THis is my favorit Che Shirt
Posted on 08/29/2005 8:43:56 PM PDT by freedom44
HAVANA (Reuters) - With his picture on rock band posters, baseball caps and women's lingerie, Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara is firmly entrenched in the capitalist consumer society that he died fighting to overturn.
The image of the Argentine-born guerrilla gazing sternly into the distance, long-hair tucked into a beret with a single star, has been an enduring 20th century pop icon.
The picture -- taken by a Cuban photographer in 1960 and printed on posters by an Italian publisher after Guevara's execution in Bolivia seven years later -- fired the imagination of rioting Parisian students in May 1968 and became a symbol of idealistic revolt for a generation.
But as well as being one of the world's most reproduced, the image has become one of its most merchandised. And Guevara's family is launching an effort to stop it. They plan to file lawsuits abroad against companies that they believe are exploiting the image and say lawyers in a number of countries have offered assistance.
"We have a plan to deal with the misuse," Guevara's Cuban widow Aleida March said in an interview.
"We can't attack everyone with lances like Don Quixote, but we can try to maintain the ethics" of Guevara's legacy, said March, who will lead the effort from the Che Guevara Studies Centre which is opening in Havana later this year.
"The centre intends to contain the uncontrolled use of Che's image. It will be costly and difficult because each country has different laws, but a limit has to be drawn," the legendary guerrilla's daughter, Aleida Guevara, told Reuters.
Swatch has used Guevara on a wristwatch. Advertising firms have used his image to sell vodka. Supermodel Gisele Bundchen even took to the runway in Brazilian underwear stamped with Che's face.
Guevara collectibles -- from Zippo lighters to belt buckles and key chains -- can be bought online at thechestore.com.
But a successful copyright lawsuit against Smirnoff vodka in Britain in 2000 set the precedent for legal action, establishing ownership of the photographic image.
Lawyers say it will be an uphill struggle to deter non-photographic use of such a widely reproduced image, other than in countries like Italy where laws protect image rights.
KORDA VS SMIRNOFF
The famous picture was shot by Alberto Diaz, a fashion photographer better known as Korda, at a funeral for victims of the explosion of a French freighter transporting weapons to Cuba one year after Fidel Castro's revolution triumphed with the help of Guevara.
Korda's group photograph was not printed by his newspaper the next day. Seven years later, when Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli showed up looking for a cover picture for an edition of Che's "Bolivian Diary," Korda gave him two prints for free.
Guevara was captured six months later in the Bolivian jungle, where his bid to start an armed peasant revolution ended in fiasco. On news on his death, Feltrinelli cropped the photo and published large posters that quickly sold 1 million copies.
The guerrilla fighter was transformed into martyr, pop celebrity and radical chic poster boy.
Korda said he never received a penny from Feltrinelli.
But a year before his death in 2001, the photographer won a lawsuit against London agency Lowe Lintas for unauthorized use of the picture in a Smirnoff vodka advertising campaign. The Smirnoff brand is now owned by Britain's Diageo.
Korda later donated the $70,000 award to children's health care in communist Cuba.
Razi Mireskandari, the London lawyer who filed the copyright case, said Korda worried that the image of Che, who did not drink, was being trivialized by its use in promoting a alcoholic beverage that bore no relation to Cuba or his political message.
"We felt there were so many people you could take action against that we had to start somewhere," Mireskandari said. "The plan of action was to target one of these, which was Smirnoff, and then, when we got the judgement, we were going to go against everyone else," he said in a telephone interview.
After the photographer's death, his heirs never contacted the lawyer for further action and are disputing among themselves copyright ownership of the famous picture.
IMAGE PROTECTION
Korda's daughter Diana Diaz has continued to fight political misuse of the picture.
In 2003 she won a lawsuit against a Paris-based press rights group for using the Che photograph in a poster campaign aimed at dissuading French tourists from vacationing in Cuba after the jailing of 29 dissident journalists.
Reporters Without Borders had superimposed Che's face on a picture of a baton-wielding riot policeman. The caption said: "Welcome to Cuba, the world's largest jail for journalists."
Che fever was stoked last year by "The Motorcycle Diaries," a film about his eye-opening trip through poverty-stricken countries of South America as a medical graduate.
Even Cuba sells Che's image. Postcards and posters of Guevara playing golf at the Country Club shortly after the overthrow of dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 are popular with tourists.
So are Cuban banknotes issued when Guevara was Central Bank governor, simply signed "Che."
I think his heirs are about to learn a lesson in capitalism. Up yours you commie scum. BTW, I'm going to market home proctology kits with Che's image on the probe. I think they'd sell well in San Francisco and the 2008 RAT convention...
Thos silly commies, always after a quick buck to line their private pockets with. Note that Korda's $70,000 went to a Cuban children's hospital. How interesting that a country with such wonderful health care for all would even accept such a paltry sum that could have been better used to feed all the starving children in the USA instead.
He was Che before Che was cool.
What' snext a restaurant? 'Chez Che'?
But Cuba already has the best health care in the world. Just ask Hillary.
THis is my favorit Che Shirt
"Guevara collectibles -- from Zippo lighters to belt buckles and key chains -- can be bought online at thechestore.com."
I'm still laughing at that :) The commie becomes a free enterprise commodity. I can't think of a more fitting insult.
This one is good too
On or Off Cuba Ping.
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I have that shirt.
LOL! Thats a nice way of putting it; when said peasants turned him over to authorities.
Don't forget the urinal targets.
Idealistic is another way of saying young and ignorant.
CIA Debriefing of Félix Rodríguez, June 3, 1975 When Che Guevara was executed in La Higuera, one CIA official was present--a Cuban-American operative named Félix Rodríguez. Rodríguez, who used the codename "Félix Ramos" in Bolivia and posed as a Bolivian military officer, was secretly debriefed on his role by the CIA's office of the Inspector General in June, 1975. (At the time the CIA was the focus of a major Congressional investigation into its assassination operations against foreign leaders.) In this debriefing--discovered in a declassified file marked 'Félix Rodríguez' by journalist David Corn--Rodríguez recounts the details of his mission to Bolivia where the CIA sent him, and another Cuban-American agent, Gustavo Villoldo, to assist the capture of Guevara and destruction of his guerrilla band. Rodríguez and Villoldo became part of a CIA task force in Bolivia that included the case officer for the operation, "Jim", another Cuban American, Mario Osiris Riveron, and two agents in charge of communications in Santa Clara. Rodríguez emerged as the most important member of the group; after a lengthy interrogation of one captured guerrilla, he was instrumental in focusing the efforts to the 2nd Ranger Battalion focus on the Villagrande region where he believed Guevara's rebels were operating. Although he apparently was under CIA instructions to "do everything possible to keep him alive," Rodríguez transmitted the order to execute Guevara from the Bolivian High Command to the soldiers at La Higueras--he also directed them not to shoot Guevara in the face so that his wounds would appear to be combat-related--and personally informed Che that he would be killed. After the execution, Rodríguez took Che's Rolex watch, often proudly showing it to reporters during the ensuing years.
The only good Che is a dead Che....
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