friedrich braun
08-18-2004, 12:24 PM
Just a pretty face?
For 40 years he has been a sex symbol, heroic victim and the ultimate poster boy of revolutionary chic. But behind the myth of Che Guevara lie darker truths. On the eve of a new film, it is time to reassess the Sixties' most enduring icon
Sean O'Hagan
Sunday July 11, 2004
The Observer
On the outskirts of Vallegrande, a mountain village in Bolivia, there is a single airstrip, little more than a long ribbon of rubble and dirt. It was there, seven years ago, that a team of forensic scientists from Argentina and Cuba began digging in search of the skeleton of a man with no hands. They found it after a few days, buried alongside the bones of six others.
Thirty years after his death, the remains of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, whose hands had been cut off following his execution by his Bolivian army captors, were finally returned to Cuba, the homeland he adopted and helped remake in his image. His final resting place is a mausoleum in the suburbs of the city of Santa Clara, a site of almost religious significance to Cubans who lived though the revolution of 1959. Vallegrande, where his corpse was put on public display following his execution, remains much as it was, a forlorn place with little trace of his presence save for the hawkers of cheap Che memorabilia who wait for the tourist buses. On the wall of the town's public telephone office, someone has written, 'Che - alive as they never wanted you to be'.
...
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4968218-102280,00.html
For 40 years he has been a sex symbol, heroic victim and the ultimate poster boy of revolutionary chic. But behind the myth of Che Guevara lie darker truths. On the eve of a new film, it is time to reassess the Sixties' most enduring icon
Sean O'Hagan
Sunday July 11, 2004
The Observer
On the outskirts of Vallegrande, a mountain village in Bolivia, there is a single airstrip, little more than a long ribbon of rubble and dirt. It was there, seven years ago, that a team of forensic scientists from Argentina and Cuba began digging in search of the skeleton of a man with no hands. They found it after a few days, buried alongside the bones of six others.
Thirty years after his death, the remains of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, whose hands had been cut off following his execution by his Bolivian army captors, were finally returned to Cuba, the homeland he adopted and helped remake in his image. His final resting place is a mausoleum in the suburbs of the city of Santa Clara, a site of almost religious significance to Cubans who lived though the revolution of 1959. Vallegrande, where his corpse was put on public display following his execution, remains much as it was, a forlorn place with little trace of his presence save for the hawkers of cheap Che memorabilia who wait for the tourist buses. On the wall of the town's public telephone office, someone has written, 'Che - alive as they never wanted you to be'.
...
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4968218-102280,00.html