NYC Letter: Che Is Dead! Let's Make Some T-Shirts!

UPDATE 10.11.05: Comrade Red Square over at The People's Square has had his "Che Is Dead - Get Over It!" T-shirt banned at CafePress on grounds of copyright infringement. Well, not really copyright infringement, something more like sanctity impingement. Drop CafePress a line here. Tell them to play fair. Tell them Che is dead and you'd like to advertise the fact with one of Comrade RS's nifty tees.

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Yesterday. October 9, in 1967 Dr. Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna, el Che*, was shot dead in the jungles of Higueras, in the southeast of Bolivia. His hands were surgically amputated to aid identification. His body was buried in an unmarked grave near Vallegrande. His remains were exhumed in June 1997 and returned to Cuba. The small casket was interred in the Guevara Mausoleum in Santa Clara to edify the day-tripping revolutionaries.

Ah, but Sr. Guevara continues to live on as Che T-shirts, Che knits, Che club shirts, Che boxers (with secure placket), Che toddler leotards (with quick access snaps), Che baseball caps, Che berets, blacklight Che posters, Che body art (here the Che high-thigh tattoo), Che pesos, Che ashtrays (for revolutionaries with smoking dispensations), Che ceramic mugs, Che buttons, Che tchotchkes, and, well, a whole universe of Che junk.

All of these are a very specific Che, the Che of Alberto Diaz Gutierrez ("Korda). Taken March 5, 1960, skill, the artful moment, and luck all joined hands to produce the quintessential Che. It is this single hagiographic image that envelopes and hides Sr. Guevara the man, his life and his infamies.

Naturally both professional and recreational revolutionaries prefer Korda's single shot to the equally iconic -- though to different effect -- Che death shots by Freddy Alborta.

Che Makeover

While remaining ideologically blameless Communist revolutions tend to be morally disordered. Therefore image is everything. Putting a good face on the revolution is a deathly serious cliché.

Budding teenie materialists sport Che wear at Starbucks, at malls, at rock concerts, at Internet cafés, and behind the bolted doors to their living-with-my-parents personal spaces. Children embrace an empty notion of revolution and dreamy notions Che the revolutionary. They think about revolution and making a better world between surfing the Internet, channel surfing, and important dating decisions. Few if any are prepared to be monsters for a revolution, undergo hardships and deprivations for ideology cant, or risk breaking a nail on the barricades. Most if not all will wear Che until Che goes out of fashion or they apply for a mortgage.

Ah, were Sr. Guevara less photogenic would Che be less brandable, would revolution have less allure?

Alvaro Vargas Llosa comments on the fashionable embrace of Che:

THE KILLING MACHINE: CHE GUEVARA,
FROM COMMUNIST FIREBRAND TO CAPITALIST BRAND

It is customary for followers of a cult not to know the real life story of their hero, the historical truth. ... It is not surprising that Guevara’s contemporary followers, his new post-communist admirers, also delude themselves by clinging to a myth—except the young Argentines who have come up with an expression that rhymes perfectly in Spanish: “Tengo una remera del Che y no sé por qué,” or “I have a Che T-shirt and I don’t know why.”

Consider some of the people who have recently brandished or invoked Guevara’s likeness as a beacon of justice and rebellion against the abuse of power. In Lebanon, demonstrators protesting against Syria at the grave of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri carried Che’s image. Thierry Henry, a French soccer player who plays for Arsenal, in England, showed up at a major gala organized by FIFA, the world’s soccer body, wearing a red and black Che T-shirt. In a recent review in The New York Times of George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead, Manohla Dargis noted that “the greatest shock here may be the transformation of a black zombie into a righteous revolutionary leader,” and added, “I guess Che really does live, after all.” The soccer hero Maradona showed off the emblematic Che tattoo on his right arm during a trip where he met Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. In Stavropol, in southern Russia, protesters denouncing cash payments of welfare concessions took to the central square with Che flags. In San Francisco, City Lights Books, the legendary home of beat literature, treats visitors to a section devoted to Latin America in which half the shelves are taken up by Che books. José Luis Montoya, a Mexican police officer who battles drug crime in Mexicali, wears a Che sweatband because it makes him feel stronger. At the Dheisheh refugee camp on the West Bank, Che posters adorn a wall that pays tribute to the Intifada. A Sunday magazine devoted to social life in Sydney, Australia, lists the three dream guests at a dinner party: Alvar Aalto, Richard Branson, and Che Guevara. Leung Kwok-hung, the rebel elected to Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, defies Beijing by wearing a Che T-shirt. In Brazil, Frei Betto, President Lula da Silva’s adviser in charge of the high-profile “Zero Hunger” program, says that “we should have paid less attention to Trotsky and much more to Che Guevara.” And most famously, at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony Carlos Santana and Antonio Banderas performed the theme song from The Motorcycle Diaries, and Santana showed up wearing a Che T-shirt and a crucifix. The manifestations of the new cult of Che are everywhere. Once again the myth is firing up people whose causes for the most part represent the exact opposite of what Guevara was.

And here Mr. Llosa offers a quick tutorial to the Che beguiled: TEN SHOTS AT CHE GUEVARA

There has been some spin on Che's last words. Just before Che dies, General Ovando, Chief of Bolivian Armed Forces, has him saying, "I am Che Guevara and I have failed." Addressed to Sergeant Jaime Terán, Che's maybe reluctant maybe trepidant maybe enthusiastic executioner, another version has a defiant Guevara, who refuses to sit for his execution, saying, "Know this now, you are killing a man." It also goes like this: "I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, you are only going to kill a man."

But they only killed a T-shirt.

* In English, the misspelling "Ché" (with an acute accent) and mispronunciation are common, probably due to French linguistic influence.