Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts

Volume 2, Number 34              September 29 - October 5,  2002            Quezon City, Philippines







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Faces of Che

This uninformed obsession with Che Guevara is being exploited by capitalist-spawned pop culture. The capitalists of pop culture are making business by coopting the portrait of a man who spent most of his life in a bitter struggle against the world capitalist system.

By Alexander Martin Remollino
Bulatlat.com

It is common these days to see young men and women wearing T-shirts bearing on front the face of a man in a beret with long, unkempt hair and a thick moustache matched with a thick beard.

That face belongs to Che Guevara. Who was Che Guevara?

Ernesto Guevara y de la Serna was born in Argentina in 1926, the son of an engineer.

He took a medical degree, but soon turned to radical politics. While practicing his profession, he became
active in revolutionary circles in Argentina and elsewhere.

It was as a leftist activist that Dr. Guevara came to be known by the nickname Che. He earned the nickname
becuase he always interspersed his speeches with “che”, a colloquial term for “friend”.

In 1954 he was active in the reformist government of President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala.

A revolutionary doctor

He later met Fidel Castro when the latter was exiled in Mexico. He served in Castro’s revolutionary army as
a doctor and later became one of its ablest commanders.

Together with Castro, he became one of the ideologues and military leaders of the Cuban Revolution. In his
writings, he outlined his prescriptions for the government that was to be established in Cuba after the revolution. He adapted the theories of Mao Zedong on guerilla warfare to the Cuban Revolution. After the Revolution succeeded in ousting the dictatorial regime of Fulgencio Batista, he explained through his writings the lessons of the Cuban revolutionary experience to other revolutionary movements worldwide.

He served briefly as president of the Cuban National Bank and Minister of Industry.

As an official of the Cuban government, he opposed alliance with the Union of Soviet and socialist republics.

In 1966, he went to Bolivia to lead the revolutionary movement there.

He was captured by the Bolivian army in 1967 after suffering a serious wound in an encounter. After a few days in prison, he was executed by the Bolivian army upon orders from Washington. His hands were amputated by his executioners for identification, and his body was buried by the foot of a mountain.

His remains were found in 1997. They were brought to Cuba, where they were buried.

T-shirts bearing the face of Che Guevara first became popular in the 1970s. He had become popular among
activists because he had lived a life of epic proportions.

Interest in Che Guevara was revived in Cuba after the crumbling of the “socialist” bloc in Europe in 1991.
It proved that he was right all along in opposing alliance with the Soviet Union.

The discovery of his remains further fuelled popular interest in him.

Cult figure

All these have added up to the immense popularity that the man now enjoys. He has become something of a cult figure. Such is his popularity that people — most particularly young men and women — with no inkling of who he was have been seen wearing T-shirts that bear his face. In fact a video of the patently non-political pop music group S Club 7 shows a dancer wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt.

His popularity among young people who know nothing of him can be explained by the image in which he has been immortalized. The beret, the long and unkempt hair, the thick moustache and beard all remind many young fellows of their rock idols.

This uninformed obsession with Che Guevara is being exploited by capitalist-spawned pop culture. The capitalists of pop culture are thus making business by coopting the portrait of a man who spent most of his life in a bitter struggle against the world capitalist system. Bulatlat.com 


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