U.S. Media
and the Deconstruction of a Revolutionary Life
Ernesto Che Guevara remains one of the most important symbolic leaders of the late twentieth century, not only because of his role in the Cuban revolution, but because of his ability to capture the imagination of millions of people at various times of social and political unrest. His name remains synonymous with the struggle for freedom and self-determination in many parts of the world and his legacy of a new socialism has inspired a generation of revolutionary practices. His murder in 1967 intensified the celebration of the individual and his ideas when he became an idol of resistance and change in a world that was marked by armed conflicts and ideological strife. Thirty years after his death and on the occasion of his burial in Cuba, his image has recaptured media attention in the United States and elsewhere.
According to one of his biographers, "as a symbol of the political revolution, he disappeared, because a political rebellion was defeated and is totally senseless today. But since he was also a symbol of the cultural rebellion, and the cultural rebellion is still with us today, then today he reappears as a symbol, not of the politics of the '60s, but of the cultural revolt of the '60s, which is so important" (Castañeda, 1997a).
This project is located in the cultural arena of public discourse and focuses on U.S. media construction of two major encounters with Che Guevara, they are the day of his murder in Bolivia, on October 9, 1967, and the days leading up to the thirtieth anniversary of his death. At stake is the meaning of Che and his position in the historical narrative as his image changed from the radical revolutionary and enemy of the United States during the early 1960s to a cult figure of the 1990s.
Stuart Hall (1981, 235) provides a theoretical perspective on this process of shifting or unstable positions by noting that the "meaning of a cultural form and its place or position in the cultural field is not inscribed inside its form. Nor is its position fixed once and forever. This year's radical symbol or slogan will be neutralized into next year's fashion; the year after, it will be the object of a profound cultural nostalgia." This project is based on an understanding of communication as articulation, which--when located within institutional contexts--dominates the cultural and forms consciousness, according to Hall's early work (1980, 1989). Thus, this project is about a process of re-articulating Che as he moved from being a symbol of radical opposition and revolutionary change to a commodified expression of nostalgia.
Based on readings of various public media, including the internet, this project identifies and describes the construction of Che during the periods of October 1967 and October 1997 by focusing on the actual texts of news stories, opinion pieces, and reviews. Of interest is the discourse of the media under specific socio-historical conditions and its constitutive power to reproduce or change representations of Che Guevara. Media discourse is seen as a field of struggle to produce and sustain a coherent articulation of the symbolic worth of Che and addresses the dialectical nature of the relationship between text and society. As such it constitutes part of a cultural hegemony of the dominant political and economic forces in society and effects control over the types and genres of discourse, e.g., how they are articulated and in what form.
Thus, by necessity the project addresses the ideological practices of the U.S. media which fixed the reality of Che Guevara and proposed a particular vision that located Che within the experience of the reader. This is a response to a historically specific moment in which the image of Che assumed a specific role in the hegemonic politics of the dominant cultural order. The project considers how media texts reflect a particular vision of the world and the ideological struggle between the dominant interpretation of Che (and the events surrounding his myth) and other positions, including Che as an oppositional text, inscribed much earlier by the history of the relationship between the United States and Cuba.
The construction of Che is a particularly interesting ideological process of representing the enemy that involves the media in their role as executors of a dominant political will. In fact, the construction of Che's image is the result of several ideological structures and practices which are subject to analytical considerations that provide a path through the material with reference to notions of discursive ideology, context, and discourse of meaning. The former describes the general ideological framework that is applied not only to the particular content of the journalistic narrative, but also to the perceptions of the events by journalists and their way of constructing and telling their stories (discursive ideology). The latter refer to the topics that framed the story of Che's death and resurrection (contexts of meaning)--including those topics that eluded journalists or were ignored by them; they involve information about his personality and personal life, in addition to his life as a politician, revolutionary, and national hero or, less frequently, as a writer, economist, and philosopher. The idea of framing includes the nature or type of these stories and the concrete types of journalistic techniques used to tell about and comment on Che's death (discourse of meaning), like facts, opinions, and genres like interviews or book reviews, political leanings of authors, and other views guiding the narrative. The latter may have evolved from U.S. domestic and foreign policies, culture, and Latin American socio-economic conditions and official or revolutionary politics.
The project may help identify a link between the social and political realities of U.S. American existence and the construction of Che after three decades of hostility towards Cuba and the revolution he stood for; in this context, it offers an understanding of the media discourse as producer of these realities and the specific relation of the reader to the discourse--for example as consumer, bourgeois, or American. Although discourse lacks essential class connotations, meanings within discourse, nevertheless, are connotatively linked to different class interests, making explicit the linkage with hegemony as a central concept. Ernesto Laclau (1977, 161) suggests that a "class is hegemonic not so much to the extent that it is able to impose a uniform conception of the world on the rest of society, but to the extent that it can articulate different visions of the world in such a way that their potential antagonism is neutralized."
The figure of Ernesto Che Guevara is closely tied to the U.S. government position vis-à-vis Cuba, the threat of Communism in the hemisphere, and various attempts over the last thirty years to control the spread of democratic reforms in other parts of Latin America. In fact, the late 1950s are characterized by the overthrow of several Latin American rulers, besides Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar in Cuba, they include Juan Perón in Argentina (1955), Manuel Odría in Peru (1956), Gustavo Rojas Pinilla in Colombia (1957), and Marcos Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela (1958). The specific antagonism--if not open hostility towards Cuba--is a result of historical differences in which long-standing mistrust and misunderstanding--intensified by more recent ideological differences and the conditions of the Cold War--combine into a web of real and imagined threats and counter-threats.
The construction of Che as arch-enemy of U.S. American interests in the hemisphere during the late 1960s coincided with official attacks on Cuba and her involvement in the politics of democratization elsewhere to eradicate social and economic underdevelopment, like illiteracy, disease, and poverty, but also neocolonialism--the shackles of third-class citizenship in the world. For instance, Memories of Underdevelopment, a post-revolutionary film by Tomas Gutierrez Alea, addresses these issues effectively. Consequently, the "geographical fatalism" which had characterized much of Cuba's past attitude towards the United States was resolutely replaced by Castro's (and Che's) insistence on total independence from U.S. American interests. In pursuit of the "new Cuban man or woman" Castro became increasingly dependent upon the Soviet Union for the economy and defense of Cuba, whereas relations with the United States steadily deteriorated.
Cuba and the United States had been involved in a competitive race for social and political influence in Latin America ever since President Dwight D. Eisenhower had toured South America in early 1960, followed by two trips of President John F. Kennedy and attempts to encourage U.S. media interests in Latin American affairs. On the other side, Cuban leaders frequently traveled in the region, invited hundreds of students and experts to study in Cuba, and encouraged Radio Havana’s international short-wave programming and the activities of Prensa Latina and its world news service. Isolated economically and politically by the United States, Castro--with the help of Che Guevara--proceeded on the road to socialism. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962--a historical consequence of the Bay of Pigs incident--catapulted the regional conflict onto the stage of confrontational superpower politics. Cuba became inextricably identified with the goals of the Soviet Union to spread communism and confirmed official U.S. policies to overthrow Communism in Cuba. Thirty years later, Cuba's social revolution continues and so does a hostile U.S. government attitude towards Cuba, despite external and some internal pressures to lift the embargo and normalize relations with the Castro government.
In this context, U.S. media focus on Cuba as a source of news that promises controversy, conflict, and even war. They respond to a way of covering foreign affairs that reflects not only a perceived level of interest among readers but also a heavy bias towards U.S. foreign policy interests in the region. The result is a shaping of the world--including an understanding of the significance of foreign events and their consequences for the United States--by U.S. media organizations which have an ideological stake in the construction of the world (Hardt, 1988). In the case of Cuba, media interest reflected the increasing engagement of the U.S. government in Cuba's fate since the politically ambiguous phase of Castro's struggle against the Batista regime and the post-revolutionary years when Cuba's alliance with Communism increased the chances for an open conflict with the United States. U.S. journalists, in turn, reported regularly about the progress of the revolution and constructed an image of Cuba that supported an official anti-Communist campaign. The resulting media representation of Cuba prepared readers for the collapse of a revolution that was only allowed to fail in order to support U.S. interests in the region.
But whereas the 1967 coverage of Che Guevara's death was ideologically connected to the activities of the Castro government--including the success of the revolutionary struggle in Cuba--and concentrated on news, the 1997 coverage of Che's return to Cuba became a framing device for the construction of Che as a pop star and the global marketing of his image. As a result, media coverage shifted from straight news coverage--which was minimal in the United States--to considerations of various book-length treatments of Che as foundation for a series of prominently placed reviews that reexamined and deconstructed the political image of Che. Media interest in Che Guevara was concentrated on the opinion pages of newspapers or magazines, where the battle was less with Cuba than with the effects of Che as a successful symbol of radical political struggle. In fact, the acknowledgement of his political career was submerged, if not omitted, in remarks about his pop status. For instance, W magazine reported casually, "Le Chic Communiste. Move over Jerry Lewis. The newest French national icon is communist hero Che Guevara. The 30th anniversary of Guevara's death has unleashed an avalanche of propaganda, including countless newspaper and magazine articles, television specials, biographies, posters, T-shirts and even a runway homage in Jean Gaultier's October show. And now the Latin American leader has his own album. Released this fall, El Che Vive! is a compilation of songs from around the world dedicated to the dashing rebel" (December 1997). This characterization successfully removed Che Guevara (and communism) from a specific historical role and reproduced a popular culture phenomenon; Che's image became a media spectacle and, if managed correctly, a spectacular financial success.
There is an authentic existence of Che Guevara, however, that needs to be revealed to assess the complexity of his life and his contribution to the political life of Latin America to appreciate the extent of U.S. media coverage. Most biographers and scholars of Che Guevara agree that the coherence between words and deeds is the main feature of his revolutionary life, which may partially account for Guevara's historical relevance and his appeal as a major political figure (Anderson 1997, 567; Lowy 1973, 8-9; Pérez Galdós 1988, vii-ix) (1). These biographers, however, frequently understate his political thought by focusing on his revolutionary action; but as Castro (1989, 39-40, 5) argued, it is necessary to "go beyond the image that many people have of Che as a brave, heroic, pure man" to discover the theoretical foundations of his political action.
By summarizing Che Guevara's core ideas on Latin America's social formation and imperialist dominance, his understanding of social change, and the philosophical basis of his revolutionary project, the idea of the new man and woman as the ultimate end of the construction of socialism, the authors acknowledge that the discussion of Che as an intellectual and politician provides the historical (and biographical) background for understanding the representation of Che in the U.S. media in 1967 and 1997 (2); the discussion also provides the grounding for a conceptualization of culture as the new battleground for social and political change.
Guevara's thought is the result of his first-hand experience of the social conditions of Latin America and the progressive coding of that reality within a sort of Marxism that some have described as "both orthodox and at the same time fiercely-antidogmatic" (Lowy 1973. 9, 11). While travelling in Latin America, Guevara experienced poverty and oppression and was struck by the living and working conditions of poor peasants and urban working classes. He met the wretched of the earth for whom, due to poverty, social and ethnic divisions, and social and government neglect, the "farthest horizon is always tomorrow" (quoted in Anderson 1997, 76, 183).
Following the Cuban revolution, Guevara characterized other Latin American countries as sharing social structure and underdevelopment--based on the historical conditions of latifundism and allied with capitalist monopolies after 1945. Although "underdevelopment" was a euphemism for Guevara, he used the term to refer to Latin America's "monstrously distorted economy" (Guevara 1967b, 30-1), in which an underdeveloped industry complemented a feudal agrarian regimen (1967d, 76).
Underdevelopment complemented metropolitan economies and served their needs. Resembling Andre Gunter Frank's (1969) theoretical stance--popular among metropolitan and Third World sociologists--Che's argument suggested that "ever since capitalist monopolies took over the world they have kept the greater part of humanity in poverty, dividing the spoils among the most powerful countries. The standard of living in those countries is founded on the misery of ours" (1968c, 35). Since imperialist exploitation occurred with the aid of local ruling classes--totally submissive to imperialist forces (Guevara 1968d, 58)--Che concluded that an unstable oligarchical dictatorship consisting of local bourgeois and landlords ruled Latin America for the exclusive benefits of local elites and imperialist monopolies (1967d, 78).
During the late 1960s and 1970s a Latin American sociology of dependency expanded on Che's theoretical legacy. Castañeda (1993, 71) noted that it "posited the virtual neocolonial status of the hemisphere, the disfunctional nature of capitalism in the region and the consequent historical impotence of the local business classes, the complete lack of democratic channels of expression and reform, and the inviability of any form of nonsocialist development."
Che Guevara's understanding of Latin America's social and political situation formed the basis of his theory of social change which was built on the Marxist stance that "the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed," (Guevara,1967a, 20) and on the distinction between objective (material) and subjective conditions for social change.The former had existed in Latin America since the late 1950s and early 1960s and the latter could be helped to develop through insurrection. According to Che, the major contribution of the Cuban revolution was the advancement of the subjective conditions for social change and the creation of a political and moral example for others to follow. Since the Cuban revolution the peasantry had become a new historical agent of social change (Guevara 196c, 33; and 1967d, 75). Consequently Che Guevara turned to the central role of the intellectual to help to overcome the lack of political education and social consciousness among peasants and the urban working class. Generalizing the Cuban experience of strong leadership and strict discipline, he articulated the creation of subjective conditions as a moral call for intellectuals, students, working people, and peasants conscious of the need for radical social change.
But whereas developmentalists argued for the potential of the national bourgeoisie and traditional communists sought an alliance between industrial working- and middle-class sectors for a peaceful march into socialism (Graciarena and Franco 1981, 212-14), Che dismissed the bourgeoisie as an agent of domination and unfit to lead an anti-imperialist struggle (1967d, 77). He argued that peasants embodied the main contradiction of Latin American societies and, therefore, had a greater potential for revolutionary agency. He also proposed that the industrial working class would join the struggle for liberation which was to begin in the countryside ( 1967d, 76-77).
For Che Guevara the Cuban revolution had shown that change was necessary, armed struggle could succeed, peasants were the main revolutionary force, and--given socio-economic and political similarities among Latin American countries--the revolution had a continental character (1967d, 80- 86). Consequently social change was inevitable and imminent through armed struggle. In contrast to other progressive--but more traditional--political forces in Latin America, Guevara (1967d, 78) insisted that the seizure of power could be attained by "short cuts" rather than by alliances with the bourgeoisie and peaceful coexistence with imperialism. Although he did not advocate armed struggle as a general remedy for whatever social and political conditions (Castañeda 1993, 329), his understanding of the social and political reality--the idea of the potential for immediate social change and its historical agents and the role of the radicalized intellectual--represented a "major theoretical and practical" challenge (Sánchez Vánquez 1990, 10-11) for traditional communist stances in Latin America.
However, the fundamental contradictions between a national bourgeoisie (imperialism) and peasants (working class) were leading to an increased polarization and diminished the chances for a peaceful road to social change. In a Leninist fashion, Guevara understood imperialism as "a word system" and "the last stage of capitalism" and concluded that revolution must be affected on a global scale (Guevara, 1968d, 64). The Vietnam war, the fight for national liberation in Africa, and the struggle for socialism in Latin America reflected the global nature of imperialist dominance. The Vietnam war, in particular, was the most important conflict, and solidarity was not only a matter of internationalism but of understanding it as a dispersement of imperialist military and political powers, thus debilitating their operating capabilities in Latin America and elsewhere. Che envisioned a Vietnamese victory as the beginning of the end of imperialism and, therefore, articulated a strategy of creating "two, three, many Vietnams" (1968a, 32; and 1968d, 59-60, 67).
Revolutionary violence was a necessary response to the violence in an existing social structure of injustice and inequality. The strategic goal of destroying imperialism was the only way to create conditions "for the real liberation of all peoples" (Guevara, 1968d, 64). For Guevara revolutionary struggle was a combination of fighting imperialism and striving to overcome backwardness (1968c, 35). His goal was to create a radical democracy with full participation by individuals in the social and political process and--unlike capitalist projects--with an alternative form of development that would focus on satisfying individual needs rather than pursuing "better personal incomes or personal success" (1967b, 38). Thus, technology (urban industrialization and rural mechanization) would aid in developing the material conditions for creating the new individual of the twenty-first century.
The idea of the new man and woman is the touchstone of Guevara's political philosophy and revolutionary action (Lowy 1973, 28). It rests on the belief that men and women are the true actors in history, that an individual's freedom from alienation is "the ultimate and most important revolutionary aspiration" (Guevara 1968b, 9, 12, and 21); that "liberation is not a single act but a process" (Lowy 1973, 33), and that the construction of socialism rests on the formation of a new individual and the development of technology--in that order. Guevara affirmed the centrality of the individual not only in the revolutionary struggle but also in the building of a new society.
The individual--the "specific and named" man or woman--was recognized as the most important asset of the new society (Guevara 1968b, 9) and part of his dream of a new humanity. Against capitalist individualism--which cannot overcome Hobbes' assertion that man is homo homini lupus--Che envisioned an individual in solidarity with the rest of society--especially peasants and the working class. The new men and women collaborate with others--out of social duty--to contribute to the betterment of each individual in society (Guevara 1967b, 38) and overcome alienation through their consciousness of being the creators of a new humanity--led by the principles of justice, dignity, and freedom (Guevara 1968b, 17) (3).
Socialism becomes a form of "socialized humanity" or a "concrete universal brotherhood" (Lowy 1973, 27), in which the sense of belonging to a more humane solidary community overcomes capitalist alienation. Since socialism is a radical break with current societal projects, the new individual represents "neither XIX century ideas nor those of our decadent and morbid century" (Guevara 1968b, 17). Consequently Guevara designed and enforced economic plans to correct capitalist deviations from other socialist projects and launch the birth of the new individual. He also proposed (and was involved in) voluntary work campaigns to demonstrate the creation of the new man and woman in the Third World. His ideas of universal fraternity and solidarity also guided his appeals to socialist bloc countries for new forms of international relations based on "a fraternal policy" toward the peoples of dependent countries rather than on foreign trade criteria (Guevara 1968c, 39).
Trying to plant the seeds of the new individual, Ernesto Che Guevara died in Bolivia, in October 1967. His ideas, however, continued to fuel many projects of social change in the world--not only in the dependent countries--and still have great influence in Cuba. Although the clear-cut polarities that framed Guevara's thought may not hold today, the social problems that brought about his revolutionary thoughts and actions have not been solved. In fact, new forms of exclusion in dependent and advanced capitalist countries (race, gender, immigration) are being added to the socio-economic and ethnic exclusions Che fought in Latin America and Africa. Returning to Che Guevara's thought is a reminder that the longing for justice and a more humane existence still makes sense.
Reporting the Death: 1967
Che Guevara's death in 1967 helped the U.S. press to round off its anti-Cuba campaign in Latin America with accusations against Castro, a representation of Che deprived of social conviction and personal commitment, and the exclusion of radical theories of social change in Latin America (4).
Che's assassination and subsequent events were framed by the discursive ideology of modernization and political democracy; they led the press to focus on two contexts of meaning: political violence and social change, while privileging the "factual" as the predominant discourse of meaning. In fact, political violence became a major issue, whereas social change received less attention. For instance, the Cuban presence in Latin American revolutionary movements and Che's violent and contradictory features preoccupied the press, whose coverage never considered the display of force by the Bolivian army and the presence of U.S. military forces in Bolivia in terms of political violence.
ANew York Times report about the presentation of conclusive evidence by Bolivian officials about Che's leadership in the Bolivian guerrilla movement referred to him as "a leader of the Castro Revolution" involved in "subversion and terrorism . . . fomented by the Communist Cuban regime of Premier Fidel Castro" or as part of the "Communist Castrist infiltration" (Sept. 23, 1967,1 & 12). The De Moines Register called Che a"reputed master-mind of Latin America's Communist guerrillas" and described him as an "elusive revolutionary," a man whose revolutionary activities were the result of his multiple contradictions. Born into a middle-class Argentine family, he fought resolutely against U.S. imperialism, although he was a "cigar smoker," who wore a necktie, "a bourgeois article of dress that (he) spurned when he was Fidel Castro's right-hand man in Cuba" (Oct. 10, 1967, 5)
The Des Moines Register characterized Che as the "philosophical and military mentor of the Castros brothers in the guerrilla days in Cuba's Sierra Maestra," and described him as having affected "young ultraleftists who are tired of the ideological disputes that are fracturing Communism, and who yearn for action." The newspaper related his famous reference about "two, three Vietnams" flowering on the surface of the globe, to " Bolivia's jungles and Andean vastnesses as the locale for a 'second Vietnam'" and--citing the captured diary of Braulio, Che's main aide-- called the guerrilla incursion in Bolivia "an adventure" (Oct. 10, 1967, 5 ). The Chicago Tribune--quoting the same diary--also stressed the adventurous character of Che's campaign but concluded that he "believed that he had failed to foment a communist revolution in Bolivia" ( Oct. 12, 1967, 22), reinforcing the Los Angeles Times report that the diary "reflected disillusionment and bitterness over Guevara's inability to develop revolution" (Oct. 12, 1967, 1).
According to the U.S. media, Che's irrational violence was grounded in fanaticism and hatred, whereas ideological conviction and economic and social oppression in Latin America were ruled out as inspirations for his radical theory of social change. The New York Times depicted Che as a fanatic Communist of the Havana-Peking activist school who went to Bolivia solely for the purpose "of inciting armed revolt" and called him "an arch conspirator" who hated the United States "with a passion even exceeding San Martin's hatred for Imperial Spain" (Oct. 8, 1967, IV-10). For the Washington Post he became "too revolutionary either for Castro or his Soviets creditors" (Oct. 11, 1967, A24). When C. L. Sulzberger, New York Times correspondent in Buenos Aires, compared Che's belief in the inevitability of a general revolution to José de San Martín's fight for nationhood and independence, he concluded that these independent nations did not exist for Che Guevara; he pretended they were "simply U. S. appanages." Taking for granted that foreign dominance was a phenomenon peculiar to the colonial world--and ignoring Latin America's dependence on the United States--Sulzberger discredited Che's theory of imperialism and turned his revolutionary program into senseless violence (New York Times, Oct. 8, 1967, IV-10).
But it was part of a Castro speech in La Habana that became the most credible proof of Che's irrational aggressiveness. The New Yorker reported that according to Castro, "'as a guerrilla Che had an Achilles heel: it was his excessive aggressiveness, his absolute disregard for danger. This is something in which it was difficult to go along with him." Castro was also quoted as saying that Che "could have acted in an excessively aggressive manner" (Oct. 20, 1967, 20).
The Washington Post also commented on Che's political and military mistakes. By trying to provoke a revolution in a foreign land, Che displayed "an unwise disregard for the factor of nationalism and a fatal disregard for Mao's principle that guerrillas must operate as fish in the sea of the people" (Oct. 13, 1967, A24). In fact, two days earlier the Washington Post had concluded that because Che was obsessed with a continental revolution, "he seems to have ignored some of the axioms" from his own text on guerrilla warfare (Oct. 11, 1967, A-24). The New York Times agreed that, "Guevara's Bolivian campaign . . . failed . . . to comprehend local conditions" (Oct. 8, 1967, IV-10).
The portrayal of Che as an irrational activist is rounded out by discussions of his failure as a planner and politician. The Los Angeles Times speculated that Che's departure from Cuba was a result of Soviet pressures for his dismissal for ideological (his closeness to Peking) and practical reasons (Cuba's disastrous economy) (Oct. 12, 1967, II-4). The Des Moines Register also discredited him as a technician, suggesting that "Guevara was badly miscast as director of the Cuban central bank, as minister of Cuba's economy (Oct. 12, 1967, 6). In a less direct fashion, the Washington Post stated that most of Che's influence on the internal workings of the Cuban revolution was transitory as the drive toward industrialization "has become distinctly secondary to a re-emphasis on agriculture" (Oct. 15, 1967, A16). The New York Times added that "he was never popular with Cubans" because of his "haughty ways, his reliance on foreigners as advisers, his 3 p.m.-6 a.m. working schedule, and his bland confession that the Cuban government had made serious economic mistakes" (Sept. 23, 1967, 12). This emphasis on Che's personal features in explanations of the rising "subversive violence" in Latin America overshadowed considerations of the socio-historical conditions in the region. For instance, since structural conditions in Latin America were ambiguously described, social changes seemed attainable through traditional formulas of development thereby ruling out the need for deep and radical transformations.Thus, the Los Angeles Times argued that Che's failure did not "in any way minimize the need for continued efforts to improve the lives of the people through meaningful reforms" (Oct. 12, 1967, II-4) after observing earlier that the lack of equality and opportunities had made "many areas highly susceptible to Communist exploitation" (Oct. 11, 1967, A6).
The Los Angeles Times also implied a model of modernization based on industrialization, urbanization, and the evolution of a traditional political system. Thus, "Bolivia is a place apart, primitive even by standards that prevail in this part of the world, and not likely to change dramatically in our time" (Oct. 19, 1967, A29). The fact that Che had died in "a primitive" Bolivia is an ironic twist of South American history.
A shared assumption in U.S. newspaper accounts--aside from Che's presence in Bolivia--was the infiltration of most guerrilla movements throughout Latin America by Cuba. Therefore, any representation of Che as a threat to Latin American stability depended not only on his abilities as a guerrilla, but on Cuba's interest in expanding the revolution beyond its own frontiers. In fact, most references to Che mentioned Castro and the Cuban revolution, like the Los Angeles Times which maintained that Che's death "marked the most decisive victory to date over Premier Fidel Castro's efforts to export the Cuban revolution" (Oct. 19, 1967, 29).
However, such claims were rarely based on concrete evidence. For instance, when the Los Angeles Times suggested in an editorial that "the failure of guerrilla warfare so far in Latin America discredits the Castro-Guevara doctrine," the newspaper failed to provide information about the presence of Cuban military personnel, money, and weapons in Bolivia (Oct. 12, 1967, II-4). The New York Times offered at least some facts when it reported the arrival of four "prominent Cuban military figures" in Bolivia together with Che and described them as having held high government posts in Cuba and the Communist party. A man named "Braulio" also entered Bolivia with $25,000 for Che (Sept. 23, 1967, 12). And when the Washington Post raised the number of Cuban revolutionaries in Bolivia to "half a dozen," the report contained no additional information on monetary contributions and weapons (Oct. 11, 1967, A24).
In an immediate reaction to Che's death the Des Moines Register celebrated his failure to expand a small Bolivian guerrilla movement into another Vietnam "for the peace and well-being of mankind" (Oct. 12, 1967, 6), whereas the New York Times suggested that Che's death offered proof of Cuba's involvement in a subversive war in Latin America and helped to erode the guerrillas' invincibility in Latin America (Oct. 11, 1967, 18).
Skepticism prevailed among journalists, about the end of Che's ideological influence, because of his charismatic appeal among many young leftists. According to the Washington Post, for instance, Che's effect on a large and growing student movement on the left was to drive many young and immature people to death because they were convinced that "violence will be needed to accomplish the revolution which The Alliance for Progress attempts in peace" (Oct. 11, 1967, A24). The newspaper also noted that Che's charismatic influence could be rendered useless by revealing large gaps in his life "between what he tried to do and what he actually accomplished" (Oct. 15, 1967, A16). Similarly, the Los Angeles Times observed the powerful appeal of Che's myth among many would-be insurrectionists and concluded that his theory of insurgency would remain a handbook for those dedicated to "the violent overthrow of non-Communist governments" (Oct. 12, 1967, II-4).
Unlike revolutionary violence, the violence of the Bolivian army was cast as a legitimate response to subversion, whereas U.S. military presence was justified as needed assistance to prevent more Vietnams and to support government efforts to build stable societies. The New York Times relied on presidential announcements by Lyndon B. Johnson and Rene Barrientos, respectively, to provide definitions of state violence against Che and the revolutionary violence of the guerrilla movement.
For instance, when Bolivian officials informed the O.A.S. about Che's role in leading guerrilla activities, the New York Times reported that President Johnson advised Latin American leaders at a White House luncheon "to use 'resolute force' to combat subversion and sabotage being exported . . . by Castro agents." Johnson equated these guerrilla strategies with Ho-Chi-Min's practices, reinforcing ideological connotations of "subversion" and "sabotage" on one hand and "resolute force" on the other (Sept. 23, 1967, 1).
The New York Times then cited President Barrientos who called Che's military activities in Bolivia a "little foreign adventure," designed to establish a guerrilla center in South America. He was also quoted as saying that his army had "a plan in effect that is going to end" it in the context of defending the development plans of his nation against "Castro Communism" while insisting that "a country can develop and change itself from within while maintaining human dignity and individual sovereignty" (Sept. 23, 1967, 12). Thus, a patriotic Bolivian army advocated social change, whereas the guerrillas promoted violence and chaos.
This binary framing of political violence was never questioned by the U.S. press, although the unclear and contradictory circumstances of Che's death provided sufficient reasons for a critical look at the role of the Bolivian army. Instead of challenging the legality of killing a prisoner, Che's elusiveness and a blind acceptance of a war culture led journalists to focus on the identity of the displayed corpse. Consequently, the Bolivian army set the agenda of the debate, whereas the condemnation of the killing by Roberto Guevara, Che's brother, for instance, was not enough to inspire coverage beyond official statements (e.g., Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Des Moines Register, Oct., 10-15, 1967).
Instead, U.S. newspapers, like the Chicago Tribune, reinforced their previous conceptualization of political violence by recognizing Che's failures and praising the Bolivian military (Oct. 11, 1967, 1) despite ambiguous and contradictory statements by the Bolivian army.`In fact, since Che's execution news reports focused on eliminating doubts about a mistaken identity. The New York Times and Washington Post, however, drew on the contradictory army versions of Che's death, but only speculated about the falsity in the first reports and called the event an unresolved "mystery" ( Oct. 12, 1967, 23; and Oct. 14, 1967, A11, respectively). Accusing the Bolivian army of "ineptitude," the Washington Post addressed efficiency rather than politics and avoided debating the political reasons for the crime (Oct. 14, 1967, A11). Che's murder was never constructed by the U.S. press as political assassination, nor did the press discuss the consequences of a trial and the possibility of a death sentence.
In addition, a U.S. military presence in Bolivia was presented by the press as response rather than participation in political violence (by the Bolivian army), and the coverage remained low key. In fact, such a presence--based on requests from the government-- became "assistance," whereas guerrilla actions were repeatedly called a foreign intervention, because of their links with the Cuban revolution. Initially the New York Times reported that "Bolivian security authorities are understood to have received foreign--and according to some reports, United States--assistance in screening the captured passports" (Sept. 23, 1967, 12). However, it was not until October 10, 1967 when U.S. military involvement in Bolivia was officially recognized at a Washington meeting. The Washington Post revealed that "the U.S. Army has sent a 16-man team to Bolivia to train forces there in counter-insurgency" and disclosed that the information was released "to rebut claims that the United States had sent thousands of Green Berets to Bolivia" (Oct. 11, 1967, A4). Reporting on the flow of U.S. personnel, money, weapons, and training into Latin America lent specificity to the news and made military assistance appear natural and necessary, while the Cuban infiltration remained speculation.
In fact, the Washington Post reported that these announcements were made "when Congress is cutting back on military assistance to Latin America," and justified as needed assistance since"Latin America threatens to become another Vietnam unless the United States increases the military assistance so that Latin American forces can provide a shield against counter insurgency while their governments build a stable society" (Oct. 11, 1967, A4). In an attempt to explain the contradictory existence of military dictators in Latin America, the Los Angeles Times noted that according to the official statement, "some soldiers have used the armed forces to maintain themselves as dictators [with the result that] the Latin American military have evolved a fine social consciousness and a keen interest in helping with nation building" (Oct. 11, 1967, 6).
The antagonism of U.S.-Cuban relations entered into the vocabulary of the press where "counter-insurgent" training--suggesting a defensive mission--faced "foreign intervention"--an agressive act, and an institutional characterization of a U.S. presence--without an identifiable leader and connections to the U.S. government--confronted a personalized descriptions of revolutionary activities (as products of Castro-Guevara ambitions).
The ideological framing of guerrilla and U.S. military activities by the press did not remain completely uncontested, however. The Des Moines Register published a letter which called Che Guevara a "liberator of (the) oppressed" and accused the Bolivian government of being supported "both economically and military by the United States" (Oct. 14, 1967, 8). Another letter in the Washington Post defended Che as a "rare human" who fought for a cause and suggested irrationality on the side of politicians and leaders who do not fight for the welfare of their people ( Oct. 20, 1967, A20).
In addition, the New York Times reported that "more than 350 admirers" of Che had gathered for a memorial tribute at which "speakers charged that the United States was responsible for Mr. Guevara's death at the hands of Bolivian soldiers." (Oct. 27, 1967, 15). A syndicated article--published in the Des Moines Register and the Atlanta Constitution---called the United States a sponsor of military regimes and charged that regimes patronized by the United States had not evolved successfully after an outpouring of heroic revolutionaries like Che. "Almost everywhere else in the underdeveloped world, in Pakistan, South Korea, South Vietnam and all over Latin America and Africa, the United States is backing governments dominated by generals and colonels." Opposing military assistance as a factor in promoting development and democracy, the article concluded that "it is not all clear that this country has anything to contribute to the political development of the 'backward' nations" (Oct. 13, 1967, 8 and Oct. 16, 1967, 4, respectively).
However, such critical coverage did not seriously challenge the dominant ideological representations of information but--to some extent--legitimized them. In the context of the overall coverage these oppositional texts remained minimal contributions, they were short--except for one article-- and three of them represented opinions but none gained front- page attention. Yet, their publication legitimized the coverage by the liberal press; after all, it allowed critics to express their concerns and endorsed the difference between facts and opinions, objectivity and subjectivity--another fundamental ideological assumption of the press.
News magazines like Look, Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News and World Report shared the basic assumptions that foregrounded newspaper characterizations of Che. He was seen as "a doctor of medicine who never treated a patient" (U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 23, 1967, 20), a permanent rebel who did not know what to do with himself, and a zealot who was "humorless, arrogant, ruthless and sometimes brutal in his dedication to his own simplistic version of history" (Newsweek, 1967a, 65). Che was not only a "daring imaginative guerrilla tactician" (Newsweek, 1967b, 64) and the revolution's philosopher, but he shaped his own brand of guerrilla Marxism, much more violent than Mao's, for instance (Time Oct. 20, 1967, 26) and became "this hemisphere's top communist revolutionary (US News, Oct. 23, 20). In addition, he was "a romantic rather than a serious politician operator," as shown by his failure in Cuba's Ministry of Industry and his guerrilla adventure in Bolivia (Time, Oct. 20, 20; Newsweek, 1967a, 64).
The magazines agreed that after transforming Cuba into a center of revolutionary activities in the hemisphere, terrorizing peasants in Southern Bolivia, and obstructing Bolivian government efforts toward development, Che became the biggest game bagged by the Bolivian Army (U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 23, 1967, 20; Newsweek, 1967a, 64). His death was a major blow to Castro's export of revolutions to Latin America and other Third World countries (U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 23, 1967,20) and a relief for all Latin American governments facing the threat of systematic subversion (Time, Oct. 20, 1967, 27). But the news magazines also speculated that the legend of this "pure-hearted communist Robin Hood" would haunt the world "for years to come" (Newsweek, 1967a, 65), not only because Cubans would make him a martyr and create a myth (U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 23, 1967, 20; Look, Dec.12, 1967, 26), but also because the roots of the revolution remained (Time, Oct. 20, 1967, 26). Newsweek, in particular, concluded that overcoming backwardness, inefficiency, and corruption in Latin America would need more than hunting and murdering revolutionary legends (1967b, 42).
The news magazines framed Che's death as a Latin American matter; there was no or marginal involvement by the U.S. government, and the death had not much importance for U.S. readers. In contrast to the press coverage, these publications constructed Che's death as part of a struggle by Latin American governments against systematic subversion; it was not seen as part of broader conflicts--like Vietnam and U.S. interests in preventing a potential emergence of new Vietnams in the hemisphere. There were no references to U.S. involvement in Che's death or to U.S. support of counterinsurgent projects in Latin America. Only Newsweek mentioned U.S. aid to Bolivia, but suggested that it was directed toward education and transportation rather than military assistance (1967b, 42). In contrast, all news magazines emphasized Cuba's export of revolutions and even provided data about Cuba's expenses in promoting "wars of liberation" elsewhere. (U. S. News, Oct, 23, 1967, 20).
In addition, Time and Newsweek offered reasons for revolutions in Latin America (Oct. 20, 1967, 27 and 1967b, 41, respectively), but despite abstract references to "backwardness, inefficiency and corruption," and Che's direct experience with the CIA-inspired 1954 coup in Guatemala, the anti-imperialist nature of Che's struggle remained the result of his "passionate hatred of the U.S," according to Newsweek (1967a, 64). For Time it was Guevara's "almost pathological" sentiment of unknown causes together with his "emotional worship of the communist world" (Oct. 20, 1967, 26) which explained his revolutionary activities. US News and World Report, on the other hand, saw Che's struggle as part of a hemispheric conflict but did not refer to actual social conditions, efforts by local elites to contain any substantial social change, and U.S. support of counterinsurgent projects (Oct, 23, 1967, 20).
The acknowledgement of certain social conditions that explained the emergence of revolutionary ventures, became part of a narrative strategy and allowed Time magazine to portray Latin American militaries and governments as agents of modernization, committed to bringing "the peasant into the 20th century" (Oct. 20, 1967, 27); whereas Newsweek concluded that Che's revolutionary activities became an obstacle to these goals and his death was an opportunity for dominant forces to devote their "full energies to the economic ills that beset" Latin America (1967b, 41).
In contrast to news magazine (and newspaper) constructions of Che as philosopher of violence, arrogant zealot, romantic but hardly serious politician, and enemy of the hemisphere, magazines like the Nation, the New Republic, and Ramparts viewed Che Guevara as the greatest Latin American revolutionary since Símon Bolivar, the most important exponent of guerrilla warfare, and the most romantic revolutionary figure of the last decades (Gott, 1967, 531), whose made-in-the-United-States death (Ray, 1967, 37) elevated him to a powerful revolutionary symbol.
Ramparts magazine developed the most positive image of Che Guevara in a 14-page article by a French journalist, Michele Ray (1968); it also provided the most complete contextualization of Che's death as part of the Pentagon's commitment against any Vietnam in Latin America and to create several Bolivias (counterinsurgent projects). Ramparts also published Fidel Castro's (1968) introduction to The Bolivian Diary of Che Guevara; it presented Che's revolutionary work and death in the context of a Latin American and global revolution--a painful but necessary way for underdeveloped countries to overcome dependency and to close an increasing gap between them and the industrialized world. Ramparts also published a book review, aimed at countering the appropriation, trivialization, and transformation of Che into one more "North American culture hero," an anachronistic and romantic knight. (Weissman, 1968, 59). Similarly, the Nation also placed Che's revolutionary activities in the context of Latin American social conditions and politics (Nov. 20, 1967, 522-23), but its main topic was Che as a revolutionary figure who captured the imagination of U.S. Americans (Yglesias, 1967, 464).
The positive images of Che as a revolutionary hero were constructed in these publications based on his political goals--combined with personal traits--and the power of his adversaries. Thus, honesty, discipline, commitment, aloofness, and even his playboy appearance together with the nature of his political goals--to lead revolutions and build socialism to overcome injustice and social inequality--formed an individual who stood opposed to the overwhelming economic, political and military power of U.S. imperialism and its allied Latin American economic and political elites. His image was further enhanced when his revolutionary battle moved onto a global stage and the struggle in a small Latin American country--like Bolivia--actually stood for a universal struggle of people in underdeveloped and industrialized countries, who were not only excluded from the benefits of development, but were forced to fight their nation's neocolonial and imperialist wars, like in Vietnam. Castro's view conveyed the best the image of Che as a hero, whose ideas, image, and name "are the banner of the struggle against the injustices of the oppressed and exploited." Vastly universalized because it embodies "the anti-imperialist spirit" in "its purest and most disinterested form," Che's figure had become the "universal breath of the revolutionary struggle even in the imperialist and colonial metropolises themselves" (Castro 1968, 4-5).
Consequently, Che's murder was "a symbol of the power of the USA throughout Latin America" and the beginning of Che's life as a powerful symbol of people's need for redemption from misery and injustice in Latin America and around the world, including those oppressed in colonial or imperialist metropolises (Ray 1968, 32, 37).
Constructing the Resurrection: 1997Three decades after his death Che was resurrected in the United States and around the world. The revival of his image was an opportunity for some to celebrate its commodification and for others to formulate a "nuanced good-bye" to Che Guevara's times and politics of anti-colonial struggles and revolutionary utopias.Che was resemantisized and his image conveyed a much more diverse set of political, artistic, and commercial meanings, threatening to impoverish his image as a revolutionary symbol and even parody its original meaning. Although "the Guevara that people are buying today has been downsized for a cynical age" (Reuss, 1997), media representations of Che were much more nuanced than the media constructions of his death thirty years ago. A number of competing voices emerged from the publications included in this study (5). Che had become a world "pop icon" (Larmer, 1997, 38) and represented a way of life and politics that seemed utterly irrelevant in contemporary culture and society; yet for others, Che was still a much needed revolutionary symbol in a world of increasing socio-economic and political imbalances, declining utopian longings of social justice and equality, and rising cynicism.Newspaper and magazine articles seemed to agree--implicitly at least-- that Che's death "only enhanced his legend" (Larmer, 1997, 39) as a model revolutionary in Latin America and elsewhere and a pop star (or both) when he appeared in his "multiple incarnations" as a 20th century myth and "the Guerrilla Heroica himself" (Franklin, 1997, 27). Che's image could not only be found everywhere in Cuba, but as easily in a peasant's home in El Salvador--next to a crucifix--in movies in Brazil and the United States, in a mural of Chicano heroes in a Latino dorm at Stanford University, as a theatrical device in Parker's film, "Evita," and on British beer labels. Similarly, Newsweek journalist Brook Larmer saw Che's revival as a form of commercial resurrection. "Suddenly, Che is chic," and his appeal "is no longer limited to aging leftists," when his "gentle and lite" incarnations are "used to sell everything," from rock-rap music, skis, beer, watches, and t-shirts, to photographs, books, movies, and college courses. (Larmer, 1997, 38-39).According to Christopher Hitchens (1997, 20), Che's significance was now described in "boutique versions" and he suggested that Ce's attraction had much to do with "the grace of an early and romantic death." Larmer (1997, 38) added that Che Guevara's allure for many people in today's consumer society "seemed to stem from a longing for the pure uncompromising ideals of the past" and from his good looks, but above all, because "thirty years have tamed the antiimperialist tiger and turned him into a rebel without claws." Indeed, in the post-cold-war period of the 1990s, Guevara's "revolutionary ideals no longer pose much of a threat."These portrayals succeed in cancelling the political and revolutionary meaning of Che, reproducing an image well suited for commercialization. His image was reduced to just another display in the shop windows of international commerce where all meanings are homogenized or blurred, regardless of where Che's image could be located or whether it was celebrated--like in the Plaza de la Revolucion in La Habana--or banned--like in a Costa Rican soccer stadium (6). However, there were still other ways of preempting the revolutionary meaning of Che's image.For instance, Hitchens (1997, 22) represented Che as an authentic revolutionary, "one of those rare people for whom there is no real gap between conviction and practice." During the early 1960s in Cuba he was "unsparing of himself . . . worked unceasingly . . . (and) completely indifferent to possessions." He went to Africa because he "wanted to share in the suffering and struggle [of those] who were receiving the blunt end of the cold war," and later in Bolivia "his final days demonstrate conclusively that he was not a hypocrite." Consequently, Che's murder had a great impact on world politics. Although "nebulous and elusive," Guevara had "a real presence" in the political struggles of the last decades. Hitchens concluded that despite the fact that "the hedonist Utopians rather than the rigorous revolutionary puritans . . . made the running " in the United States, Che's murder helped inaugurate the "hot" period of the 1960s when his image became a symbol of the times. Hitchens (1997, 23) placed his sympathetic account of a revolutionary, however, in a strictly historical context and argued that Che Guevara's world "was a radically different place." The struggles against colonialism, neo-colonialism, authoritarian regimes, or racial discrimination in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have been overcome, the political and economic imbalances he fought have disappeared or are irrelevant, and the hot late 1960s in the United States have been replaced by official politics and consumer hedonism. From his point of view, the revival of Che's image is not really a resurrection but "a nuanced good-bye to all that" (7).This observation, however is only partially accurate--since many conflicts that fueled guerrilla activities in the Third World still persist despite a significant change in world politics since the late 1960s--but provides the context for yet another view of Che Guevara. For instance, Curtis Ellis (1967) discovered that "nowhere is Che's image as revered--or as relevant today--as in Cuba" and he interpreted the revitalization of Che's image as part of a government attempt to "cash in by marketing Che's old haunts." Similarly, Brook Larmer (1997, 38) referred to the uneasiness and ambiguity of the Cuban government in promoting Che as a saint while abandoning many of the principles he "held sacred."The newspaper coverage of Che's burial in Cuba revealed these concerns, in particular. For instance, The Chicago Tribune reported about Che Guevara's triumphant ride across the Cuban countryside to his tomb in Santa Clara--the historic place of his battle that marked the end of the Batista dictatorship in December 1958. But in contrast to his subsequent victorious ride into La Habana, his last journey to Santa Clara "would be (rather) bitter than sweet," because Cuban reality--no matter how the government had tried to hide it--was too far removed from Che's revolutionary vision of a society of literate and healthy people, collective ownership of the land, industrialization, full employment, social equality, and justice. Yet alongside the experiences of hardship, inequality, and problems caused by a free-market model, Che would discover that his memory energized people and produced "a deep sense of determination and pride and hope" among a large number of Cubans, (8) who still saw themselves as "fighting for the same ideals" (Oct. 13, 1997, 1, 8).The Associated Press coverage of the 30th anniversary of Che Guevara's death and the transfer of his remains to Cuba revealed--in a much more assertive fashion--the Cuban government's practices of highlighting Che's historical significance and political and moral relevance to revitalize its weakened socio-political model. For instance, the news agency reported that Castro was posing Che as a historical figure, "a symbol for all the poor of this world," and a national hero who was "waging and wining more battles than ever." He invoked Guevara's ideals of socialist self-sacrifice and his principles of Latin American solidarity and appealed to his memory for help "in Cuba's ongoing struggle to revive its economy and easy the pressure of U.S. economic sanctions" (Internet, MSNBC International News, Oct. 1997).The media coverage of the official discourse at Che's burial--somehow resonating sympathetic comments by ordinary Cubans--also revealed a symbolic struggle involving different perspectives on the meaning of Che in current Cuban society (9). For example, some news stories echoed the views of Cubans critical of the government's tribute to Che as a staged event (Chicago Tribune, Oct. 13, 1997, 8) or a "publicity stunt" (Boston Globe, Oct. 20, 1997). Other stories conveyed the sense of a religious ritual to install Che as a saint or god in the official Cuban discourse (10); they cited Catholics who found themselves "clashing [with the government] over symbols" in attempts to counter the official discourse about Che Guevara's relevance and to make symbolic (and political) room for the visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba. For the Boston Globe "the pope will offer Mass in Che Guevara's shadow" (Oct. 20, 1997).In general, newspapers accounts revealed complex and ambiguous visions of Che based on a large number of competing voices. At the same time, the coverage of Che's burial seemed to privilege the resurrection of Che by the Cuban government. This was paradoxical, because the coverage highlighted the distance between Che's utopian visions of a just and equal society and the harsh realities of today's Cuba without providing the necessary background to ponder these realities in terms of Cuba's recent history; after all, the evolution of world politics and the new conditions of globalization faced the persistence of considerable and increasing imbalances between industrialized and non-industrialized societies. U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba was not even mentioned, and the news reports focused on banishing the revolutionary utopia in Cuba even among old revolutionaries--the Cuban children of Che Guevara.This view of Che's 1997 burial in Cuba resembled the dominant framing of his death in 1967, when it was Bolivia's business--an underdeveloped and distant South American country--where Che had become an outdated revolutionary with no other place to go. Cuba's official claims like "Che would feel proud of the merits and virtues of the revolution, and would feel proud of the valor and heroism of this people" seemed to make no sense, and even less so Fidel Castro's remarks that the image of Che "would grow larger the more the world was blighted with imperialism, poverty, cowardice and hypocrisy" (Diaz, 1997). Castro's words--according to this representation--sounded more like the nostalgic exclamation of an elderly leftist than an accurate account of Che's relevance in a world that had changed since his death but still contained many of the conflicts and imbalances Che had addressed.These representations suggest--in fact--that Che's resurrection is based on the need by Cuba's leaders to revive a historic and revolutionary figure, because Che's resurrection in 1997 could only be commercial and not political, as some publications argued. For others--who may have agreed--Che was never a real hero.But it became equally clear that Che Guevara's influence has been deeper and greater in Latin American politics--but also more frustrating and problematic--than suspected. Alma Guillermoprieto (1997, 104) noted, for instance, that a young generation--who only knew of Che when he was murdered--became "the children of Che." They followed the slogans of Che Guevara ("the first duty of a revolutionary is to make revolution") and Fidel Castro ("be like Che") uncritically and died for revolutionary causes in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and elsewhere in Latin America. As disciples of a fanatic they provoked the specter of authoritarian regimes in the hemisphere during the last thirty years with subversive politics and armed struggles. This view deemed Che intellectually and ethically responsible for such tragedies. As a Mexican (11), however, Guillermoprieto was not blind to the "objective conditions" in Latin America that led (and may still lead) to revolutionary projects and armed struggle. She observed that "perhaps it is true that in the Latin America of those years it required more self-dillusion to be a moderate reformer than to be a utopian revolutionary" and she concluded that "Guevara was born in Latin America's hour of the hero," at a time, when "only a hero could answer the call and only a heroic mode of life could seem worthy" (1997, 106, 111).Like the failure of mainstream media representations of Che Guevara in 1967 and 1997, Guillermoprieto's portrayal of Che in the New Yorker also lacked concrete references to the real significance of the historical conditions confronted by Guevara's political thought and his revolutionary actions. By politicizing Che's subjective features, Guillermoprieto (1997, 111) constructed a dehistoricized image of Che and ruled him out of "the present era, in which there are no perfect causes, and where men like him are more than ever out of place." Her article--a review of Jon Lee Anderson's Che Guevara. A Revolutionary Life and Jorge G. Castañeda's Companero--belonged among constructions of Che's image that have been described as a "nuanced good-bye to all that" (12).Three decades after his death Che Guevara was resurrected in U.S. newspapers and magazines as an object of a commercial mentality which cannot recognize (or appreciate) the need for revitalizing his political and revolutionary thoughts and actions. Whereas these publications reflected on political ideas--appropriating Che's legacy for revitalizing Cuba's political model, energizing claims of social change in Latin America, and promoting solidarity among the undeveloped countries to counter the negative consequences of unequal international relations--the prevailing discourse fit the dominant framing of news stories. In other words, these publications presented contending views--without explicitly qualifying any of them--and cast them in specific frames which dehistoricized Che Guevara's thoughts, political goals, and revolutionary actions; they also emphasized the subjective qualities of the hero (or antihero) without concern for the potential relationship between reported facts and U. S. foreign policy toward Latin America. The resurrection of Che in U.S. publications was a commercial (or depoliticized) undertaking rather than a political accomplishment since media coverage resulted in a litany of rejection and blame. But because of these circumstances, media representations of Che were by far more complex and ambiguous in 1997--when the axis of signification had shifted toward the fields of commerce and culture--than those constructed in 1967. In fact, it could be argued that Che's resurrection by the media represented an aftershock of the 1967 cultural revolution and suggested that the domain of culture may hold the key to social change. The contemporary media coverage of events--like Che's burial--was considerably enhanced by an academic interest in Che which contributed to shaping his image. For instance, three new biographies (13) and a number of reviews (14) were published in 1997, addressing an academic and intellectual public (15). They were part of a much larger body of works about Che Guevara (16) that suggests the commercial viability of intellectual efforts to construct the meaning of Che under different political and cultural conditions. The emerging representations of Che are particularly significant, since they pursue the deconstruction of Che's mythical image. Many scholars and journalists--identified with past or present left-wing politics--contributed to Che's new image by reinforcing a commercial media interest in denying the current validity of Che's revolutionary activity. Their arguments paralleled the 1967 press coverage of Che's death--including a condemnation of his violent activities and their consequences--without references to state violence or the need for significant social changes in Latin America and despite their specific political positions.For instance, in his New York Times review of three books Richard Bernstein asked about the importance of a renewed interest in Che and what it suggests about Che and this generation ( Nov. 26, 1997, B2). These were questions that occupied implicitly, at least, other reviewers and they were relevant, because the debate had rekindled memories of a revolution in an age in which, according to Guillermoprieto, "there are not perfect causes" (New Yorker, Oct. 6, 1997, 111).The answers--coincidentally--construed Che as a 1960s phenomenon. This convergence can be explained partly by the biographical nature of the books, but mostly by the end-of-the-cold-war political background of Che's comeback. Instead of locating him in the 1960s, however, the reviewers scrutinized Che's revolutionary life with political and theoretical criteria that belonged to the 1990s--constructing not only an incomplete image of Che in the 1960s, but relinquishing his political meaning in the 1990s.The ensuing academic debate of Che--supported by the nature of biography and nurtured by a general intellectual interest in the individual as a theoretical touchstone--was informed by a fascination with his personal history; the latter also helped reinforce the negative portrayal by the media. For instance, Guillermoprieto provided multiple examples of Che's fanaticism, hatred, and machismo--making it impossible for him to bear the ambivalence of the world and pushing him to find relief in battle and radicalism (New Yorker, Oct. 6, 1997, 104-5, 109). Similarly, Saul Landau called him arrogant and--following Castañeda--a man who recurrently and, ultimately, made "fatal mistakes" (Washington Post, Oct. 19, 1997, X1), whereas Bernstein stressed Che's authoritarian and non-pacifist characteristics (New York Times, Nov. 26, 1997, B2). Such representations matched similar ones by M. Falcoff, a conservative writer, for whom Che's soul was in a perpetual "search of revolutionary upheaval" (American Spectator, June, 1, 1997, Internet).The task of killing Che's myth was urgent because--according to Guillermoprieto--the heroic picture of Che "is still satisfying to large number of Latin Americans who are not in a position to exact an accounting from their leaders but do . . . demand that their leaders act grandly and provoke fervor and states of rapture" (New Yorker, Oct. 6, 1997, 111). More sympathetic views agreed with this position. Philip Bennett, for instance, saluted Che's commitment to sacrifice for a cause, proving that being a guerrilla--like being a priest--could be a lifelong vocation. He observed that after Che's death revolutionary movements had spread across Latin America, "consuming hundreds of thousands of lives and drawing some of the best and brightest of a generation into conflict with the United States" and concluded that "inasmuch as the diseases that moved him go untreated, Che lives, not only in the books but in the world" (Boston Globe, Internet, May 12, 1997).The reason why Che's myth is irrelevant was provided by Bernstein, who suggested that "Che no longer needs to be a hero or a villain, but can be seen more as an emblem of a time that quite clearly, is past. He is to be studied not as a martyr or a prophet, but as distant mirror of a generation still striving to understand itself" (New York Times, Nov. 26, 1997, B2). Similarly, Falcoff maintained that Che's capacity to provoke empathy among the spoiled youths in the affluent West had largely passed. "It is not as if nothing has happened these last three decades to establish once and for all which political and economic systems are more likely to produce abundance and freedom." Furthermore, thinking of Che was useless, since "revolutionaries . . . cannot be judged only by their intentions or ideals; they have to be evaluated in terms of their accomplishments. In the case of Guevara, we have a minister of industries who succeeds only in producing toothpaste that turns to cement once it leaves the tube, and a land reformer whose policies generate food shortages, disorder, and hunger" (American Spectator, Jun. 1, 1997, Internet). For Bernstein, finally, Che's disinterment--not his resurrection--was avalid opportunity for members of the 1960s generation to evaluate their idealism with an awareness of their naiveté. The desire to settle accounts with a promising but problematic era, however, suffered from the same all-or-nothing logic that was criticized in Che's ideological stance. Whereas the 1967 newspaper accounts equated Che's death with the cancellation "of two or three Vietnams," contemporary observers sought to banish the possibilities of a new era of radicalism in Latin America. The Vietnam war provided the political background for informing the ideological construction of Che's image in 1967. The 1990s failure of Communism became the ideological force that shapes today's authoritarian, machisto image of Che. In this process, however, the 1960s were framed as an era focused on itself and in need of gaining a full understanding of its own contradictions through Che's demythification. The only lesson this era could provide was to avoid more fatal mistakes.In the meantime, Che's image was deprived of political meaning for the 1990s; most reviewers ignored that "Guevara must be understood in his historical context [and that] he perceived his life's purpose as part of a struggle against imperialism, in which the fight to break U.S. control over Cuba could be crucial" (Franklin, The Nation, May 19, 1997, 28). By omitting the historical fact that some military regimes in Latin America--backed by the U.S. government--were not less sanguinary than their revolutionary opposition and that most people lived in extreme poverty, these reviewers ignored Che's historical commitment against poverty and vexation. In this sense, academic reflections on Che tended to immobilize rather than stimulate a new wave of theoretical and political imagination. Latin America persists as a region in need of profound social change and reflection on the possibilities for redefining the struggle against hunger and injustice. Instead, scholarly efforts seemed more concentrated on eliminating memories and myths to effectively drain Che's political meaning from the 1990s.Finally, the textual treatment of Che Guevara in 1997 was supplemented by a sparse photographic narrative that supported and reinforced the meaning of Che as a historical figure. Many publications did not make use of photographic material, leaving it to the imagination of the older reader to recall one or several of the famous photographs; others illustrated the textual accounts with photographs that identified Che in the timeless fashion of cropped images of his face. History and politics lie beyond these frames, where they await confirmation by the anonymous reader. Among them were the famous photograph that has come to represent Che, taken by a Cuban photographer (Alberto Karda) at a political rally in La Habana. Another image of Che as a smiling cigar-smoking young man in a military uniform (by René Burri) is a casual photograph that looks more like a provocative 1990s cigar advertisement. Both images suggested the range of representations--from the militant to the personal--and reinforce the complex nature of Che Guevara.Other publications reprinted the now famous photograph of Che's body, produced for the world hours after his murder, when he was laid out on a concrete slab, surrounded by some of his captors. It revealed a powerful, Christ-like image that could have only strengthened his legend and added to his reputation among the poor at the time of his death. This particular photograph of the body as a war trophy--which turns into the image of a martyr--supported the claims by various writers of the public perception in Latin America's countryside of Che's moral standing, his honesty and humanity in the face of absolute disaster. Although the photographic coverage during 1997 was minimal, it was based on well-known photographs that are reminders of Che's work in Cuba and his death in Bolivia during the 1960s. Ultimately, however, the photographs were suggestions of the distance his image had travelled in the collective memory of the 1960s while appealing to the historical consciousness of the reader and the resistance of his image to change.ConclusionsAt the end of 1967 several different and contradictory images of Che Guevara emerged from U.S. media coverage of his death. The press, in particular, constructed Che almost exclusively from evidence of violence, citing either his personality or his resolve to carry Communism into Latin America. News magazines, on the other hand, relied more on revolution and anti-imperialist struggles in Latin America and elsewhere for a description of his political activities and the cause of his death, Opinion journals also described him as an imaginative revolutionary, a romantic more than a serious politician, whose anti-imperialist fight was based on his pathological hatred of the United States and his need for destruction. In either case, Che's image was conditioned by contradictory observations and resulted in a flawed ideal of friend or foe that haunted the pages of the print media and reflected the uneasiness of U.S. journalism in the face of U.S. involvement in Che Guevara's death.The representations of Che Guevara--offered by a variety of media thirty years after his death--have lost their political edge.The celebration of the 1967 execution in Bolivia and the appropriation of Che's body as a sign of victory by U.S. media have given way to a more differentiated use of his image. This change coincided not only with the end of the Cold War and the defeat of Communism, but also with a shift of the struggle from military confrontation to cultural warfare. It is still an ideological conflict, however, in which the commodification of Che plays a major role in the battle over cultural territories that hold the promise of political and social change. For one, the coverage of Che as a news story--based on the burial of his remains in Cuba--provided an opportunity for perfecting the incorporation of Che into a hegemonic system of information and entertainment under the control of major international news organizations. When this event coincided with the release of biographical studies, musical records, and the editorial response to them, it maximized the impact of the topic and reinforced its credibility.In 1997 Che had safely arrived as an object of editorial reflection which seemed to concentrate either on his political or military failures as a result of strategic mistakes and lack of support from Cuba, or on his psychological condition as a root cause of a destructive life that had led inevitably to the demise of the revolutionary project. The former considerations confirm (with hindsight) the historical reality since 1989--when Communism collapsed in Europe due to a series of political and economic mistakes--the latter suggestion privileges the personal in a commercial culture that celebrates outcomes rather than the process of becoming and totally neglects the importance of the collective as a social and political goal.The position of Che Guevara has shifted significantly in the mediated realities of contemporary political cultures. Effectively neutralized by an ahistorical news treatment and intellectually reinforced by selective editorial comments or book reviews, which by no means reflect the complexity of the book-length treatments, the meaning of Che rises from an ideological disposition that privileges the consequences of individualism. It emerges in the public re-articulation of Che as a response to the dominant political context and cultural values that reflect a traditional sensitivity towards the demands of the marketplace. Thus, the process of meaning making is linked to specific class interests that provide various articulations of Che in ways that are consistent with the dominant conception of history and the contemporary world, in which the potential of political opposition and revolutionary change is obscured by a strategy of deconstruction that effectively kills the image of resistance and reinforces the political status quo by cultural means. Consequently, the representation of the (revolutionary) politics of change in Latin America--individualized by Che--retains the suggestion of flawed practices and ill-conceived ideas, beginning with the 1967 image of the arch enemy and ending with the 1997 construction of a cult figure, whose proximity to James Dean or John Lennon deflects from his contemporary ideological role in parts of Latin America.Indeed, there was little, if any recognition of Che's ideas, his utopian visions for a new society, or the possibilities for a better world. His resurrection occured in the recounting of his activities and the ultimate failure of his plans; it was event-oriented and speculated, at best, about the course of his life. And in the final analysis, it was a resurrection of his body--the image--without his soul or his intellect. After all, while events are bound by history and reconstituted in the memories of people, ideas have a life of their own; they interact with the makers of new historical realities and continue to address the lingering social, political, and economic issues of the present. They may even incite to action and invite a new cycle of revolutionary thoughts and practices. The result is a construction of Che Guevara, the guerilla fighter, which is aimed at coopting oppositional readings by emphasizing his concrete experiences; it also solidifies his place in the cultural warfare on the side of the dominant forces. Che Guevara died thirty years ago and was laid to rest in 1997. The Che Guevara of a new world, however, is a man whose revolutionary ideals remain buried with him in the shadow of a socialist revolution that seems difficult to comprehend by self-righteous oblivious post-capitalist societies of the late 1990s.Notes & References Notes1. A man who "practices what he preaches," (Castro 1989, 39) paraphrases Che's farewell letter to his children, in which he says, "your father has been a man who acted the way he thought" (Pérez Galdós, 1988, xi. our translation).2. Other core aspects of his theoretical contributions are omitted, e.g., his view of economics and planning in the transition to socialism, the forms of popular democratic participation in revolutionary politics and government, and the building of a new world order. In addition to works quoted in this section, Regis Debray (1967) provides a sympathetic but somewhat polemic account of Che's (and Castro's) political thought, particularly on guerrilla warfare as a revolutionary strategy in Latin America; Tablada (1989) summarizes Che's economic thought in the broader contexts of his politics, philosophical stances, and utopian longings. A more recent and well informed biography is Castañeda (1997b), which aims to demytify and recreate Che as a historical, although paradoxical figure.3. David Slater (1992, 298-9) refers to Che's discussion of the individual and society as an example of Marxist totalitarian theories alien to a present-day diversity of social movements, popular political agendas, and views of radical democracy. From another perspective--but in the same vein-- Anderson (1997, 636-37) points to the totalitarian nature of Che's theory. An objective assessment of Che's idea of the new individual needs to include a close examination of Che's historical circumstances and the political culture of which Che was an expression.4. Newspapers cited in the 1967 coverage include: The Atlanta Constitution, TheChicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post andThe Des Moines Register.5. This section includes four articles from news magazines (Franklin, 1997, Guillermoprietos, 1997, Hitchens, 1997, Larmer, 1997), all but Larmer's are book reviews (Anderson, 1997, Castañeda, 1997), in addition to newspaper and internet articles.6. Last year, a small group displayed a large image of Che during a soccer game in Costa Rica. Although Guevara had not been influential in Costa Rican politics, some media representatives reacted ferociously and the stadium management banned further displays of Che images.7. Hitchens reviews the Anderson book in the New York Review of Books . Anderson (1997, 754), however, seems to suggest otherwise in his conclusions, "Elsewhere, Che's ghost continues to reappear as a specter in the unreconciled conflicts persisting since his times."8. The sense that Guevara's memory has a strong appeal and "commands a particular respect among many Cubans, even those critical of the present government" (Associated Press, Cuba Buries Revolutionary, by Zoraida Diaz, 1997) is shared by most news stories and articles included in this study. Another journalist notes, "Even Cubans who harbor doubts about the revolution still hold deep feelings for Che" (Fainaru, 1997a).9. In addition to the Cuban government, other sectors and political forces in Latin America also try to appropriate Che's legacy. For example, a Reuters report (October 10, 1997) about Carlos Menem, Argentina's pragmatic, anti-Communist president mentions the "widely-criticized proposal to issue a postage stamp honoring Ernesto 'Che' Guevara on the 30th anniversary of the legendary revolutionary's death . . ."10. According to a Cuban church historian, "What Jesus is to John Paul II, Che is to Fidel Castro" (Fainaru 1997a).11. In the introduction to her book on reporting from Latin America, Guillermoprieto explains, "I write as a Mexican-born-and-bred journalist who learned the trade working for newspapers published in London and the District of Columbia, and as a New Yorker who prefers to live in Latin America" (1994, xii). 12. Guillermoprieto, however, seems more interested in presenting her own views of Che rather than those of Anderson and Castañeda. Actually, she misrepresents Anderson's book, which, for other reviewers, "projects a multifaceted view of Guevara as a person, seething with ambiguities and complexities" (Franklin, 1997,27) and suggests that Che's image is still relevant (see note 6 above). Also, the Che who emerges from Castañeda's attempt to demystify Che by locating him in the contexts of his time, his political options, and his personal features, is by far more complex, ambiguous, and human than Guillermoprieto's. However, by blaming Che for much of Latin America's leftist politics, Guillermoprieto echoes an earlier Castañeda who criticizes Fidel Castro (but not Che) for exporting the Cuban revolution to the rest of Latin America (Castañeda, 1993; Chap. 3). In addition, Guillermoprieto reflects the political stance of many Latin American intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s, who were involved in revolutionary projects, like in Chile and Argentina, but ended up blaming leftist forces not only for the failures but also for the institutionalization of repression and violence in the military regimes of the 1970s and 1980s. Either way, repression and violence of the military regimes seem to have been the natural consequences of revolutionary politics and not the result of a clash between contending, yet uneven, political forces.13. They are Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson, New York: Grove Press; Guevara, also known as Che by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, New York: St. Martin's Press; and Compañero, by Jorge Castañeda, New York: Vintage Books.14. These reviews are: Philip Bennett. "Finding Ernesto Guevara in the Myth of Che," Boston Globe, Internet, May 12, 1997; Richard Bernstein. "Looking Back with cooled passions at Che's image," The New York Times, Nov. 26, 1997, B2); M. Falcoff. "He thinks we still care: Che Guevara: A revolutionary life," The American Spectator, Jun 1, 1997, Internet; Jane Franklin. "Guerrilla Heroica," The Nation, May 19, 1997, 27-28; Alma Guillermoprieto. "The harsh angel," The New Yorker, Oct. 6, 1997, 104-11; Saul Landau. "Poster Boy of the revolution," The Washington Post, Oct. 19, 1997, X1.15. An analysis of these reviews provides a cultural guide to the consumption and appropriation of the material, since reviews promote sales and consumption, offer codes of interpretation, and set agendas for debates. They also provide manufactured readings for individuals who will not read these books, but who will appropriate these texts as valid arguments and potential contributions to their own participation in the social or cultural contexts of debates regarding Che Guevara. However, there are certain limitations to this analysis involving the size and nature of the material. All materials were obtained from the Internet. The book reviews were published in several newspapers and magazines, but do not constitute a representative sample of what the U.S. press may have said about these books.
Ernesto Che Guevara remains one of the most important symbolic leaders of the late twentieth century, not only because of his role in the Cuban revolution, but because of his ability to capture the imagination of millions of people at various times of social and political unrest. His name remains synonymous with the struggle for freedom and self-determination in many parts of the world and his legacy of a new socialism has inspired a generation of revolutionary practices. His murder in 1967 intensified the celebration of the individual and his ideas when he became an idol of resistance and change in a world that was marked by armed conflicts and ideological strife. Thirty years after his death and on the occasion of his burial in Cuba, his image has recaptured media attention in the United States and elsewhere.
According to one of his biographers, "as a symbol of the political revolution, he disappeared, because a political rebellion was defeated and is totally senseless today. But since he was also a symbol of the cultural rebellion, and the cultural rebellion is still with us today, then today he reappears as a symbol, not of the politics of the '60s, but of the cultural revolt of the '60s, which is so important" (Castañeda, 1997a).
This project is located in the cultural arena of public discourse and focuses on U.S. media construction of two major encounters with Che Guevara, they are the day of his murder in Bolivia, on October 9, 1967, and the days leading up to the thirtieth anniversary of his death. At stake is the meaning of Che and his position in the historical narrative as his image changed from the radical revolutionary and enemy of the United States during the early 1960s to a cult figure of the 1990s.
Stuart Hall (1981, 235) provides a theoretical perspective on this process of shifting or unstable positions by noting that the "meaning of a cultural form and its place or position in the cultural field is not inscribed inside its form. Nor is its position fixed once and forever. This year's radical symbol or slogan will be neutralized into next year's fashion; the year after, it will be the object of a profound cultural nostalgia." This project is based on an understanding of communication as articulation, which--when located within institutional contexts--dominates the cultural and forms consciousness, according to Hall's early work (1980, 1989). Thus, this project is about a process of re-articulating Che as he moved from being a symbol of radical opposition and revolutionary change to a commodified expression of nostalgia.
Based on readings of various public media, including the internet, this project identifies and describes the construction of Che during the periods of October 1967 and October 1997 by focusing on the actual texts of news stories, opinion pieces, and reviews. Of interest is the discourse of the media under specific socio-historical conditions and its constitutive power to reproduce or change representations of Che Guevara. Media discourse is seen as a field of struggle to produce and sustain a coherent articulation of the symbolic worth of Che and addresses the dialectical nature of the relationship between text and society. As such it constitutes part of a cultural hegemony of the dominant political and economic forces in society and effects control over the types and genres of discourse, e.g., how they are articulated and in what form.
Thus, by necessity the project addresses the ideological practices of the U.S. media which fixed the reality of Che Guevara and proposed a particular vision that located Che within the experience of the reader. This is a response to a historically specific moment in which the image of Che assumed a specific role in the hegemonic politics of the dominant cultural order. The project considers how media texts reflect a particular vision of the world and the ideological struggle between the dominant interpretation of Che (and the events surrounding his myth) and other positions, including Che as an oppositional text, inscribed much earlier by the history of the relationship between the United States and Cuba.
The construction of Che is a particularly interesting ideological process of representing the enemy that involves the media in their role as executors of a dominant political will. In fact, the construction of Che's image is the result of several ideological structures and practices which are subject to analytical considerations that provide a path through the material with reference to notions of discursive ideology, context, and discourse of meaning. The former describes the general ideological framework that is applied not only to the particular content of the journalistic narrative, but also to the perceptions of the events by journalists and their way of constructing and telling their stories (discursive ideology). The latter refer to the topics that framed the story of Che's death and resurrection (contexts of meaning)--including those topics that eluded journalists or were ignored by them; they involve information about his personality and personal life, in addition to his life as a politician, revolutionary, and national hero or, less frequently, as a writer, economist, and philosopher. The idea of framing includes the nature or type of these stories and the concrete types of journalistic techniques used to tell about and comment on Che's death (discourse of meaning), like facts, opinions, and genres like interviews or book reviews, political leanings of authors, and other views guiding the narrative. The latter may have evolved from U.S. domestic and foreign policies, culture, and Latin American socio-economic conditions and official or revolutionary politics.
The project may help identify a link between the social and political realities of U.S. American existence and the construction of Che after three decades of hostility towards Cuba and the revolution he stood for; in this context, it offers an understanding of the media discourse as producer of these realities and the specific relation of the reader to the discourse--for example as consumer, bourgeois, or American. Although discourse lacks essential class connotations, meanings within discourse, nevertheless, are connotatively linked to different class interests, making explicit the linkage with hegemony as a central concept. Ernesto Laclau (1977, 161) suggests that a "class is hegemonic not so much to the extent that it is able to impose a uniform conception of the world on the rest of society, but to the extent that it can articulate different visions of the world in such a way that their potential antagonism is neutralized."
The figure of Ernesto Che Guevara is closely tied to the U.S. government position vis-à-vis Cuba, the threat of Communism in the hemisphere, and various attempts over the last thirty years to control the spread of democratic reforms in other parts of Latin America. In fact, the late 1950s are characterized by the overthrow of several Latin American rulers, besides Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar in Cuba, they include Juan Perón in Argentina (1955), Manuel Odría in Peru (1956), Gustavo Rojas Pinilla in Colombia (1957), and Marcos Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela (1958). The specific antagonism--if not open hostility towards Cuba--is a result of historical differences in which long-standing mistrust and misunderstanding--intensified by more recent ideological differences and the conditions of the Cold War--combine into a web of real and imagined threats and counter-threats.
The construction of Che as arch-enemy of U.S. American interests in the hemisphere during the late 1960s coincided with official attacks on Cuba and her involvement in the politics of democratization elsewhere to eradicate social and economic underdevelopment, like illiteracy, disease, and poverty, but also neocolonialism--the shackles of third-class citizenship in the world. For instance, Memories of Underdevelopment, a post-revolutionary film by Tomas Gutierrez Alea, addresses these issues effectively. Consequently, the "geographical fatalism" which had characterized much of Cuba's past attitude towards the United States was resolutely replaced by Castro's (and Che's) insistence on total independence from U.S. American interests. In pursuit of the "new Cuban man or woman" Castro became increasingly dependent upon the Soviet Union for the economy and defense of Cuba, whereas relations with the United States steadily deteriorated.
Cuba and the United States had been involved in a competitive race for social and political influence in Latin America ever since President Dwight D. Eisenhower had toured South America in early 1960, followed by two trips of President John F. Kennedy and attempts to encourage U.S. media interests in Latin American affairs. On the other side, Cuban leaders frequently traveled in the region, invited hundreds of students and experts to study in Cuba, and encouraged Radio Havana’s international short-wave programming and the activities of Prensa Latina and its world news service. Isolated economically and politically by the United States, Castro--with the help of Che Guevara--proceeded on the road to socialism. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962--a historical consequence of the Bay of Pigs incident--catapulted the regional conflict onto the stage of confrontational superpower politics. Cuba became inextricably identified with the goals of the Soviet Union to spread communism and confirmed official U.S. policies to overthrow Communism in Cuba. Thirty years later, Cuba's social revolution continues and so does a hostile U.S. government attitude towards Cuba, despite external and some internal pressures to lift the embargo and normalize relations with the Castro government.
In this context, U.S. media focus on Cuba as a source of news that promises controversy, conflict, and even war. They respond to a way of covering foreign affairs that reflects not only a perceived level of interest among readers but also a heavy bias towards U.S. foreign policy interests in the region. The result is a shaping of the world--including an understanding of the significance of foreign events and their consequences for the United States--by U.S. media organizations which have an ideological stake in the construction of the world (Hardt, 1988). In the case of Cuba, media interest reflected the increasing engagement of the U.S. government in Cuba's fate since the politically ambiguous phase of Castro's struggle against the Batista regime and the post-revolutionary years when Cuba's alliance with Communism increased the chances for an open conflict with the United States. U.S. journalists, in turn, reported regularly about the progress of the revolution and constructed an image of Cuba that supported an official anti-Communist campaign. The resulting media representation of Cuba prepared readers for the collapse of a revolution that was only allowed to fail in order to support U.S. interests in the region.
But whereas the 1967 coverage of Che Guevara's death was ideologically connected to the activities of the Castro government--including the success of the revolutionary struggle in Cuba--and concentrated on news, the 1997 coverage of Che's return to Cuba became a framing device for the construction of Che as a pop star and the global marketing of his image. As a result, media coverage shifted from straight news coverage--which was minimal in the United States--to considerations of various book-length treatments of Che as foundation for a series of prominently placed reviews that reexamined and deconstructed the political image of Che. Media interest in Che Guevara was concentrated on the opinion pages of newspapers or magazines, where the battle was less with Cuba than with the effects of Che as a successful symbol of radical political struggle. In fact, the acknowledgement of his political career was submerged, if not omitted, in remarks about his pop status. For instance, W magazine reported casually, "Le Chic Communiste. Move over Jerry Lewis. The newest French national icon is communist hero Che Guevara. The 30th anniversary of Guevara's death has unleashed an avalanche of propaganda, including countless newspaper and magazine articles, television specials, biographies, posters, T-shirts and even a runway homage in Jean Gaultier's October show. And now the Latin American leader has his own album. Released this fall, El Che Vive! is a compilation of songs from around the world dedicated to the dashing rebel" (December 1997). This characterization successfully removed Che Guevara (and communism) from a specific historical role and reproduced a popular culture phenomenon; Che's image became a media spectacle and, if managed correctly, a spectacular financial success.
There is an authentic existence of Che Guevara, however, that needs to be revealed to assess the complexity of his life and his contribution to the political life of Latin America to appreciate the extent of U.S. media coverage. Most biographers and scholars of Che Guevara agree that the coherence between words and deeds is the main feature of his revolutionary life, which may partially account for Guevara's historical relevance and his appeal as a major political figure (Anderson 1997, 567; Lowy 1973, 8-9; Pérez Galdós 1988, vii-ix) (1). These biographers, however, frequently understate his political thought by focusing on his revolutionary action; but as Castro (1989, 39-40, 5) argued, it is necessary to "go beyond the image that many people have of Che as a brave, heroic, pure man" to discover the theoretical foundations of his political action.
By summarizing Che Guevara's core ideas on Latin America's social formation and imperialist dominance, his understanding of social change, and the philosophical basis of his revolutionary project, the idea of the new man and woman as the ultimate end of the construction of socialism, the authors acknowledge that the discussion of Che as an intellectual and politician provides the historical (and biographical) background for understanding the representation of Che in the U.S. media in 1967 and 1997 (2); the discussion also provides the grounding for a conceptualization of culture as the new battleground for social and political change.
Guevara's thought is the result of his first-hand experience of the social conditions of Latin America and the progressive coding of that reality within a sort of Marxism that some have described as "both orthodox and at the same time fiercely-antidogmatic" (Lowy 1973. 9, 11). While travelling in Latin America, Guevara experienced poverty and oppression and was struck by the living and working conditions of poor peasants and urban working classes. He met the wretched of the earth for whom, due to poverty, social and ethnic divisions, and social and government neglect, the "farthest horizon is always tomorrow" (quoted in Anderson 1997, 76, 183).
Following the Cuban revolution, Guevara characterized other Latin American countries as sharing social structure and underdevelopment--based on the historical conditions of latifundism and allied with capitalist monopolies after 1945. Although "underdevelopment" was a euphemism for Guevara, he used the term to refer to Latin America's "monstrously distorted economy" (Guevara 1967b, 30-1), in which an underdeveloped industry complemented a feudal agrarian regimen (1967d, 76).
Underdevelopment complemented metropolitan economies and served their needs. Resembling Andre Gunter Frank's (1969) theoretical stance--popular among metropolitan and Third World sociologists--Che's argument suggested that "ever since capitalist monopolies took over the world they have kept the greater part of humanity in poverty, dividing the spoils among the most powerful countries. The standard of living in those countries is founded on the misery of ours" (1968c, 35). Since imperialist exploitation occurred with the aid of local ruling classes--totally submissive to imperialist forces (Guevara 1968d, 58)--Che concluded that an unstable oligarchical dictatorship consisting of local bourgeois and landlords ruled Latin America for the exclusive benefits of local elites and imperialist monopolies (1967d, 78).
During the late 1960s and 1970s a Latin American sociology of dependency expanded on Che's theoretical legacy. Castañeda (1993, 71) noted that it "posited the virtual neocolonial status of the hemisphere, the disfunctional nature of capitalism in the region and the consequent historical impotence of the local business classes, the complete lack of democratic channels of expression and reform, and the inviability of any form of nonsocialist development."
Che Guevara's understanding of Latin America's social and political situation formed the basis of his theory of social change which was built on the Marxist stance that "the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed," (Guevara,1967a, 20) and on the distinction between objective (material) and subjective conditions for social change.The former had existed in Latin America since the late 1950s and early 1960s and the latter could be helped to develop through insurrection. According to Che, the major contribution of the Cuban revolution was the advancement of the subjective conditions for social change and the creation of a political and moral example for others to follow. Since the Cuban revolution the peasantry had become a new historical agent of social change (Guevara 196c, 33; and 1967d, 75). Consequently Che Guevara turned to the central role of the intellectual to help to overcome the lack of political education and social consciousness among peasants and the urban working class. Generalizing the Cuban experience of strong leadership and strict discipline, he articulated the creation of subjective conditions as a moral call for intellectuals, students, working people, and peasants conscious of the need for radical social change.
But whereas developmentalists argued for the potential of the national bourgeoisie and traditional communists sought an alliance between industrial working- and middle-class sectors for a peaceful march into socialism (Graciarena and Franco 1981, 212-14), Che dismissed the bourgeoisie as an agent of domination and unfit to lead an anti-imperialist struggle (1967d, 77). He argued that peasants embodied the main contradiction of Latin American societies and, therefore, had a greater potential for revolutionary agency. He also proposed that the industrial working class would join the struggle for liberation which was to begin in the countryside ( 1967d, 76-77).
For Che Guevara the Cuban revolution had shown that change was necessary, armed struggle could succeed, peasants were the main revolutionary force, and--given socio-economic and political similarities among Latin American countries--the revolution had a continental character (1967d, 80- 86). Consequently social change was inevitable and imminent through armed struggle. In contrast to other progressive--but more traditional--political forces in Latin America, Guevara (1967d, 78) insisted that the seizure of power could be attained by "short cuts" rather than by alliances with the bourgeoisie and peaceful coexistence with imperialism. Although he did not advocate armed struggle as a general remedy for whatever social and political conditions (Castañeda 1993, 329), his understanding of the social and political reality--the idea of the potential for immediate social change and its historical agents and the role of the radicalized intellectual--represented a "major theoretical and practical" challenge (Sánchez Vánquez 1990, 10-11) for traditional communist stances in Latin America.
However, the fundamental contradictions between a national bourgeoisie (imperialism) and peasants (working class) were leading to an increased polarization and diminished the chances for a peaceful road to social change. In a Leninist fashion, Guevara understood imperialism as "a word system" and "the last stage of capitalism" and concluded that revolution must be affected on a global scale (Guevara, 1968d, 64). The Vietnam war, the fight for national liberation in Africa, and the struggle for socialism in Latin America reflected the global nature of imperialist dominance. The Vietnam war, in particular, was the most important conflict, and solidarity was not only a matter of internationalism but of understanding it as a dispersement of imperialist military and political powers, thus debilitating their operating capabilities in Latin America and elsewhere. Che envisioned a Vietnamese victory as the beginning of the end of imperialism and, therefore, articulated a strategy of creating "two, three, many Vietnams" (1968a, 32; and 1968d, 59-60, 67).
Revolutionary violence was a necessary response to the violence in an existing social structure of injustice and inequality. The strategic goal of destroying imperialism was the only way to create conditions "for the real liberation of all peoples" (Guevara, 1968d, 64). For Guevara revolutionary struggle was a combination of fighting imperialism and striving to overcome backwardness (1968c, 35). His goal was to create a radical democracy with full participation by individuals in the social and political process and--unlike capitalist projects--with an alternative form of development that would focus on satisfying individual needs rather than pursuing "better personal incomes or personal success" (1967b, 38). Thus, technology (urban industrialization and rural mechanization) would aid in developing the material conditions for creating the new individual of the twenty-first century.
The idea of the new man and woman is the touchstone of Guevara's political philosophy and revolutionary action (Lowy 1973, 28). It rests on the belief that men and women are the true actors in history, that an individual's freedom from alienation is "the ultimate and most important revolutionary aspiration" (Guevara 1968b, 9, 12, and 21); that "liberation is not a single act but a process" (Lowy 1973, 33), and that the construction of socialism rests on the formation of a new individual and the development of technology--in that order. Guevara affirmed the centrality of the individual not only in the revolutionary struggle but also in the building of a new society.
The individual--the "specific and named" man or woman--was recognized as the most important asset of the new society (Guevara 1968b, 9) and part of his dream of a new humanity. Against capitalist individualism--which cannot overcome Hobbes' assertion that man is homo homini lupus--Che envisioned an individual in solidarity with the rest of society--especially peasants and the working class. The new men and women collaborate with others--out of social duty--to contribute to the betterment of each individual in society (Guevara 1967b, 38) and overcome alienation through their consciousness of being the creators of a new humanity--led by the principles of justice, dignity, and freedom (Guevara 1968b, 17) (3).
Socialism becomes a form of "socialized humanity" or a "concrete universal brotherhood" (Lowy 1973, 27), in which the sense of belonging to a more humane solidary community overcomes capitalist alienation. Since socialism is a radical break with current societal projects, the new individual represents "neither XIX century ideas nor those of our decadent and morbid century" (Guevara 1968b, 17). Consequently Guevara designed and enforced economic plans to correct capitalist deviations from other socialist projects and launch the birth of the new individual. He also proposed (and was involved in) voluntary work campaigns to demonstrate the creation of the new man and woman in the Third World. His ideas of universal fraternity and solidarity also guided his appeals to socialist bloc countries for new forms of international relations based on "a fraternal policy" toward the peoples of dependent countries rather than on foreign trade criteria (Guevara 1968c, 39).
Trying to plant the seeds of the new individual, Ernesto Che Guevara died in Bolivia, in October 1967. His ideas, however, continued to fuel many projects of social change in the world--not only in the dependent countries--and still have great influence in Cuba. Although the clear-cut polarities that framed Guevara's thought may not hold today, the social problems that brought about his revolutionary thoughts and actions have not been solved. In fact, new forms of exclusion in dependent and advanced capitalist countries (race, gender, immigration) are being added to the socio-economic and ethnic exclusions Che fought in Latin America and Africa. Returning to Che Guevara's thought is a reminder that the longing for justice and a more humane existence still makes sense.
Reporting the Death: 1967
Che Guevara's death in 1967 helped the U.S. press to round off its anti-Cuba campaign in Latin America with accusations against Castro, a representation of Che deprived of social conviction and personal commitment, and the exclusion of radical theories of social change in Latin America (4).
Che's assassination and subsequent events were framed by the discursive ideology of modernization and political democracy; they led the press to focus on two contexts of meaning: political violence and social change, while privileging the "factual" as the predominant discourse of meaning. In fact, political violence became a major issue, whereas social change received less attention. For instance, the Cuban presence in Latin American revolutionary movements and Che's violent and contradictory features preoccupied the press, whose coverage never considered the display of force by the Bolivian army and the presence of U.S. military forces in Bolivia in terms of political violence.
ANew York Times report about the presentation of conclusive evidence by Bolivian officials about Che's leadership in the Bolivian guerrilla movement referred to him as "a leader of the Castro Revolution" involved in "subversion and terrorism . . . fomented by the Communist Cuban regime of Premier Fidel Castro" or as part of the "Communist Castrist infiltration" (Sept. 23, 1967,1 & 12). The De Moines Register called Che a"reputed master-mind of Latin America's Communist guerrillas" and described him as an "elusive revolutionary," a man whose revolutionary activities were the result of his multiple contradictions. Born into a middle-class Argentine family, he fought resolutely against U.S. imperialism, although he was a "cigar smoker," who wore a necktie, "a bourgeois article of dress that (he) spurned when he was Fidel Castro's right-hand man in Cuba" (Oct. 10, 1967, 5)
The Des Moines Register characterized Che as the "philosophical and military mentor of the Castros brothers in the guerrilla days in Cuba's Sierra Maestra," and described him as having affected "young ultraleftists who are tired of the ideological disputes that are fracturing Communism, and who yearn for action." The newspaper related his famous reference about "two, three Vietnams" flowering on the surface of the globe, to " Bolivia's jungles and Andean vastnesses as the locale for a 'second Vietnam'" and--citing the captured diary of Braulio, Che's main aide-- called the guerrilla incursion in Bolivia "an adventure" (Oct. 10, 1967, 5 ). The Chicago Tribune--quoting the same diary--also stressed the adventurous character of Che's campaign but concluded that he "believed that he had failed to foment a communist revolution in Bolivia" ( Oct. 12, 1967, 22), reinforcing the Los Angeles Times report that the diary "reflected disillusionment and bitterness over Guevara's inability to develop revolution" (Oct. 12, 1967, 1).
According to the U.S. media, Che's irrational violence was grounded in fanaticism and hatred, whereas ideological conviction and economic and social oppression in Latin America were ruled out as inspirations for his radical theory of social change. The New York Times depicted Che as a fanatic Communist of the Havana-Peking activist school who went to Bolivia solely for the purpose "of inciting armed revolt" and called him "an arch conspirator" who hated the United States "with a passion even exceeding San Martin's hatred for Imperial Spain" (Oct. 8, 1967, IV-10). For the Washington Post he became "too revolutionary either for Castro or his Soviets creditors" (Oct. 11, 1967, A24). When C. L. Sulzberger, New York Times correspondent in Buenos Aires, compared Che's belief in the inevitability of a general revolution to José de San Martín's fight for nationhood and independence, he concluded that these independent nations did not exist for Che Guevara; he pretended they were "simply U. S. appanages." Taking for granted that foreign dominance was a phenomenon peculiar to the colonial world--and ignoring Latin America's dependence on the United States--Sulzberger discredited Che's theory of imperialism and turned his revolutionary program into senseless violence (New York Times, Oct. 8, 1967, IV-10).
But it was part of a Castro speech in La Habana that became the most credible proof of Che's irrational aggressiveness. The New Yorker reported that according to Castro, "'as a guerrilla Che had an Achilles heel: it was his excessive aggressiveness, his absolute disregard for danger. This is something in which it was difficult to go along with him." Castro was also quoted as saying that Che "could have acted in an excessively aggressive manner" (Oct. 20, 1967, 20).
The Washington Post also commented on Che's political and military mistakes. By trying to provoke a revolution in a foreign land, Che displayed "an unwise disregard for the factor of nationalism and a fatal disregard for Mao's principle that guerrillas must operate as fish in the sea of the people" (Oct. 13, 1967, A24). In fact, two days earlier the Washington Post had concluded that because Che was obsessed with a continental revolution, "he seems to have ignored some of the axioms" from his own text on guerrilla warfare (Oct. 11, 1967, A-24). The New York Times agreed that, "Guevara's Bolivian campaign . . . failed . . . to comprehend local conditions" (Oct. 8, 1967, IV-10).
The portrayal of Che as an irrational activist is rounded out by discussions of his failure as a planner and politician. The Los Angeles Times speculated that Che's departure from Cuba was a result of Soviet pressures for his dismissal for ideological (his closeness to Peking) and practical reasons (Cuba's disastrous economy) (Oct. 12, 1967, II-4). The Des Moines Register also discredited him as a technician, suggesting that "Guevara was badly miscast as director of the Cuban central bank, as minister of Cuba's economy (Oct. 12, 1967, 6). In a less direct fashion, the Washington Post stated that most of Che's influence on the internal workings of the Cuban revolution was transitory as the drive toward industrialization "has become distinctly secondary to a re-emphasis on agriculture" (Oct. 15, 1967, A16). The New York Times added that "he was never popular with Cubans" because of his "haughty ways, his reliance on foreigners as advisers, his 3 p.m.-6 a.m. working schedule, and his bland confession that the Cuban government had made serious economic mistakes" (Sept. 23, 1967, 12). This emphasis on Che's personal features in explanations of the rising "subversive violence" in Latin America overshadowed considerations of the socio-historical conditions in the region. For instance, since structural conditions in Latin America were ambiguously described, social changes seemed attainable through traditional formulas of development thereby ruling out the need for deep and radical transformations.Thus, the Los Angeles Times argued that Che's failure did not "in any way minimize the need for continued efforts to improve the lives of the people through meaningful reforms" (Oct. 12, 1967, II-4) after observing earlier that the lack of equality and opportunities had made "many areas highly susceptible to Communist exploitation" (Oct. 11, 1967, A6).
The Los Angeles Times also implied a model of modernization based on industrialization, urbanization, and the evolution of a traditional political system. Thus, "Bolivia is a place apart, primitive even by standards that prevail in this part of the world, and not likely to change dramatically in our time" (Oct. 19, 1967, A29). The fact that Che had died in "a primitive" Bolivia is an ironic twist of South American history.
A shared assumption in U.S. newspaper accounts--aside from Che's presence in Bolivia--was the infiltration of most guerrilla movements throughout Latin America by Cuba. Therefore, any representation of Che as a threat to Latin American stability depended not only on his abilities as a guerrilla, but on Cuba's interest in expanding the revolution beyond its own frontiers. In fact, most references to Che mentioned Castro and the Cuban revolution, like the Los Angeles Times which maintained that Che's death "marked the most decisive victory to date over Premier Fidel Castro's efforts to export the Cuban revolution" (Oct. 19, 1967, 29).
However, such claims were rarely based on concrete evidence. For instance, when the Los Angeles Times suggested in an editorial that "the failure of guerrilla warfare so far in Latin America discredits the Castro-Guevara doctrine," the newspaper failed to provide information about the presence of Cuban military personnel, money, and weapons in Bolivia (Oct. 12, 1967, II-4). The New York Times offered at least some facts when it reported the arrival of four "prominent Cuban military figures" in Bolivia together with Che and described them as having held high government posts in Cuba and the Communist party. A man named "Braulio" also entered Bolivia with $25,000 for Che (Sept. 23, 1967, 12). And when the Washington Post raised the number of Cuban revolutionaries in Bolivia to "half a dozen," the report contained no additional information on monetary contributions and weapons (Oct. 11, 1967, A24).
In an immediate reaction to Che's death the Des Moines Register celebrated his failure to expand a small Bolivian guerrilla movement into another Vietnam "for the peace and well-being of mankind" (Oct. 12, 1967, 6), whereas the New York Times suggested that Che's death offered proof of Cuba's involvement in a subversive war in Latin America and helped to erode the guerrillas' invincibility in Latin America (Oct. 11, 1967, 18).
Skepticism prevailed among journalists, about the end of Che's ideological influence, because of his charismatic appeal among many young leftists. According to the Washington Post, for instance, Che's effect on a large and growing student movement on the left was to drive many young and immature people to death because they were convinced that "violence will be needed to accomplish the revolution which The Alliance for Progress attempts in peace" (Oct. 11, 1967, A24). The newspaper also noted that Che's charismatic influence could be rendered useless by revealing large gaps in his life "between what he tried to do and what he actually accomplished" (Oct. 15, 1967, A16). Similarly, the Los Angeles Times observed the powerful appeal of Che's myth among many would-be insurrectionists and concluded that his theory of insurgency would remain a handbook for those dedicated to "the violent overthrow of non-Communist governments" (Oct. 12, 1967, II-4).
Unlike revolutionary violence, the violence of the Bolivian army was cast as a legitimate response to subversion, whereas U.S. military presence was justified as needed assistance to prevent more Vietnams and to support government efforts to build stable societies. The New York Times relied on presidential announcements by Lyndon B. Johnson and Rene Barrientos, respectively, to provide definitions of state violence against Che and the revolutionary violence of the guerrilla movement.
For instance, when Bolivian officials informed the O.A.S. about Che's role in leading guerrilla activities, the New York Times reported that President Johnson advised Latin American leaders at a White House luncheon "to use 'resolute force' to combat subversion and sabotage being exported . . . by Castro agents." Johnson equated these guerrilla strategies with Ho-Chi-Min's practices, reinforcing ideological connotations of "subversion" and "sabotage" on one hand and "resolute force" on the other (Sept. 23, 1967, 1).
The New York Times then cited President Barrientos who called Che's military activities in Bolivia a "little foreign adventure," designed to establish a guerrilla center in South America. He was also quoted as saying that his army had "a plan in effect that is going to end" it in the context of defending the development plans of his nation against "Castro Communism" while insisting that "a country can develop and change itself from within while maintaining human dignity and individual sovereignty" (Sept. 23, 1967, 12). Thus, a patriotic Bolivian army advocated social change, whereas the guerrillas promoted violence and chaos.
This binary framing of political violence was never questioned by the U.S. press, although the unclear and contradictory circumstances of Che's death provided sufficient reasons for a critical look at the role of the Bolivian army. Instead of challenging the legality of killing a prisoner, Che's elusiveness and a blind acceptance of a war culture led journalists to focus on the identity of the displayed corpse. Consequently, the Bolivian army set the agenda of the debate, whereas the condemnation of the killing by Roberto Guevara, Che's brother, for instance, was not enough to inspire coverage beyond official statements (e.g., Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Des Moines Register, Oct., 10-15, 1967).
Instead, U.S. newspapers, like the Chicago Tribune, reinforced their previous conceptualization of political violence by recognizing Che's failures and praising the Bolivian military (Oct. 11, 1967, 1) despite ambiguous and contradictory statements by the Bolivian army.`In fact, since Che's execution news reports focused on eliminating doubts about a mistaken identity. The New York Times and Washington Post, however, drew on the contradictory army versions of Che's death, but only speculated about the falsity in the first reports and called the event an unresolved "mystery" ( Oct. 12, 1967, 23; and Oct. 14, 1967, A11, respectively). Accusing the Bolivian army of "ineptitude," the Washington Post addressed efficiency rather than politics and avoided debating the political reasons for the crime (Oct. 14, 1967, A11). Che's murder was never constructed by the U.S. press as political assassination, nor did the press discuss the consequences of a trial and the possibility of a death sentence.
In addition, a U.S. military presence in Bolivia was presented by the press as response rather than participation in political violence (by the Bolivian army), and the coverage remained low key. In fact, such a presence--based on requests from the government-- became "assistance," whereas guerrilla actions were repeatedly called a foreign intervention, because of their links with the Cuban revolution. Initially the New York Times reported that "Bolivian security authorities are understood to have received foreign--and according to some reports, United States--assistance in screening the captured passports" (Sept. 23, 1967, 12). However, it was not until October 10, 1967 when U.S. military involvement in Bolivia was officially recognized at a Washington meeting. The Washington Post revealed that "the U.S. Army has sent a 16-man team to Bolivia to train forces there in counter-insurgency" and disclosed that the information was released "to rebut claims that the United States had sent thousands of Green Berets to Bolivia" (Oct. 11, 1967, A4). Reporting on the flow of U.S. personnel, money, weapons, and training into Latin America lent specificity to the news and made military assistance appear natural and necessary, while the Cuban infiltration remained speculation.
In fact, the Washington Post reported that these announcements were made "when Congress is cutting back on military assistance to Latin America," and justified as needed assistance since"Latin America threatens to become another Vietnam unless the United States increases the military assistance so that Latin American forces can provide a shield against counter insurgency while their governments build a stable society" (Oct. 11, 1967, A4). In an attempt to explain the contradictory existence of military dictators in Latin America, the Los Angeles Times noted that according to the official statement, "some soldiers have used the armed forces to maintain themselves as dictators [with the result that] the Latin American military have evolved a fine social consciousness and a keen interest in helping with nation building" (Oct. 11, 1967, 6).
The antagonism of U.S.-Cuban relations entered into the vocabulary of the press where "counter-insurgent" training--suggesting a defensive mission--faced "foreign intervention"--an agressive act, and an institutional characterization of a U.S. presence--without an identifiable leader and connections to the U.S. government--confronted a personalized descriptions of revolutionary activities (as products of Castro-Guevara ambitions).
The ideological framing of guerrilla and U.S. military activities by the press did not remain completely uncontested, however. The Des Moines Register published a letter which called Che Guevara a "liberator of (the) oppressed" and accused the Bolivian government of being supported "both economically and military by the United States" (Oct. 14, 1967, 8). Another letter in the Washington Post defended Che as a "rare human" who fought for a cause and suggested irrationality on the side of politicians and leaders who do not fight for the welfare of their people ( Oct. 20, 1967, A20).
In addition, the New York Times reported that "more than 350 admirers" of Che had gathered for a memorial tribute at which "speakers charged that the United States was responsible for Mr. Guevara's death at the hands of Bolivian soldiers." (Oct. 27, 1967, 15). A syndicated article--published in the Des Moines Register and the Atlanta Constitution---called the United States a sponsor of military regimes and charged that regimes patronized by the United States had not evolved successfully after an outpouring of heroic revolutionaries like Che. "Almost everywhere else in the underdeveloped world, in Pakistan, South Korea, South Vietnam and all over Latin America and Africa, the United States is backing governments dominated by generals and colonels." Opposing military assistance as a factor in promoting development and democracy, the article concluded that "it is not all clear that this country has anything to contribute to the political development of the 'backward' nations" (Oct. 13, 1967, 8 and Oct. 16, 1967, 4, respectively).
However, such critical coverage did not seriously challenge the dominant ideological representations of information but--to some extent--legitimized them. In the context of the overall coverage these oppositional texts remained minimal contributions, they were short--except for one article-- and three of them represented opinions but none gained front- page attention. Yet, their publication legitimized the coverage by the liberal press; after all, it allowed critics to express their concerns and endorsed the difference between facts and opinions, objectivity and subjectivity--another fundamental ideological assumption of the press.
News magazines like Look, Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News and World Report shared the basic assumptions that foregrounded newspaper characterizations of Che. He was seen as "a doctor of medicine who never treated a patient" (U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 23, 1967, 20), a permanent rebel who did not know what to do with himself, and a zealot who was "humorless, arrogant, ruthless and sometimes brutal in his dedication to his own simplistic version of history" (Newsweek, 1967a, 65). Che was not only a "daring imaginative guerrilla tactician" (Newsweek, 1967b, 64) and the revolution's philosopher, but he shaped his own brand of guerrilla Marxism, much more violent than Mao's, for instance (Time Oct. 20, 1967, 26) and became "this hemisphere's top communist revolutionary (US News, Oct. 23, 20). In addition, he was "a romantic rather than a serious politician operator," as shown by his failure in Cuba's Ministry of Industry and his guerrilla adventure in Bolivia (Time, Oct. 20, 20; Newsweek, 1967a, 64).
The magazines agreed that after transforming Cuba into a center of revolutionary activities in the hemisphere, terrorizing peasants in Southern Bolivia, and obstructing Bolivian government efforts toward development, Che became the biggest game bagged by the Bolivian Army (U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 23, 1967, 20; Newsweek, 1967a, 64). His death was a major blow to Castro's export of revolutions to Latin America and other Third World countries (U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 23, 1967,20) and a relief for all Latin American governments facing the threat of systematic subversion (Time, Oct. 20, 1967, 27). But the news magazines also speculated that the legend of this "pure-hearted communist Robin Hood" would haunt the world "for years to come" (Newsweek, 1967a, 65), not only because Cubans would make him a martyr and create a myth (U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 23, 1967, 20; Look, Dec.12, 1967, 26), but also because the roots of the revolution remained (Time, Oct. 20, 1967, 26). Newsweek, in particular, concluded that overcoming backwardness, inefficiency, and corruption in Latin America would need more than hunting and murdering revolutionary legends (1967b, 42).
The news magazines framed Che's death as a Latin American matter; there was no or marginal involvement by the U.S. government, and the death had not much importance for U.S. readers. In contrast to the press coverage, these publications constructed Che's death as part of a struggle by Latin American governments against systematic subversion; it was not seen as part of broader conflicts--like Vietnam and U.S. interests in preventing a potential emergence of new Vietnams in the hemisphere. There were no references to U.S. involvement in Che's death or to U.S. support of counterinsurgent projects in Latin America. Only Newsweek mentioned U.S. aid to Bolivia, but suggested that it was directed toward education and transportation rather than military assistance (1967b, 42). In contrast, all news magazines emphasized Cuba's export of revolutions and even provided data about Cuba's expenses in promoting "wars of liberation" elsewhere. (U. S. News, Oct, 23, 1967, 20).
In addition, Time and Newsweek offered reasons for revolutions in Latin America (Oct. 20, 1967, 27 and 1967b, 41, respectively), but despite abstract references to "backwardness, inefficiency and corruption," and Che's direct experience with the CIA-inspired 1954 coup in Guatemala, the anti-imperialist nature of Che's struggle remained the result of his "passionate hatred of the U.S," according to Newsweek (1967a, 64). For Time it was Guevara's "almost pathological" sentiment of unknown causes together with his "emotional worship of the communist world" (Oct. 20, 1967, 26) which explained his revolutionary activities. US News and World Report, on the other hand, saw Che's struggle as part of a hemispheric conflict but did not refer to actual social conditions, efforts by local elites to contain any substantial social change, and U.S. support of counterinsurgent projects (Oct, 23, 1967, 20).
The acknowledgement of certain social conditions that explained the emergence of revolutionary ventures, became part of a narrative strategy and allowed Time magazine to portray Latin American militaries and governments as agents of modernization, committed to bringing "the peasant into the 20th century" (Oct. 20, 1967, 27); whereas Newsweek concluded that Che's revolutionary activities became an obstacle to these goals and his death was an opportunity for dominant forces to devote their "full energies to the economic ills that beset" Latin America (1967b, 41).
In contrast to news magazine (and newspaper) constructions of Che as philosopher of violence, arrogant zealot, romantic but hardly serious politician, and enemy of the hemisphere, magazines like the Nation, the New Republic, and Ramparts viewed Che Guevara as the greatest Latin American revolutionary since Símon Bolivar, the most important exponent of guerrilla warfare, and the most romantic revolutionary figure of the last decades (Gott, 1967, 531), whose made-in-the-United-States death (Ray, 1967, 37) elevated him to a powerful revolutionary symbol.
Ramparts magazine developed the most positive image of Che Guevara in a 14-page article by a French journalist, Michele Ray (1968); it also provided the most complete contextualization of Che's death as part of the Pentagon's commitment against any Vietnam in Latin America and to create several Bolivias (counterinsurgent projects). Ramparts also published Fidel Castro's (1968) introduction to The Bolivian Diary of Che Guevara; it presented Che's revolutionary work and death in the context of a Latin American and global revolution--a painful but necessary way for underdeveloped countries to overcome dependency and to close an increasing gap between them and the industrialized world. Ramparts also published a book review, aimed at countering the appropriation, trivialization, and transformation of Che into one more "North American culture hero," an anachronistic and romantic knight. (Weissman, 1968, 59). Similarly, the Nation also placed Che's revolutionary activities in the context of Latin American social conditions and politics (Nov. 20, 1967, 522-23), but its main topic was Che as a revolutionary figure who captured the imagination of U.S. Americans (Yglesias, 1967, 464).
The positive images of Che as a revolutionary hero were constructed in these publications based on his political goals--combined with personal traits--and the power of his adversaries. Thus, honesty, discipline, commitment, aloofness, and even his playboy appearance together with the nature of his political goals--to lead revolutions and build socialism to overcome injustice and social inequality--formed an individual who stood opposed to the overwhelming economic, political and military power of U.S. imperialism and its allied Latin American economic and political elites. His image was further enhanced when his revolutionary battle moved onto a global stage and the struggle in a small Latin American country--like Bolivia--actually stood for a universal struggle of people in underdeveloped and industrialized countries, who were not only excluded from the benefits of development, but were forced to fight their nation's neocolonial and imperialist wars, like in Vietnam. Castro's view conveyed the best the image of Che as a hero, whose ideas, image, and name "are the banner of the struggle against the injustices of the oppressed and exploited." Vastly universalized because it embodies "the anti-imperialist spirit" in "its purest and most disinterested form," Che's figure had become the "universal breath of the revolutionary struggle even in the imperialist and colonial metropolises themselves" (Castro 1968, 4-5).
Consequently, Che's murder was "a symbol of the power of the USA throughout Latin America" and the beginning of Che's life as a powerful symbol of people's need for redemption from misery and injustice in Latin America and around the world, including those oppressed in colonial or imperialist metropolises (Ray 1968, 32, 37).
Constructing the Resurrection: 1997Three decades after his death Che was resurrected in the United States and around the world. The revival of his image was an opportunity for some to celebrate its commodification and for others to formulate a "nuanced good-bye" to Che Guevara's times and politics of anti-colonial struggles and revolutionary utopias.Che was resemantisized and his image conveyed a much more diverse set of political, artistic, and commercial meanings, threatening to impoverish his image as a revolutionary symbol and even parody its original meaning. Although "the Guevara that people are buying today has been downsized for a cynical age" (Reuss, 1997), media representations of Che were much more nuanced than the media constructions of his death thirty years ago. A number of competing voices emerged from the publications included in this study (5). Che had become a world "pop icon" (Larmer, 1997, 38) and represented a way of life and politics that seemed utterly irrelevant in contemporary culture and society; yet for others, Che was still a much needed revolutionary symbol in a world of increasing socio-economic and political imbalances, declining utopian longings of social justice and equality, and rising cynicism.Newspaper and magazine articles seemed to agree--implicitly at least-- that Che's death "only enhanced his legend" (Larmer, 1997, 39) as a model revolutionary in Latin America and elsewhere and a pop star (or both) when he appeared in his "multiple incarnations" as a 20th century myth and "the Guerrilla Heroica himself" (Franklin, 1997, 27). Che's image could not only be found everywhere in Cuba, but as easily in a peasant's home in El Salvador--next to a crucifix--in movies in Brazil and the United States, in a mural of Chicano heroes in a Latino dorm at Stanford University, as a theatrical device in Parker's film, "Evita," and on British beer labels. Similarly, Newsweek journalist Brook Larmer saw Che's revival as a form of commercial resurrection. "Suddenly, Che is chic," and his appeal "is no longer limited to aging leftists," when his "gentle and lite" incarnations are "used to sell everything," from rock-rap music, skis, beer, watches, and t-shirts, to photographs, books, movies, and college courses. (Larmer, 1997, 38-39).According to Christopher Hitchens (1997, 20), Che's significance was now described in "boutique versions" and he suggested that Ce's attraction had much to do with "the grace of an early and romantic death." Larmer (1997, 38) added that Che Guevara's allure for many people in today's consumer society "seemed to stem from a longing for the pure uncompromising ideals of the past" and from his good looks, but above all, because "thirty years have tamed the antiimperialist tiger and turned him into a rebel without claws." Indeed, in the post-cold-war period of the 1990s, Guevara's "revolutionary ideals no longer pose much of a threat."These portrayals succeed in cancelling the political and revolutionary meaning of Che, reproducing an image well suited for commercialization. His image was reduced to just another display in the shop windows of international commerce where all meanings are homogenized or blurred, regardless of where Che's image could be located or whether it was celebrated--like in the Plaza de la Revolucion in La Habana--or banned--like in a Costa Rican soccer stadium (6). However, there were still other ways of preempting the revolutionary meaning of Che's image.For instance, Hitchens (1997, 22) represented Che as an authentic revolutionary, "one of those rare people for whom there is no real gap between conviction and practice." During the early 1960s in Cuba he was "unsparing of himself . . . worked unceasingly . . . (and) completely indifferent to possessions." He went to Africa because he "wanted to share in the suffering and struggle [of those] who were receiving the blunt end of the cold war," and later in Bolivia "his final days demonstrate conclusively that he was not a hypocrite." Consequently, Che's murder had a great impact on world politics. Although "nebulous and elusive," Guevara had "a real presence" in the political struggles of the last decades. Hitchens concluded that despite the fact that "the hedonist Utopians rather than the rigorous revolutionary puritans . . . made the running " in the United States, Che's murder helped inaugurate the "hot" period of the 1960s when his image became a symbol of the times. Hitchens (1997, 23) placed his sympathetic account of a revolutionary, however, in a strictly historical context and argued that Che Guevara's world "was a radically different place." The struggles against colonialism, neo-colonialism, authoritarian regimes, or racial discrimination in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have been overcome, the political and economic imbalances he fought have disappeared or are irrelevant, and the hot late 1960s in the United States have been replaced by official politics and consumer hedonism. From his point of view, the revival of Che's image is not really a resurrection but "a nuanced good-bye to all that" (7).This observation, however is only partially accurate--since many conflicts that fueled guerrilla activities in the Third World still persist despite a significant change in world politics since the late 1960s--but provides the context for yet another view of Che Guevara. For instance, Curtis Ellis (1967) discovered that "nowhere is Che's image as revered--or as relevant today--as in Cuba" and he interpreted the revitalization of Che's image as part of a government attempt to "cash in by marketing Che's old haunts." Similarly, Brook Larmer (1997, 38) referred to the uneasiness and ambiguity of the Cuban government in promoting Che as a saint while abandoning many of the principles he "held sacred."The newspaper coverage of Che's burial in Cuba revealed these concerns, in particular. For instance, The Chicago Tribune reported about Che Guevara's triumphant ride across the Cuban countryside to his tomb in Santa Clara--the historic place of his battle that marked the end of the Batista dictatorship in December 1958. But in contrast to his subsequent victorious ride into La Habana, his last journey to Santa Clara "would be (rather) bitter than sweet," because Cuban reality--no matter how the government had tried to hide it--was too far removed from Che's revolutionary vision of a society of literate and healthy people, collective ownership of the land, industrialization, full employment, social equality, and justice. Yet alongside the experiences of hardship, inequality, and problems caused by a free-market model, Che would discover that his memory energized people and produced "a deep sense of determination and pride and hope" among a large number of Cubans, (8) who still saw themselves as "fighting for the same ideals" (Oct. 13, 1997, 1, 8).The Associated Press coverage of the 30th anniversary of Che Guevara's death and the transfer of his remains to Cuba revealed--in a much more assertive fashion--the Cuban government's practices of highlighting Che's historical significance and political and moral relevance to revitalize its weakened socio-political model. For instance, the news agency reported that Castro was posing Che as a historical figure, "a symbol for all the poor of this world," and a national hero who was "waging and wining more battles than ever." He invoked Guevara's ideals of socialist self-sacrifice and his principles of Latin American solidarity and appealed to his memory for help "in Cuba's ongoing struggle to revive its economy and easy the pressure of U.S. economic sanctions" (Internet, MSNBC International News, Oct. 1997).The media coverage of the official discourse at Che's burial--somehow resonating sympathetic comments by ordinary Cubans--also revealed a symbolic struggle involving different perspectives on the meaning of Che in current Cuban society (9). For example, some news stories echoed the views of Cubans critical of the government's tribute to Che as a staged event (Chicago Tribune, Oct. 13, 1997, 8) or a "publicity stunt" (Boston Globe, Oct. 20, 1997). Other stories conveyed the sense of a religious ritual to install Che as a saint or god in the official Cuban discourse (10); they cited Catholics who found themselves "clashing [with the government] over symbols" in attempts to counter the official discourse about Che Guevara's relevance and to make symbolic (and political) room for the visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba. For the Boston Globe "the pope will offer Mass in Che Guevara's shadow" (Oct. 20, 1997).In general, newspapers accounts revealed complex and ambiguous visions of Che based on a large number of competing voices. At the same time, the coverage of Che's burial seemed to privilege the resurrection of Che by the Cuban government. This was paradoxical, because the coverage highlighted the distance between Che's utopian visions of a just and equal society and the harsh realities of today's Cuba without providing the necessary background to ponder these realities in terms of Cuba's recent history; after all, the evolution of world politics and the new conditions of globalization faced the persistence of considerable and increasing imbalances between industrialized and non-industrialized societies. U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba was not even mentioned, and the news reports focused on banishing the revolutionary utopia in Cuba even among old revolutionaries--the Cuban children of Che Guevara.This view of Che's 1997 burial in Cuba resembled the dominant framing of his death in 1967, when it was Bolivia's business--an underdeveloped and distant South American country--where Che had become an outdated revolutionary with no other place to go. Cuba's official claims like "Che would feel proud of the merits and virtues of the revolution, and would feel proud of the valor and heroism of this people" seemed to make no sense, and even less so Fidel Castro's remarks that the image of Che "would grow larger the more the world was blighted with imperialism, poverty, cowardice and hypocrisy" (Diaz, 1997). Castro's words--according to this representation--sounded more like the nostalgic exclamation of an elderly leftist than an accurate account of Che's relevance in a world that had changed since his death but still contained many of the conflicts and imbalances Che had addressed.These representations suggest--in fact--that Che's resurrection is based on the need by Cuba's leaders to revive a historic and revolutionary figure, because Che's resurrection in 1997 could only be commercial and not political, as some publications argued. For others--who may have agreed--Che was never a real hero.But it became equally clear that Che Guevara's influence has been deeper and greater in Latin American politics--but also more frustrating and problematic--than suspected. Alma Guillermoprieto (1997, 104) noted, for instance, that a young generation--who only knew of Che when he was murdered--became "the children of Che." They followed the slogans of Che Guevara ("the first duty of a revolutionary is to make revolution") and Fidel Castro ("be like Che") uncritically and died for revolutionary causes in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and elsewhere in Latin America. As disciples of a fanatic they provoked the specter of authoritarian regimes in the hemisphere during the last thirty years with subversive politics and armed struggles. This view deemed Che intellectually and ethically responsible for such tragedies. As a Mexican (11), however, Guillermoprieto was not blind to the "objective conditions" in Latin America that led (and may still lead) to revolutionary projects and armed struggle. She observed that "perhaps it is true that in the Latin America of those years it required more self-dillusion to be a moderate reformer than to be a utopian revolutionary" and she concluded that "Guevara was born in Latin America's hour of the hero," at a time, when "only a hero could answer the call and only a heroic mode of life could seem worthy" (1997, 106, 111).Like the failure of mainstream media representations of Che Guevara in 1967 and 1997, Guillermoprieto's portrayal of Che in the New Yorker also lacked concrete references to the real significance of the historical conditions confronted by Guevara's political thought and his revolutionary actions. By politicizing Che's subjective features, Guillermoprieto (1997, 111) constructed a dehistoricized image of Che and ruled him out of "the present era, in which there are no perfect causes, and where men like him are more than ever out of place." Her article--a review of Jon Lee Anderson's Che Guevara. A Revolutionary Life and Jorge G. Castañeda's Companero--belonged among constructions of Che's image that have been described as a "nuanced good-bye to all that" (12).Three decades after his death Che Guevara was resurrected in U.S. newspapers and magazines as an object of a commercial mentality which cannot recognize (or appreciate) the need for revitalizing his political and revolutionary thoughts and actions. Whereas these publications reflected on political ideas--appropriating Che's legacy for revitalizing Cuba's political model, energizing claims of social change in Latin America, and promoting solidarity among the undeveloped countries to counter the negative consequences of unequal international relations--the prevailing discourse fit the dominant framing of news stories. In other words, these publications presented contending views--without explicitly qualifying any of them--and cast them in specific frames which dehistoricized Che Guevara's thoughts, political goals, and revolutionary actions; they also emphasized the subjective qualities of the hero (or antihero) without concern for the potential relationship between reported facts and U. S. foreign policy toward Latin America. The resurrection of Che in U.S. publications was a commercial (or depoliticized) undertaking rather than a political accomplishment since media coverage resulted in a litany of rejection and blame. But because of these circumstances, media representations of Che were by far more complex and ambiguous in 1997--when the axis of signification had shifted toward the fields of commerce and culture--than those constructed in 1967. In fact, it could be argued that Che's resurrection by the media represented an aftershock of the 1967 cultural revolution and suggested that the domain of culture may hold the key to social change. The contemporary media coverage of events--like Che's burial--was considerably enhanced by an academic interest in Che which contributed to shaping his image. For instance, three new biographies (13) and a number of reviews (14) were published in 1997, addressing an academic and intellectual public (15). They were part of a much larger body of works about Che Guevara (16) that suggests the commercial viability of intellectual efforts to construct the meaning of Che under different political and cultural conditions. The emerging representations of Che are particularly significant, since they pursue the deconstruction of Che's mythical image. Many scholars and journalists--identified with past or present left-wing politics--contributed to Che's new image by reinforcing a commercial media interest in denying the current validity of Che's revolutionary activity. Their arguments paralleled the 1967 press coverage of Che's death--including a condemnation of his violent activities and their consequences--without references to state violence or the need for significant social changes in Latin America and despite their specific political positions.For instance, in his New York Times review of three books Richard Bernstein asked about the importance of a renewed interest in Che and what it suggests about Che and this generation ( Nov. 26, 1997, B2). These were questions that occupied implicitly, at least, other reviewers and they were relevant, because the debate had rekindled memories of a revolution in an age in which, according to Guillermoprieto, "there are not perfect causes" (New Yorker, Oct. 6, 1997, 111).The answers--coincidentally--construed Che as a 1960s phenomenon. This convergence can be explained partly by the biographical nature of the books, but mostly by the end-of-the-cold-war political background of Che's comeback. Instead of locating him in the 1960s, however, the reviewers scrutinized Che's revolutionary life with political and theoretical criteria that belonged to the 1990s--constructing not only an incomplete image of Che in the 1960s, but relinquishing his political meaning in the 1990s.The ensuing academic debate of Che--supported by the nature of biography and nurtured by a general intellectual interest in the individual as a theoretical touchstone--was informed by a fascination with his personal history; the latter also helped reinforce the negative portrayal by the media. For instance, Guillermoprieto provided multiple examples of Che's fanaticism, hatred, and machismo--making it impossible for him to bear the ambivalence of the world and pushing him to find relief in battle and radicalism (New Yorker, Oct. 6, 1997, 104-5, 109). Similarly, Saul Landau called him arrogant and--following Castañeda--a man who recurrently and, ultimately, made "fatal mistakes" (Washington Post, Oct. 19, 1997, X1), whereas Bernstein stressed Che's authoritarian and non-pacifist characteristics (New York Times, Nov. 26, 1997, B2). Such representations matched similar ones by M. Falcoff, a conservative writer, for whom Che's soul was in a perpetual "search of revolutionary upheaval" (American Spectator, June, 1, 1997, Internet).The task of killing Che's myth was urgent because--according to Guillermoprieto--the heroic picture of Che "is still satisfying to large number of Latin Americans who are not in a position to exact an accounting from their leaders but do . . . demand that their leaders act grandly and provoke fervor and states of rapture" (New Yorker, Oct. 6, 1997, 111). More sympathetic views agreed with this position. Philip Bennett, for instance, saluted Che's commitment to sacrifice for a cause, proving that being a guerrilla--like being a priest--could be a lifelong vocation. He observed that after Che's death revolutionary movements had spread across Latin America, "consuming hundreds of thousands of lives and drawing some of the best and brightest of a generation into conflict with the United States" and concluded that "inasmuch as the diseases that moved him go untreated, Che lives, not only in the books but in the world" (Boston Globe, Internet, May 12, 1997).The reason why Che's myth is irrelevant was provided by Bernstein, who suggested that "Che no longer needs to be a hero or a villain, but can be seen more as an emblem of a time that quite clearly, is past. He is to be studied not as a martyr or a prophet, but as distant mirror of a generation still striving to understand itself" (New York Times, Nov. 26, 1997, B2). Similarly, Falcoff maintained that Che's capacity to provoke empathy among the spoiled youths in the affluent West had largely passed. "It is not as if nothing has happened these last three decades to establish once and for all which political and economic systems are more likely to produce abundance and freedom." Furthermore, thinking of Che was useless, since "revolutionaries . . . cannot be judged only by their intentions or ideals; they have to be evaluated in terms of their accomplishments. In the case of Guevara, we have a minister of industries who succeeds only in producing toothpaste that turns to cement once it leaves the tube, and a land reformer whose policies generate food shortages, disorder, and hunger" (American Spectator, Jun. 1, 1997, Internet). For Bernstein, finally, Che's disinterment--not his resurrection--was avalid opportunity for members of the 1960s generation to evaluate their idealism with an awareness of their naiveté. The desire to settle accounts with a promising but problematic era, however, suffered from the same all-or-nothing logic that was criticized in Che's ideological stance. Whereas the 1967 newspaper accounts equated Che's death with the cancellation "of two or three Vietnams," contemporary observers sought to banish the possibilities of a new era of radicalism in Latin America. The Vietnam war provided the political background for informing the ideological construction of Che's image in 1967. The 1990s failure of Communism became the ideological force that shapes today's authoritarian, machisto image of Che. In this process, however, the 1960s were framed as an era focused on itself and in need of gaining a full understanding of its own contradictions through Che's demythification. The only lesson this era could provide was to avoid more fatal mistakes.In the meantime, Che's image was deprived of political meaning for the 1990s; most reviewers ignored that "Guevara must be understood in his historical context [and that] he perceived his life's purpose as part of a struggle against imperialism, in which the fight to break U.S. control over Cuba could be crucial" (Franklin, The Nation, May 19, 1997, 28). By omitting the historical fact that some military regimes in Latin America--backed by the U.S. government--were not less sanguinary than their revolutionary opposition and that most people lived in extreme poverty, these reviewers ignored Che's historical commitment against poverty and vexation. In this sense, academic reflections on Che tended to immobilize rather than stimulate a new wave of theoretical and political imagination. Latin America persists as a region in need of profound social change and reflection on the possibilities for redefining the struggle against hunger and injustice. Instead, scholarly efforts seemed more concentrated on eliminating memories and myths to effectively drain Che's political meaning from the 1990s.Finally, the textual treatment of Che Guevara in 1997 was supplemented by a sparse photographic narrative that supported and reinforced the meaning of Che as a historical figure. Many publications did not make use of photographic material, leaving it to the imagination of the older reader to recall one or several of the famous photographs; others illustrated the textual accounts with photographs that identified Che in the timeless fashion of cropped images of his face. History and politics lie beyond these frames, where they await confirmation by the anonymous reader. Among them were the famous photograph that has come to represent Che, taken by a Cuban photographer (Alberto Karda) at a political rally in La Habana. Another image of Che as a smiling cigar-smoking young man in a military uniform (by René Burri) is a casual photograph that looks more like a provocative 1990s cigar advertisement. Both images suggested the range of representations--from the militant to the personal--and reinforce the complex nature of Che Guevara.Other publications reprinted the now famous photograph of Che's body, produced for the world hours after his murder, when he was laid out on a concrete slab, surrounded by some of his captors. It revealed a powerful, Christ-like image that could have only strengthened his legend and added to his reputation among the poor at the time of his death. This particular photograph of the body as a war trophy--which turns into the image of a martyr--supported the claims by various writers of the public perception in Latin America's countryside of Che's moral standing, his honesty and humanity in the face of absolute disaster. Although the photographic coverage during 1997 was minimal, it was based on well-known photographs that are reminders of Che's work in Cuba and his death in Bolivia during the 1960s. Ultimately, however, the photographs were suggestions of the distance his image had travelled in the collective memory of the 1960s while appealing to the historical consciousness of the reader and the resistance of his image to change.ConclusionsAt the end of 1967 several different and contradictory images of Che Guevara emerged from U.S. media coverage of his death. The press, in particular, constructed Che almost exclusively from evidence of violence, citing either his personality or his resolve to carry Communism into Latin America. News magazines, on the other hand, relied more on revolution and anti-imperialist struggles in Latin America and elsewhere for a description of his political activities and the cause of his death, Opinion journals also described him as an imaginative revolutionary, a romantic more than a serious politician, whose anti-imperialist fight was based on his pathological hatred of the United States and his need for destruction. In either case, Che's image was conditioned by contradictory observations and resulted in a flawed ideal of friend or foe that haunted the pages of the print media and reflected the uneasiness of U.S. journalism in the face of U.S. involvement in Che Guevara's death.The representations of Che Guevara--offered by a variety of media thirty years after his death--have lost their political edge.The celebration of the 1967 execution in Bolivia and the appropriation of Che's body as a sign of victory by U.S. media have given way to a more differentiated use of his image. This change coincided not only with the end of the Cold War and the defeat of Communism, but also with a shift of the struggle from military confrontation to cultural warfare. It is still an ideological conflict, however, in which the commodification of Che plays a major role in the battle over cultural territories that hold the promise of political and social change. For one, the coverage of Che as a news story--based on the burial of his remains in Cuba--provided an opportunity for perfecting the incorporation of Che into a hegemonic system of information and entertainment under the control of major international news organizations. When this event coincided with the release of biographical studies, musical records, and the editorial response to them, it maximized the impact of the topic and reinforced its credibility.In 1997 Che had safely arrived as an object of editorial reflection which seemed to concentrate either on his political or military failures as a result of strategic mistakes and lack of support from Cuba, or on his psychological condition as a root cause of a destructive life that had led inevitably to the demise of the revolutionary project. The former considerations confirm (with hindsight) the historical reality since 1989--when Communism collapsed in Europe due to a series of political and economic mistakes--the latter suggestion privileges the personal in a commercial culture that celebrates outcomes rather than the process of becoming and totally neglects the importance of the collective as a social and political goal.The position of Che Guevara has shifted significantly in the mediated realities of contemporary political cultures. Effectively neutralized by an ahistorical news treatment and intellectually reinforced by selective editorial comments or book reviews, which by no means reflect the complexity of the book-length treatments, the meaning of Che rises from an ideological disposition that privileges the consequences of individualism. It emerges in the public re-articulation of Che as a response to the dominant political context and cultural values that reflect a traditional sensitivity towards the demands of the marketplace. Thus, the process of meaning making is linked to specific class interests that provide various articulations of Che in ways that are consistent with the dominant conception of history and the contemporary world, in which the potential of political opposition and revolutionary change is obscured by a strategy of deconstruction that effectively kills the image of resistance and reinforces the political status quo by cultural means. Consequently, the representation of the (revolutionary) politics of change in Latin America--individualized by Che--retains the suggestion of flawed practices and ill-conceived ideas, beginning with the 1967 image of the arch enemy and ending with the 1997 construction of a cult figure, whose proximity to James Dean or John Lennon deflects from his contemporary ideological role in parts of Latin America.Indeed, there was little, if any recognition of Che's ideas, his utopian visions for a new society, or the possibilities for a better world. His resurrection occured in the recounting of his activities and the ultimate failure of his plans; it was event-oriented and speculated, at best, about the course of his life. And in the final analysis, it was a resurrection of his body--the image--without his soul or his intellect. After all, while events are bound by history and reconstituted in the memories of people, ideas have a life of their own; they interact with the makers of new historical realities and continue to address the lingering social, political, and economic issues of the present. They may even incite to action and invite a new cycle of revolutionary thoughts and practices. The result is a construction of Che Guevara, the guerilla fighter, which is aimed at coopting oppositional readings by emphasizing his concrete experiences; it also solidifies his place in the cultural warfare on the side of the dominant forces. Che Guevara died thirty years ago and was laid to rest in 1997. The Che Guevara of a new world, however, is a man whose revolutionary ideals remain buried with him in the shadow of a socialist revolution that seems difficult to comprehend by self-righteous oblivious post-capitalist societies of the late 1990s.Notes & References Notes1. A man who "practices what he preaches," (Castro 1989, 39) paraphrases Che's farewell letter to his children, in which he says, "your father has been a man who acted the way he thought" (Pérez Galdós, 1988, xi. our translation).2. Other core aspects of his theoretical contributions are omitted, e.g., his view of economics and planning in the transition to socialism, the forms of popular democratic participation in revolutionary politics and government, and the building of a new world order. In addition to works quoted in this section, Regis Debray (1967) provides a sympathetic but somewhat polemic account of Che's (and Castro's) political thought, particularly on guerrilla warfare as a revolutionary strategy in Latin America; Tablada (1989) summarizes Che's economic thought in the broader contexts of his politics, philosophical stances, and utopian longings. A more recent and well informed biography is Castañeda (1997b), which aims to demytify and recreate Che as a historical, although paradoxical figure.3. David Slater (1992, 298-9) refers to Che's discussion of the individual and society as an example of Marxist totalitarian theories alien to a present-day diversity of social movements, popular political agendas, and views of radical democracy. From another perspective--but in the same vein-- Anderson (1997, 636-37) points to the totalitarian nature of Che's theory. An objective assessment of Che's idea of the new individual needs to include a close examination of Che's historical circumstances and the political culture of which Che was an expression.4. Newspapers cited in the 1967 coverage include: The Atlanta Constitution, TheChicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post andThe Des Moines Register.5. This section includes four articles from news magazines (Franklin, 1997, Guillermoprietos, 1997, Hitchens, 1997, Larmer, 1997), all but Larmer's are book reviews (Anderson, 1997, Castañeda, 1997), in addition to newspaper and internet articles.6. Last year, a small group displayed a large image of Che during a soccer game in Costa Rica. Although Guevara had not been influential in Costa Rican politics, some media representatives reacted ferociously and the stadium management banned further displays of Che images.7. Hitchens reviews the Anderson book in the New York Review of Books . Anderson (1997, 754), however, seems to suggest otherwise in his conclusions, "Elsewhere, Che's ghost continues to reappear as a specter in the unreconciled conflicts persisting since his times."8. The sense that Guevara's memory has a strong appeal and "commands a particular respect among many Cubans, even those critical of the present government" (Associated Press, Cuba Buries Revolutionary, by Zoraida Diaz, 1997) is shared by most news stories and articles included in this study. Another journalist notes, "Even Cubans who harbor doubts about the revolution still hold deep feelings for Che" (Fainaru, 1997a).9. In addition to the Cuban government, other sectors and political forces in Latin America also try to appropriate Che's legacy. For example, a Reuters report (October 10, 1997) about Carlos Menem, Argentina's pragmatic, anti-Communist president mentions the "widely-criticized proposal to issue a postage stamp honoring Ernesto 'Che' Guevara on the 30th anniversary of the legendary revolutionary's death . . ."10. According to a Cuban church historian, "What Jesus is to John Paul II, Che is to Fidel Castro" (Fainaru 1997a).11. In the introduction to her book on reporting from Latin America, Guillermoprieto explains, "I write as a Mexican-born-and-bred journalist who learned the trade working for newspapers published in London and the District of Columbia, and as a New Yorker who prefers to live in Latin America" (1994, xii). 12. Guillermoprieto, however, seems more interested in presenting her own views of Che rather than those of Anderson and Castañeda. Actually, she misrepresents Anderson's book, which, for other reviewers, "projects a multifaceted view of Guevara as a person, seething with ambiguities and complexities" (Franklin, 1997,27) and suggests that Che's image is still relevant (see note 6 above). Also, the Che who emerges from Castañeda's attempt to demystify Che by locating him in the contexts of his time, his political options, and his personal features, is by far more complex, ambiguous, and human than Guillermoprieto's. However, by blaming Che for much of Latin America's leftist politics, Guillermoprieto echoes an earlier Castañeda who criticizes Fidel Castro (but not Che) for exporting the Cuban revolution to the rest of Latin America (Castañeda, 1993; Chap. 3). In addition, Guillermoprieto reflects the political stance of many Latin American intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s, who were involved in revolutionary projects, like in Chile and Argentina, but ended up blaming leftist forces not only for the failures but also for the institutionalization of repression and violence in the military regimes of the 1970s and 1980s. Either way, repression and violence of the military regimes seem to have been the natural consequences of revolutionary politics and not the result of a clash between contending, yet uneven, political forces.13. They are Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson, New York: Grove Press; Guevara, also known as Che by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, New York: St. Martin's Press; and Compañero, by Jorge Castañeda, New York: Vintage Books.14. These reviews are: Philip Bennett. "Finding Ernesto Guevara in the Myth of Che," Boston Globe, Internet, May 12, 1997; Richard Bernstein. "Looking Back with cooled passions at Che's image," The New York Times, Nov. 26, 1997, B2); M. Falcoff. "He thinks we still care: Che Guevara: A revolutionary life," The American Spectator, Jun 1, 1997, Internet; Jane Franklin. "Guerrilla Heroica," The Nation, May 19, 1997, 27-28; Alma Guillermoprieto. "The harsh angel," The New Yorker, Oct. 6, 1997, 104-11; Saul Landau. "Poster Boy of the revolution," The Washington Post, Oct. 19, 1997, X1.15. An analysis of these reviews provides a cultural guide to the consumption and appropriation of the material, since reviews promote sales and consumption, offer codes of interpretation, and set agendas for debates. They also provide manufactured readings for individuals who will not read these books, but who will appropriate these texts as valid arguments and potential contributions to their own participation in the social or cultural contexts of debates regarding Che Guevara. However, there are certain limitations to this analysis involving the size and nature of the material. All materials were obtained from the Internet. The book reviews were published in several newspapers and magazines, but do not constitute a representative sample of what the U.S. press may have said about these books.
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