'Che' Guevara's iconic image endures

By MARTHA IRVINE, AP National Writer Sat Sep 23, 3:37 PM ET

[heavily edited by pk. interesting snippets follow. see link for full story.]

Part political statement and part fashion statement, the image sometimes overshadows the man, as one T-shirt wryly acknowledges. Below the photo, a caption on the shirt reads: "I have no idea who this is."

Working its way from art to pop culture and back again, the image of Guevara is widely considered one of the world's most reproduced and emulated photographs.

"This portrait of Che is an ideal abstraction transformed into a symbol that both resists subtle interpretation and is infinitely malleable," curator Trisha Ziff wrote in an introduction to the British exhibit. "It has moved into the realm of caricature and parody at the same time it is used as political commentary on issues as diverse as the world debt, anti-Americanism, Latin-American identity, and the rights of gays and indigenous peoples."

"The ultimate irony is the millions of dollars that capitalists and bourgeois merchants have made selling the image of Che. He's probably rolling over in his grave," says Henry Louis Gomez. A 36-year-old Cuban-American who lives in Miami, he sells T-shirts from his anti-Guevara Web site, including one that says "Che is Dead — Get Over It."

"Guevara was the ultimate revolutionary because he fought to the death, and the ultimate poster boy because he was chic," says Alvaro Vargas Llosa, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization based in Washington.

"As a Latin American, it puzzles me, fascinates me and makes me angry, all at the same time, that young Americans and Europeans should continue to idolize him, thereby reinforcing the notion that revolutionary socialism is the way to combat underdevelopment," says Vargas Llosa, a native of Peru.

"Perhaps my consolation is in the fact that people do not tend to associate Guevara with the Castro revolution but with an abstract idea of revolution that does not and will never exist."

"While former generations expressed themselves with protest posters, our own generation seems to believe that a T-shirt says it all, or enough — and when they're bored, it's on to the next one," says Rachel Weingarten, a Gen Xer who tracks pop culture trends at her New York marketing firm. "In other words, I care enough to wear a T-shirt, but not quite enough to actually rouse myself to make changes in my community or the world."

So there you have it.

- posted by k @ 4:16 AM