Che Chic
Luke Y. Thompson reminded me how annoyed I always am when I see those twits running around in Che Guevara t-shirts, clueless that the image has a little more, um...negativity...behind it than, say, Warhol's Marilyn. Jay Nordlinger explains the man behind the fashion legend:
The fog of time and the strength of anti-anti-Communism have obscured the real Che. Who was he? He was an Argentinian revolutionary who served as Castro's primary thug. He was especially infamous for presiding over summary executions at La Cabaña, the fortress that was his abattoir. He liked to administer the coup de grâce, the bullet to the back of the neck. And he loved to parade people past El Paredón, the reddened wall against which so many innocents were killed. Furthermore, he established the labor-camp system in which countless citizens — dissidents, democrats, artists, homosexuals — would suffer and die. This is the Cuban gulag. A Cuban-American writer, Humberto Fontova, described Guevara as "a combination of Beria and Himmler." Anthony Daniels once quipped, "The difference between [Guevara] and Pol Pot was that [the former] never studied in Paris."
Paul Berman likewise undresses myth:
The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"— and so on. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a guerrilla movement that had failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. And yet he succeeded in inspiring tens of thousands of middle class Latin-Americans to exit the universities and organize guerrilla insurgencies of their own. And these insurgencies likewise accomplished nothing, except to bring about the death of hundreds of thousands, and to set back the cause of Latin-American democracy—a tragedy on the hugest scale.
Yeah, but that guy who played him in the Motorcycle Diaries is sooooooo hot.
I was just at Cafe Tropical yesterday (Sunset and Parkman), which has an entire wall of photos dedicated to Guevara. The cult that's grown around him is really a testimony to the power of sexuality over common sense. The guy was such a babe, no one stops to ask anything more about him. Thanks for the reality check.
Lena Cuisina, Blessed by Capitalism at March 13, 2005 6:00 AM
Hi –
"Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"—
Are you sure this hasn't been pinched from a recent White House memorandum ? Or perhaps from a speech by the Secretary of Defense ? Or from a homily delivered by one of the fundamentalist preachers ?
L'Amerloque
L'Amerloque at March 13, 2005 7:32 AM
Hi Lena –
Yes, the reality check is relevant, important and necessary. Far too many people accept only the favorable aspect of the myth. Few revolutions endure without firing squads, of course, and Che's were apparently quite busy.
On the other hand, when a fellow inspires poetry like this:
Vienes quemando la brisa
Con soles de primavera
Para plantar la bandera
Con la luz de tu sonrisa
there just might be more than meets the eye.
One wonders, too, why all these conservative and "independent" commentators conveniently pull in their fangs when it comes to Pinochet and other tinpot dictators of his ilk, reserving their claws for the Cuban Revolution. Victor Jara must be smiling, somewhere.
L'Ameloque
L'Amerloque at March 13, 2005 7:50 AM
Hi L'Amerloque -- Those lines of verse are pretty primarily because they're in Spanish though, yes? Not much different from the songs that upper-middle class white children (like my niece) learn in their high-priced nursery schools:
De colores, de colores se visten los campos en la primavera
De colores, de colores de los parajitos que vienen de fuera
De colores, de colores es el arco iris que vemos lucir
Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mi.
I lived in Berkeley for several years and saw the widespread fetishization/distortion of Latin-American culture by liberal whites on a regular basis. It's embarrassing. I love a good Neruda poem as much as the next cracker, but you won't see me walking around in any technicolor ponchos, that's for sure.
Lena Cuisina, Ethical Consumer at March 13, 2005 8:24 AM
But, Amerloque, nobody glorifies Pinochet or Pol Pot. Punches may be pulled, yes...as I pulled punches when that idiot, Kerry, was running -- because I preferred the idiot Kerry to the far more dangerous idiot, George Bush. Now that there's no longer an election on, I can be free with my opinion of the Democratic lame-ass who ran for president. There are, however, no stakes involved with Che -- except of preserving a notion of a person that is anything but the truth -- and is, in fact, the opposite of the truth - and that makes me sick.
Amy Alkon at March 13, 2005 8:33 AM
Hi Lena –
>>Those lines of verse are pretty primarily because
>>they're in Spanish though, yes?
Well, no, actually: they're pretty because the author, Carlos Puebla, uses his language very, very well. (smile) If one looks at the entire poem
Aprendimos a quererte
Desde la historica altura
Donde el sol de tu bravura
Le puso cerco a la muerte
(Estribillo)
Aqui se queda la clara
La entraniable transparencia
De tu querida presencia
Comandante Che Guevara
Tu mano glorioso y fuerte
Sobre la historia dispara
Cuando todo Santa Clara
Se despierta para verte
Vienes quemando la brisa
Con soles de primavera
Para plantar la bandera
Con la luz de tu sonrisa
Tu amor revolucionario
Te conduce a nueva empresa
Donde esperan la firmeza
De tu brazo libertario
Seguiremos adelante
Como junto a ti segimos
Y con Fidel te decimos
Hasta Siempre, Comandante
one can see a style worthy of the greatest poets. Look at the meter ! It's a bit more recherché than the traditional De Colores.
>>but you won't see me walking around
>>in any technicolor ponchos, that's for sure.
Good point. (smile) Since my Berkeley days, I have been bearded, but not because of Los Barbudos (wide smile).
L'Amerloque
L'Amerloque at March 13, 2005 8:58 AM
Hi Amy –
>>There are, however, no stakes involved with Che –
>>except of preserving a notion of a person that is
>>anything but the truth -- and is, in fact, the
>>opposite of the truth - and that makes me sick.
I can understand that, obviously … howver, the "truth" has many facets. It's not so cut-and-dried. It's not black and white. It's many and multifarious shades of grey. It always is. It's the nature of the beast. We can't help that.
L'Amerloque
L'Amerloque at March 13, 2005 9:06 AM
Che was just born too early. He'd have found hale and hearty fellowship with the current religious fanactics of the Islamic sort. Of course, he'd have to soft pedal the communistic thing. His row was so much harder to hoe. Being a communist they just didn't have an inticing bonus like a heaven with shelves filled with waiting virgins. What a helluva recruiter he'd have made with that in his backpocket. Erstwhile catholicism plus virgin temptresses. Can't miss proposition. As if these current thugs need any help.
allan at March 13, 2005 9:36 AM
I like those t-shirts with Dick Cheney in a Che beret, under which appears:
CHE
ney
I think the two might easily be equated.
david at March 13, 2005 11:15 AM
Nobody glorifies Pinochet, but I've heard a TV commentator or two overlook his brutality and whitewash his authoritarianism when talking in an anti-cuban/anti-venezualan context.
It's usually something like: 'Look at Venezuala. Castro's been a cancer spreading his communism in South America for fifty years. We saw the people of Nicaragua reject this repression and in Chile with the overthrow of the Allende government. People choose freedom over communism.'
Of course the Allende government was an elected one and the only one rejecting communism in this case was the top general who killed everybody, put down any political speech and, bizarrely, pioneered the private social security accounts that Bush is now pushing, which didn't work.
I'm not defending communism, and I don't particularly care about the fallen Allende government, or for that matter, Chile. I suppose I just find it strange when 'pundits' will mention Chileans being 'freed' from communism, since they seem to not remember what the Chileans were 'freed' into.
Note*: I always confuse the socialist revolutions in Chile and Nicaragua, mostly because I rarely attended my Latin American revolutions class and ended up reading all the books on both revolutions the day before the paper was due. So if my facts are bleeding into each other, that's because I've always been an ass.
Little ted at March 13, 2005 11:55 AM
> I think the two might
> easily be equated.
Care to give it a shot?
Seriously, seekers, maybe we'd win more elections if we weren't enchanted by our own pouty, inane rhetoric.
Cridland at March 13, 2005 12:51 PM
The interesting thing about Pinochet, the thing that gets him a bit of a pass with many people, is the notion that he, as dictators go, was somewhat benevolent. Though his methods admittedly trampled some human rights pretty regularly and occasionally dispicably, I think the consensus is that he really cared about Chile and Chileans, and that he really wanted to do the best thing for the country. I have tried and tried but I can't think of a single other dictator in the last 200 years that you can say that about. Across the board, totalitarian rulers are all about hooking themselves up, the country be damned.
Oh and Little Ted -
"...pioneered the private social security accounts that Bush is now pushing, which didn't work."
Dude, you need to get a grip. Chile's system works beautifully. Those who have been able to participate in the system have averaged 8% on their money (which they get to keep and pass on to their families when they die) since the program's inception(about 3x what Americans get for SS - assuming they live long enough to get it all back). The biggest complain about it that there are many people who don't have good enough jobs to actually have money withheld, which means they can't contribute, and therefore have nothing in their personal accounts. However, this is a red herring because the system pays a minimum benefit to *everyone.*
Let me guess - here's your logic - Bush likes it, it must be bad. Brrrrilliant.
Chris Wilson at March 13, 2005 6:28 PM
L’Amerloque wrote: “Yes, the reality check is relevant, important and necessary. Far too many people accept only the favorable aspect of the myth. Few revolutions endure without firing squads, of course, and Che's were apparently quite busy.”
“On the other hand, when a fellow”… writes poetry like this in 1780, one wonders how some thirteen years later, he could vote, among others, the death of his king:
Il pleut, il pleut Bergère,
Rentre tes blancs moutons.
Allons à la chaumière,
Bergère, vite allons.
J’entends sous le feuillage
L’eau qui tombe à grand bruit.
Voici venir l’orage,
Voici l’éclair qui luit.
Entends-tu le tonnerre ?
Il roule en approchant.
Prends un abri, bergère,
A ma droite en marchant.
Je vois notre cabane
Et, tiens, voici venir
Ma mère et ma sœur Anne
Qui vont l’étable ouvrir.
Bonsoir, bonsoir, ma mère.
Ma sœur Anne, bonsoir.
J’amène ma bergère
Près de vous pour ce soir.
Qu’on mène dans l’étable
Ses brebis, ses agneaux.
Et mettons sur la table
Laitages et fruits nouveaux.
Soignons bien, ô ma mère,
Son tout joli troupeau.
Donnez de la litière
A son petit agneau.
C’est fait allons près d’elle.
Eh bien donc te voilà ?
En corset, qu’elle est belle.
Ma mère, voyez-la.
Soupons. prends cette chaise.
Tu seras près de moi.
Ce flambeau de mélèze
Brûlera devant toi.
Goûte de ce laitage
Mais… tu ne manges pas ?
Tu te sens de l’orage ?
Il a lassé tes pas.
Eh bien ! voilà ta couche ;
Dors-y bien jusqu’au jour.
Laisse-moi sur ta bouche
Prendre un baiser d’amour.
Ne rougis pas bergère.
Ma mère et moi, demain,
Nous irons chez ton père
lui demander ta main.
(To your dictionary, bloggers, no time to
translate !)
A French playwright, should I add exceptionally handsome, Fabre d’Eglantine (1755-1794), had adopted to the ideals of 18th century philosophers such as Rousseau who preached the return to Nature. Around 1780, he wrote the above poem which was put to music by the violinist-composer Victor Simon. “Il pleut, il pleut, Bergère” was a “hit” at the very start of the Revolution. True to his ideals, Fabre d’Eglantine had become a deputy to the Convention. In its will to dechristianize France, the revolutionary government decided that a new calendar should be created. Fabre d’Eglantine was a member of the commission put in charge of its creation (1792/1793) and was chosen to find the new names for the twelve months. The romantic disposition of Fabre d’Eglantine did not stop him from voting the death of king Louis XVI who was beheaded in January 1793. And voting the death of the king did not save Fabre d’Eglantine’s own head as he was beheaded a little more than a year later in April 1794. In their turn, within a year, his beheaders were beheaded… And so on, and so on. Fabre d’Eglantine’s poem survived to this day as one of French children’s loveliest songs. The revolutionary calendar did not, although traces of it are found in history books as some of its dates became famous. What does all this have to do with Che? Men can be beheaded or shot, but poems never die.
Frania W.
P.S. The paragraphs do not appear in the preview, hope they are there once this is posted.
Frania W. at March 13, 2005 10:06 PM
I don't understand why some guy just jumped down my throat, but here's my answer, jumpy
Pinochet the Benevolent? I'm sorry, I must have been thinking of the Augusto Pinochet who inspired so much Chilean hatred that Chileans are still working to stretch his vegetative neck.
Chile's privatization system works? I wouldn't know if it does, but you need to tell that to all the other supporters who don't seem to think this. The line I usually hear from supporters is that since the US has a better infrastructure than Chile, our system wouldn't have the faults that Chile's does (thusly acknowledging that Chile's system is bad).
I do hate Bush.
As for my logic about social security, I don't think it is brilliant, I think it's obvious. No entity will loan us the money except for China (and some moneys from Japan).
If my cousin, who has 3 mortgages and no job, told me he was going to put a bunch of money into some can't-miss stock, but that he was getting the money from a loan shark because no banks would give him another loan, I'd tell him it was a bad idea and that he should get all his accounts settled and get the money in a less foolish way, and then do whatever he wanted.
'Dude,' you need to get your head around the idea that there are people out there who don't buy any party's line. If you want to know why I hate Bush, I suggest you read a summary of each case that John Ashcroft filed, and then look to Gonzalez's new war on Playboy magazine.
Little ted at March 13, 2005 10:34 PM
Frania W: "Men can be beheaded or shot, but poems never die."
Amy Alkon is working hard to change all that! Check out her "Will Walk to End Poetry" demonstration sign.
As a member of the Brotherhood of Eternal Fagdom, however, I am a total poetry whore. Enjoy...
Robert Schumann
By Mary Oliver
Hardly a day passes I don’t think of him
In the asylum: younger
Than I am now, trudging the long road down
Through madness toward death.
Everywhere in this world his music
Explodes out of itself, as he
Could not. And now I understand
Something so frightening, and wonderful –
How the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing
Through crossroads, sticking
Like lint to the familiar. So!
Hardly a day passes I don’t
think of him. Nineteen, say, and it is
spring in Germany
And he has just met a girl named Clara.
He turns the corner,
He scrapes the dirt from his soles,
He runs up the dark staircase, humming.
Lena-doodle-doo at March 13, 2005 11:46 PM
A private response to Lena-doodle-do, in public:
Peace, Peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep--
He hath awakened from the dream of life--
~Percy Shelley~
Poetry is one of the pillars of life. So is love, sensuality, music, wine, cinema, dogs, ravens, pasta, pussy.... everybody out there, don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I feel upset. Let's do some celebrating
~our beloved Patti Smith~
(Me? Listening to Carmen on a wicked 2nd bottle of Enola Pinot Noir...)
Life just kinda sucks these days for a lotta people.
Chile is on the happy end of the economic fulcrum with America.
ANd fuck Pinochet. Pol Pot and most dictators have died badly in history. Be happy they are not in your midst. I am almost, ALMOST, aligning with Crid in this world needs a big time dictator enema. Just tell us the truth Dubya before the youngsters march in.
Playboy will survive.
The sun will continue to set in the west, most of us thought it to be best...
eric at March 14, 2005 8:15 PM
To Lena: “Men can be beheaded or shot, but poems never die", to which I could have added “music” but, to me, music is poetry. And so was it to Robert Schumann who, in July 1830, a few months after hearing Paganini at a concert, wrote to his mother, "My whole life has been a struggle between Poetry and Prose, or call it Music and Law." By the end of the year he had abandoned the study of law to give himself entirely to that of music.
To the unknowing & to the unfeeling, the line between creativity & insanity is blurred. What a field day psychiatrists & psychologists would have had in 19th century Romantic era! Had Robert Schumann been under the care of one of them, would his musical creation have been different? Do great composers & poets need to be tormented to achieve perfection?
Frania W.
Frania W. at March 14, 2005 9:26 PM
L’Amerloque: ¿ Solamente la barba o también el bigote ?
Frania W.
Frania W. at March 14, 2005 9:43 PM
Jeez, just when I start getting a handle on French (TV5 et RFI, chez moi), my immediate universe turns to Spanish!
Amy Alkon at March 14, 2005 10:46 PM
Hola Frania !
El bigote desde 1964, naturalmente !
I suppose if we were to continue in a, er, conquering vein … (smile):
Comme un vol de gerfauts hors du charnier natal,
Fatigués de porter leurs misères hautaines,
De Palos de Moguer, routiers et capitaines
Partaient, ivres d'un rêve héroïque et brutal.
Ils allaient conquérir le fabuleux métal
Que Cipango mûrit dans ses mines lointaines,
Et les vents alizés inclinaient leurs antennes
Aux bords mystérieux du monde Occidental.
Chaque soir, espérant des lendemains épiques,
L'azur phosphorescent de la mer des Tropiques
Enchantait leur sommeil d'un mirage doré ;
Ou penchés à l'avant des blanches caravelles,
Ils regardaient monter en un ciel ignoré
Du fond de l'Océan des étoiles nouvelles.
Undoubtedly one of the more beautiful poems ever written in French … Amy, your French prof will undoubtedly know this fellow: José-Maria de Hérédia. It's Les Conquérants, from his major work Les Trophées.
L'Amerloque
L'Amerloque at March 15, 2005 6:30 AM
¡Hola El Gringo!
I don’t mean to copycat you but I can’t resist taking you to the grave of "el conquistador" with this other "sonnet", "Le Tombeau du Conquérant" (= The Conqueror's grave), from José Maria de Heredia’s "Les Trophées":
A l'ombre de la voûte en fleur des catalpas
Et des tulipiers noirs qu'étoile un blanc pétale,
Il ne repose point dans la terre fatale;
La Floride conquise a manqué sous ses pas.
Un vil tombeau messied à de pareils trépas.
Linceul du Conquérant de l'Inde Occidentale,
Tout le Meschacébé par-dessus lui s'étale.
Le Peau-Rouge et l'ours gris ne le troubleront pas.
Il dort au lit profond creusé par les eaux vierges.
Qu'importe un monument funéraire, des cierges,
Le psaume et la chapelle ardente et l'ex-voto?
Puisque le vent du Nord, parmi les cyprières,
Pleure et chante à jamais d'éternelles prières
Sur le Grand Fleuve où gît Hernando de Soto.
¡Hasta la vista!
Frania W.
Frania W. at March 15, 2005 10:38 AM
Hola Frania !
Our quoting French poetry is akin to going off into a corner at a salon and ignoring the other attendees. (smile) It's most unfair to them, but I'm sure they will accept our apologies …
… especially since I've now taken the time to type in a translation of both of Hérédia's œuvres. They're actually quite special versions of the sonnets, from the book of Les Trpophées translated by John Myers O'Hara and John Harvey, published in 1927 in Paris. In front of me as I type is the Abbé Dimnet's very own copy, inscribed and dedicated to him by the translators. I was fortunate to pick it up many, many years ago at a flea market for the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes. (smile) You will find few copies for sale, anywhere … it it quite confidentiel.
First, though, a brief word about José-Maria de Hérédia for the attendees here at Amy's salon. He spent most of his life (30 years !) working on Les Trophées: he had never before published a volume of poetry, and he never published another. His work is hailed as perfection. The book is a cycle of 118 sonnets; that most difficult of poetical forms, not for the casual reader.
In French, the sonnet is composed of Alexandrines, or lines of twelve syllables, while the English sonnet is made of pentameters, or lines of ten syllables. "The Alexandrine never having been naturalized in English metrics, the rendering of his sonnets in pentameters is obbligatory," dixit the translators. They have succeeded their tour de force marvelously !
(first poem)
The Conquistadores
As from their native eyries hawks take wing,
Spurred by the miseries they proudly share,
Bravos and chiefs from Palos de Moguer
Sail drunk with dreams that brutal conquests bring.
They see the treasure fabulous to wring
From the far mines Cipango's mountains bear,
The trade winds fill their sais and waft them where
Mysterious western shores lie beckoning.
Each evening for an epic dawn they yearn,
The phosphorescent seas that round them burn
Enchant their restless sleep with phantom gold;
And as from white-winged caravels they lean,
In unknown skies their wondering eyes behold
Strange stars ascend from Ocean's depths unseen.
(second poem)
The Conqueror's Grave
The blossoming catalpa's arching shade,
The ebon tulip-trees with white blooms starred –
Their fatal land his slumbers shall not guard:
With Florida his conquests were not staid.
For such a death shall no mean tomb be made:
Let the Great River keep him in its ward,
Defend him from the redskin and the pard:
There let West India's Conqueror be laid.
Let virgin waters hollow out his bed –
No catafalque, no candles at his head,
No psalm, no chapel-ardent, no ex-voto,
There shall the north wind in the cypress trees
Chant through its tears eternal litanies
Above the flood that sepulchres De Soto.
Wonderful, n'est-ce pas ?(Any typing mistakes are mine, of course !)
L'Amerloque
L'Amerloque at March 15, 2005 11:55 AM
L'Amerloque,
As the French say as a compliment for outstanding achievement, to the translators: "Chapeau!"
Frania W.
Frania W. at March 15, 2005 2:55 PM
A teacher of mine once gave us - that was eons ago - a subject to discuss in the classroom for thirty minutes. Every once in a while, she would take notes. When the half hour was up, she stopped our discussion and, tracking back from her notes, made us aware of the direction the discussion had taken. We were miles from the subject and yet, there was a link from one change of direction to the other. This is to point out that, from Amy's "twits running around in Che Guevara's t-shirts", we landed at the grave of a conquistador on the Mississipi Riverbank, quoting poems from Cuban-born José Maria Heredia (Spanish father, French mother, higher education, adult life & death in France)... with an explanation of the difference in the number of syllables between a French & an English sonnet... That was the point my teacher was trying to make in the "wandering of the mind" in a conversation. In this particular case, we even did it in three languages!
Frania W.
Frania W. at March 15, 2005 5:04 PM
Mississippi (!)
Frania W. at March 15, 2005 5:07 PM
These are my favorite type of drive by bloggings. Sometimes you just don't want to go to sleep without throwing in your own two cents...
eric at March 15, 2005 5:17 PM
You are wrong about Che. He eventually threw out Castro's policies, and was publicy against them. He wanted an equality among people. Do your research next time. Che was a motivator of the people, he was a revolutionary that valued the wealth of the common people. Cuba in 1950 was not a great place for the common man. Those who respect him are just admiring his legacy. You used eventually a lot, Che wasnt part of eventually. He was killed by the USA secretly in Bolivia, he was ASKED to resign from Cuba by Castro because he actually valued the condition of the people.
Kate at March 22, 2005 5:41 PM
Kate, see above. Che was a murderous thug.
Amy Alkon at March 22, 2005 9:03 PM
I saw above, and I have done research of my own and he wasnt, and I think it was more conclusive than your pack of lies probebly set out by the CIA, who killed Che illegally.
Kate at March 22, 2005 9:43 PM
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