“In fact, 40 years after his death, Che—born Ernesto Guevara de la Serna—is as much a marketing tool as an international revolutionary icon. Which raises the question of what exactly does the sheer proliferation of his image—the distant gaze, the scraggly beard and the beret adorned with a star—mean in a decidedly capitalist world? Even in Cuba, one of the world’s last Communist bastions, Che is used both to make a buck and to make a point. ‘He sells,’ acknowledged a Cuban shop clerk, who had Che after Che staring down from a wall full of T-shirts.” NYT on the (mis)marketing of Che Guevara. A few of my thoughts on the subject in this essay for Dot Dot Dot #7.
