When I look for articles and news about Che Guevara, there is one name that I often bum into. Maybe some of you have met his name before. Humberto Fontova.

He is a Cuban-American man whose family left Cuba for good in 1961 when he was a child. Since then he has been an active enemy to Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution.
He has written two books -  Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant (2005) and Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him (2007) - that have gained him enough fame in the USA that he became a popular author on different online magazines.
He often publishes articles about different topics in connection with Cuba or the Cuban government and he never ceases to talk about Che. No matter what he is writing about, he always weaves Che into the text, ranting about him and his "bloody acts". He seems to be so obsessed with the guerrilla leader as if there was no one else he could think about during his days.

Let's check out some reviews about the Exposing the Real Che Guevara:

Travel author Rolf Potts noted that "taken in selective doses", the book puts "some well-placed holes in Che’s presumed humanism and military competence." However, Potts said that what "is meant to be a polemic against Guevara’s t-shirt-certified mythology" actually ends up showing "how Che’s reputation benefits from the myopic fury and misguided political influence of those who hate him the most." Potts said that the book's "slightly schizophrenic tone" meanders off into subject matter that has little to do with the book’s premise, that the book seems "less an indictment of Guevara than the New York Times or John F. Kennedy. Ultimately, Potts states, the book is "less about Che Guevara than the King Lear-style resentments of the Cuban-Americans who hate him — and the effectiveness of its argument suffers as a result."

Journalist Michael Casey described it as "an art form of mixing frustration with ridicule." Casey said that Fontova's prose was a marriage of Ann Coulter with the Gonzo journalism of Hunter S. Thompson, and that Fontova "basically yells at his readers, mixing a sarcastic wit with a touch of self-deprecation until it is overwhelmed by disdain for his opponents." Lastly, Casey observed that Fontova often "lathers himself into a rage" when it comes to the issue of Che Guevara, noting that his barrage of hyperbole leads him to describe Guevara as an "assassin", "sadist", "bumbler", "fool", and "whimpering-sniveling-blubbering coward" who is "revered by millions of imbeciles." Other descriptions by Fontova of Guevara, cited by Casey, were "shallow", "boorish", "epically stupid", "a fraud", a "murdering swine", an "intellectual vacuum", and an "insufferable Argentine jackass."

[Source: Fontova's biography on Wikipedia]

Fontova wants to blacken Che's name, introducing dirty secrets in his books and articles, but actually all he does is turning into a crazy ranting machine who keeps on repeating his own and other people's lies.

The problem with Cuban-American sources like Fontova or Felix Rodríguez is that they are unreliable and openly prejudiced - they are the parrots of the US government. They like to tell lies and twist facts in order to portrait Che as the worst man of the world history.
Che was not a saint and he was far from perfect - if you choose to read the appropriate biographies, you can read about the less shiny side of him. He had his faults and he made mistakes, but - at least for me - it seems quite pathetic to keep on attacking and to blame every bad thing on a man who died so long ago so he cannot defend himself anymore.
For the Cuban government, Che is the everlasting symbol of the victorious Revolution. For  the enemies, Che is the anti-Christ.

That is why I would never even touch Fontova's book - obsessed prejudice won't seduce or persuade me. And I don't like it either, being called an idiot for supporting someone whose ideals and example I believe in, whose courage, intelligence and hard work I admire.

I am done with Fontova - let's check out Rodríguez now.

He and those people who captured Che and were near him in La Higuera till his execution claim that Che was talking to them, confessing his intimate thoughts. Some claim that Che was a coward.
Let me ask a few questions.
Che was captured, his combatants were killed and captured, and his Bolivian mission was defeated - and would he be chatting cheerfully with his capturers? Sharing his thoughts with them? Telling them that he failed? Laughing at Rodríguez's joke? I don't think so.
What is even more impudent is to claim that Che was a coward and he was afraid of dying.
Really? The man who was facing death since he was two years old, diagnosed with asthma? Who did the toughest sports and committed dangerous acts during his young years? Who travelled to far-away places ignoring that fact that a serious asthma attack could kill him anytime if he ran out of medicine? Who always stood on the first row, risking his life, whenever there was a battle? Who left his beloved family and his comfortable life and job as a minister behind in order to fight in the hot Congo and in the wild forests of Bolivia, often without proper food, drink and medicine?

Enough said (or asked), I guess.

[The title of my article comes from the song of the Welsh rockband, Manic Street Preachers who played a concert in Havana in 2001 as the first Western band ever and who even met Fidel Castro personally. I guess if Humberto Fontova has ever heard about the Welsh guys, he would have included them in his ranting book about Che.]