They lost radio contact with Cuba, supplies ran low. They were plagued by illness and vicious insects. The Bolivian recruits resented taking orders from the battle-hardened Cubans, and government propaganda sowed fear of the foreign interlopers among the campesinos. The remainder trudged towards the mountains in a desperate attempt to break out of the trap. Che, prostrated by asthma, rode on a mule towards the remote village of La Higuera.
Wounded, he surrendered to a battalion of rangers — trained by US Green Berets — under the command of a year-old captain, Gary Prado. In an interview with the Guardian, Prado recalled that moment. Prado had several conversations with Guevara, and says he brought him food, coffee and cigarettes.
When Guevara asked what would happen to him, Prado said he told the guerrilla that he would be court-martialled in the city of Santa Cruz. The trial never happened. The boulder behind which Che sheltered is daubed with graffiti. Farming tools rust among the overgrown foliage. The hut of an old woman mentioned by Che in his diary — today kept in a vault in the Central Bank of Bolivia — is in ruins.
That may well be true, but accepting money in payment could also have been risky. The government was on its way to extinguishing all private business, and possession of foreign currency was a crime that carried a prison sentence. The violence that runs through this story did not spare Feltrinelli. Suspicions of suicide and assassination still surround his death. The Soviets never forgave him for helping Pasternak, just as they never forgave Che for being an admirer of Mao, whose global aspirations conflicted with their own.
For decades Korda never earned a cent from the broad distribution of his iconic picture. Such profiting would have been unrevolutionary. Who pays Cervantes? Just before his death, Korda did file and prevail in some legal claims and finally had his copyright confirmed by the London High Court. He was then able to stop the use of his Che image in Smirnoff vodka ads, arguing that he considered such commercial exploitation an insult to the legacy of the guerrillero heroico.
Korda insisted to the press that neither he nor his hero ever drank alcohol. And his image continues to be framed into the last selfies of socialism by tourists passing through what was once called Civic Square and is now the Plaza of the Revolution.
Maybe he saw the irony or some political utility in the shot. Still, it was more evidence—as if any were needed—that the magic somehow persists. Meanwhile, the mortal remains of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, their authenticity subject to ongoing debate, are kept as a communist totem in Santa Clara, in the geographical center of Cuba— a withering testament to one of the last attempts to create a utopia on Earth. His book Abandoned Havana is a photo diary of his home city.
Korda captured this iconic image of the Cuban revolutionary by chance. And of course, Che was gorgeous. It helps. So I think you have this image … of a very handsome man, and … you really don't know what you're looking at, so it's filled with mystery. While he is still extremely famous in Cuba and throughout Latin America, where children are taught to see him as a hero from a very young age, much of the rest of the world appears to see him only as an icon.
In , a Taco Bell ad featured the signature chihuahua sporting the Guevara beret. Several months later, the Church of England faced widespread criticism for its advertisement bearing the face of Jesus Christ in the style of the Che Guevara photograph. The ad was geared toward attracting churchgoers to Easter mass. Just over a year ago, the Mercedes-Benz corporation apologized publicly for depicting Guevara wearing the company's logo on his beret.
In , the year after Guevara's assassination, his image was spotted in the West Bank and Gaza. It cropped up again in Tehran in and, more recently, has made appearances in the Arab Spring.
As the image explodes around the world, one thing keeps it grounded: the people who claim legal ownership. While Korda did not originally pursue copyright of the image — he intended it to be available for public use — he later claimed intellectual property rights when he felt the image was being misused. In , Korda sued the advertising agency Lowe Lintas for using his photo of Guevara on an advertisement for Smirnoff vodka.
He didn't drink," said Korda's lawyer, Razi Mireskandari. The case revealed the challenge Korda — and, after his death, his estate — would face if he decided to control the use of the image more stringently. Since use of the photo is so widespread, it would be impossible to track every individual case.
Korda, however, is not the only one looking to protect Guevara image from misuse.
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