Pat Dollard

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Amid protests, city of Vienna unveils Che Guevara monument

(Earth Times)

Vienna – The city of Vienna unveiled Europe’s first monument dedicated to Latin American revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara on Thursday, as right-wing parties said a “murderer” should not be honoured in this way. The 70-centimetre tall bronze bust is a symbol of Vienna’s intention to eradicate poverty, said the city’s social democratic mayor Michael Haeupl, according to public broadcaster ORF.

To call Guevara a murderer is wrong, Haeupl said. “He was a human,” Austrian news agency APA quoted him as saying.

The centrist conservative People’s Party and the right-wing Freedom party criticized the monument sculpted by artist Gerda Fassel. It was erected in a park near the United Nations offices in Vienna.

“As far as I’m concerned, Haeupl can sleep in Che Guevara’s bedclothes,” said conservative politician Norbert Walter. But it was tasteless to spend public money on such a bust, he said.

At the unveiling ceremony, one Freedom Party protester held up a poster with the names of Guevara’s alleged victims.

Born in Argentina, Guevara was a key figure in the Cuban revolution in the 1950s. He was executed by Bolivian soldiers in 1967.

Anatasio Blanco of Babalu Blog writes:

It is the worst type of bigotry imaginable. The celebration of the extermination of what were initially hundreds of Cubans which later became thousands by Ernesto “Che” Guevara stands as a shout of hatred against the Cuban people. In much the same way that Vienna’s most infamous son, Adolf Hitler, described the Jews as a “bacillus”,”a “boil” that must be “lanced” from the body of the “fatherland,” the city’s Mayor Michael Haeupl has declared his disdain for the Cuban people … There are still those, like Haeupl, who concern themselves more with the fashionable – albeit sick – image of Che, rather than the reality.