The Che Cachet

The Che Cachet
An Exhibition Traces How the Marxist Revolutionary's Photo Inspired an
Army of Capitalists

By David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 7, 2006; C01

NEW YORK Just look at what they have done to Che.

The glowering visage of the Cuban comandante and ur-Marxist pops up
everywhere -- in art, on the cover of magazines and, more blasphemously,
on lighters, wallets, coasters, T-shirts, hoodies, key chains, tissue
packs, nesting dolls and something called Red Cream Soda.

It's always the same shot, the one where the man born Ernesto Guevara
stares into the middle distance with fiery resolve, a military beret
perched on his head, a leather jacket zipped up to his neck, hair
rakishly blown by the wind. Rifle-wielding freedom fighters around the
world have revered this image the way Christians revere saints. But
entrepreneurs love it, too. One company slapped the likeness on a frozen
treat called Cherry Guevara, vanilla ice cream on a stick, wrapped in
chocolate and cherry-flavored sauce.

"The revolutionary struggle of the cherries was squashed as they were
trapped between two layers of chocolate," reads the copy on the wrapper.
"May their memory live on in your mouth."

Cherry Guevara and other examples of what could be called Che abuse are
now on display at the International Center of Photography in midtown
Manhattan for an exhibition titled "¡Che! Revolution and Commerce." (The
show runs until Feb. 26.) It's the story of a single photograph and its
flukey journey from contact sheet to international ubiquity and then
into the farcical maw of commercial kitsch. Shot by a onetime fashion
photographer named Alberto Korda, it might be, according to the show's
curators, the most reproduced image in the history of photography.

The exhibit works, too, as an object lesson in the power -- and on some
level, the formidable beauty -- of market economies, which can absorb
and commodify anything, even their bitterest enemies. Today, there are
dozens of Web sites selling stuff with Korda's Che shot emblazoned on
it. Places like Thechestore.com and Fidelche.com mostly target young
people who, one assumes, aren't actually gearing up for armed insurrection.

"Our other big seller is beer pong shirts," says Shayn Diamond, a
college student in London, Ontario, who a few months ago started selling
Che-wear with some friends at Cheguevarashirts.com. "He's a rebel, and
along with rebel comes the cool factor and trendiness."

Translation: Viva los fashionistas!

The beginning of all this was more dignified. Korda took the shot the
day of a rally in Cuba, organized to protest an explosion in Havana
harbor of a ship loaded with ammunition. More than 100 people died in
early March 1960, and many Cubans believed it was a CIA-orchestrated
crime, not an accident. The following day, maximum leader Fidel Castro
turned a mass funeral into a mass protest and Korda, on assignment from
a newspaper called Revolucion, was there to capture the event.

Che didn't speak that day, but he showed up briefly on the podium to
gaze at the crowd. Korda squeezed off two quick shots with his Leica.
The image first turned up publicly in April 1961, in the pages of
Revolucion, to promote a conference where Che was the star speaker. Yes,
fittingly enough, "Guerrillero Heroico," as Korda called his photo,
started off as an advertisement.

Then it just spread. Korda never kept a grip on the copyright, and the
shot eventually turned up on the cover of magazines and newspapers in
Europe and across the United States. National Lampoon published a
satirical version in 1972 with Che taking a pie to the face. Madonna did
a variation for her "American Life" album in 2003. When Taco Bell used a
Chihuahua in a Guevara-like beret to promote its "revolutionary taco,"
the company took incoming from Cuban exiles in Miami. The vice president
of the company said the ads were intended to represent revolution
"generically."

Artists have long played with the iconic power of the image. Among them
is Pedro Meyer, who created "Five Dollar Bill," which is in the ICP
exhibit and features a blowup of the U.S. fiver, with Che's face where
Lincoln's ought to be.

"The U.S. has always had the ability to appropriate rebels," says Meyer,
on the phone from his studio in Mexico. "It's a cheap way to deal with
your urge to be rebellious. You buy a T-shirt and you don't have to do
anything more."

Korda, who died in Paris in 2001, apparently never earned any royalties
from his most famous portrait. He did, however, win an out-of-court
settlement in England against Smirnoff after the company ran an ad with
"Guerrillero Heroico," along with the words "A complete flavoured
vodka," a riff perhaps on John Paul Sartre's claim that Che was "the
most complete man of his age."

"I am categorically against the exploitation of Che's image for the
promotion of products such as alcohol," Korda is quoted as saying, "or
for any purpose that denigrates the reputation of Che."

Why Che? How did this Argentine doctor with a bad case of asthma acquire
such astounding worldwide cachet, not to mention enduring commercial appeal?

The hunky looks don't hurt. Actually, they help, quite a bit. And few
doubt the man's sincerity, even if his sincerest wish was a dreary,
centrally planned bummer.

"Even his ideological foes admire him because he represents the great
virtues it takes to be a revolutionary," says Jon Lee Anderson, a New
Yorker writer who penned the biography "Che: A Revolutionary Life."
"Bravery, fearlessness, honesty, austerity and absolute conviction.
Those are the prerequisites to carry others into what is actually quite
a miserable existence. He lived it. He really lived it."

After he helped to overthrow the Batista government in Cuba, he headed
to other countries, including the Congo and Bolivia, to try to foment
revolution there. Adding to the mythology, he died a martyr's death in
1967, captured and executed at the age of 39 as he battled U.S.-trained
troops in Bolivia. Reportedly, his last words to the soldier who shot
him were "Shoot, coward, you're just killing a man."

And, it seems, creating a brand. He's lionized by insurgents around the
world, according to Anderson, in places as varied as Burma and
Afghanistan. Last month, the new president of Bolivia asked for a moment
of silence at his swearing-in to remember, among others, Che Guevara.
The Cuban government, meantime, has tapped heavily into Che-mania,
presenting Guevara to tourists as the public face of the island ever
since the Russians withdrew financial support. Che T-shirts are among
the first things you'll see after landing at the Havana airport.

But at least the Cubans know whom they're glorifying. In the United
States, Che's life story and ambitions seem beside the point, or maybe
they've just been reduced to caricature. The guy's face is shorthand for
"I'm against the status quo." He's politics' answer to James Dean, a
rebel with a very specific cause. And since very few people know
anything about the cause, or the rebel -- besides the basics -- the Che
shirt has about it the whiff of inside info. It makes you part of the
thrift-store intelligentsia, even if your real focus is beer pong.

This, in brief, is why capitalism won. It's the only system that
understands that we'd all like to change the world, but we are way too
lazy for that sort of thing. Especially if there's ice cream around.
When you get done with a Cherry Guevara, you're left with a wooden stick
with the words "We will bite to the end!" stamped on it. If there are
nails in Che's coffin, this, no doubt, is what they look like.

2006 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020601950.html