The question we must always ask when reviewing the actions of Che and anyone else in the 26th of July movement is this "what other choices did they have, in the times and situation in which they were living and working?".

Cuba in the 1950s was not a country in which any form of democratic resistance to its existing government, the U.S.- supported Batista regime was possible.

The actions of Che and the rest of those who went to the mountains were informed by the total absence of democratic possibility in Cuba at the time, and also by the ways the "free press" and the military had been used by the U.S. to overthrow the democratically elected socialist government of Guatemals led by Jacobo Arbenz- as well as the long history of U.S. destruction and repression of all attempt to achieve any form of progressive, egalitarian change in the Americas.

The Left in this era would not use the methods Che and the others used- but is there not a clear and distinct limit on the degree to which American citizens are entitled to condemn what the Cuban Revolution did, in a previous century and under conditions that do not exist in any Latin American country today?