gables, to grab a coffee between meetings and lay eyes on some books, which have enamored me since childhood. To my astonishment, as I walked in from the back entrance, the first thing that caught my eye was a stack of books of Che Guevara in prominent display under a sign for "Reference books."

I went straight to the book Che, a revolutionary icon (by Luis Enrique Martínez, New York: Charwell Books, 2018). Page after page tells a selective and glorified story of Guevara under subtitles such as "The legend is born," "The messenger of love," "A revolutionary adventurer," "The price of glory," "Che lives forever," with many glossy photos from many phases of his life. I found no subtitles such as "The killing machine," "the butcher of La Cabaña," "terrorist," "aristocratic racist," or other less laudatory labels also used to describe him. A few brief sentences of the 187-page volume referred to his command at La Cabaña prison but fail to even mention any of the human beings executed there by his order ("just around two hundred") and missing were photos of the execution wall. There's not a peep on the camp he created at Guanahacabibes, a remote peninsula in Cuba, to send his underlings at the Ministry of Industry for hard labor as "rehabilitation" punishment for all kinds of so-called transgressions. Missing too were references to his leadership in eliminating free press, destroying the economy, and installing a totalitarian dictatorship in Cuba, of his support for nuking the US during the missile crisis, or of his defiant declaration to the UN General Assembly that "we will continue to execute as long as necessary." The page at the end of the volume for "Suggested Reading" had a bibliography with just more adoring works and selective Che writings. This is what Barnes and Nobles offers under "Reference books." I asked the nice staffers if they had any books on Osama Bin Laden, Hitler, Stalin, Mao or other famous world figures known for their revolutionary views or as leaders of non-democratic regimes. They were helpful but could not find any. All they knew about Guevara was that he adorns lots of t-shirts. So, I asked to see the manager and when Andy arrived, I explained to him, very politely, that Miami was the home of a large Cuban American community that had suffered directly from Guevara's actions and was, in general, particularly sensitive to the misguided Che cult. I told him I was not in favor of censorship but that I knew children and siblings of men executed by Guevara who lived in Miami. Plus, I said, I would have been just as upset had I found a glowing book on Osama Bin Laden displayed prominently at a B&N bookstore in my New Jersey hometown, that lost ten people on September 11^th. Andy was clueless, he told me he was born in Cuba but had left as a young child and knew nothing about Guevara. I politely asked him to at least consider moving the books to a less prominent location. When I walked back from the coffee shop to leave some minutes later, Andy was asking the young woman at the Customer Service desk near the display to move the stack of books to the other side of the table, not visible when customers walk in. She looked cross and smirked out loud, "That's random!" I stopped by again the next day, as I had a lunch date a block away, and the books remained exactly where they were the day before. So, I later telephoned the store and spoke to the store manager on duty, Diane (Andy was not there). After explaining the situation, she said she was close to someone whose relative had been killed by Guevara but, not comfortable removing the books, agreed to move them to a less prominent location.

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On the Barnes and Nobles website, a search for books on "Osama Bin Laden" had 150 results, none of which seem to glorify the "terrorist" (a passionate and committed Islamist for his followers); most had to do with hunting and killing him. A search for Adolf Hitler had over 400 results, many were Mein Kampf by different publishers and none of the books for sale seemed to be fond of the murderous dictator. A search for the nazi "angel of death" Josef Mengele, similarly pulled nothing but critical works. A search for "neo-Nazis" and "white supremacy" pulled no volumes justifying or supporting those ideologies or movements. In other words, the folks at B&N who select the books to sell seem to have a double standard when it comes to mass murderers and radical ideologues. As far as I have been able to find, only a glossy and adoring book of the "killing machine" Che Guevara (to use his own words to describe his aspirations) has deserved selection. Irony of ironies, the book is authored by Luis Enrique Martínez, described as a freelance writer born in Venezuela who "now lives in London after leaving his home country where violence and crime had become so prevalent. ...He has been fascinated by Che Guevara since he was a boy when he had a poster of the revolutionary on his bedroom wall." Go figure!, after Che's New Man finally found a foothold in Venezuela, his "fascinated" fan packed it up for London!!! The edition is from 2018, when the effects of castro-chavismo had been patently obvious for years. This neo-communist modality was used to transfer the Cuban template to Venezuela that Che helped create. Sadly, it seems that the adoring fan still fails to understand why the Che lovefest has real consequences. I plan to avoid shopping at Barnes and Nobles unless the book is removed from sale. (I did buy the book grudgingly, as I needed to research it in order to write about it.)

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Take a few minutes and do something! Add your signature to our online campaign! You may also want to contact Barnes and Nobles to politely let them know that their selection glorifies violence and repression and is insensitive and offensive especially to Che Guevara's victims.

• Write to CorporateCustomerRelations@bn.com or call 212.414-6300.
• Call or visit the B&N store at 152 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables, FL 33134, tel. 305.446-4152 (9am-10pm daily).

These small gestures honor Guevara's victims and the millions who have suffered and continue to suffer from the dogmatic communist project he helped install in Cuba and spread around the world. P.S. Just one example of many illustrating the biased nature of this "reference" volume on Che Guevara This is one of few passing references to Che's excesses and brutality. Under the subtitle "Justice in Havana (p. 71): "Che's behavior and his actions during this period have been the subject of much debate. He had the last word on the fate of the many people who were charged and is accused of administering summary justice. Those who are opposed to the revolution have claimed that he sent thousands to their deaths but the number would appear to be closer to two hundred. It seems impossible to equate the monster described by some with the educated, cultured individual who, at the time, was in a loving relationship and had a great deal of rewarding work ahead of him." (Underlines are ours.) See our publication Che Guevara's Forgotten Victims. An updated edition is coming soon.