Álvaro Vargas Llosa

This slim volume by the son of Mario Vargas Llosa is really two books in one, though it's divided into three parts. The first part, which will sell this book to a large audience, is a debunking of the romanticism of Latin America's most celebrated thug. This is a very useful and worthy bit of work, though it could benefit from more depth, since Che left plenty of evidence of his depravity and the depravity of his ideology to draw upon.

The second and third parts are a discussion of Latin America's economic and political problems, from a very broad perspective. Unfortunately, the author does not connect the problems or his solutions to Che terribly well - while any serious person would realize that Che wasn't fighting to overthrow the system of privilege and pull endemic to Latin America, but merely to replace the people in charge with his own people, the second part of the book doesn't make much effort to draw a connection between the persistence of Latin American mercantilism and the pseudo-revolution promoted by Che and his admirers.… (meer)