A Cuban Movie Proposal

As the world's leftists keep celebrating the 40th anniversary of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's death and keep selling him as the ultimate champion of a people's revolution, I keep thinking about my friend Carlos Barberia.

When you talk to Barberia, you see the other side of Guevara, who has become a romanticized icon.

At a time when Guevara's face has become a T-shirt fashion statement among young Americans, Barberia has a way of explaining why they should reconsider idolizing a man such as Guevara.

Barberia's story is dramatic, suspenseful — fit to become a Hollywood classic. Instead of fiction about Che, depicting the guerrilla/terrorist as a humanitarian motorcycle rider, this movie would be the story of one of Guevara's lucky-to-be-living victims.

Imagine a movie opening with Barberia, a black, robust man, leading the band at the swanky nightclub of the old Havana Hilton Hotel in Cuba before the revolution. Picture him living through those tumultuous days before the fall of Fulgencio Batista's dicatorship, when Havana's watering holes for American tourists were being bombed and terrorized by rebels.

Then fast-forward to the triumph of the Fidel Castro Revolution, the sudden departure of Batista, as Barberia performed on New Year's Eve, the evening before the first day of 1959. In the following months, destiny would bring Barberia close to Castro, Guevara and many of the other leaders of the revolution.

After all, when the guerrillas came down from the mountains, ironically, they stayed at the Hilton. For the first few months of 1959, Castro and his top men occupied three floors of the prestigious Havana hotel. And when the guerrillas and the musicians got hungry in the middle of the night, they all gathered at the hotel kitchen looking for leftovers.

That's where Barberia met Castro and Guevara. They hit it off right away. Barberia was an admirer of the rebels, and the rebels found him entertaining.

"We became very friendly, and we would talk about all kinds of things," Barberia said.

Suddenly, Barberia and the other musicians fell into the awkward yet privileged position of chatting informally with the men who had just taken over the government and were reshaping the country.

Think of it as a movie. Doesn't it have all the necessary hooks to make it a box-office hit?

It got to the point where Barberia felt he could say anything to Castro or Che. He even felt he could be critical.

During those first few months of 1959, Castro had put Guevara in charge of the firing squads that executed hundreds of Batista government officials and other Cubans considered potential enemies. Guevara served as prosecutor, judge and jury.

And at one point, Barberia felt it was getting out of hand.

"I simply suggested to Fidel that they should consider stopping the firing squads, and El Che was listening," Barberia said. "I told them they were killing too many people."

A few hours later, at the crack of dawn, a group of Guevara's men went knocking on Barberia's door in Havana. He was told that Guevara wanted to see him at La Cabana, the old Spanish fortress that had been turned from a tourist attraction to a prison, complete with firing squads.

Barberia said Guevara greeted him at the officers' club, a beautiful dining room that had a glass wall overlooking the castle's courtyard. He said he knew the room well because his Kubavana Orchestra had performed there many times back when La Cabana was still a place for tourists. But in the first few months of Castro's rule, that courtyard had become the stage for Guevara's bloody firing squads.

Barberia said Guevara invited him to breakfast, ordered two rare steaks and told him to sit facing the courtyard. Barberia had been invited to watch the executions.

"They brought four guys out, but when they shot the first one, I got up and I walked away," Barberia said.

Barberia felt that his rejection of Guevara's methods made him a marked man. In December 1959, upon learning that Guevara's men were investigating him, Barberia went into hiding in Havana and then out of Cuba. When Guevara's men went looking for him, Barberia said, "They took my father and had him shot."

Take that story into account when you consider that on the main commercial road in the town where Barberia lives (Bergenline Avenue in Union City, N.J.), there are boutiques selling T-shirts with Che Guevara's face.

Barberia, now 72, has made strides in the United States, both as a bandleader and as an advertising salesman for New York Spanish-language radio stations. But when he is confronted with images of Guevara, Barberia is visibly affected. His face turns red. His eyes shed tears. When he sees young Americans who don't know Guevara's true history blindly following a murderer who has been turned into a pop-culture icon, Barberia makes a visible effort to restrain himself.

Not long ago, when Barberia waited for a bus on Bergenline Avenue, he spotted a Guevara T-shirt on a rack at a sidewalk sale. And he couldn't take it. They had brought the T-shirt out too close to the comfort zone. He grabbed the T-shirt, took it inside the store and paid for it. And then he took it back outside and set it on fire.

When police arrived, Barberia said he was honest in explaining his outburst. "Che Guevara killed my father," he told the officers. "He had my father shot by a firing squad in Cuba."

As luck would have it, Barberia said one of the cops was a young Cuban-American. "He told me, 'I have not seen anything,'" Barberia said, "and he walked away."

Think of it as a movie — one with real memories and real pain.

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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