Exposing the Insane Rants of Humberto Fontova

[CHE with an AK]

Usually in every internet discussion on Che Guevara, some right-wing reactionary copy and pastes the rantings of the revisionist hack Humberto Fontova and his comically stupid screed of a book ...

so I figured I would post a review I found online ...




Book Review: Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Idiots who Idolize Him, By Humberto Fontova
by Bruno Somerset

It is no surprise that Humberto Fontova has gone the route of many others looking to make a quick buck off the fame of Che Guevara. The main difference here is that he's making his money make a quick buck off the memory of a man he claims to despise. Che's memory, and particularly his image, have been abused almost since the moment he burst onto the world stage during the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Today most people know what Che Guevara looks like, even if they can't put a name with the face. The famous of Guevara taken by Alberto Korda during a 1960 funeral service for victims of a munitions ship explosion has become one of the iconic images of our time. Yet what was once an image carried by student demonstrators and social revolutionaries now adorns T-shirts, mugs, and any other number of consumer goods.

Humberto Fontova is just another in a long line of people trying to cash in on Che Guevara's life and untimely death I could not even finish his book, "Exposing the real Che Guevara and the Idiots who Idolize Him." It reached the point where it was no different than reading Ann Coulter ramble on about whatever liberal villain she's mad about today. Had Fontova been more objective, he might have been able to add to the discussion on Che's place in history.

Che Guevara was no saint, but in spite of Fontova's slanderous assertions to the contrary, he may well have been what the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called him after Che's death in 1967: "the most complete human being of his age." Many, especially the rabid anti-Communists of his day, saw him as ruthless, which he certainly could be. If ruthlessness is something to be universally condemned, however, we should discard nearly all of the stories of the Old Testament.

Che Guevara is relevant today not because of his status as an icon. He is relevant because he lived the very inverse of the American dream. We admire those who start with nothing and attain great wealth, prestige, and power. Che was born into wealth, prestige, and power and gave it all up to attain what many would consider nothing. After seeing the grinding poverty of his continent during a 1951 motorcycle trip across South America, he left a middle-upper class life as an Argentine doctor to fight for the oppressed people he encountered in South America, Africa and Asia.

This is an important lesson to us, and our children, as we move through this hyper-consumer, "me-first" society. I believe Che was the model of what a political leader should be. After the success of the Cuban revolution in 1959, he was one of the highest-ranking officials in the government, behind only Fidel and Raul Castro. Yet each weekend he could be found working alongside the people, cutting sugar cane or pushing a loaded wheelbarrow at a public works project. When was the last time you saw an American politician do manual labor of any kind, except as a photo opportunity?

Che could have done as Fidel Castro did, remaining in leadership in Cuba, amassing wealth counter to his stated communist ideals, and living a comfortable life. Instead, he left the chance for that comfortable life to fight with oppressed people, first in the Congo and later in Bolivia, where he was killed by CIA-led Bolivian troops in 1967. His death was greeted with joy in the Cold War West, and with sadness by the millions he worked so tirelessly to liberate.

From the time we are children we are taught that actions speak louder than words, and Che Guevara was at his core a man of action. He didn't simply make speeches for the sake of hearing himself speak, but to call others to change their world. Today our children grow up wanting to be Peyton Manning or Hannah Montana or stars of their own reality TV show. Cuban children to this day proclaim: "we will be like Che." It's not hard to see which is the more admirable aspiration.

[CHE with an AK]

Some good excerpts from Amazon Reviews on this clownish hunter/blogger Humberto Fontova - who makes a living off of writing revisionist anti-Che propaganda for the Miami Mafia & Malkin/Palin flat-earth/Jesus rode a T-rex wingnuts ...



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Your expose` doesn't start very well when you throw out verbal slurs in the first four pages with only one source to back it up (and that note refers to a quote by Benecio Del Toro, not the 20-odd insults slung by Fontova); indeed the introduction is 10 pages long filled with invective, and yet it is only backed up by an additional 6 references, three of which are slanted towards the authors view. In Chapter 1, the reader may see the same pattern: 9 pages, with 12 notes, one of which is another book by the same author. I stopped there.

Fontova maintains that "Che was never a doctor"; How funny it is that Che "sat for his final exam on 11 April, 1953" and passed according to Jon Lee Anderson. Why would someone who wasn't a doctor volunteer to work at a Leper Hospital? Fontova could look at Anderson's book to see his class at Buenos Aires University in 1947. Another assertion is that Che was "a coward" who liked to live the 'high life'. Of course; that's why an asthmatic doctor from a wealthy Argentinian family gave up a prosperous career to free South America from what he saw as tyranny. That's why he snuck into Mexico, got arrested and snuck into Cuba and the Sierra Miestras to fight, because he was a coward. Of course; this would explain why he left Cuba and a stable job to continue revolutions in the Congo and Bolivia, risking his life. Because he was a coward. Ridiculous.


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I will set the record straight now and say I'm an anti-communist and dislike Che.

This book reminds me to typical Holocaust-denial authors. The author bashes absolutely everything about Che, goes around with speculation a LOT, trashes every single thing about the Cuban Revolution and it's leaders, doesn't cite pretty much anything, pleads to emotion several times, etc. I remember one part where he even said Fidel could have been inspired by nazism because the colour for the flag of his revolutionary movement was black, red and white, the same colours of the Nazi flag with the swastica. I gave me a facepalm so many times when I read this book.

This book should be called "Lying about Che Guevara: And the useful idiots who believe me". It's amazing something like this really got published in the press. It's a book filled with blatant lies.

Don't believe everything that is in print. This book is definitely a let down. I honestly feel like trashing this book, I don't want works like this on my bookshelf.


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Completely awful in every regard. The author makes blanket generalisations without any concern for backing up his argument with facts of any kind. He also clearly only interviewed and researched those who would agree with his unbelievably biased views on Ernesto Guevara. The author displays a clear lack of respect for the intelligence of the reader and uses a style of writing which would not pass for readable in any college or possibly even highschool setting. If you are looking for a scathing account of 'Che' then I suggest you look elsewhere.


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This book is so bias that it makes books by people like Michael Moore look truthful -- and in all openness, I love Moore's books, I find them hilarious--but that's okay, if you can make some clear points and elaborate on them. However, in this book, that steams with the sated hatred Mr. Fontova has for Che and the people that like him and think him a Revolutionary, his points are too broad, and too outward against what is actually known. But I will be fair and show the points that he did make that are true.

I do not like Che Guevara, I think he's overhyped. I do not like this book. I think it's a poorly written, poorly structured, and even worst, poor lies--if you're going to lie to me, at least do it creatively and believably like Michael Moore. There are plenty of reasons to not like Che Guevara, but the facts in this book aren't one of them.


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I read the book, and I must say, it is the worst piece of garbage I have ever seen printed on Cuba.


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This book is worthless drivel, just talk-radio in printed form, screed. It is neither history nor biography. It's not even non-fiction.

The author equates Che with Castro and the Castro regime. All crimes and depredations of the latter are attributed to the former, even those which took place years after Che died. Moreover, Fontova depicts Che as totally inept as a military leader, a coward, a philanderer, a bigamist, not really a doctor, ad nauseam. It is just a straw man argument.

But more importantly to the entire purpose of the book, Fontova misses the point entirely about why people admire Che, perhaps out of intellectual dishonestly or maybe genuine befuddlement.

Fontova's total lack of objectivity, over the top claims, pointless references to pop culture and People magazine celebs, repeatedly using the same quotes or examples -- they all add up to a book that cannot be taken seriously.

I'll never make the mistake of reading anything else by this author. Thank goodness I got it from the library.


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The author simply fails to make his case. As i read this in a bookstore i couldnt help but feel that i was reading propaganda. Was Che Guevara without flaws? Hardly. But is he the figure this book tries to make him? Not in my opinion. The Jon Lee Anderson bio remains for me the most scrupulosly researched and even keeled exploration.


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Humberto Fontova apparently has some real unhealthy personal obsession with Cuba, which he left with his wealthy parents when he was five and has apparently never set foot on again. This his second venomous book slamming a figure from the Cuban Revolution, and the problem is once again not that Fontova is expressing an opinion, which he has the complete right to do so, but that he is making a serious attempt at misleading readers with shady information, fuzzy sources and incidents that have never been documented or proven. Keep in mind that Fontova in his Castro book actually praised the barbaric Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who slaughtered 30,000 innocent Chileans, but of course Fontova considers this acceptable since Pinochet was anti-Castro, no doubt Fontova also applauds the Bush regime's protection of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, who bombed a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing 73 civilians, just one operation in the U.S.'s terrorist war against Cuba which Fontova never mentions.

As for his book "Exposing The Real Che Guevara," Fontova delights in taking history and twisting it around. Are we to believe that this hack of a writer who speaks without any eloquence or fluidity has better sources than Jon Lee Anderson's highly respected "Che: A Revolutionary Life" or the classic work by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, "Guevara, Also Known As Che?" The truth is Fontova's claims here of Che being a radical mass murderer have no grounding in fact, none of his claims have ever been documented or sustained by any serious or credible witnesses. No doubt Mr. Fontova wishes the gangsters and United Fruit Company could come back to Cuba and keep it running like the brothel of the Caribbean that it was. Fontova is the equivalent of a Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity, publishing his sensational fantasies or right-wing love notes to the Miami exile crowd who have been exporting terrorism to Cuba for years. Fontova has little knowledge of Latin American culture here, claiming Che exported terrorism to the Americas, I suppose the brave indigenous Zapatista rebels fighting for their rights in Mexico are terrorists in Fontova's view, as well as the brave fighters in Guatemala and El Salvador who were fighting against brutal, truly genocidal dictatorships. We have well-documented evidence of the mass killings carried out by Pinochet, who Fontova loves, as well as the military juntas in Argentina, Brazil and Guatemala during the 1970s and 1980s that Fontova no doubt wishes could be implemented here to silence the Left.

Fontova covers-up his lack of evidence with hateful terms and long sentences of just rabid biting towards his subject matter, I imagine this man must have a terrible time getting a good night's sleep, with so much hate inside him. Or maybe it's all a sham and Fontova's just trying to make some quick cash from presenting "the other side" of a character who is respected all over the world. Maybe it's his class, maybe Mr. Fontova has never known what it's like to be a hungry Indian in Bolivia or abused campesino in Mexico, because his sheer ignorance of the significance of the Cuban Revolution in Latin America is astounding. No doubt Mr. Fontova is probably collecting a check for his un-impressive book sales and is on his way to have coffee with Mr. Carriles who Fontova I am sure, considers a hero. Bottom line: This is radical right-wing trash, for a true look at Guevara's life I recommend Jon Lee Anderson's groundbreaking work as well as the book by Paco Ignacio Taibo II.


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It is a thoroughly humorless, poorly written, personal attack with almost no historical basis in fact. The facts that Fontova does get right are grossly and deliberately misrepresented, with many so-called "facts" based on interviews whose authenticity is never verified.

Under most circumstances I would simply shrug this off but for the fact that Fontova actually studied Latin American history (he got his MA from Tulane) and is therefore deliberately misrepresenting and even fabricating events. The sole reason being to assassinate the character of a well-known political figure. Now, a lot of people do this kind of thing -- bring down a popular figure in order to try to raise themselves a bit -- but in order to make his case, Fontova does some really despicable things. He uses all kinds of violations of logic, misquotes people, quotes them out of context, frequently uses unsubstantiated third party testimony, and even goes so far as to laud the actions of dictators like Batista and Stalin in order to manufacture grounds on which to attack Guevara.

Most of this book is in direct contradiction to declassified CIA documents and first person testimony readily available to the public online. One can't dismiss this as a case of bad research or simple incompetence. This is a deliberate and cowardly distortion of history.

This book not only raises serious questions regarding Fontova's credibility and professionalism, it could very well cast doubt on the reputation of Tulane's History department as a whole if they do not speak out.


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