It was 35 years ago today that Che Guevara, commander of the Rebel Army in the Cuban Revolution, was captured and murdered in Bolivia by the Bolivian army. It was a month ago that I saw his face on a $30 bag sold at an Evanston clothing store.
Simple background for those who don’t know who Che Guevara is: A Marxist, Che, along with Fidel Castro, led the late 1950s Cuban Revolution against the corrupt and repressive Batista government. What began as a revolution to overthrow Batista transformed into a broader social and economic movement whose main element was agrarian reform to give back the land to those who work it.
The revolution succeeded and Batista was forced to flee in ’59. Castro became Prime Minister, but Che, a revolutionary at heart, left Cuba in ’65. He later went to Bolivia to lead a guerilla movement against the country’s military dictatorship. He was caught and murdered Oct. 9, 1967.
Today, Che is a worldwide symbol for rebellion, change and revolution. Rage Against the Machine used his image for the cover of its first album.
He is an icon. Phil Ochs said, “The perfect rock outfit would be a combination of Elvis and Che Guevara.”
He is idolized. A lot of leftists and admirers own Che posters and T-shirts, understandably so because he is the archetype for revolution and they want to be revolutionary too.
He is a pop-political legend and that, my friends, seems to be the problem. Che is now a commodity.
The $30 bag in that oh-so-hip Evanston store made me think about how Che and counterculture is now, regrettably, a market. It’s cool, it’s trendy, it’s alternative and someone who may not have a clue who Che is would spend 30 bucks on a bag because being counterculture is ironically fashionable and being mainstream is just so plain. And who would, like, want to be plain?
And today, the idea of a revolution and being revolutionary has taken on a new meaning. Now a revolution is something that’s new and exciting instead of “a sudden, radical or complete change, especially the overthrow or renunciation of one ruler or government,” as my trusty Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word. Everything from diets to razors to blenders to freezers to exercise equipment to the Ronco rotisserie oven is revolutionary.
Whether you think it was for the good or for the bad, no one really can deny that Che and Castro brought about economic and political change in Cuba. And the fact that Che, who wrote in “Socialism and Man in Cuba,” “In the realm of culture, capitalism has given all that it had to give and nothing remains but the stench of a corpse, today’s decadence in art,” is now a commodity in a capitalist society is highly ironic – and sad.
But what can you expect from a country where after Sept. 11, someone felt the need to print fake dollar bills with pictures of the World Trade Center, George W. Bush or the bald eagle on it? Look for it online before it’s too late.
So while more Che Guevara bags are being produced for mass consumption and the wheels of capitalism keep on turning, I’ll just buy more stuff to make myself feel better about the world.
