New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is not ready for prime time. But he thinks he is.
On Thursday, at a protest in Miami, the mayor concluded a speech by shouting a phrase commonly attributed to Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, of all people.
“The eyes of the world are on Miami-Dade and on this airport,” de Blasio said as he addressed a protest organized by the Service Employees International Union.
He concluded by shouting, “Hasta la victoria siempre!”
“The eyes of the world are on Miami-Dade and on this airport.” -De Blasio.
Followed that up by “Hasta la victoria siempre!” (famous Che Guevara quote) pic.twitter.com/vabGaueE43
— Taylor Dolven (@taydolven) June 27, 2019
We in the political commentary business call that last part a “gaffe.”
That phrase — “hasta la victoria siempre,” which translates loosely to “always winning” — was popularized by Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, who is also one of the main reasons why Florida has such a large Cuban exile community. As it turns out, that whole revolución thing left massive numbers of Cuba’s population with only two choices: Flee or face persecution (and most likely death).
De Blasio claimed Thursday evening he had no idea Guevara was associated with the phrase.
“I did not know the phrase I used in Miami today was associated with Che Guevara & I did not mean to offend anyone who heard it that way,” the mayor said Thursday on social media. “I certainly apologize for not understanding that history.”
He added, “I only meant it as a literal message to the striking airport workers that I believed they would be victorious in their strike.”
De Blasio’s apology came after Florida residents and lawmakers spoke openly about their shock and distaste for his choice of words. Democratic state Sen. Jose Javier Rodríguez, for example, whose district includes Little Havana, tweeted Thursday that the mayor needed to apologize.
“Quoting a murderer responsible for death & oppression in communist Cuba and throughout Latin America is not acceptable. Please apologize,” said Rodríguez.
Another Democratic lawmaker, state Sen. Annette Taddeo, who also spoke at the SEIU-organized event Thursday, reportedly gasped when she was told what the mayor chanted, according to the Miami Herald.
“I have no idea if he knew [he was quoting Guevara]. But it’s very disappointing, clearly,” she told the paper. “This is the problem that we run into all the time … The left has people that are just clueless as hell.”
The Miami Herald also interviewed Bay of Pigs veteran Félix Rodríguez, who had just this to say: “Does he really know who Che Guevara was? I don’t think so. If he does, he’s a f—— asshole.”
It makes sense that Florida residents and lawmakers are sensitive to the issue. Many in the state’s Cuban exile community have lost loved ones to Castro’s murderous regime, of which Guevara was one of his most zealous enforcers.
“[A]lmost 78,000 innocents may have died trying to flee the dictatorship,” the Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady reported several years ago, citing a Harvard-trained economist.
She adds, “Another 5,300 are known to have lost their lives fighting communism in the Escambray Mountains (mostly peasant farmers and their children) and at the Bay of Pigs. An estimated 14,000 Cubans were killed in Fidel’s revolutionary adventures abroad, most notably his dispatch of 50,000 soldiers to Angola in the 1980s to help the Soviet-backed regime fight off the Unita insurgency.”
These are just rough estimates. In the meantime, consider Armando Valladares’ 1986 Against All Hope, which recounts what it was like during the early days of Castro’s rise to power, when Guevara served as one of his most merciless lieutenants:
Many of them were hardly more than boys, who had joined the army because money and food were scarce at home. The mass execution was ordered by Raul Castro and attended by him personally. Nor was it an isolated instance; other officers in Castro’s guerilla forces shot ex-soldiers en masse without a trial, without any charges of any kind lodged against them, simply as an act of reprisal against the defeated army.
De Blasio’s progressive politics and his love for violent revolutionaries have done him no favors in his own city, where he polls worse than President Trump. And now the 2020 Democratic primary candidate is taking his act on the road, where he will no doubt find an even tougher audience, especially in places like Miami where the residents have actually seen de Blasio’s beloved revolutionary ideals play out in real-time.
