Che chic: it's tres disgusting

In France, the remarkable group Reporters Without Borders took an image well known in that country: that of a policeman wielding a truncheon and a shield. But it put Guevara's face in place of the policeman's and cried, "Welcome to Cuba, the world's biggest prison for journalists." A woman named Diane Diaz Lopez objected: She is the daughter of "Korda," the late Cuban photographer who snapped the "iconic image" of Che. She seems to be a bitter-end Marxist. She took Reporters Without Borders to court, and won-they had to abandon that particular tactic.

SADDENING AND MADDENING

There are some who will always have romantic feelings about Guevara, and the Cuban revolution. For this type, Guevara was a true man, not a namby-pamby liberal, but hardcore--pure in his willingness to do the necessary. An anti-Communist of my acquaintance asked a friend of his why she admired Guevara. She answered, "He never sold out." Frank Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, says, "Yes, Guevara was 'courageous' and 'committed.' So are many bank robbers." In the run-up to the Iraq War, I asked Bernard Kouchner--the great French humanitarian and politician--why so many of his countrymen seemed enthusiastic about Saddam Hussein. He said their enthusiasm for Saddam was akin to their attachment to Che: It was a way of expressing anti-Americanism (in brief), the facts about the two men aside.

But facts are not unimportant to Cuban Americans. Imagine being one of them and seeing celebratory images of Guevara all around you. Imagine--even further--being the son or daughter of someone whom Guevara personally executed. There are such people in the United States. Or imagine-further yet--being a Cuban political prisoner, and knowing that masses in free countries were wearing Che on their chests.

If you talk to Cuban Americans about how they feel, they will first mention Hitler and the Nazis: No one would sell or sport items celebrating those beasts; what's the difference, other than scale? Otto Reich is a Cuban American who has thought keenly about all this. He has been an official under the last three Republican presidents, and he was a refugee from the island; his father had been a refugee from Nazi Austria. Says Reich, "The first reaction [on seeing a piece of Che-wear] is revulsion. The second is more like pity, because these people have no idea what they're doing."

Ronald Radosh has written about a democracy activist in Hong Kong. In his innocence, this fellow--Leung Kwokhung, nicknamed "Long Hair"--goes around in a Guevara T-shirt. As Radosh points out, Guevara would be appalled at this use of his image, and would "favor [Long Hair's] immediate imprisonment as a counterrevolutionary, if not his quick execution by firing squad." And I heard from an acquaintance in Japan, who teaches at an American school: "Imagine my shock when I saw a four-year-old student of mine come to class last week wearing a brand-name sweatshirt with that image of Che superimposed on an American flag. He's a great kid, and he obviously had no idea what it was, but just being in the same room as that shirt made me uneasy. Heck, just knowing the fact that that shirt exists in a size that fits four-year-olds made me uneasy." Obviously, my acquaintance had never seen the onesie.