His is arguably one of the most recognizable faces in the world, and yet, to anyone under 45 or so, he is known only by his name and his face. Little of his place is history is known to anyone born after the 60's, and to anyone born from the 80's onward, he is a fashion accessory and nothing more. Che Guevara (few know the surname associated with the face, to most he is just Che) sells. Put his face on just about anything and it's a license to print money. Indeed, there is a tee shirt available with his image and the statement underneath "I don't know who the fuck this is."
I've always been fascinated by the way pop culture subsumes everything in it's path. It's a dumbing down process that's like a juggernaut. It's worrying, but I see little than can be done about it. In an age where we have people who are famous for being famous I suppose it's to be expected. I realize writing a piece about him is like shining a flashlight in pitch-black stadium, but i'll give it a go anyway.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara, El Che, or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, politician, author, physician, military theorist, and guerrilla leader. He was instrumental is the Cuban revolution that overthrew U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and installed Fidel Castro as ruler.
As a young medical student he travelled extensively in Latin America and was greatly affected by the endemic poverty he witnessed there. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to conclude that the region's ingrained economic inequalities were an intrinsic result of monopoly, capitalism, neo-colonialism, and imperialism. As many young, idealist people do, he concluded that outright revolution was the only way to bring about change. I wonder what he would think of the grinding poverty that communism continues to bring to Cuba. It's true that American embargos contribute to that situation, but it's the inherent unworkability of Communism that is the biggest culprit.
He was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare, along with an acclaimed memoir about his motorcycle journey across South America. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to incite revolutions first in an unsuccessful attempt in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured with the help of the CIA and executed.
Guevara evolved into a quintessential icon of leftist-inspired movements. His execution contributed greatly to that fact. Both notorious as a ruthless disciplinarian who unhesitatingly shot defectors and revered by supporters for his rigid dedication to professed doctrines, Guevara remains a controversial and significant historical figure. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by "moral" rather than "material" incentives, he long remained an icon of the fight for equality.
As we see now, though, he has been reduced to a marketing tool for the very establishment he so detested. The irony of that is delicious. Now we have a situation where interviews with people on the street questioned about him produce comments like this:
A young man wearing a Che tee shirt is asked about the image. He states: "He was the man who invented those, uh, Mojitos", naming the rum drink synonymous with Cuba.
An Asia woman says she likes Che because she "Admires his lifestyle, he's a punk." Notice she uses the present tense. Some people don't even realize he's been dead for 42 years.
The famous image of Che was captured on March 5, 1960 by Alberto Korda, a fashion photographer in pre-Castro Havana. Che had stepped onto a stage next to Castro at a mass funeral after a shipment of munitions had exploded at Havana harbour, and Korda, a newspaper photographer barely had time to capture the image before Che disappeared back in to the crowd.
Today that image in legendary, but the story behind the legend is barely known, and with each new generation seems doomed to be nothing more than a nameless face on coffee mugs, shoulder bags and tee shirts. Such is life.
