I was appalled, even within the context of a book review, to read an uncritical and glowing assessment of Ernesto "Che" Guevara as a "secular saint" whose "ideas of social justice and democracy unite Latinos throughout the Americas" (HCN, 6/26/06: Nuestra America). High Country News has lost my sympathies forever.

If all you know of Guevara is an image plastered on T-shirts of sandbox revolutionaries, you need to get out more. Far from uniting Americans south of the border, Guevara — acting as Castro’s pawn — did his utmost to polarize the continent. His insurgencies in Argentina, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Haiti, Panama and the African Congo — all of which failed — set back development for decades and made a graveyard of Latin America. With friends like Guevara, "the people" don’t need enemies.

Alberto Enriquez