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Examines the history and legacy of the photo Guerrillero Heroico taken by famous Cuban photographer Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez. This image has thrived for the decades since Che Guevara’s death and has evolved into an iconic image, which represents a multitude of ideals. The documentary film explores the story of how the photo came to be, its adoption of multiple interpretations and meanings, as well as the commercialization of the image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
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00:00:00Thank you so much for watching.
00:00:30Thank you so much for watching.
00:01:00Thank you so much for watching.
00:01:29Thank you so much for watching.
00:01:31I mean, some people don't even know who he is, have no clue whatsoever, but they wear
00:01:37the t-shirt, they have the poster and everything, and they have no clue at all.
00:01:40They may not know who Che is, but they know that guy is cool.
00:01:43Now, why is that guy cool?
00:01:44I kind of admire his lifestyle.
00:01:49It's really like a punk.
00:01:52He was a great man.
00:01:59And at least we, the Cubans, are what we know.
00:02:04We are proud of all his achievements and everything he did, not only for our country, but for the
00:02:11world.
00:02:12The real truth is Che Guevara in Cuba, he killed a lot of people.
00:02:16His presence is massive.
00:02:20If I see him on another t-shirt, I'm going to go crazy.
00:02:23He's everywhere.
00:02:24I'm surprised they haven't made a beer out of him.
00:02:26Photograph to transform itself into that kind of immensely popular and instantly recognizable
00:02:35form.
00:02:36There's nothing like it.
00:02:37It's been called the Mona Lisa photography.
00:02:39What I'm so moved by and so struck by is the sort of survivability and the malleability,
00:02:45the universality of this image.
00:02:47It is a great iconic image, probably the most famous photograph of a person in the 20th century.
00:02:56It's the most reproduced image in all the history of the photography.
00:03:01It happened in a fraction of a second.
00:03:04A shutter opened and closed to capture the iconic portrait of an elusive man known to
00:03:09most as Che.
00:03:13Over time, the image has been transformed, gathering different meanings along the way.
00:03:18The photograph would become a graphic.
00:03:20The graphic turned to political statement.
00:03:23Statement be appropriated for art.
00:03:25Then commerce to sell a dizzying array of products, many of which strayed from Che's ideals.
00:03:31And yet, despite the commercialization, the image still recalls the life of the iconic revolutionary.
00:03:39Born Ernesto Guevara, Che left his life a privilege to travel through Latin America in search of a
00:03:44higher purpose and went to Cuba to bring down a dictator.
00:03:47Decades later, his life was one of bold choices, violence at times, and defiance in the face of overwhelming odds.
00:03:56Decades later, this single frame, this portrait of Che, still enthralls our modern world.
00:04:02Decades later, that still inspires young people, artists, designers, and the world's dispossessed to make it their own.
00:04:21Decades later, this image is the most famous image of the 20th century, because it's the most reproduced image of the history.
00:04:37The story of the Che icon is, in many respects, the story of two characters, two very different characters, who have been married through history.
00:04:47The first one, obviously, is Che himself.
00:04:51Alberto Corda is the other person in this story.
00:04:53The man who took the photo was originally a fashion photographer.
00:05:08Corda, uh, and Corda was a brilliant fashion photographer.
00:05:11Mira, mi padre, eh, él tenía, en aquel entonces, el estudio Corda.
00:05:17He took very beautiful pictures of very sexy women.
00:05:25El estudio de él, yo recuerdo que siempre estaba lleno de muchas personas.
00:05:30Escritores, intelectuales, pintores, poetas, iban modelos, iban bailarinas, iban cantantes, iban actores de cine.
00:05:37You had this fun-loving party.
00:05:40This was a, this was, this was the Caribbean celebrating.
00:05:42God knows he was a man of great charm, he could charm the pants off anybody, and skirt.
00:05:52He drank rum, he smoked, he was a musician, he danced, he was a, a, a, a tango singer.
00:05:58He was just your absolute life of the party, and in many respects, thoroughly Cuban.
00:06:03I mean, he mixed in a crowd of fun-loving, uh, pre-revolutionary characters, and, and, and the, the, the whole image we have of Cuba, uh, in the Batista years, as being this kind of non-stop cabaret.
00:06:17That was Corda's world.
00:06:19Raro, no todo en Cuba era, eh, ni toda esa depravación, que a veces se habla de, de casinos y cabaret y eso.
00:06:44Estaba la dictadura de Batista, que sí era cierta.
00:06:46On the one hand, yes, famously the playground of the Yankees, the whorehouse of the Caribbean,
00:07:15but outside of Havana, it was a very rural, very, very poor place where the people were, as they called them, guajitos, or peasants, true peasants.
00:07:45It was possible, almost always, there was a beautiful woman next to him, and I said, who are they, who are these people?
00:07:52I was a young man, 16, 17 years old, that was what I wanted to do too.
00:07:57It was a very rare story that Corda's studio needed to be a assistant.
00:08:04Corda was not only my boss, as I have said, but only my teacher.
00:08:10He was my mentor, and in some ways, he ended up being my father.
00:08:14Meanwhile, in Latin America, a young idealist was traveling the continent with a friend.
00:08:28Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought, he wrote, as he came to know the people and their politics.
00:08:35In those days, he was known as Ernesto.
00:08:39He was young, he was infinitely superior to all of us, in intelligence, capable, tenaz.
00:08:54El viaje, que tuve el honor, el orgullo de hacer con él, lo marca, en primer término, en Bolivia.
00:09:07Cuando vemos la revolución que acababa de ocurrir, ya estaba el tren decadente, ¿no?
00:09:16Ernesto, por cómo viajábamos nosotros, estábamos en contacto con la parte baja de los pueblos,
00:09:22las clases más pobres, y veíamos la miseria, y en el segundo viaje, no ha mejorado.
00:09:29Ernesto witnessed widespread poverty and exploitation on his travels.
00:09:34Having found his calling, he dedicated himself to the poor and the sick.
00:09:39He began to come into contact with them on his youthful hitchhiking adventures around Argentina
00:09:46into the back of beyond in his own country.
00:09:49And a kind of awakening began to occur.
00:09:52A social and political awakening.
00:09:54A lot of his deepest revolutionary convictions come from a sense, in my view, of indignation at social injustice.
00:10:03As his political beliefs galvanized, Ernesto decided to reject the social systems that created such inequity.
00:10:10I was filled with the spirit of the beehive he wrote in the diary he kept on his famous motorcycle journeys.
00:10:17His path would eventually lead him to Mexico City, and to a man with whom he would make history.
00:10:24Yo pienso que él buscaba una oportunidad que para mí se le presenta en México cuando lo conoce a Fidel.
00:10:31He just come from Guatemala where he had gone hoping to be a revolutionary doctor
00:10:54or a doctor who would cure the poor and the marginalized people's maladies caused by political
00:11:02injustice to decide that he needed to go to the source. And the solution was to overthrow
00:11:08the political systems that caused that social injustice, which caused those endemic maladies
00:11:13of poverty and misery. He didn't feel that it was the time for compromise. He had seen
00:11:21that in Guatemala, it had failed. Taking power at the point of a gun now, peasants fighting
00:11:28an agrarian revolution to bring about a socialist future, and that appealed to Che. So when Guevara
00:11:36met Fidel in Mexico City, he believed he had found the man that he was looking for, a kind
00:11:44of archetypal figure of what was necessary to carry off a successful revolution in Latin
00:11:50America.
00:11:51Within hours of their first meeting, Ernesto pledged to join Castro in launching a people's
00:11:59revolt in Cuba. It would take another 18 months, but finally, in November 1956, the volunteers
00:12:08crowded onto the Granma, a small boat that could barely hold half the men. Under the cover of
00:12:14night, they sailed the dark waters towards Cuba.
00:12:17You have to be a bit crazy, right, to climb 82 people in a boat where he had the capacity
00:12:23for 20, to fight with another army. But well, the history is made of those people, right?
00:12:30If not, it is made of cowardly.
00:12:33All of this is the kind of early origin of the Che mythology. Ernesto the intellectual
00:12:42and poet learned the ways of war, and Fidel appointed him comandante. In the dense Cuban
00:12:50mountains of the Sierra Maestra, the rebels gathered force and dreamt of their new Cuba. Months
00:12:56led to years of struggle against much larger and better equipped forces. He had joined the
00:13:03guerrillas as Ernesto the doctor, but emerged as Che the revolutionary.
00:13:09He chose the ammo box, thus setting himself on the path of the warrior rather than the doctor. Che not
00:13:28only found that he was able to function under fire, but that he was actually unafraid. He
00:13:34also discovered that he was prepared to sacrifice himself, that he was unafraid of death, and that
00:13:38this was a virtue, which helped to make him a warrior amongst warriors. We can see another
00:13:45component of the construction of his legend and of his mythology.
00:13:53From his stronghold in the wild Sierra Maestra mountains, Cuba's Fidel Castro emerged triumphant
00:13:58after two years of guerrilla warfare against the Batista regime. Now Batista has fled. A new leader is on the scene.
00:14:05Fidel Castro, in many ways an unknown quantity in his politics and policies, but certain to be dominant
00:14:11in Cuba's new era, just begun.
00:14:15Fidel Castro.
00:14:16Fidel Castro.
00:14:17Fidel Castro.
00:14:18Fidel Castro.
00:14:19Fidel Castro.
00:14:20Fidel Castro.
00:14:21Fidel Castro.
00:14:22Fidel Castro.
00:14:23Fidel Castro.
00:14:24Fidel Castro.
00:14:25Fidel Castro.
00:14:26Fidel Castro.
00:14:27Fidel Castro.
00:14:28Fidel Castro.
00:14:29Fidel Castro.
00:14:30Fidel Castro.
00:14:31Fidel Castro.
00:14:32Fidel Castro.
00:14:33Fidel Castro.
00:14:34Fidel Castro.
00:14:35Fidel Castro.
00:14:36Fidel Castro.
00:14:37Fidel Castro.
00:14:38Fidel Castro.
00:14:39Fidel Castro.
00:14:40Fidel Castro.
00:14:41Fidel Castro.
00:14:42Fidel Castro.
00:14:43Fidel Castro.
00:14:44Fidel Castro.
00:14:45Sometimes he looked at me and said,
00:14:47Che, how do you envy the beard?
00:14:49Look at the turns that life gives me.
00:14:51That he envy the beard.
00:14:53He's a world symbol and eternal symbol.
00:14:59Che becomes a known person in the world
00:15:03from the Cuban Revolution.
00:15:05Even the name of Che is called Cubans.
00:15:07They say Che.
00:15:09Che, come here, come here, come here, all Che.
00:15:11Che was this new revolutionary identity
00:15:13that he craved. He craved to possess.
00:15:17Che actually functioned from that moment on
00:15:19on various levels.
00:15:23He was first and foremost
00:15:25the supreme inquisitor, the prosecutor
00:15:27at La Cabaña for war criminals.
00:15:29He became Minister of Industries,
00:15:31President of the Central Bank.
00:15:33He was 28 years old.
00:15:35Onesicabad had become Che.
00:15:37This new man
00:15:39who was able to overcome
00:15:41all obstacles
00:15:45in order to pursue his objective.
00:15:47Which was
00:15:49a revolution.
00:15:57I knew about the revolution.
00:15:59I knew about Fidel Castro.
00:16:01Because those images
00:16:03of the revolution
00:16:05that were published in Life Magazine
00:16:07in 1959.
00:16:09I remember clearly to this day.
00:16:11And I was quite struck by
00:16:13seeing this supposed leader
00:16:15of a revolution.
00:16:16Because revolution in my mind
00:16:17was something that was strong
00:16:19and dramatic and involved
00:16:21death and chaos.
00:16:23And here was this person supposedly
00:16:25responsible for a revolution
00:16:27in front of the Lincoln Memorial
00:16:29and his head off.
00:16:35Fidel understood the importance
00:16:37of surrounding himself
00:16:39with major photographers.
00:16:41Both to make documents
00:16:43of the revolution
00:16:45and of his presence
00:16:47and to give material
00:16:49that could be used
00:16:51for propaganda.
00:16:53And in the 60s,
00:16:55the publicity agencies
00:16:59in the February of Cuba
00:17:00ended.
00:17:01They were intervening.
00:17:02And I was working
00:17:03only on the revolution
00:17:05but already as a photographer.
00:17:07And then we nucleated
00:17:09Roberto, Osvaldo, Corda, Corrales,
00:17:13Ernesto Fernandez.
00:17:15And we started to publish
00:17:17entire pages in the newspaper
00:17:18and everything that happened in the country.
00:17:19Livorio, you know the way
00:17:21Livorio is.
00:17:22And me, we were all the same.
00:17:23We felt that we all had different,
00:17:25very defined styles of working.
00:17:27También teníamos la costumbre
00:17:28cuando terminábamos
00:17:29un trabajo colectivo
00:17:30enseñarnos la foto
00:17:31y escoger nosotros
00:17:32las mejores fotos
00:17:33de todos nosotros
00:17:34para el periódico.
00:17:35And you can throw them
00:17:36on a table
00:17:37and you didn't have to turn them over.
00:17:38You know whose picture
00:17:39belongs to who.
00:17:40Because they had reflected
00:17:41all that part
00:17:45that if we had not done that,
00:17:47the revolution
00:17:48didn't exist.
00:17:49He didn't work
00:17:53specifically for the newspaper.
00:17:55His work,
00:17:58what he seemed to be good,
00:17:59he took it to the newspaper
00:18:01and he admitted it
00:18:02or if it didn't fit
00:18:04he didn't publish it.
00:18:05The main thing
00:18:07was the newspaper,
00:18:08not the photo of us.
00:18:09Inmediatamente,
00:18:10el determinado,
00:18:11o el acto,
00:18:12o la actividad,
00:18:13o lo que fuera,
00:18:14corrían a sus
00:18:15estudios fotográficos
00:18:16a revelar sus
00:18:17rollos fotográficos
00:18:18para enseguida
00:18:19imprimirlas
00:18:20y llevarla al periódico.
00:18:21Porque date cuenta
00:18:22que lo que pasa hoy
00:18:23sale mañana
00:18:24en el periódico.
00:18:25Pero tú tenías
00:18:26que imprimirla
00:18:27en el baño
00:18:28del hotel.
00:18:29No.
00:18:30No.
00:18:31No.
00:18:32No.
00:18:33No.
00:18:34No.
00:18:35No.
00:18:36No.
00:18:37No.
00:18:38No.
00:18:39No.
00:18:40No.
00:18:41No.
00:18:42No.
00:18:43No.
00:18:44No.
00:18:45No.
00:18:46No.
00:18:47No.
00:18:48No.
00:18:49No.
00:18:50No.
00:18:51No.
00:18:52No.
00:18:53No.
00:18:54No.
00:18:55No.
00:18:56No.
00:18:57No.
00:18:58No.
00:18:59No.
00:19:00No.
00:19:01No.
00:19:02No.
00:19:03chemical, you were a revelator.
00:19:05And that's how we were doing all the things of the revolution.
00:19:18The Niña was the really transition image of Alberto Corda's work
00:19:24from a fashion photographer, a commercial photographer,
00:19:27to then dedicating his life to the revolution.
00:19:30He recognized that this little girl was living without anything.
00:19:34This piece of wood that she's holding here in her hands was her doll.
00:19:40And realizing the inequalities that existed in Cuba,
00:19:43he couldn't justify the work that he was doing anymore.
00:19:45And he sort of left the whole world of commercial and fashion photography
00:19:48because of this one image.
00:19:51He made the transition from being a fashion photographer
00:19:53to a press photographer, but he kept a lot of his instincts,
00:19:57his natural eye for a certain aesthetic.
00:20:00Y mi padre siempre acompañaba a Fidel.
00:20:06Por eso te digo, era fotógrafo acompañante, no fotógrafo oficial.
00:20:10Sin embargo, con el Che, el Che no le gustaba que lo retrataran.
00:20:23Te pedí una cámara para verla, para tenerla en las manos.
00:20:36Y no le gustaba que lo retrataran.
00:20:38Me he quedaté una cámara para tenerla en luz.
00:20:40Mi teoría es que él fue un fotógrafo.
00:20:42Él hizo un trabajo como un fotógrafo en México,
00:20:45y toda su vida, él siempre tenía una cámara.
00:20:48No sé de un fotógrafo que le gustaba tener su foto tomada.
00:20:54I remember the story that he told me of wanting to photograph Che.
00:21:01Yes. Che, when my father was introduced, he told him,
00:21:08Commander, we came to do an interview here.
00:21:11He asked him if he had cut caña, where he was.
00:21:15My father said, I'm from La Habana.
00:21:17I'm very proud that he was from La Habana.
00:21:19Have you cut caña some time?
00:21:21He said, no, never.
00:21:22Che thrust a machete in his hands and said,
00:21:26After you've finished cutting cane for a week, then you can take my pictures.
00:21:31Es un trabajo muy duro.
00:21:35And it was Alberto.
00:21:37And the sugar cane feels cutting cane for a week
00:21:40until he's finally allowed to photograph Che.
00:21:43And that was Che.
00:21:44Yes, that was Che.
00:21:45Yes, that was Che.
00:21:46But Che was a minister.
00:21:47He always had to do work on weekends.
00:21:48He had to explain what was the work on weekends.
00:21:49He did it as a way of teaching.
00:21:50And he did it on weekends, which was a day free of work,
00:21:53but to produce a little bit more.
00:21:54But basically, it was a teaching of what had to do in that time for the revolution.
00:21:56He was one of the architects of the socialization of the revolution.
00:22:15And to kick start it, he began programs like volunteer labor, which drove everyone else crazy,
00:22:25especially the people who worked for him or other ministers,
00:22:28because instead of going home to his family on Sundays, he went off to cut sugar.
00:22:32And they all felt that they had to as well.
00:22:34Filled with the energy of victory, Che, Fidel, and their comrades began to build a new society.
00:22:43But now they had become involved in a larger game as pawns between two world superpowers.
00:22:49It was the Eisenhower years of Cold War intensification.
00:22:54The United States at the time was probably at its most imperial.
00:22:58Soviets, they wanted basically to have a thorn in Uncle Sam's side, 90 miles offshore.
00:23:05And all they really wanted was a military base,
00:23:08and they were prepared to subsidize it by buying their sugar.
00:23:12They weren't interested in industrializing in Cuba.
00:23:18I imagine that the direction of the revolution
00:23:22realized that there were very difficult days.
00:23:26And somehow we had to prepare ourselves to defend ourselves.
00:23:31They bought a Bélgica of weapons that came from a ship called La Cubre.
00:23:39La Cubre enters into the Cuban port
00:23:42and when the workers are unloading that ship,
00:23:46there is an explosion.
00:23:49First, they didn't know what had happened.
00:23:53In the past, the people started to go there to help the wounded.
00:23:58And in the few minutes of that first explosion,
00:24:01there was the second explosion.
00:24:05It was a massacre.
00:24:06It was something terrible.
00:24:07People destroyed, thousands of wounded.
00:24:12It was one of the first acts of terrorism against our country.
00:24:19And that was the所有 of the individuals,
00:24:23and all the others have been shot against
00:24:24coming to this country,
00:24:37and so as much as others alive,
00:24:38the suburban community would invite us food
00:24:39with stainings!
00:24:41of the remains, because sometimes there were remains of people.
00:24:46One arm, one leg, the person had disappeared in fragments.
00:24:53And the tribune was improvised,
00:24:55in a corner of the Colón Cemetery, where Fidel spoke.
00:25:06When my father was in the multitude,
00:25:08because he put himself on the side of the people.
00:25:11He was involved in a group of people,
00:25:14in the near the tribune.
00:25:16And suddenly, in which he did a panhandle
00:25:20for the characters that were,
00:25:23Che Guevara came forward,
00:25:27at the moment when he passed his camera.
00:25:29Che as if he came to see that...
00:25:34Aquella humanidad adolorida,
00:25:39llorando por sus muertos, por su pueblo.
00:25:44Pero solamente le dio tiempo a hacer dos fotos.
00:25:47Porque el Che llegó, se asomó,
00:25:49y él dispara una primera foto.
00:25:52Cambia la cámara y tira una segunda foto.
00:25:57Y acto seguido, el Che volvió a irse de ahí.
00:26:07Y siempre le oí la historia a mi padre,
00:26:11de que cuando él llegó a su estudio,
00:26:14se mete en el laboratorio,
00:26:16y revela esa foto con idea de llevarlo al periódico, esa noche.
00:26:21Y el Che...
00:26:23It was just another photograph that he was taking.
00:26:25He was fulfilling a job.
00:26:27The sequence is he takes everybody at the tribune.
00:26:30Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
00:26:31One of them is che.
00:26:32He showed up, bim, bam, he took it.
00:26:34He kept on going.
00:26:35Publicaron una foto de Fidel,
00:26:38que se ve con la bandera cubana detrás,
00:26:41y Fidel con dos cohetes en la mano.
00:26:45That was an important thing at that moment.
00:26:48Alberto has a half a roll of film of Fidel showing the thing,
00:26:53because he knew that picture.
00:26:54Newsworthy, that was the important one, not the other one.
00:26:59If it would have been any kind of important for him,
00:27:01he would have taken three, four, five.
00:27:02I know Alberto.
00:27:03There were other photos of the people crying,
00:27:08from the moment that came, Fidel, the Che, Dorthy Koss.
00:27:13But, well, I already explained that the newspaper
00:27:15didn't put it on the next day.
00:27:20However, my father liked it so much,
00:27:23it impressed me so much that photo,
00:27:26He knew what he had.
00:27:37He knew that he had something really special
00:27:40in that particular photograph.
00:27:42What he didn't know was the impact it would have on the world.
00:27:49Gordo's photograph was not published the next day,
00:27:51nor for months after that.
00:27:53He carefully filed the negative away.
00:27:56In 1965, like the image,
00:28:03Che disappeared from view.
00:28:07Che's departure from Cuba has, it's a long story,
00:28:11but it has its origins in following the Cuban Missile Crisis,
00:28:16when he was extremely angered over the way the Soviets
00:28:20had cut a deal with the Americans behind his and Fidel's back.
00:28:23Combined with him losing subsequently the struggle to industrialize Cuba.
00:28:32He wanted to educate Cubans.
00:28:34He wanted to take it to a new level.
00:28:35And in that, he failed.
00:28:37No matter what he started, he never finished anything.
00:28:42He always went on to something else.
00:28:44And what he left behind wasn't complete.
00:28:46Because he was not a guy to be behind a desk in a ministery as a politician.
00:28:52There's stories of him showing up in embassies, you know, full of boots all dirty and stuff like that,
00:29:01and dirty rugs in an embassy and stuff.
00:29:03He didn't give a shit about that.
00:29:05As a matter of fact, I think he did it on purpose.
00:29:07He was a guy for action.
00:29:10He was a man that wanted to be in the battlefields where the workers were.
00:29:15And with 14 guys, 30 guys, it doesn't matter.
00:29:19He was a man looking once again for a cause to throw himself into.
00:29:24He was a guy who wanted to be there, you know, open in new ways and doing the tough
00:29:30work that you have to do when you have to open a new door.
00:29:33The Cuba door was open.
00:29:35I don't have anything to do here.
00:29:37Goodbye.
00:29:47The legend started to spread out that Che was missing.
00:29:51He disappeared.
00:29:52He vanished.
00:29:53And he was every place.
00:29:55As a matter of fact, there were rumors that he was in Vietnam.
00:29:58There were rumors that he was in Africa.
00:30:00There were rumors that he was all over the place.
00:30:06Paddy Match had blazoned it on the full page,
00:30:10a version of the Corda photograph.
00:30:11And nobody knows how Paddy Match got hold of it.
00:30:13There was an article asking, where is the Che?
00:30:25How did that get there?
00:30:27Well, we start doing our research and we find that in August appears a whole page of the image,
00:30:33not credited, but it's called the official portrait of Comandante El Che Guevara.
00:30:40The photograph was known in parts of the world even before that.
00:30:53The first time I saw the photo of Che, it was published in the periódico Revolución.
00:30:59It was in 1961, I think.
00:31:01It became in a paper announcing that Che was going to speak at some kind of activity or something like that.
00:31:07The event happens, but then it's stopped midstream during the morning.
00:31:26News comes of the invasion from the United States.
00:31:31And Che goes off to defend his new country against an invasion.
00:31:35But it was a small piece.
00:31:38I don't think it impressed anybody.
00:31:41I don't think it even impressed the people of the newspaper.
00:31:46A glimpse here, a trace there.
00:31:49It's unclear where Corda's image first appeared.
00:31:52But when Paddy Match asked, where is Che?
00:31:55A lone poster is held aloft in the crowd.
00:31:58Where the poster was first published is more certain.
00:32:00Paddy Match with the huge circulation is really immeasurable, how far that entered people's
00:32:07consciousness.
00:32:08But as a poster, certainly Feltrinelli is at the beginning.
00:32:13Feltrinelli was a publisher of Milan, Italy.
00:32:22They had his publishing house.
00:32:23They edited books, posters and stuff like that.
00:32:26A radical publisher with very radical politics.
00:32:28He was hot.
00:32:29He was the hot, leftist publisher in Milan of that time.
00:32:35La historia es que vino Feltrinelli a Cuba, y ahí de ella muy acorde para que le diera
00:32:42unas fotos a Feltrinelli de Che.
00:32:45Alberto me indicó hacer esas dos copias y que este señor venía al día siguiente y yo
00:32:52entregárselo.
00:32:52O sea, que yo fui el que procesé esas dos primeras copias.
00:32:55If Feltrinelli wanted that image for a poster or not, I don't know.
00:32:59Yo pienso que Feltrinelli no era bobo.
00:33:02Imaginaba algo, quería alguna foto nueva de él.
00:33:05Y estuvo en casa de Che y creo que se llevó dos o tres fotos.
00:33:08Entre ella, la de la cara de Che.
00:33:10Y piró un millón de afiches en aquel, de poster en aquel momento.
00:33:16Hundreds of thousands of posters, supposedly, which were distributed and or sold,
00:33:21particularly throughout Europe.
00:33:33What I do know definitely that that image was out before Che had died.
00:33:40That I know for a fact.
00:33:44As to the question, where was Che?
00:33:47He was fueling other fires in the Congo.
00:33:53El Che no hay que olvidarse que siempre hablaba de exportar la revolución.
00:33:57El Che hablaba de un, de una revolución como un estado de la conciencia.
00:34:03Ese tiempo, ese año que tuvo el Che en el Congo, casi el año que tuvo el Che en el Congo,
00:34:09nosotros no logramos en todo ese tiempo que tuvimos ni un solo soldado.
00:34:14O sea, no era fácil organizar una guerrilla en ese, en ese continente y en ese, y en ese estado de Congo.
00:34:24Tuvimos que salir, él lo sintió mucho, hasta última hora él estuvo reuniente a salir, no querían.
00:34:32Pero inmediatamente que salió, ya él estaba proyectándose hasta hacia Bolivia.
00:34:37Porque la CIA lo situaba en Santo Domingo, la otra versión de que Fidel lo había hecho matar,
00:34:46y estaba sepultado ocultamente, de que nunca había podido salir del Congo.
00:34:52Todas esas versiones se manejaban, no se imaginaban que estuviera en Bolivia.
00:34:57Y fue un fracaso en Bolivia, ante un ejército muy pobre, muy pobre.
00:35:03En cualquier país del mundo llega una guerrilla, por muy extranjera que sea, por muy Che el que sea,
00:35:08se tiene que defender, y el ejército hizo lo que tuvo que hacer. Se defendió.
00:35:14Cuando leo Che el diario de los últimos días en Bolivia, veo a un hombre que, en algún nivel,
00:35:22knows what's coming. Che felt no fear.
00:35:29And that soon became apparent to Fidel, to the extent that he eventually had to assign men to look after Che,
00:35:37so that he wouldn't put himself constantly into danger, go to the front, get killed.
00:35:42Tengo la impresión de él, él no encontraba mejor muerte, como los viejos samuráis del Japón,
00:35:51de morir por el honor, por la libertad, por la patria.
00:35:55Él era un hombre arriesgado, pero no era un hombre que estaba pensando en la muerte.
00:36:00Pero esa cosa de él, de estar en primer lugar, de ser el ejemplo, de ir delante en todo,
00:36:07eso fue lo que le costó la vida.
00:36:09Ese grito que el Che lanza cuando le dice a Terán, a su asesino,
00:36:18apunte bien que va a matar a un hombre.
00:36:21Ese es el grito que escuchó cada persona a lo ancho y alrededor de todo el planeta.
00:36:28La muerte de Ernesto es una cosa histórica, pero tiene un agregado que es mi amistad.
00:36:57Me mataron a mi amigo.
00:36:59Posteriormente, después del asesinato del Che en Bolivia,
00:37:16cuando se hace la velada solemne aquí en la Plaza de la Revolución,
00:37:20y Fidel es el que hace las palabras fundamentales, las principales de allí.
00:37:26Yo recuerdo que esa noche estaba convocada la manifestación
00:37:30y Corda, por supuesto, iba a fotografiar.
00:37:34Y salimos caminando con los equipos por el medio de la multitud
00:37:37y ya cuando desembocamos en la plaza y vemos que esa imagen está allí,
00:37:42con la bandera media hasta atrás de la tribuna que se hizo,
00:37:46Alberto se viró para mí y me dijo, coño, Chen, mira mi foto.
00:37:49Y el año siguiente de la muerte del Che se le puso Año del Guerrillero Heroico.
00:38:04Es muy posible que a partir de esa fecha
00:38:07él le haya puesto a su foto el nombre de Guerrillero Heroico.
00:38:12Esta foto era todo lo contrario a esa imagen del Che muerto.
00:38:26Este es el Che vivo.
00:38:30Esa foto se hace famosa porque al Che lo mataron.
00:38:34Y el Che era en aquel momento una figura revolucionaria en el mundo
00:38:38que estaban haciendo una serie de revoluciones.
00:38:41A number of the plastic artists, the painters and stuff like that at the time
00:38:45did a number of posters here using that image.
00:38:52That was all done in that time, exactly right after Che's death.
00:38:56One poster in Cuba after his death would multiply into thousands
00:39:14as artists began to resurrect Gorda's photograph.
00:39:18His image was emerging as a universal icon for struggle.
00:39:20Pero cuando chocó duro de verdad fue cuando mayo de 68 cuando aquella gran cosa de los estudiantes
00:39:30en mayo de 68 en París, que salió la imagen del Che.
00:39:35Y hizo una explosión.
00:39:36Esa foto se siente en vitalidad.
00:39:41Se had gustado más a skyper.
00:39:45Y caguére.
00:39:45La imagen de la Μ aim viel, que salió a la imagen del Cheyenne
00:39:48como una edificación de lungs, al centro de edu Stefan,
00:39:49caattered al París, al Guardado Chile.
00:39:50La imagen de París près de EE completion,
00:39:51la imagen de París, a Pósito, a Pósito, a París cordial.
00:39:52to Paris, to Belfast in 1968. It's sited in Vietnam, it's sited in Washington, it's
00:39:59sited in Russia.
00:40:00In the course of the Paris student riots in 1968, the poster as a political medium
00:40:05came into its own very strongly and the poster became almost an icon of resistance, not necessarily
00:40:12the Guevara poster, all posters were used as icons of resistance and items of resistance
00:40:17against whatever regime they were resisting. And they were a very effective political medium
00:40:21because they could be mass produced so easily. Offset printing, mimeograph, later Xerox,
00:40:26and certainly access to silkscreen became the hallmark insignia of the revolutionary movement.
00:40:34And of course we believed then that revolution, one form or another, would be upon us and Che Guevara
00:40:41was the example and the inspiration.
00:40:44At that time, everybody was exchanging bits and pieces. So that's how I first came.
00:40:50upon anything about Che Guevara. The portrait or the icon, I think I first saw Jim Fitzpatrick
00:41:03did it as a sort of a pop art.
00:41:09Sartre had met Corda in Cuba and presumably Corda, as they always did, gave Sartre a copy of his photograph, which he then passed on and it ended up in my hands. And I turned it into the now famous Che Guevara graphic. I liked Che Guevara. I met him and he was an immensely personable, interesting, fascinating, humorous man. I saw the photographs of him brutally murdered. I was outraged at the manner of his murder when it came to light a couple of months later. And I felt that she was a
00:41:26And I felt that she should be remembered forever. And I felt it was my job to make sure that happened.
00:41:43I suppose people from my background were drawn to that image because of what Che Guevara was seen to represent.
00:41:54The poster was copied by revolutionary groups throughout Europe and throughout the world. And they used that image to make money for their organizations. And that's where we see all the versions of the poster coming into being. And it moves from this image, which is directly about Cuba, directly about the life of one individual, to becoming symbolic of political ideologies and about change.
00:42:22This massive rebellion against authority from students in Paris and in the U.S. and other parts of the Western world. So Che was this force for rebellion. And it was very much, it began at least as very much radical politics.
00:42:41Anytime you bring the truth, it's sad. Anytime you're speaking the truth, you're a revolutionary. Che, it was easy to see what he was saying. He said, if you can't get what you want, you can go take it.
00:42:51You can go take it. And that means by, you know, little Malcolm X in there by any means necessary. The beret. I mean, you know, Black Panthers back in my day, they wore the berets.
00:43:02And still to this day, that means strength and power and something that's cool because the Black Panthers were cool.
00:43:14There he is. He's long haired. He's beautiful. He's virile looking. He's angry.
00:43:20The Vietnam War, the anti-Vietnam War protests were underway. Bob Dylan was beating up a storm. The Rolling Stones, the Beatles.
00:43:32This very good-looking man with his hair just the right length, his beard just the right way, lands into the public consciousness at the moment of the hippie movement when hair was in.
00:43:42And so he became this symbol of this liberated youth in the 60s.
00:43:47So here you have the beginnings of this iconic character being symbolized for different causes at different moments in time, happening at the very time of his death.
00:43:59The Che image lends itself to being a poster perfectly because it is so it works so effectively, even just as a black and white image.
00:44:21Of course, with the black, white and red, it's unstoppable.
00:44:26Pretty soon after that, I realized that the multiplication of the image was in itself an index of his significance.
00:44:36I mean, the Che image was just everywhere towards the end of the 1960s.
00:44:47After the poster came out and people adopted this image as a symbol, everybody took it as being their own.
00:44:54And issues of copyright were very unclear to most people in those days.
00:44:58Cuba, at that stage, basically rejected international copyright laws.
00:45:03Well, Fidel was a communist. He didn't believe in copyright. Images were free. Ideas were free.
00:45:09They were there to be shared by people. In some ways, it's completely an anathema, the notion of copyright.
00:45:15Because the feeling was if you own the image, if you own the photograph or a poster, that you had the right then to reproduce it as well.
00:45:24The Che image was helped in this way because it was free from the constraints of copyright.
00:45:30So you have this sort of multiplicity of change. You have all of the creativity that's placed upon this.
00:45:37I very deliberately made the image copyright free, and that was one of the reasons, I believe, for its instant proliferation.
00:45:43There were a number of versions of it out, including one which was the photographic version, copyrighted to Vettronelli.
00:45:48I made my version absolutely copyright free. Anybody who wanted to use it, and I encourage people to use it,
00:45:53I wanted, as I once said, to breed like rabbits.
00:45:56And it was that kind of multiplying effect, that multiplicity of a Che image,
00:46:02seen again and again on poster after poster, that began to bring it into global consciousness.
00:46:10Any image that has become important in the photographic history, the history of photography,
00:46:14was made important by the usage that they did of it, not because the photographer wanted it that way,
00:46:20because it was used in a certain way, it was used under certain circumstances,
00:46:24and it turned into who the hell knows what.
00:46:34It was this kind of singular moment in time that the image first appeared,
00:46:41that a new kind of aesthetic in painting began to emerge.
00:46:50And so the kind of conglomeration of the Corda image with the pop art image,
00:46:56the removal of the chiaroscuro, the tonal characteristic of Corda's image,
00:47:02and turning it into the kind of silhouetted Warholian image.
00:47:06It has a kind of physical openness that allows the viewer to read it in any way that they want.
00:47:13Everybody can invest their own fantasies in those eyes.
00:47:17And it applies to anybody. You don't know if the guy is colored, if he's white,
00:47:21if he's Chinese, if he's African, if he's Indian.
00:47:25He looks like everything. He looks like everybody's symbol.
00:47:31He actually became part of the pop culture all around the world,
00:47:34but he was very pop, even visually at the time.
00:47:37Well, still, you know, and thanks to Pope Art also, you know,
00:47:40Mao was clever.
00:47:42I think it was a big part of the pop culture.
00:47:47Simultaneously, it took all the various kinds of basic stylistic notions of pop and op
00:47:54and kind of hallucinatory images and made it part of that generation.
00:48:00Remember, we're also coming right out of the era of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe,
00:48:06and a very impactful point in movie history where all these young heroes, if you want,
00:48:12really made an enormous impact on the world.
00:48:15And that kind of conjunction between Che and the emerging world of the celebrity
00:48:21is another aspect that begins to place him within the pantheon of the celebrity
00:48:29at the same time that he is a revolutionary.
00:48:33He's a superstar, and he's a superstar who had a message.
00:48:39And so the conjunction between celebrity and revolutionary hero
00:48:42begins to happen within the popular culture.
00:48:45Perhaps only quarter of all the photographers surrounding Castro
00:48:50could create within a single gesture, within a single face,
00:48:56an image that would represent the kind of aspirations, vision,
00:49:02heroicism, youth, rebellion of the revolution.
00:49:09Carter was very focused, again, on the creation of something beautiful.
00:49:16So he crops the photo, and the original photo had a palm tree
00:49:21and the profile of a man on the other side.
00:49:23Carter cropped those out of there, and that's to create the beautiful consistency
00:49:27of his portrait.
00:49:28But in the process, he separates the moment from history.
00:49:32That's the work of a fashion photographer,
00:49:34he's trying to create something that is beautiful,
00:49:37something that is quite separate from the historical moment.
00:49:42When we look at it, we don't see it and say,
00:49:44ah, that was Che at the Rally of La Coupe.
00:49:47There it is.
00:49:48We don't understand the Che photo as we do say the Iwo Jima,
00:49:51famous photo from the Second World War,
00:49:54or the naked girl running down the streets in Vietnam.
00:49:57These are located in time and place.
00:50:00They are historical press photos.
00:50:01The Che photo is an artistic creation.
00:50:04It is a portrait.
00:50:05It can be anywhere, and that's part of its iconic power.
00:50:12And I think that any artist would take great pride in the fact
00:50:15that people adopted an image of yours,
00:50:18an image that you had taken in this case,
00:50:20and just taken to it as a symbol,
00:50:24as a symbol for world-class struggle,
00:50:27as a symbol for freedom, as a symbol for hope.
00:50:32In the same way that Gorda's portrait has become a symbol,
00:50:39freed from its historical moment,
00:50:41the story of Che has moved beyond the man.
00:50:44He has become folklore, a guerrero heroico,
00:50:48an infallible heroic freedom fighter,
00:50:50lionized in the myths passed down through generations.
00:50:55When I first came to school,
00:50:57I were always like Che, Che, Che, Che,
00:51:12He's been ché, ché, ché.
00:51:15I'm interested in him because...
00:51:18because of the stories that I've learned from him
00:51:21they've made me from the school of young people
00:51:22to now that I've grown and they've been great.
00:51:25If we didn't have heroes,
00:51:27if we didn't have heroes, what would it be?
00:51:32When you're little, I mean,
00:51:34growing up in a sort of leftist family,
00:51:37it becomes a bedtime story in a way.
00:51:39What happened, you know?
00:51:41The whole epic of his journeys
00:51:43and how he ended up in Mexico
00:51:45and the whole feat of the Cuban Revolution,
00:51:47it's always an incredible story.
00:51:53This was a guy who had ideals,
00:51:55who lived by them, very clearly lived by them,
00:51:58and then he died for them, and he died young.
00:52:01I mean, those are the components that make mythologies.
00:52:04If we don't have heroes, we build them, we invent them.
00:52:07We need people to follow.
00:52:09All. The human being.
00:52:11The Bolivians, the North Americans, the Chinese, all.
00:52:13The myth behind Che and the story has a very biblical feel to it.
00:52:25And this comparison with Christ actually happened very early,
00:52:28instantly, you might say, on his death.
00:52:30And this song was aavia.
00:52:32Who else was named?
00:52:34And this song was named by the Afrikanal,
00:52:35was named by the Afrikanal.
00:52:37And this song was named by the Afrikanal as the year of the French.
00:52:40And this song was named by the Afrikanal as the war.
00:52:43It's not for nothing that women in Valle Grande celebrate
00:53:12his life on the Day of the Dead and pray to him as a saint.
00:53:18It's the way they can understand him, you know, the man who wandered through the wilderness.
00:53:23We didn't know who he was at the time.
00:53:25We were the handmaidens to his death.
00:53:27There's this idea of collective guilt.
00:53:30The beret that he habitually wore, including in the Caudre photograph, becomes a crown of
00:53:41thorns.
00:53:42The lapel of a coat becomes the wound on Jesus' breast.
00:53:48And the somewhat foreshortened photograph that we have by Alberta, taken in Valle Grande,
00:53:55is compared with Mantegna's dead Christ in the Brera Museum in Milan.
00:54:01Las ultraciones of the Dead and in a οιrocríbete por mil vidas futuras.
00:54:09To the victory, comandante, por mil vidas futuras.
00:54:21But for me, he was a very big man, very big, that made a lot for humanity.
00:54:30Like all human beings, we can in a certain moment commit a mistake.
00:54:35But in him there were no mistakes.
00:54:38The ideas of him were not wrong or wrong.
00:54:43I'm not a believer, but if I was to believe in a god, I would believe in Che Guevara.
00:54:51It's a very convenient and beautiful narrative and all history is written this way.
00:55:00Every country has and every political movement has its myths and its stories.
00:55:04I think that this photo changed my father's life in a way, in a way more emotional way.
00:55:21He was proud of the image. He was happy that it be used in a radical context.
00:55:36So he said, what do you imagine? The famous one I made with that photo. I didn't do anything.
00:55:46What do you say, Malda?
00:55:48One of the things that I think has been quite fundamental in its explosive growth around the world, ironically, is the lack of copyright associated with it.
00:55:58That meant that Alberto Correa, the photographer who took it, who was a believer in the revolution, you know, had to also accept the fact that he would not have any control over this image and would not be able to enforce it if he wanted to live in the Cuba that he wanted to live in.
00:56:10So he could do nothing about it.
00:56:14Feltrinelli was given a print or two prints, as Alberto told me a number of times, and Corden never got a penny from any of that.
00:56:23In fact, the poster itself had at the bottom copyright Feltrinelli.
00:56:28How far Feltrinelli may have cheated the author by not putting his name on the poster, not giving any money for it, this is of much disgust.
00:56:38The whole myth that then grew up, and that Corden constantly refers to, is Feltrinelli made a fortune from his image, and this Cuban photographer didn't make a penny.
00:56:51I don't think that's the case. Feltrinelli was an extraordinarily wealthy man. He was a radical. He'd been in the Communist Party. He supported authors and people of ideas all over the world.
00:57:04And he wouldn't have sold the poster, as Corden increasingly claimed with some resentment.
00:57:13Yes, it's true that Feltrinelli did not credit Alberto Corden for taking the image. Did any other photographer at that time, photojournalists get credited for taking their photographs? No, they didn't. Artists get credited. Photographers during that epoca didn't.
00:57:26It wasn't until 1980 that anybody knew that Corda, in fact, was the photographer of that image.
00:57:37Corda, hopefully, has made what he deserves, but aside from that, it really is a public domain piece, and I don't know if anyone really can say what it should or shouldn't be used for.
00:57:52I believe it doesn't necessarily belong to a specific person. I think the people as a whole own the image of Che.
00:58:08The public expectation is that this does not belong to anybody, that Che, in fact, as people often say, belongs to all of us.
00:58:12From Argentina to Cuba, all the way to Kenya, that's a freedom fighter.
00:58:21So, in a sense, Che has become someone that everyone can appropriate. Capitalists can do and will appropriate him.
00:58:28The Japanese will make snowboards with his image on them. Americans, Cubans, and English, and Germans will make T-shirts with his face on them.
00:58:39Beer, soda, you know, he's on cigarette holders. You know that Che is everywhere.
00:58:45In a swimming suit, in Brazil, in a zunguinha, which is a little tanga, I don't know how to say that, that had the figure of Che Guevara right in the middle.
00:58:58It's very good, no? It's very funny.
00:59:00You find it in a wallet, you find it even in a corbata, there are half of children, I found it in France.
00:59:08Incredible. A child who can have a year with half of a half that says Che, and he says Che, that's commerce.
00:59:17This is the image of Che Guevara with Bob Marley.
00:59:19Nothing, I'm an observer. So, all the time I observe, I take the symbols and mix them without devotion and without respect for those symbols. If not, I can't do it.
00:59:34There are many things that, you know, devices that movies, cartoons, everything used as sort of timeless hooks. And I think that Che image has it.
00:59:45So it seems like we have enough people now. When do we start taking down the corporations?
00:59:51Yeah, man, the corporations. Right now they're raping the world for money.
00:59:55Yeah, so where are they? Let's go get them.
00:59:57So you have it as an object of humor. You have it being ridiculed on The Simpsons and then in South Park. So it's reinvented constantly.
01:00:07Look at soccer. Look how the Che image kind of manifests itself through sport.
01:00:15And this is something that has become exacerbated really, I suppose, by the Internet, where it just floats out in cyberspace, it's picked up and used and so forth.
01:00:24You have this kind of, like, license to just head out into the world and just, you know, commercialize anything if you like. And we get this sort of like, you know, this fiesta, this big kind of globalization party.
01:00:41One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. And like Che said, a true revolutionary is motivated by love. That's right. That's what's up. Anything you want. Five minutes, y'all, to get over and go.
01:00:58It can exist outside of capitalism as a critique of capitalism for in a pure form for a very brief amount of time. The moment it's seen as having any value in terms of the capital.
01:01:16cultural currency that it can be used to sell anything, it will be exploited by capitalism.
01:01:23Immediately that the people who are in charge of making money realized that there was a possibility. They commercialized the whole entire hippie movement.
01:01:29And you can go to a big department store and you just can buy the symbols that they were using at the time. You can buy the jackets that they were using at the time.
01:01:36Everything. And then it's gone. The purity of what it represents actually is the opposite of what we are using at the time.
01:01:45You can buy the jackets that they were using at the time. Everything. And then it's gone.
01:01:51The purity of what it represents actually is the opposite of what we are buying. And that happens now at tremendous speed.
01:02:03Now a movement, especially the youth movements all around the world, they are metabolized by the system in a matter of sometimes even months.
01:02:13As soon as somebody just realized that that's what is coming right now, punk, you name it, the X generation, you're going to be, it's going to be sold to you.
01:02:22As soon as something resonates, it will be exploited. And that Shay image had been exploited. And I felt like my throwing my version into the, into the pot was, was both participating and, and sort of commenting on, hey, one more.
01:02:43I had really started utilizing different symbols that I thought were, had been seen a lot and hijacking them for my own use.
01:02:52My idea behind the Obey Giant campaign was to get people to question everything they're inundated with.
01:02:58My image of Andre the Giant turned into my own icon. And then by manipulating symbolism, by associating my image with, um, with the revolutionary Che Guevara image,
01:03:12I felt that, uh, that would get people to wonder even more what I was doing or assume that it was revolutionary or, um, or important.
01:03:21As the creator of an image like that, you really have no choice but to either decide to participate in the capitalist aspect of it or to boycott that and have someone else profit from your creation.
01:03:35And you can go kicking and screaming and a couple of people will listen, but everybody else will just say, I'm glad I got a T-shirt.
01:03:42You are a Che Guevara, T-shirt wearer, and you have no idea of who he is. You are a Che Guevara, T-shirt wearer, and you have no idea of what he did. You're not interested in politics.
01:04:01I mean, the Che image empire has to be worth so many millions of dollars.
01:04:08I don't think that Che Guevara would like to use his figure in that way.
01:04:13So, I imagine that if Che would continue to live, I also think that he would criticize that posture of commercializing his image.
01:04:23The very system that he was trying to bring down is the very thing that's supporting his entire manuscript, like his image being manufactured and his memory being remanufactured and copied everywhere.
01:04:38The Che image was a figure associated with leftist protesters, and I always knew that it was associated with those kind of movements and those kind of people.
01:05:02I didn't really know that much about the person, Che itself, until I'd say high school.
01:05:08And that was when I started realizing exactly what things he stood for and what things he did.
01:05:13I don't remember when, but it's just from the time I was young.
01:05:18I guess the people that I associated the image with were with punk rockers, like young people who were, you know, of the hippie mindset.
01:05:27And that's why his image actually reminded me a lot of Bob Marley.
01:05:31And so, I actually thought he was a musician.
01:05:33I'm wearing it, but you have to look at what's under his image.
01:05:38And it's sort of like a play on words.
01:05:40This shirt brought to you by capitalism.
01:05:42Wearing it in this context, it's just acknowledging the very system that it is coming from.
01:05:48So, in a way, we're reminding people capitalism is the reason why this shirt exists.
01:05:56It doesn't seem fair to him to turn him into a shallow god with some sort of fan club.
01:06:08You know, it shouldn't be about that.
01:06:10It should be about people who respect his political ideas and not people who just follow him because he looks cool.
01:06:17He is the ideal for kids my age, like kind of rebellious, long hair, you know, cool hippie beard.
01:06:30You know, this is all the stuff that kids my age want to be.
01:06:34They want to be going out, they want to be overthrowing right-wing oppressive government.
01:06:41If you think it makes you look like a rebel to wear something that you bought at Urban Outfitters or that everybody else has,
01:06:53you just sort of look lame.
01:06:55I don't think that person on your shirt represents what you believe.
01:06:58Unless you believe in violent revolution to overthrow your government
01:07:06and install a dogmatic Marxist totalitarian communist regime
01:07:12where the government tells you what you can think and say,
01:07:17what kind of t-shirts you can wear, what music you can listen to.
01:07:20I don't think that that is what you want.
01:07:23And if it is, that is absolutely the right t-shirt for you.
01:07:28You're separating the image from the man.
01:07:31And I guess other people can do that, you know, who don't have the same heritage as I do.
01:07:38But when I see that, it's impossible for me to separate that.
01:07:42Well, he has his contradictions too, political contradictions.
01:07:45And the way that he was probably pursuing his cause may be contradicted with the cause itself.
01:07:52Y el Che, y la revolución cubana y Castro eran un insulto para nosotros.
01:07:57El Che no significaba otra cosa que muerte, que socialismo.
01:08:04Y en ese estatus nosotros no queríamos el socialismo.
01:08:07Blood shedding was a big part of Che's message.
01:08:12So we now live in a world in which Che is used, as I say,
01:08:17sometimes in a peace march, sometimes it's been used in anti-death penalty protests.
01:08:23All of which, of course, upsets a lot of people who are opposed to what has happened in Cuba
01:08:29and want to sort of resurrect or recover what they say is the truth about Che.
01:08:36El Che Guevara es un asesino.
01:08:38Se supone que un médico, en vez de matarlo, tiene que salvar vidas y quiere ir al revés.
01:08:44So we can sort of conveniently forget about executions,
01:08:47an armed revolution that seems completely out of touch, really,
01:08:50with the much more accepted democratic means of change
01:08:55that are now as embraced by most people on the left.
01:08:57Now, however, we prefer to see Che disarmed.
01:09:01There are now doves and flowers and other emblems of peace,
01:09:07sometimes of justice, but never or seldom with the gun.
01:09:12You know, how can it be that people have transmogrified this image
01:09:19of a totalitarian, dogmatic Marxist
01:09:25and change that into a freedom-loving, you know,
01:09:29bohemian, uh, guy who questions authority?
01:09:34I don't know.
01:09:38Because I don't think that at this moment that represents
01:09:41the struggle of the people of Latin America.
01:09:44I, bullshit. I don't think it represents that.
01:09:47It represents something much more.
01:09:49Exactly what it is, I don't know.
01:09:51There is a feeling of pride that the figure of Che Guevara,
01:09:56a fighter for basically the working class, made it that far.
01:10:01That that symbol trespassed, uh, um, to many different people
01:10:05from many different social classes, too, all around the world.
01:10:09Uh, but at the same time, a certain sadness of the, uh, commercial use
01:10:16of something that was exactly the opposite.
01:10:18Exactly the opposite.
01:10:20What happens?
01:10:32What happens?
01:10:33That, from the death of my father,
01:10:35people thought, ah, if the author died of the photo,
01:10:39let's use it.
01:10:41Ya.
01:10:42No hay que pedir permiso para usarla.
01:10:44Ya.
01:10:45No hay que pedir permiso para usarla.
01:10:46Y no es así.
01:10:47Hay que pedir permiso para usarla.
01:10:49Porque yo soy, yo quedé como el este de Corda.
01:10:53O sea, es la heredera de su obra.
01:11:04Corda himself said that he wasn't concerned with people
01:11:08who were, uh, making t-shirts
01:11:12and making a few dollars, uh, here and there from it,
01:11:15as long as they were doing it with a respect to the image.
01:11:20Mi padre, por ejemplo, no quería que se utilizara ese imagen
01:11:24en cosas de vicios.
01:11:27Cuando digo vicios, estoy hablando de bebidas alcohólicas,
01:11:31de cigarros o tabacos, de perfumes.
01:11:36Corda began to realize that, uh, many people were profiting
01:11:41from something that he should also have some profits.
01:11:49As we move through history and we get to where we are now,
01:11:51uh, and Cuba has become more inserted into the global economy,
01:11:55more of a sort of participant of the global economy,
01:11:58and is seeking to sort of benefit from that,
01:12:00you've had a change.
01:12:01It now recognizes international copyright.
01:12:03It really wasn't until the 90s, towards the late 90s,
01:12:07that he finally did retain a lawyer
01:12:09to go after, um, his copyright for this one image only.
01:12:15The Corda family has been, um, seeking to use that copyright
01:12:21in a way to enforce what it sees as the integrity of the image,
01:12:26an effort to sort of protect Che, uh, and what he stands for,
01:12:29to prevent it from being used for commercial or inappropriate purposes.
01:12:34And the way one goes about stopping it is,
01:12:37you go after the people, I think,
01:12:39who are attempting to make the biggest amount of money,
01:12:42because otherwise, you'll, you yourself will end up in a poorhouse.
01:12:46Cecilia molestaba que lo utilizaran en bebidas y en cigarros.
01:12:51La última fue en septiembre del 2000,
01:12:53la famosa demanda que le puso al Esmirno, que se la ganó.
01:12:57Y me conta que llegó y le dijo a Fridel,
01:13:00te doy 50 mil dólares que le ganamos a los ingleses.
01:13:03Before that, he had sued Swatch,
01:13:06because they had produced a watch which, uh, used the image,
01:13:10and, uh, he won that lawsuit.
01:13:20I never heard that, that, uh, the photographer was unhappy
01:13:23with the way we use the image.
01:13:25I just heard that they wanted money.
01:13:31The image of Che on the bomb track single cover
01:13:33was predated by the image of Che on my amplifier.
01:13:36And so the image of Che Guevara on stage
01:13:38was kind of like a fifth member of Rage Against the Machine.
01:13:41That iconic image of Che, in a way,
01:13:43began to stand for the band and that band's politics.
01:13:46The band chose it not because of the photograph.
01:13:49We chose it because it was a photograph of Che Guevara.
01:13:51You know, we just thought this was like a, sort of a, uh,
01:13:53an image in the public domain.
01:13:55When we heard that it was owned by someone,
01:13:56we were happy to pay, you know,
01:13:58we had used it for commercial use.
01:14:00We had sold t-shirts around,
01:14:01so it seemed like any other image was something
01:14:03that we felt, you know, obliged to pay for.
01:14:05But it was, uh, they came after the band aggressively.
01:14:07to, uh, you know, to be paid a lot of money.
01:14:12The Guevara family, um,
01:14:14asked that the image be nationalized
01:14:16and become an image of Cuba,
01:14:19become a populist and free image.
01:14:21And there was a case around this,
01:14:23because the Corder estate,
01:14:25the family of Alberto Corder,
01:14:27fought that the copyright remain with them.
01:14:30And the lawyers, eh,
01:14:33almost always,
01:14:35the ones we have,
01:14:36win all the pledges.
01:14:38Until now they've always won the pledges,
01:14:41because they have pledged
01:14:43for a very fair reason,
01:14:45which is the right of the author,
01:14:47which I correspond to.
01:14:48And it's not that we can't allow it to use it.
01:14:52It's not that,
01:14:53it's not that we can use it.
01:14:54It's not that we can use it.
01:14:55But, like,
01:14:56as an art art,
01:14:59we have to ask permission.
01:15:01They are actually moving more and more towards a corporate model.
01:15:31They are defining the boundaries of the brand.
01:15:34They are saying it represents this and not that.
01:15:37It's not just a simple matter of, I want to use this image, this is what I'm going to
01:15:43use it for, and it's yes or no.
01:15:46Every use has its own constraints.
01:15:50Che is emerging into, as an image, as a participant in global copyright, he's getting his little
01:15:57R.
01:15:58The only way that logo is going to have power and actually mean something, it can
01:16:03be the greatest logo in the history of mankind.
01:16:05It can be the Nike swoosh, it can be Coca-Cola, it can be the McDonald's M.
01:16:12If what that thing purports to stand for, what that company says that it stands for, really
01:16:16doesn't stand for it, the logo is powerless.
01:16:21American Indians, or American Indians, or those in the United States, or the other in the
01:16:26United States.
01:16:27¿Qué es lo que se opera?
01:16:29¿Qué es lo que se opera?
01:16:33En la misma manera, en la misma manera, en la misma manera del mundo del mundo.
01:16:35En la misma manera, en la misma manera, en la misma manera.
01:16:37I think that as a pattern, this idea is to be an icon of the rebellion, of the challenge,
01:16:45of the confrontation with the institutional power.
01:16:49For me, the image certainly has not lost its power.
01:16:51When I wear my Che Guevara t-shirt, I know what it means, and I know what I mean when I wear it.
01:16:56It stood as a model, an anti-imperialist model.
01:16:59They've got the money, they've got the guns, they've got the power, and we're going to win.
01:17:04And that's hope and that optimism in the ability of people who do not have money, do not have power,
01:17:10do not have the military behind them, to be able to create a world that's better than the one that we inherited,
01:17:17is really what the idea of Che Guevara is all about.
01:17:21Osterisk II
01:17:26As far as my parents gave me the message of being free and hard to do,
01:17:33I come to the plaza with my children and I transmit them.
01:17:37My son, Ernesto ,
01:17:39and my other son, Fidel.
01:17:41Ironically, as much as the image seems to convey many different meanings, at the same
01:17:58time when somebody puts up a Che poster or a Che t-shirt, we think we know where they
01:18:03stand, at least in reference to the issue that they're dealing with. We know that they
01:18:06are opposed to it. We know that this is a strong position. We know also that it is one
01:18:10that says, I'm not going to give in.
01:18:17It's impossible to divorce what's happening in Latin America from what happened previously
01:18:31any more than it's impossible to divorce what's happening in Ireland at this time from what's
01:18:36happened over a long time. If the world was equal, there would be no need for anybody
01:18:43to fight to use armed actions or armed struggle. And the world isn't equal.
01:18:51It's an interesting moment of where this idealism or this search for change is right now, and
01:18:58how it stands also. It's more or less in the same situation as it was fifty years ago, the
01:19:00whole sort of distressed situation that exists, the difference between the white and the indigenous
01:19:07people and the rich and the poor and the rich and the poor and the rich and the poor.
01:19:11is very tangible.
01:19:32For many people who are at the forefront, the movements, the sort of the activists, the radical
01:19:52students, particularly young people, is that there's this sense of empowerment that they
01:19:56get from Che.
01:20:11They're uber-rebels in the world.
01:20:39They're uber-rebels in today's world. And Che is their ultimate icon. And there's a reason for that.
01:20:46Because the message that was behind Che is still, unfortunately, and I say unfortunately, because
01:20:52it was a message of confrontation with the system and confrontation with capitalism and confrontation
01:20:58with a very specific power at the time that is still probably now even bigger than the time.
01:21:04The essential thing that is Che Guevara is still in that image, you know, an uncompromising,
01:21:14you know, willingness to fight back against unjust authority, to fight back against exploitation,
01:21:20to stand with the poor and the oppressed, and to really, Che did a very unique thing, something that
01:21:25very few humans do. He lived his ideas.
01:21:29Che is understood to be the face of Icarus, in a sense.
01:21:35He resonates with the deepest of our mythologies.
01:21:38He's the boy who put on a pair of wax wings and said he would fly to the sun, and his father said,
01:21:44no, you can't, and he did anyway, and he died in the effort.
01:21:48He represents the perennial idealism of youth.
01:21:54The power, the political message, the essence of it is still there, and that's what's so interesting,
01:22:02so rich about it. It is, it's defiant in itself. Che was this defiant figure, the icon is defiant.
01:22:09It just survives. It goes on and on and on.
01:22:13BOOOOO
01:22:17BOOOOO
01:22:19BOOM
01:22:23De tu querida presencia, comandante Che Guevara
01:22:28Lo que nos queda es esa esperanza, ¿no? Y es lo que ha dado El Che con esa imagen de corda.
01:22:34O sea, el ver así un futuro y que todavía hay más cosas por las que tenemos que luchar, ¿no?
01:22:39And that image of corda represents, for me personally, hope.
01:23:10The image gives an idea of freedom,
01:23:13of being able to do what one wants,
01:23:15of being revolutionary in the aspect of the life of each one who wants.
01:23:33¡Comandante Che Guevara!
01:23:39¡Comandante Che Guevara!
01:23:42Aprendimos a quererte, desde la histórica altura,
01:23:47desde el sol de tu bravura,
01:23:49te puso cerco a la muerte.
01:23:52Aquí se queda la clara, la increíble transparencia,
01:23:57de tu querida presencia, comandante Che Guevara.
01:24:03De tu querida presencia, comandante Che Guevara.
01:24:09Comandante Che Guevara
01:24:12Tu mano gloriosa y fuente.
01:24:17Sobre la historia dispara, cuando todo salga clara,
01:24:23se despierta, para verte.
01:24:24Aquí se queda la clara, la increíble transparencia,
01:24:27de tu querida presencia, comandante Che Guevara.
01:24:34Che Guevara
01:24:36De tu querida presencia
01:24:39Como el dente
01:24:40Che Guevara
01:25:04Tu amor revolucionario
01:25:07Te conduce a toda empresa
01:25:09Con tu esperanza
01:25:11De tu brazo
01:25:13Libertario
01:25:14Seguiremos adelante
01:25:17Como junto a ti seguimos
01:25:21Y nosotros te latimos
01:25:23Hasta siempre
01:25:24Comandante
01:25:25Y aquí se queda la clara
01:25:28La increíble transparencia
01:25:30De tu querida presencia
01:25:34Comandante
01:25:35Che Guevara
01:25:36De tu querida presencia
01:25:39Comandante
01:25:41Che Guevara
01:25:42Comandante
01:25:43Che Guevara
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