12. Screaming From The Pyre, Chapter X. The Roughest Game of All

The Roughest Game of All:

Quite by accident, I discovered the roughest game two teams of people can play. It's not American football or English rugby, nor water polo. Until the moment that my bent and twisted body was sent crashing into one of those metal poles that rise up in school yards to hold the chain link fence, I thought the roughest and toughest game anyone could play was school yard basketball pickup games.

I am speaking of the inner city variety, here. That's where young people, many of whom had dropped out of school, years earlier, play, by street rules, that is, no guns or knives on the court. Further, players who have fallen onto the court may not be kicked or otherwise beaten. It is, after all, just a game. Overt violence for the sake of violence is frowned upon by these, the toughest of the neighborhood youth. Everything else in this refereeless game: elbows to the head, hard slaps to the face and head, kicks and punches to the body and knees to the groin (all accidental of course) are all cool. Young people in the realms of the inner city play this game for money, therefore they take it quite seriously. Thereto, there is always the dream that a scout for a professional team may be watching.

Anybody, even someone wearing a Rolex, can walk through the toughest of neighborhoods, in America, in relative safety as long as he/she has a basketball under his/her arm and Converse hightops on their feet. To interfere with this person's passage is socially unacceptable. After all, this stranger might mean some easy chump money for one of the strongest, meanest and toughest guy on the block. The game is the thing, such as it is. Call it one of the most elegant, yet legal, forms of violence in contemporary society, today.

But after what I was involved in, recently, school yard basketball has to take an uncomfortable second place to school yard soccer. Forget what ever conception you have of European soccer players prancing around in their brightly colored nylon jerseys. Erase from your mind the images of men jumping, kissing and hugging each other after scoring a goal. Even those fellows referred to as "Football Hooligans," whose function is to supply the only real action in those low scoring contests are no more than painted dandies who would no more step into a school yard soccer game than an Ivy League philosophy student would wrestle sharks.

Imagine the same inner city school yard. Take away the extra space between the foul line and the fence (space is at a premium, here). In the States, that extra space is where friends, onlookers and extra players sit and wait their turn to play. In Eastern Europe, all the space enclosed by the chain link fence is playing field. The game rules are pretty much the same, both here, and in the States.

As in the States, there are no referees; here, there are no fouls, either. Envision 20 men, -- women seem to think better of their bodies than to jump into one of these games although they would be welcome-- 10 on each side, charging within this enclosed arena. No one looks up for two reasons: one, is that all eyes are on the ball being kicked dribbled and bounced around at a very fast speed.; second, you don't want to look up because what you would see is the sight of ten men charging at you at full speed with no thought of what may happen to you if you collide. Common sense, tells you to not showboat and pass the ball as quickly as you can.

I broke both rules. I tried to artfully dribble the ball into a position to score a goal and I looked up. That's when I forgot that I was the one with the ball. The last thing I remember seeing before sailing through the air, smashing against a metal pole and landing in agonizing, exquisitely excruciating, writhing pain, was the specter of ten charging grizzled and sweaty men-- all eyes on the ball --meeting me (all at the same time) at point zero.

I thought, for a moment, that I had lost a kidney. But, having received a blow to the kidney's earlier in my life, I could compare the level of pain. Eftsoons, (look it up ) I realized that I had just torn the heads of several of my abduces from their anchoring at the hip. The result was, that I have been walking around with a soccer ball under my skin between the crest of the hip and my rib cage. It's tough putting on pants, however, I won't be needing to go across the border in search of a kidney any time soon.

Do you know how they play Ping Pong here.........................?

Szia,
From Budapest

13. Screaming From The Pyre, ChapterX XI. My Trouble With Che

My Trouble with Che: The mystery surrounding his murder... and it wasn't U.S.

Forty years after his death, Che has come back. His visage peers out of book shops; young people walk around proudly displaying Che Tee shirts, souvenir shops prominently display Che posters and, recently, there have been more Che tattoos in evidence than common sense and good taste would allow one to expect.

I recall back in the 1960s having a Che poster on my wall, too. It was the same photograph seen everywhere, today: Che portrayed with a messianic assonance, a black beret -- with its ubiquitous red star affixed like a floating signifier -- pulled back on a full head of unkempt hair, a scraggly beard and eyes that fixed you-- if I may borrow a few words, "in a formulated phrase." The message, however, was revolution. For today's young people, the message is not revolution, but rebellion.

My generation made an icon of Che, because, like he, we were thinking in terms of a World Revolution without a soupçon of what that meant. Looking back 40 years later, it is apparent that Che didn't have a clue, either. Who knew? Who cared? In those days it was so "Fantastikally" romantic. Those were the days of Fidel and Che, Che and Fidel. They were our Revolutionary heroes, the quintessential guerilla fighters: one with star quality, the other, the eminence grise. They didn't walk through the jungle fighting the soldiers of, then, Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista, they swaggered through it. They were the coolest things around. What did we have in their place, Ike and his louche V.P., Nixon? Even the alphabetical combination of, JFK/LBJ, could not hold a candle to the bright lights of the Cuban Revolutionaries.

In those heady days of 1958-59, I would have been happy to join Che, Fidel Cienfuegos and the rest of the crew in the mountains. I wouldn't have had much hair on my face. Moreover, I have never really taken much pleasure in camping out that much and I, certainly, don't like mosquitos, bugs and things that slither on the ground, so, I wouldn't have stayed for more than a few days. However, I know that I would still cherish the photographs, especially of those with me standing next to a sweaty and scantily clad buxom female fellow guerilla fighter. Come to think of it, I would have had that picture blown up and, in all likelihood, it would still be hanging prominently somewhere in my home.

"Nice." as a friend used to say, long before I learned that when he said "nice,' he meant it in its original sense, i.e., "stupid."
After they had come to power, my interest in Fidel began to fade rapidly. I think that it was because he continued to wear military fatigues long after he should have graduated into a business suit. He began to look more and more like a Woody Allen caricature before there was Woody Allen. But, Che, he continued to look cool.

That image was so powerful that by the end of the 60's, wearing a beret with some kind of political pin affixed to it became the fashion rage, a faux Signifiant Flottant for artists, peaceniks and political dilettantes around the world. For more than a generation, the black beret remained the epitome of what was meant by revolutionary chic: now, it's back, although many of us never stopped wearing it. Long ago, the ornaments and pins came off, but it was still worn in the same manner as Che -- pulled back hard from the front. Some continued to wear it as a visible, albeit, false, identification with the working class; others, because it never stopped being Bohemian. In either case, people seemed to have felt empowered by it.

The exception to the "I love Che" rule were those 30-to-40--something graying New Left radicals, both White and Black who, long before the publication of his "Motorcycle Diaries," had begun to sense a macho, anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic side to Che's personality. For Latinos, that was never troublesome. Most Latino men are raised with similar biases. It takes age and a willing intellect to make the necessary alterations in attitude and behavior. Che may not have had enough time. Politically, it seems, he had a lot of growing up to do.

Those professional North American New Left radicals began to disassociate themselves from Che as their understanding of the nuances and realities of global politics grew. Che was beginning to be seen as a political adventurist. That image was great when they were in their 20's but by the time they had turned 30, the picture had begun to change.

Che began to be described as a latter day Leon Trotsky. Both were looking to export their respective revolutions. For Stalin, Trotsky's weltanschauung was too dangerous and had the potential to endanger his own fragile situation in Europe. So, off went Leon to Mexico still bearing his message of a world Marxist revolution. To make a long story short, Stalin got tired of having to constantly reign in his former comrade-in-arms, and sent a fellow with an ice pick and an ax to put an end, once and for all, to Leon's malefactions. The message appears to have worked effectively.

Che, shortly after their successful coup de main in Havana, quickly became Fidel's Trotsky, albeit, after having first served unsuccessfully as president of the National Bank of Cuba and Minister of Industry. His advocacy for a rapid pace of industrialization put him at odds with the more pragmatic, and USSR client, Fidel. No doubt Che had images of the fate of fellow partisan and revolutionary, Cienfuegos, who, from an opposite perspective, felt that the Revolution was moving away from a more moderate democratic model than he initially had in mind. One day, the plane in which he was traveling mysteriously went down: some say it was a result of an onboard bomb, others that it was shot down. In any case, Che most have known the truth. Cuba, while the largest island in the Caribbean is still an island and there is very little wiggle room. So, off he went in 1965 to foment failed revolutions in Africa and, subsequently, South America.

As long as Che was somewhere else, other than Cuba, making trouble for the Yanqui, Fidel could publicly support his activities. However, after Soviet Chairman, Leonid Brezhnev, sent his Premier, Aleksei Kosygin, to Havana in June 1967, with a message to Fidel about Che's undermining the region's traditional communist parties and allies of Moscow, it appears that Che's fate was sealed.

Coincidentally, while all this was going on, the United States had plans of its own to terminating Che's activities in the Villagrande region of Bolivia. Members of the U.S. 8th Special Forces, stationed in Panama had trained a counter insurgency battalion of Bolivian troops with the object of running Che to the ground while the Central Intelligence Agency coordinated the entire operation.

The agency had three Cubans, veterans of the Directorate's anti-Castro efforts from the early 60's, in place in Bolivia with overall tactical control of the anti-Che operation. Chief among them was Felix Ramos, a.k.a., Felix Rodriguez.

Ramos-Rodriguez had signed on to be part of the C.I.A.'s expatriate Cuban force that was supposed to overthrow Fidel Castro beginning with a landing at the "Bay of Pigs." However, a few days before the invasion, Ramos-Rodriguez became too sick to take part in the planned invasion and, therefore, escaped injury, death or capture. It was he, who, according to recently declassified State Department and C.I.A. documents, gave the order on October 9th, 1967, to execute Che, after having been ordered by his superiors on Langley's Seventh floor not to kill him: woops!

On that day, Che lost more than his hands, which were severed off for identification purposes, he lost his Rolex to Ramos.

The problem I have with Che has nothing to do with his politics or guerilla war. If you know anything about Che's final days, you might recall that it was a terrible period for him. He was running around the mountains of Villagrande dodging the U.S. trained Ranger Battalion while at the same time suffering from chronic asthma exacerbated, no doubt, by his chronic cigar smoking. The Rangers dogged him day and night not giving him much time to rest. In fact, when they finally caught up with him, he was lying down recovering from an asthma attack. Yet, Che was a medical doctor; he should have known that smoking was hazardous to one's health. In his case, it proved fatal. That's why, for me, I will always remember Che as being a really nice guy
Szia.