The Che Diaries

While working on this article, I encountered many who thought that Ernesto “Che” Guevara — one of the leaders of the 1959 Cuban revolution — should be included in any list of icons of Hispanics and Chicanos. Indeed he is included in our list, and even his detractors would agree that the man’s image is very marketable.

The Photo

His inclusion is simpler than not. Never mind about his politics. Like it or not, his image is ubiquitous — T-shirts, berets, buttons, buckles. You know the one — the face of Che often presented in black on red, the Che with a beard image that has become so popular since photographer Albert Korda snapped the image in 1960. Fittingly, it is not his peer Fidel Castro who has benefited from the marketing of Che, but Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, an entrepreneurial Italian publisher, who copyrighted the image.

Che is an undeniable icon. Online merchants like The Che Store, which exists “for all your revolutionary needs,” offer Che products ranging from belt buckles to messenger bags to bandanas to beanie hats — for cold-weather revolutionaries, I suppose.

How is it that the communist who waged a war against capitalism became the poster boy for chic rebel wear?

Chico Che

According to an article by The Observer posted on EconomicsWithAFace.com, Che was “a magnetic and strong-willed presence” since his birth in 1928 to aristocratic but radical parents in Rosaria, Argentina. (No, Che was not a Cuban.) It is believed his chronic battle with asthma formed his “conclusion early on that every problem could be solved or defeated through sheer will, even America, even global capitalism,” according to The Observer. “That, in a way, was his strength and his downfall.”

The article is a primer to Che’s life and a warning by The Observer to its readers to not fall blindly in love with the rebel by viewing “The Motorcycle Diaries,” a recent film based partially on Che’s life as a young man interrupting his medical education to travel the whole of South America by motorcycle. I must echo that sentiment.

Hollywood Che

Mexican actor Gael García, a terrific actor, does a remarkable job softening up Che’s early life and image. I couldn’t help but like the guy, but near the end of the film we see that Che has already decided that he has a new calling — and it is not medicine, but war.

“By the book’s end, his anger has turned to hatred,” The Observer notes. “‘I feel my nostrils dilate,’ he writes, ‘savoring the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood, of the enemy’s death.’”

After seeing the movie, I couldn’t help but wonder whether Che turned revolutionary because he truly saw his lot alongside “the proletariat,” as he wrote or because of unrequited love.

Havana Che

Che met up with Fidel Castro — himself an icon — in 1954 and volunteered his services as a medical officer, but his passion for blood soon became evident.

“Initially, the campaign was a catalogue of disasters, but slowly the rebels gained local support, often from peasants who realized it was more dangerous to support (Cuban dictator Fulgencio) Batista than Che,” The Observer notes. “‘Denouncing us put them in danger,’ (Che) wrote in his Cuban war diaries, ‘since revolutionary justice was speedy.’”

According to The Observer, when it came to women, especially attractive women, Che tended to put his political philosophies on hold.

Banker Che

Che was made governor of the National Bank, while José Llanes, now a professor and chair of the department of educational leadership at The University of Texas-Pan American, was in Cuba as a doctoral student in economics at the University of Havana, working part-time at the bank. He knew Che “not as an icon, but as an employer.”

Che made himself an icon by placing his image on new currency after declaring the old currency worthless, Llanes said. Each citizen was allowed to redeem their cash for a maximum of 5,000 pesos.

“Everybody was poor in Cuba,” Llanes said. “People starting burying gold. He did it again a year later in order to go further. This time the maximum was 1,000 pesos. There was no capital and no means of production. That is the disaster that is Cuba. We owe it entirely to the brain of this man.”

Killer Che

After landing in New York in 1968 and making his way to California in search of employment, Llanes met a professor at the University of California-Berkley, who invited him to lecture on Che. With a great big portrait of Che’s famous picture in the background, Llanes told the students the truth as he knew it — that initially, he too believed in the revolution. But there was more.

“Che Guevara came to the government as the executioner,” Llanes said. “From 1959 to his death, he ran a court in Principe Cuba.”

Of the 40,000 people that were tried, about “17,000 were executed without leaving the

prison,” without legal counsel and without a trial, Llanes said.

”He had to leave Cuba,” Llanes said. “That’s why he went to Bolivia.”

Che was captured and killed in 1967 during a trip to overthrow the Bolivian government.

Icon Che

“Probably his own access to stardom was less Hispanic than you think,” Llanes said. “He was brought in to that special status by the media, which is not Hispanic-controlled. It was Fidel Castro who needed a hero. Later on, (Che) became a marketing tool.”

“Just last week, I saw a kid get on a bus in Amsterdam,” Llanes said. “He had a button, a T-shirt, a bag, tennis shoes — Che’s picture was all over the place.”

The irony of Che, the icon, is that I have seen fellow poets at readings wearing a black beret with red star — ala Che — or wearing a T-shirt with that famous image when in fact such gatherings are disallowed in the totalitarian regimes for which Che fought.

“There is a very strong irony,” Llanes said. “You’re talking about a bohemian environment, which he abhorred. He spent his life in arms. He was a military man. He was not interested in poetry and poets. Environments like that did not exist. He liked rum, cigars, women, loud music and lots of food.”

In an e-mail interview seeking comment on the irony that is Che, I received this comment from José Angel Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and founder of the Mexican American Youth Organization to my question of favorite Hispanic icons:

“Emiliano Zapata is up top for me as is Che. (Your bias against socialism is

so blatant!)”

Gutierrez gave no defense of his choice of Che and no further explanation. He showed no semblance of a reporter as devil’s advocate. But I neither take it personally nor do I wish Dr. Gutierrez ill will. The man has been a champion of the Chicano cause for longer than I have been alive, and I sincerely thank him and his peers for their fight for our civil rights.

Not everyone who lauds Che, the icon, knows who he was or has considered what sweet revenge it is for Che’s detractors that he has become an icon at all. In the end, it is people like me, though — and not people like Che — who are brave enough to allow criticism. Call me anti-Che, anti-Hitler, anti-Marxist, and yes, anti-socialist any day. No American patriot I know ever died defending socialism. I am proud to live in a democratic republic where poets can thrive — even without Che T-shirts. Praise God and pass the First Amendment!