Che: The icon and the ad

[QueEx]

Che Guevara's daughter, Others Prepare to Leave Cuba

<font size="5"><center>Che Guevara's daughter
wins Argentine citizenship</font size><font size="4">
Many Cubans with ties to the Castro regime have made
contingency plans for leaving the country after the longtime
leader dies; In totalitarian regimes, most everyone associated
with that regime has some sort of exit strategy in case the regime
changes and all economic livelihood disappears</font size></center>

By Vinod Sreeharsha and Jack Chang
McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Tue, August 14, 2007

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — A daughter of famed revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara has become an Argentine citizen after decades of living in Cuba, an Argentine official said Tuesday.

The news that Celia Guevara March, 44, had obtained Argentine citizenship last January sparked speculation that she and other members of her family had begun making plans to leave the island nation after Cuban leader Fidel Castro fell ill last July.

Eduardo Gomez, a spokesman for the Argentine Embassy in Havana, said that Guevara March, the third oldest of the Argentine-born revolutionary's four surviving children, applied for Argentine citizenship in December. She took the Argentine citizenship oath the following month but has kept her Cuban passport, Gomez said.

Many Cubans with ties to the Castro regime have made contingency plans for leaving the country after the longtime leader dies, said Jorge Pinon, a senior researcher with the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami.

Castro hasn't been seen in public for more than a year and didn't appear at celebrations marking his 81st birthday Monday. Castro reportedly is suffering from diverticulitis, an ailment of the intestines, and has handed over power to his younger brother, Raul.

Guevara March, a marine biologist, is known as the most private of the Guevara clan and a loyal Castro follower.

"In totalitarian regimes, most everyone associated with that regime has some sort of exit strategy in case the regime changes and all economic livelihood disappears," Pinon said.

Juan Martin Guevara, one of Ernesto Guevara's brothers, said he didn't believe his niece was planning to leave Cuba.

"This is a personal matter, not a political one," Guevara said by telephone from the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires. "Whatever her reasons, it's to improve her own life and not a reflection on what's going on in Cuba."

According to the Argentine newspaper Clarin, which first reported Guevara March's citizenship status on Sunday, Guevara March told consular officials she was applying for Argentine citizenship so that her two sons could avoid the bureaucratic hassles of traveling with Cuban passports. She also reportedly said she had no plans to leave the communist nation.

An Argentine diplomat, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the topic, said Guevara March hadn't mentioned her children as the reason for applying for Argentine citizenship. He confirmed that Guevara March said she had no plans to leave Cuba.

Argentine law lets children of Argentines apply for the country's citizenship, regardless of where they were born. But the diplomat said Guevara March's children wouldn't qualify for citizenship because she isn't a native-born Argentine and they don't live in Argentina.

Guevara March was born in Cuba in 1963 to Ernesto Guevara's second wife, Aleida March. Bolivian troops killed Guevara four years later during his failed effort to spark a revolution there.

All of Guevara's surviving children were born in Cuba and still live there, said Ada Ventre, a spokeswoman for the "Che" Guevara Museum in his childhood hometown of Alta Gracia, Argentina.

Guevara's first child, born to Peruvian economist Hilda Gadea in Mexico in 1956, died in 1995.

Guevara joined Castro's movement in 1956 when the future Cuban leader was still in exile in Mexico and fought alongside Castro throughout his insurgency. After the 1959 revolution, Guevara lived in Cuba until 1965, when he left to lead unsuccessful insurgencies in the Congo and Bolivia.

(Chang reported from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Special correspondent Sreeharsha reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.)

McClatchy Newspapers 2007

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/18921.html

 

[QueEx]

Che: The icon and the ad ​

It is perhaps the most reproduced, recycled
and ripped off image of the 20th Century;
and used as an avatar on BGOL
more than any other symbol or picture ​

BBC News
By Stephanie Holmes
October 7, 2007

Che Guevara, his eyes framed by heavy brows, a single-starred beret pulled over his unruly hair, stares out of the shot with glowering intensity.

It's now 40 years since the Argentine-born rebel was shot dead, so any young radicals who cheered on his revolutionary struggles in Cuba and Bolivia are well into middle age.

But the image has been infinitely repeated - emblazoned on T-shirts and sprayed on to walls, transformed into pop art and used to wrap ice-creams and sell cigarettes - and its appeal has not faded.

"There is no other image like it. What other image has been sustained in this way?" asks Trisha Ziff, the curator of a touring exhibition on the iconography of Che.

"Che Guevara has become a brand. And the brand's logo is the image, which represents change. It has becomes the icon of the outside thinker, at whatever level - whether it is anti-war, pro-green or anti-globalisation," she says.

Its presence - everywhere from walls in the Palestinian territories to Parisian boutiques - makes it an image that is "out of control", she adds.

"It has become a corporation, an empire, at this point."

The unchecked proliferation of the picture - based on a photograph by Alberto Korda in 1960 - is partly due to a political choice by Korda and others not to demand payment for non-commercial use of the image.

Birth of an icon

Jim Fitzpatrick, who produced the ubiquitous high-contrast drawing in the late 1960s as a young graphic artist, told the BBC News website he actively wanted his art to be disseminated.

"I deliberately designed it to breed like rabbits," he says of his image, which removes the original photograph's shadows and volume to create a stark and emblematic graphic portrait.

"The way they killed him, there was to be no memorial, no place of pilgrimage, nothing. I was determined that the image should receive the broadest possible circulation," he adds.

"His image will never die, his name will never die."

For Ms Ziff, Che Guevara's murder also marks the beginning of the mythical image.

"The birth of the image happens at the death of Che in October 1967," she says.

"He was good-looking, he was young, but more than that, he died for his ideals, so he automatically becomes an icon."

The story of the original photograph, of how it left Cuba and was carried by admirers to Europe before being reinterpreted in Mr Fitzpatrick's iconic drawing, is a fascinating journey in its own right.

Alberto Korda captured his famous frame on 5 March 1960 during a mass funeral in Havana.

A day earlier, a French cargo ship loaded with ammunition had exploded in the city's harbour, killing some 80 Cubans - an act Fidel Castro blamed on the US.

Korda, Fidel Castro's official photographer, describes Che's expression in the picture, which he labelled "Guerrillero Heroico" (the heroic fighter), as "encabronadao y dolente" - angry and sad.

The picture was one of only two frames taken. The original shot includes palm fronds and a man facing Che, both subsequently cropped out.

Unpublished for a year, the picture was seen only by those who passed through Korda's studio, where it hung on a wall.

Poster boy

One man who brought the image to Europe was the leftist Italian publisher and intellectual, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who distributed posters across Italy in 1967.

After that, Korda's photograph made an appearance in several European magazines. Mr Fitzpatrick first came across it in the German weekly, Stern.

Fitzpatrick got the image from a
Dutch underground movement

"One of the images was Korda's but it was so tiny that when I blew it up all I got was a dot matrix pattern. From this I did a quasi-psychedelic, sea-weedy version of Che," he said.

Only months later, when he finally got his hands on a larger version of the photograph, was he able to produce the image that has such universal appeal.

"I'd got an original copy of the image sent to me by a guy involved with a group of Dutch anarchists, called the Provo."

This underground movement was in turn rumoured to have been given the image by French philosopher and radical Jean-Paul Sartre, who was present at the Havana funeral when it was taken.

Capitalism and Catholicism

After Che Guevara's death, an outraged Mr Fitzpatrick furiously reprinted originals of the poster and sent it to left-wing political activist groups across Europe.

Part of his anger stemmed from vivid memories working behind a bar in Ireland as a teenager, and seeing Che walk in.

The revolutionary was briefly exploring the homeland of his Irish ancestors - the full family name was Guevara-Lynch - during a stopover on a flight to Moscow.

"I must have been around 16 or 17," Mr Fitzpatrick remembers. "It was a bright, sunny morning and light was streaming into the windows of the bar. I knew immediately who he was. He was an immensely charming man - likeable, roguish, good fun and very proud of being Irish."

The original hung, unpublished,
on Korda's wall for a year

Mr Fitzpatrick's version of Che arrived on the continent as many countries were in a state of flux, says Ms Ziff.

"His death was followed by demonstrations, first in Milan and then elsewhere. Very soon afterwards there was the Prague Spring and May '68 in France. Europe was in turmoil. People wanted change, disruption and rebellion and he became a symbol of that change."

As time went on, the meaning and the man represented by the image became separated in the western context, Ms Ziff explains.

It began to be used as a decoration for products from tissues to underwear. Unilever even brought out a Che version of the Magnum ice cream in Australia - flavoured with cherry and guava.

"There is a theory that an image can only exist for a certain amount of time before capitalism appropriates it. But capitalism only wants to appropriate images if they retain some sense of danger," Ms Ziff says.

But in Latin America, she points out, Che Guevara's face remains a symbol of armed revolution and indigenous struggle.

Indeed, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez often appears wearing a Che T-shirt and visitors to the offices of Bolivia's leader, Evo Morales, are reportedly greeted with a version of the iconic image fashioned from coca leaves.

Combining capitalism and commerce, religion and revolution, the icon remains unchallenged, Ms Ziff says.

"There is no other image that remotely takes us to all these different places."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7028598.stm

 

[divine]

Che!

 

[QueEx]

Odd, there are so many posters on these boards using Che Guevara's poster as an avatar
yet none seem to have connected with this thread and to expound on Che's
philosophies and what they may mean today.

Maybe this next post will peak their interest



`

 

[QueEx]

<font size="3">
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 232

Scrapbook of memorabilia kept by CIA operative who buried
Che renews attention to Che Guevara's execution, U.S. Role</font size>

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB232/index.htm

 

[QueEx]

<IFRAME SRC="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7455196.stm" WIDTH=780 HEIGHT=1500>
<A HREF="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7455196.stm">link</A>

</IFRAME>

 

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>
Forum on Guevara just part of U.S. rebranding</font size>
<font size="4">
A U.S.-sponsored discussion of the branding of
Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara signaled a new
approach to Latin America</font size></center>


BY VINOD SREEHARSHA
Special to The Miami Herald
April 25, 2009


BUENOS AIRES -- The U.S. charm offensive in Latin America took a small but provocative step forward on Friday when the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires sponsored two readings of a new book that explains the enduring iconic power of Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara.

U.S. taxpayers funded the discussion at the Buenos Aires 35th International Book Fair of the Argentine revolutionary who dedicated his life to armed struggle against capitalism and imperialism. For one day at least, photos of Guevara shared space with the Stars and Stripes. Dozens attended, including local grade school students.

Mara Tekach, the embassy spokeswoman, said that the United States was simply promoting free expression.

Che's Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image, by journalist Michael Casey, is one of the first books on a rarely discussed aspect of Guevara -- his branding and why it has endured for more than four decades.

The embassy's decision comes at a time when President Barack Obama is trying to refashion how Latin Americans perceive the United States. Easing restrictions on visits to Cuba and his handshake with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at last weekend's Summit of the Americas had enormous symbolic value in the region.

Branding is fundamental in Latin American politics. Leaders regularly invoke icons, such as Guevara, to boost their popularity.

Che's Afterlife provides a detailed account of the ''product launch'' of the Guevara brand, with Cuba's Fidel Castro serving as ''brand manager.'' In doing so, it offers lessons for Obama on how to rebrand the United States in Latin America.

The book examines Alberto Korda's shooting and cropping of the iconic 1960 photograph -- Guevara in Havana with his trademark beret and piercing eyes -- as well as how the image lay dormant for several years until Castro started disseminating it.

Casey describes Castro's role in hosting the Salon de Mayo artists' festival in Havana in May 1967 that drew top European artists. The Korda image quickly spread throughout Europe in just months.

Guevara was assassinated in Bolivia in 1967, but the quick popularity of the photo allowed an image of a healthy and vibrant Guevara to enter the public consciousness before news spread about his disastrous last two years.

Casey writes that ``capitalism has made Che what he is today: a brand, used for both commercial and political purposes.''

At the same time, Casey argues that hard-line conservatives in Washington and Miami, many of whom were critical of Obama's moves last week, have played a key role in the growth of the Guevara brand over the last eight years. They have played the willing foil that leaders like Chávez have skillfully exploited, he said.

Casey told The Miami Herald that they ``are a mirror image of the exact same thing that has equally driven the Latin American left's passion for years.''

He added, ``They sound a lot like Che.''

Casey contends that Obama's new approach and emphasis on ''soft power'' can make a difference in how the United States is perceived in the region.


http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/1016809.html