The EPA email said, apparently unaware of the irony: “Religion plays a significant role in the daily life of Hispanics with more than 90% of the population being Roman Catholic. Churches and spiritual activities influence family activities and families unite together to involve in prayers and sermons.” So what could the EPA have meant by using a picture of the murderous Che with the slogan “on to victory, always”?
On September 13, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent an internal email to its staff under the subject line “Hispanic Heritage Month.” The email, obtained by The Weekly Standard magazine, featured a picture of infamous communist butcher Che Guevara with the slogan “hasta la victoria siempre,” or “on to victory, always.”
Che has long been a hero of communists and other radicals for his brutal tactics, and the iconic photo of Che taken Alberto Korda has shown up in inappropriate places before. But it is especially chilling to see Che’s image being used by a government agency that has pursued an astonishingly aggressive anti-growth and anti-property rights agenda.
The seeming ubiquity of Che’s image should not desensitize us to the depravity of the man. Alvaro Vargas Llosa explained the depths of Che’s evil a few years ago in the New Republic. He noted that Che wrote in “Message to the Tricontinental” in April 1967: “hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine.”
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