Quotable: Michael McCaughan and Che Guevara on class myths

“All across Latin America the poor majority have been conditioned to view their social status as the inevitable outcome of a free, competitive society where winners and losers rub shoulders with no hard feelings. The occasional rags-to-riches story is presented as proof that anyone can make it if they combine persistence with hard work. The business sector creates the nation’s wealth and jobs trickle down to the poor. Anyone who questions the consensus is quickly bundled out of view, like a naked man streaking across the Superbowl stadium.”

–Michael McCaughan, The Battle of Venezuela

“We get on much better with simple sailors than with that middle class which, rich or not, is too attached to the memory of what it once was to pay any attention to two penniless travellers. They are as ignorant as the next man, but their petty victory in life has gone to their heads, and the banal opinions they utter come with the arrogance of being proffered by them.”

–Ernesto “Che” Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries