Eerie to me, how 'bout you?
The Che Guevara flag seen at Obama's Houston campaign office, I know, is old news. However, recently I've seen a number of t-shirts promoting Obama as president and the intentional similarity to the Guevara rendering is just creeping me out! Yes, you can actually purchase these shirts and I've seen people wearing them! Just out of curiosity, what percentage of Americans do you think know who Guevara was, what he did, and what he stood for?
Labels: politics, ponderings
posted by Kushmama @ 11:07 AM
6 Comments:
I need an American History update... who was he?
I would be very surprised if many Americans know much about Che, although the relatively recent movie version of his Motorcycle Diaries increased the numbers to a certain extent. But since MD focused on a very short period of his life and stops short of when he hooked up with Castro, it's a very limited view. Apparently, there's a 4-5 hour movie of his life that's been recently completed, but I don't think there are any deals for distribution. (OK, directed by Soderbrgh (Ocean's 11/etc.) and starring Benicio del Torro--it's called Guerilla and you can find out about it at IMDB.com)
I knew next to nothing (if anything at all) for most of my life. But during a period when I was reading a lot of Hemingway, I started reading a lot of Cuban history, including several bios of Che and one or two of Fidel. I think that the more you read about both of these characters, the less cartoonish your vision of them is, whether it's the Super Marxist Hater of All Christians cartoon version or the Father of the Cuban Revolution and Bringer of All Good Things to the Cuban People (including sugar) version. As usual, the real truth is somewhere in between the two and I think we can learn much more by getting to the truth than by railing at the caricature.
A lot of kids seem to sport Che stuff for the sake of generic rebellion. I'd say that there's a small minority who view him as the Super Revolutionary Cartoon Character mentioned above and wear his stuff to show how revolutionary they are. In tracing the origin of the Che-Bama t-shirt you picture in your post, I found the company's MySpace page hasn't been updated in over a year, so I think we're probably safe from revolution on that front. They're definitely not Obamapproved.
Thanks, G, for informing us a bit. Living in SoFlo with a high Cuban population (many personal friends included), I know most of those who settled here from Castro's little island are NOT fans of Guevara. I'm sure many of those immigrants who support Obama in this election are horrified that some have "high-jacked" the "Che revolucion" as a platform for promoting their candidate!
Che was much more radical than Fidel during the revolution and the immediate aftermath (as was Raul Castro, although he seems to be more of a realist now). He was all for killing the opponents of the revolution and he was also way ahead of Fidel in terms of nationalizing property, both of which would contribute to Cuban refugees intensely disliking him. Che was also much more interested in exporting the revolution than was Fidel--eventually Fidel just kind of let Che go off and do his own thing, first in Africa and later in Bolivia where he was killed. Che claimed to be some sort of ideological theorist of how to run a revolution, but outside of Cuba, his attempts were pretty futile.
Probably way more than you wanted to know, huh?
Hey G, you're speaking my love language...input is one of my strengths (Strengthsfinder)! Never too much info:)
I feel enlightened... Thank You :)
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