I once met a cousin of Cuban musician Silvio Rodríguez, then living in Canada, and he shared with me the - perhaps apocryphal - anecdote that during Che's time as Minister of Industries, he was informed that miners were experiencing health issues because they were unable to urinate due to the extreme heat and dehydration of working in deep mining shafts. Che's solution to the miners' urinary constipation? He had a now-nationalized Cuban beer factory send them... free beer.
Sounds like a very Che thing to do. And the most amazing thing about that: even the idea of free beer could be ruined when you imagine the same folk making that terrible soda were now making the beer. After I originally wrote this story, I also emailed back and forth with a relative of Vincent Cassio. She said her son had recently started college and had the surreal experience of knowing the family's history, then seeing fellow students wearing Che's face on their t-shirts.
I once met a cousin of Cuban musician Silvio Rodríguez, then living in Canada, and he shared with me the - perhaps apocryphal - anecdote that during Che's time as Minister of Industries, he was informed that miners were experiencing health issues because they were unable to urinate due to the extreme heat and dehydration of working in deep mining shafts. Che's solution to the miners' urinary constipation? He had a now-nationalized Cuban beer factory send them... free beer.
Sounds like a very Che thing to do. And the most amazing thing about that: even the idea of free beer could be ruined when you imagine the same folk making that terrible soda were now making the beer. After I originally wrote this story, I also emailed back and forth with a relative of Vincent Cassio. She said her son had recently started college and had the surreal experience of knowing the family's history, then seeing fellow students wearing Che's face on their t-shirts.