May 21, 2006

One image, extreme reactions

I knew coming into the Convention that the Che? Still Dead? shirts were going to garner some interesting reactions. Some people come by the pavilion and love them. They quickly reach for their wallets and buy a shirt or two.

Others have quite the opposite reaction. Such is their hatred of the murderous revolutionary. So much so, that I took the display tshirt down out of respect when one woman came up to the booth with tears in her eyes, anger in her voice, and asked why we had the image of the man that murdered her uncle and his two sons up in our booth.

And there was no explanation that we could give her to make her see any different. The pain was - IS - too great. Some Cubans simply refuse to wear the image of the Butcher of la Cabana, no matter how the mythical icon is depicted, whether with a bloody bullet home in his head or a slash across his face.

Others, of course, especially Cuban-Americans from outside of Miami, love our shirt. They buy two or three or four at a time. They're tired, they say, of seeing the ubiquitous Korda image in malls and movie theaters and colleges and everywhere else in their neck of the woods.

So, if you've bought one of our Che? Still Dead! tshirts, wear it with pride. Because you know the real Che, the one more concerned with bullets and blood than with motorcycles and diaries.

Posted by Val Prieto at May 21, 2006 01:22 PM

Comments

This has happened to me many times - Cuban exiles in their well meaning passions (I have those passions too) sometimes don't understand satire or political satire or forms of political protest. Val's Che dead shirt is a perfect example of all the above - it is taking the sacred cow of the left (Che) and destroying or deconstructing the image. Val's treament of the shot up Che is a form of cosmic warfare that am sure is doing good to put down the obnoxcious graphic of Che that is being shoved down our throats almost everyday. Plus I love the negative reaction the commies who live in free Western societies have towards anti Che - anti communist images like Val's.

I remember in 1998 when I created one of the first and many pro Cuba democracy websites (Cuban American Democracy Project-NYC)that a lot of Cuban exiles - especially the older generation could not understand the satirical nature of my site. Pretty soon my own people attacked me because they said the site look too much like Granma International! LOL! Here I was trying to fight Castro in a gen X way and I was being called communist by many in Miami because they did not understand the iconagraphy I chose to fight Cuban communism with.
But I feel sorry for the old lady, I understand her ignorance, and we all feel her pain.

Posted by: mandingo [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 21, 2006 08:40 PM

Val - Where can I get a "Che? Still dead?" shirt?

Or better yet, one with the above pic of Sr. Rodriguez and the soon-to-be-corpse?

Caption: "Up Against The Wall, Motherfucker!"

Posted by: mojo [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 23, 2006 04:09 PM


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