I spent a great deal of time with Che Guevara while I was in Havana. I believe he was far less a mercenary than he was a freedom fighter.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Fidel Castro, whatever people may think of him, is a hero in Latin America, primarily because he stood up to the United States.
I never tried to be a mercenary or a killer but a hard working fighter.
With all of the people in Cuba who I met - many of them hugely heroic figures - I found learning about their complexity and richness and contradictions just really fascinating, and it was fulfilling to be able to offer a different side to them, to be able to have some kind of unique takeaway from the official narrative.
I've been going to Cuba since the Elian Gonzalez affair.
I realized that I had traveled to Havana during what now seems like the childhood of the Cuban Revolution, if you think that Fidel has now been in power for 44 extremely long years. I started looking at the revolution as history, and not as part of the daily news.
I grew up in Cuba under a strong, military, oppressive dictatorship. So as a teenager, I found myself involved in a revolution. I remember during that time, a young, charismatic leader rose up, talking about hope and change. His name was Fidel Castro.
The first thing out of Fidel Castro's mouth to me, he looked me right in the eye and said, 'You're a man of great courage.'
I traveled to Cuba with the intention of speaking with boxers who had turned down enormous offers to leave. When explaining my project to people, again and again I was met with amusement and skepticism.
Players aren't quite as mercenary as people make them out to be. Some of them are but some aren't.
Che Guevara was a racist.