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Revolutionary Che Guevara Gets Makeover
NEW YORK, 16 (AP) - This fall season,
iconic Communist revolutionary Ernesto "Che"
Guevara is conquering the bastion of capitalism:
the mall.
Thirty-seven years after his death in
the jungles of Bolivia, it's hard to miss
the classic image of a beret-clad and bearded
Che on T-shirts, posters, books, beanie
hats and even children's clothing.
Che's rise in popularity of late as a marketing
tool has been interpreted both as capitalism's
final victory over one of the last untouched
revolutionary icons and as a demonstration
of the enduring relevance of his ideals.
Opening amid this heightened interest in
Guevara is the movie "Motorcycle Dairies,"
distributed in the United States by Focus
Features, the specialty films unit of Universal
Pictures, a division of NBC Universal.
The movie depicts a young Guevara, the
son of a bourgeois Argentine family, on
a life-changing trip through South America
with a close friend.
Another film directed by Steve Soderbergh
and starring Benicio del Toro that will
touch on Guevara's days as a revolutionary
is scheduled to open in 2005.
Major film releases often spawn a number
of tie-in promotional and retail deals and
Guevara is no exception despite the fiery
anti-capitalist views he espoused.
"The movies are making middle America
more aware of the Che," said David
McWilliams, president and founder of Fashion
Victim, an apparel and accessory company
based in Atlanta that makes a "substantial
portion" of its $4 million to $5 million
in yearly sales on dozens of items emblazoned
with the most recognizable image of the
Che.
It's the classic photograph taken by Alberto
Korda in 1960 of a fierce-looking Guevara
at the height of his popularity after the
triumph of the Cuban revolution led by Fidel
Castro.
McWilliams, who wore Che Guevara T-shirts
and worked at a store that sold them in
the late 1960s and early 1970s as a student
at Ohio State University, said his company
acquired exclusive licensing rights in North
America for the Korda image from French
legal firm Legend LLC that represents the
interests of Korda's daughter.
Korda, whose real name was Alberto Diaz
Gutierrez, died in 2001. The year before
he successfully fought an attempt by Smirnoff
vodka to use the image on an advertising
campaign in London's High Court. After the
ruling that granted him copyright protection
of the photograph, Korda said he was against
the exploitation of the image for the promotion
of alcohol, "or any other purpose that
denigrates the reputation of the Che."
"There is a banalization of the myth
behind all this, but it didn't start in
capitalist societies," said Alcibiades
Hidalgo, a journalist, former Cuban ambassador
to the United Nations and one of the highest-ranking
officials from Cuba to defect to the United
States, where he has lived since 2002.
Hidalgo, who met Guevara several times
in the early- to mid-1960s and remembers
him as an authoritarian figure who inspired
fear, traces the origins of the commercial
cult of the Che to the opening of the Cuban
tourism sector in the mid-1990s.
"There was a conscious decision by
the regime to exploit a certain perverse
curiosity about Cuba as a museum, a country
that resembles nothing else in the world.
The opening of Cuba to tourists coincided
with sale of Che paraphernalia and it had
nothing to do with the Che's ideals,"
Hidalgo said.
"I can see how commercialization may
turn some people off, but it also brings
attention to someone who fought for his
ideas and some people may start learning
about him as a result," said McWilliams.
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