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The Culture of Che
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| Fir3start3r |
I often wonder if people who wear those Che shirts, beaming with pride, have ANY clue who Che really was...
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The Cult of Che
Don't applaud The Motorcycle Diaries.
By Paul Berman
Posted Friday, Sept. 24, 2004, at 7:33 AM ET
The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"— and so on. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a guerrilla movement that had failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. And yet he succeeded in inspiring tens of thousands of middle class Latin-Americans to exit the universities and organize guerrilla insurgencies of their own. And these insurgencies likewise accomplished nothing, except to bring about the death of hundreds of thousands, and to set back the cause of Latin-American democracy—a tragedy on the hugest scale.
The present-day cult of Che—the T-shirts, the bars, the posters—has succeeded in obscuring this dreadful reality. And Walter Salles' movie The Motorcycle Diaries will now take its place at the heart of this cult. It has already received a standing ovation at Robert Redford's Sundance film festival (Redford is the executive producer of The Motorcycle Diaries) and glowing admiration in the press. Che was an enemy of freedom, and yet he has been erected into a symbol of freedom. He helped establish an unjust social system in Cuba and has been erected into a symbol of social justice. He stood for the ancient rigidities of Latin-American thought, in a Marxist-Leninist version, and he has been celebrated as a free-thinker and a rebel. And thus it is in Salles' Motorcycle Diaries.
The film follows the young Che and his friend Alberto Granado on a vagabond tour of South America in 1951-52—which Che described in a book published under the title Motorcycle Diaries, and Granado in a book of his own. Che was a medical student in those days, and Granado a biochemist, and in real life, as in the movie, the two men spent a few weeks toiling as volunteers in a Peruvian leper colony. These weeks at the leper colony constitute the dramatic core of the movie. The colony is tyrannized by nuns, who maintain a cruel social hierarchy between the staff and the patients. The nuns refuse to feed people who fail to attend mass. Young Che, in his insistent honesty, rebels against these strictures, and his rebellion is bracing to witness. You think you are observing a noble protest against the oppressive customs and authoritarian habits of an obscurantist Catholic Church at its most reactionary.
Yet the entire movie, in its concept and tone, exudes a Christological cult of martyrdom, a cult of adoration for the spiritually superior person who is veering toward death—precisely the kind of adoration that Latin America's Catholic Church promoted for several centuries, with miserable consequences. The rebellion against reactionary Catholicism in this movie is itself an expression of reactionary Catholicism. The traditional churches of Latin America are full of statues of gruesome bleeding saints. And the masochistic allure of those statues is precisely what you see in the movie's many depictions of young Che coughing out his lungs from asthma and testing himself by swimming in cold water—all of which is rendered beautiful and alluring by a sensual backdrop of grays and browns and greens, and the lovely gaunt cheeks of one actor after another, and the violent Andean landscapes.
The movie in its story line sticks fairly close to Che's diaries, with a few additions from other sources. The diaries tend to be haphazard and nonideological except for a very few passages. Che had not yet become an ideologue when he went on this trip. He reflected on the layered history of Latin America, and he expressed attitudes that managed to be pro-Indian and, at the same time, pro-conquistador. But the film is considerably more ideological, keen on expressing an "indigenist" attitude (to use the Latin-American Marxist term) of sympathy for the Indians and hostility to the conquistadors. Some Peruvian Marxist texts duly appear on the screen. I can imagine that Salles and his screenwriter, José Rivera, have been influenced more by Subcomandante Marcos and his "indigenist" rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico, than by Che.
And yet, for all the ostensible indigenism in this movie, the pathos here has very little to do with the Indian past, or even with the New World. The pathos is Spanish, in the most archaic fashion—a pathos that combines the Catholic martyrdom of the Christlike scenes with the on-the-road spirit not of Jack Kerouac (as some people may imagine) but of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, a tried-and-true formula in Spanish culture. (See Benito Pérez Galdós' classic 19th-century novel Nazarín.) If you were to compare Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries, with its pious tone, to the irrevent, humorous, ironic, libertarian films of Pedro Almodóvar, you could easily imagine that Salles' film comes from the long-ago past, perhaps from the dark reactionary times of Franco—and Almodóvar's movies come from the modern age that has rebelled against Franco.
The modern-day cult of Che blinds us not just to the past but also to the present. Right now a tremendous social struggle is taking place in Cuba. Dissident liberals have demanded fundamental human rights, and the dictatorship has rounded up all but one or two of the dissident leaders and sentenced them to many years in prison. Among those imprisoned leaders is an important Cuban poet and journalist, Raúl Rivero, who is serving a 20-year sentence. In the last couple of years the dissident movement has sprung up in yet another form in Cuba, as a campaign to establish independent libraries, free of state control; and state repression has fallen on this campaign, too.
These Cuban events have attracted the attention of a number of intellectuals and liberals around the world. Václav Havel has organized a campaign of solidarity with the Cuban dissidents and, together with Elena Bonner and other heroic liberals from the old Soviet bloc, has rushed to support the Cuban librarians. A group of American librarians has extended its solidarity to its Cuban colleagues, but, in order to do so, the American librarians have had to put up a fight within their own librarians' organization, where the Castro dictatorship still has a number of sympathizers. And yet none of this has aroused much attention in the United States, apart from a newspaper column or two by Nat Hentoff and perhaps a few other journalists, and an occasional letter to the editor. The statements and manifestos that Havel has signed have been published in Le Monde in Paris, and in Letras Libres magazine in Mexico, but have remained practically invisible in the United States. The days when American intellectuals rallied in any significant way to the cause of liberal dissidents in other countries, the days when Havel's statements were regarded by Americans as important calls for intellectual responsibility—those days appear to be over.
I wonder if people who stand up to cheer a hagiography of Che Guevara, as the Sundance audience did, will ever give a damn about the oppressed people of Cuba—will ever lift a finger on behalf of the Cuban liberals and dissidents. It's easy in the world of film to make a movie about Che, but who among that cheering audience is going to make a movie about Raúl Rivero?
As a protest against the ovation at Sundance, I would like to append one of Rivero's poems to my comment here. The police confiscated Rivero's books and papers at the time of his arrest, but the poet's wife, Blanca Reyes, was able to rescue the manuscript of a poem describing an earlier police raid on his home. Letras Libres published the poem in Mexico. I hope that Rivero will forgive me for my translation. I like this poem because it shows that the modern, Almodóvar-like qualities of impudence, wit, irreverence, irony, playfulness, and freedom, so badly missing from Salles' pious work of cinematic genuflection, are fully alive in Latin America, and can be found right now in a Cuban prison.
Search Order
by Raúl Rivero
What are these gentlemen looking for
in my house?
What is this officer doing
reading the sheet of paper
on which I've written
the words "ambition," "lightness," and "brittle"?
What hint of conspiracy
speaks to him from the photo without a dedication
of my father in a guayabera (black tie)
in the fields of the National Capitol?
How does he interpret my certificates of divorce?
Where will his techniques of harassment lead him
when he reads the ten-line poems
and discovers the war wounds
of my great-grandfather?
Eight policemen
are examining the texts and drawings of my daughters,
and are infiltrating themselves into my emotional networks
and want to know where little Andrea sleeps
and what does her asthma have to do
with my carpets.
They want the code of a message from Zucu
in the upper part
of a cryptic text (here a light triumphal smile
of the comrade):
"Castles with music box. I won't let the boy
hang out with the boogeyman. Jennie."
A specialist in aporia came,
a literary critic with the rank of interim corporal
who examined at the point of a gun
the hills of poetry books.
Eight policemen
in my house
with a search order,
a clean operation,
a full victory
for the vanguard of the proletariat
who confiscated my Consul typewriter,
one hundred forty-two blank pages
and a sad and personal heap of papers
—the most perishable of the perishable
from this summer.
Paul Berman is the author of Terror and Liberalism and The Passion of Joschka Fischer.
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| Lepanto |
| I didn't know much about che untill a little while ago. what really made me interested was that movie the motorcycle diaries that was adapted from his log he wrote on his journey through latin america. i read alot of stuff by him and then one day in class we just happened to be discussing him, and there was a kid with a che shirt. omfg, i've never met a dumber person in my life just about sums up the whole class. |
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| Q5echo |
there is a dance club here in Dallas called "Che". not kidding. it's not a fly by night warehouse joint either it's fairly hi-brow in a nice part of the metroplex. replete with the requisite portrait of his stupid mug (the one on all the t-shirts in red) right above the door where all the proletariate stand around to get picked to go in. oh the irony. every time i see the place i giggle, but the neocon inside of me wants to set fire to the place.
here is some more irony| quote: | The Revolution Will Not Be Silk-Screened
Capitalism and copyright law usurp socialism’s most famous image.
by Katherine Glover - October 2004
Ernesto “Che” Guevara has come a long way. Once best known as a fierce companion of Fidel Castro, he now graces the T-shirts of revolutionaries, as well as assorted hipsters, celebrities, and stoners who couldn’t find Che’s native country (Argentina) on a map. Since the release of The Motorcycle Diaries, a film based on Che’s memoirs that emphasizes his wandering, Kerouac-like persona more than his communist heroics and martyrdom, sales of posters, buttons, and other Che merchandise have soared. Che is more popular than ever, even if his socialist ideals have run aground.
If becoming a martyr, a cult of personality, and a sex symbol weren’t indignity enough for a Marxist, his image has now been copyrighted.
A Georgia man named David McWilliams is claiming he has an exclusive license to reproduce the famous Che photo anywhere in North America—and he’s threatening to sue anyone who violates this right. That includes Northern Sun, the charming boutique for radicals in South Minneapolis. “Please send a list of total inventory on your shelves, and forward same to us for destruction,” McWilliams commanded in an email to Northern Sun owner Scott Cramer on August 17. “Failure to comply with these requests will result in our pursuit of all legal remedies available to us.”
Cramer says he initially agreed to start buying all of his Che merchandise from McWilliams’ company, but then he found out the T-shirts were made in Honduras, a country with terrible labor conditions. Who exactly was this man who claimed to own Che? When McWilliams refused to supply Cramer with T-shirts made in the U.S.A., Cramer was forced to keep all Che products out of his catalog and website until he and his lawyers could figure out what to do.
McWilliams did not respond to my friendly inquiries. But according to Cramer, McWilliams says he purchased the license from some Frenchmen after they threatened to sue him for violating their copyright. How the Frenchmen got rights to the photo is unclear.
The iconic image of Che comes from a photo taken in 1960 by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda. The print collected dust in Korda’s studio until 1967, the year of Guevara’s death, when a visiting Italian publisher got a copy of the print from Korda, brought it back to Europe, and sold more than two million posters. Korda could do nothing, because Cuba had, until 1997, refused to join the international Berne Copyright Convention.
Even then, Korda only bothered with one lawsuit, against Smirnoff Vodka in 2000. They wanted to use it in an ad campaign. Korda said he didn’t mind if people reproduced Che’s image “to propagate his memory and the cause of social justice throughout the world,” but he was against using it to sell alcohol, or “for any purpose that denigrates the reputation of Che.” He won the case, and he donated all the money to Cuban hospitals.
When Korda died in 2001, the rights he had exercised passed on to his daughter. She has been twice as aggressive in suing people who use the image for political causes, particularly those she feels her father would abhor (one anti-Cuba and another anti-abortion). But it is unclear whether she has ever profited from any licensing schemes. Some sources say it is not Korda’s daughter, but Che’s estate, that now controls the copyright.
“That was my first mistake,” says Cramer. “When McWilliams offered to send me proof, I said, ‘No, that’s okay, I believe you.’” Cramer consulted a copyright lawyer, but he could offer little advice without actually seeing documentation of McWilliams’ rights.
But Johnny Havana, a merchandiser based in Toronto who runs TheCheStore.com, says Cramer did the right thing. After dealing with similar threats a year ago, Havana did some research and concluded that it wasn’t worth it for a small company to take on McWilliams. “I would have had to go to France to fight.” Havana says McWilliams sells him a good product and he’s never had any complaints. And the T-shirts Havana gets are all made in the United States, he says.
So why did McWilliams tell Cramer he could only buy Che T-shirts made in Honduras? “It’s a big company,” says Havana. “He can do whatever he wants.” In other words, capitalism wins. —Katherine Glover |
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| Q5echo |
>>communists...let the rhythm move you!<<
| quote: | | The 50,000 watts of hard pounding energy and excitement of a South Beach Club awaits you at Club Ché. Right off the bat you’ll notice that it is a complete multimedia experience with a state-of-the-art professional nightclub sound and computerized laser light systems, and 45 plasmas, projectors and monitors. |
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| Shakka |
| Is this a Cyrus baiting thread?:toothless |
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| shaolin_Z |
| I did my spanish presentation on Che a few semester ago. Che was a badass! |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
here is some more irony
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That shirt is solid gold. |
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| emc^2 |
Che was a flaming h0m0.
Any retard that wears a Che shirt deserves to get punched in the face. I hope they do.
And any retard who has Che in his avatar deserves to get hit in the face by an 18 wheeler going 80 MPH :rolleyes: |
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| Lepanto |
| most people who wear the shirts know nothing about him, maybe they know that he "wanted to bring freedom to people but was backstabbed by castro"...yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. |
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| habsfan |
| quote: | Originally posted by emc^2
Che was a flaming h0m0.
Any retard that wears a Che shirt deserves to get punched in the face. I hope they do.
And any retard who has Che in his avatar deserves to get hit in the face by an 18 wheeler going 80 MPH :rolleyes: |
Wow!
Here's a guy who leaves his potentially comfy life as a doctor to help those less fortunate,leads a revolution, and you're calling him a homo?
Yeah, keep acting tough on TA, lol.
EDIT: I can't tell if you're being sarcastic? |
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| Lepanto |
| oh, wow yeah he left his job as doc...that he barely had, to set up a totalatarian government. what a standup guy. at one point joseph stalin left his training as a priest to kill 20 million people, he's the model of a honest, modest, humble, helping, selfless human being. |
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| NebulousQ |
| quote: | Originally posted by habsfan
Here's a guy who leaves his potentially comfy life as a doctor to help those less fortunate,leads a revolution, and you're calling him a homo? |
Everything in this thread just flew right over your head, didnt it?
Edit:
Where does one find this shirt?
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
[.IMG]http://thoseshirts.com/images/rect-checap-sand.jpg[/IMG] |
Edit2: Lol. Maybe I can just read the leeched url hmmm? Bandwith leeching is bad. |
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