As Fidel spoke, I allowed myself to listen closely and feel that peculiar sensation I experience in his presence, as if meeting with a force of nature, a man so filled with the energy of the historical mission that he is almost a different species. Power radiates from him.

[Y]ou gave all of us who are alone in this country … some sense that there were heroes in the world … It was as if the ghost of Cortez had appeared in our century riding Zapata's white horse. You were the first and greatest hero to appear in the world since the Second War … you gave a bit of life to the best and most passionate men and women all over the earth, you are the answer to the argument … that revolutions cannot last, that they turn corrupt or total or they eat their own.

[Che Guevara] presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads … [and] founded Cuba's labor camp system … The present day cult of Che … has succeeded in obscuring this dreadful reality … Che was an enemy of freedom and yet he has been erected into a symbol of freedom. He helped establish an unjust social system in Cuba and has been erected into a symbol of social justice.