CHE GUEVARA “FOR SALE”;
ICON TO THE UNREAD!
Ric Polansky ã
His Hollywood style portrait can usually be found adorning the walls of the posh University dormitories or the living rooms of squalid tiny apartments or digs - always amongst the young and of course....revolutionary. His face is the logo for transformation, rebellion, change. Out with the old and in with anything new. His cinematic handsome his eyes seem to perceive the future with a pleasant vision, as if the ice cream trolley should be arriving any moment from just around the corner.
This week in Havana they are still partying. October 9th is Cuba’s day of recognition from the rest of the world for their prophet. The Havana Club swigging dictator tries to remain sober enough to render another fist pounding eulogy to the mystic that never really was. And yet, an idol he has become. Snapped and printed he changed historical accuracy from being an over zealot socialist to the pop cultures imagination of the sainted good warrior guy in just 125th of a second. Ernesto Guevara de la Serna became CHE and the revolution marches on.
Of course you have heard of Che Guevara, he was the same man that ordered the rich of Havana and political contrary to be herded into the bullring and machine gunned to death. Streams of dissenters´ blood poured out through the arena’s portals and into the liberated streets. Che led other firing squads for months following Bautista’s over throw in Cuba. Castro had appointed him “supreme prosecutor in charge of the cleansing commission that exacted justice on war criminals”. Che shrugged off his merciless injustice by stating “either you kill first or else you get killed”. And it was this same crazed and personally inspired rebel whose “Argentine cockiness was resented by many Bolivian peasants who also resented his brand of revolution”. Soon he got turned in by the people he thought he was helping. The authorities in 1968 took no chances and reciprocated the same consequences Che had meted out in Cuba.
Che Guevara probably would have gone down in Latin American history as a footnote had it not been for the accidental photograph taken by Cuban photographer Alberto Diaz Gutiérrez, known professionally as Korda, on March 5th, 1960-- that rewrote history and immortalized a absolute lie.
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Korda said of the shot that clicked rather than crunched “I managed to shoot only two frames before he was gone”. That was back in 1960 at a funeral for fallen comrades. The photograph rested in the studio for seven years until in 1967, just before Che’s death, it was given to another photographer friend for free distribution in Italy. Because Korda never asked commission for his “masterpiece” it helped in the dissemination world wide that has since become the most recognized photograph in the world. “Italian writer, Giuliana Skime in a catalog text, for the exhibition Alberto Korda: "Momenti della Storia", in 1988, compared, Guerrillero Heróico to the iconic image of the Mona Lisa, in its gaze, arguing that the portrait of Ché captures the ideals of its time!”
The early 70´s found the world leaning toward stratified big and uncaring business— it was good to be just a little rebellious. The image caught on and “in a little time the modified photograph, now reduced to a portrait head shot only of Che arrived in Dublin in early 1969 “where well known local artist Jim Fitzpatrick turned it into the famed two toned print so familiar to us all today” has written Harry Sheff.
Andy Warhol graced him too and there after Che was deemed radical and chic. His image led the fashion distribution in the form of key chains, coffee mugs, flags, bumper stickers, T shirts, hats, murals and posters. He belonged to another realm connoting goodness and courage, the struggle against the impossible.
The mass distribution of marketing gear and gadgets also erased the confused, convoluted complex authentic definition of the man that was. Che was re-birthed as a myth similar to papa Noel, the Easter bunny or the kindly tooth fairy.
The adulation goes on; naturally in the poorer countries, most destitute places or most oppressed. There, copy right infringements don’t exist for a god like figures.
However things have changed on the other side of the Atlantic. Korda’s relatives have sold the photographic rights to the David McWilliams’ company, the one that sponsors Fashion Victim where his image for the North American market is sold under registered trademarks.
Ironically enough, sweatshops in Honduras manufacture the T-shirts and other paraphernalia for the “young and esteemed would be rebel market”.
Here in Europe Che is still free to be sold without paying rights. A Che motif lends credence to your presence, it represents aloud to all who behold— who is the rebel in the crowd! Oh, and the unread spirit.
