Over the top? II

Hugo Chavez’s insistences notwithstanding, not everyone in Venezuela is enamored of Che Guevara, as Australia’s Herald Sun reports:

A GROUP of Venezuelans shattered a glass monument to Cuban hero Che Guevara built by the Government of leftist President Hugo Chavez, an area mayor told state television…

Local media reported that a group identifying itself as the Patriotic Command of the Plateau took responsibility for destroying the 2.4m-tall glass monument inscribed with a message to honor the Argentine-born icon of Cuba’s 1959 revolution.

“We do not want a monument to Che, he is not an example for our children,” the group said in a note left at the scene of the monument shattered by six gunshots, according to the El Universal newspaper.

While I do not advocate vandalism as a mode of protest, such outrage at the dedication of a monument to a murderous thug is heartening — even if the response is a bit, well, over the top.

Welcome outrage aside, this is shoddy reporting. The reference to Che as a “Cuban hero” is grossly overt editorializing — especially when the story itself makes clear that esteem for the “Argentine-born” Che is hardly universal. (Thanks for Margaret Griffis for Herald Sun link.)