
Che Guevara known for
Guevarism
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What did Che Guevara believe in?
Guevarism is a theory of communist revolution and a military strategy of guerrilla warfare associated with Marxist–Leninist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, a leading figure of the Cuban Revolution who believed in the idea of Marxism–Leninism and embraced its principles.
What does Che Guevara symbolize?
Che Guevara is the purest part of the Cuban Revolution. He is the symbol of the ideal of the revolution; he is the symbol of innovation. We all need change, and we need hope.
Why are Che Guevara T shirts famous?
Che Guevara's image is a popular design for clothing, so much so that Che's likeness has been known as "the face that launched a thousand T-shirts". Commentators have noted how the T-shirt is popular among younger adults, especially university students drawn to the rebelliousness associated with the icon.
What did Che Guevara do for fun?
He loved rugby, chess and poetry. Che had a range of hobbies. He played scrum-half in the San Isidro rugby club in his youth, then published his own magazine dedicated to the sport, called Tackle, in 1951. Though he suffered from asthma which hampered his playing, Che once told his father, “I love rugby.
Why Che Guevara is a hero?
Remembered as a romantic freedom fighter, an expert in guerrilla warfare, and a thoughtful philosopher who died young for his cause, Guevara has always been the revolutionaries' revolutionary.
When did Cuba stop being communist?
Batista outlawed the Cuban Communist Party in 1952. After the coup, Cuba had Latin America's highest per capita consumption rates of meat, vegetables, cereals, automobiles, telephones and radios, though about one-third of the population was considered poor and enjoyed relatively little of this consumption.
Was Che Guevara a vegetarian?
Che Guevara was not a vegetarian. Perhaps, had he lived, he would have come to see animal rights as a serious social issue.
How is Che Guevara pronounce?
0:221:00How to Pronounce Che Guevara? (CORRECTLY) | Spanish & English ...YouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipPretty straightforward right however in english it is usually pronounced as che guevara te guevaraMorePretty straightforward right however in english it is usually pronounced as che guevara te guevara from spanish te gibara here are more videos on how to pronounce more names whose pronunciations.
What's a guayabera shirt?
Its roots are in 19th century Cuba, but the guayabera — a button-down shirt in cotton or linen with four pockets and embroidery or pleats down the front — has evolved into a fashionable and formal shirt worn from Mexico to Miami to Tampa.
What does the word Che mean?
Che is a Spanish diminutive interjection commonly used in Argentina. It is a form of colloquial slang used in a vocative sense as "friend", and thus loosely corresponds to expressions such as "mate", "pal", "man", "bro", or "dude", as used by various English speakers.
What were Che Guevara's last words?
Guevara's last words were to Sgt. Jaime Terán, the soldier ordered to shoot him, according to journalist Jon Lee Anderson's biography, “Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life.” “I know you've come to kill me,” he said. “Shoot, you are only going to kill a man.”
When did the Cuban Revolution start?
July 26, 1953 – January 1, 1959Cuban Revolution / Period
Was Che Guevara liberal or conservative?
Che GuevaraPolitical partyCommunist Party of CubaSpouse(s)Hilda Gadea ( m. 1955; div. 1959) Aleida March ( m. 1959)Children5, including AleidaAlma materUniversity of Buenos Aires31 more rows
What were Che Guevara's last words?
Guevara's last words were to Sgt. Jaime Terán, the soldier ordered to shoot him, according to journalist Jon Lee Anderson's biography, “Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life.” “I know you've come to kill me,” he said. “Shoot, you are only going to kill a man.”
Who developed the Foco theory?
The foco theory of revolution by way of guerrilla warfare, also known as foquismo (Spanish: [foˈkismo]), was formulated by French intellectual and government official Régis Debray, whose main source of inspiration was Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara's experiences surrounding his rebel army's victory in the 1959 Cuban ...
Who was the communist revolutionary who led a revolution in Cuba died in Bolivia and then was immortalized in countless T shirt and merchandise?
Che Guevara Is Immortalized In Guerrillero Heroico In Cuba, Castro proclaimed three days of mourning for his fallen comrade, telling his people: "If we wish to express what we want the men of future generations to be, we must say: 'Let them be like Che!'
Why was Che Guevara so influential?
Che Guevara was a prominent communist figure in the Cuban Revolution (1956–59) and a guerrilla leader in South America who became a powerful symbol...
What was Che Guevara’s early life like?
Che Guevara was the eldest of five children in a middle-class Argentine family of leftist leanings. He was an excellent athlete and scholar. Before...
What did Che Guevara believe in?
Che Guevara expounded a vision of a new socialist citizen who would work for the good of society rather than for personal profit.
How was Che Guevara killed?
In October 1967 the guerrilla group that Che Guevara was leading in Bolivia was nearly annihilated by a special detachment of the Bolivian army aid...
Where was Che Guevara buried?
Che Guevara was secretly buried after he was killed in Bolivia in 1967, but in 1997 a skeleton that was believed to be his and the remains of six o...
What happened to Che Guevara?
Wounded, Guevara was captured and then shot dead. Before he was secretly buried, his hands were cut off so that his fingerprints could be used to confirm his identity.
What was Che Guevara's medical background?
Medical school and Motorcycle Diaries: early life. Guevara was the eldest of five children in a middle-class family of Spanish-Irish descent and leftist leanings. Although suffering from asthma, he excelled as an athlete and a scholar, completing his medical studies in 1953.
What was Che Guevara's role in Cuba?
He also became well known in the West for his opposition to all forms of imperialism and neocolonialism and for his attacks on U.S. foreign policy. He served as chief of the Industrial Department of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, president of the National Bank of Cuba (famously demonstrating his disdain for capitalism by signing currency simply “Che”), and minister of industry.
How did Che Guevara change his worldview?
In particular, his worldview was changed by a nine-month journey he began in December 1951, while on hiatus from medical school, with his friend Alberto Granado. That trip, which began on a motorcycle they called “the Powerful” (which broke down and was abandoned early in the journey), took them from Argentina through Chile, Peru, Colombia, and on to Venezuela, from which Guevara traveled alone on to Miami, returning to Argentina by plane. During the trip Guevara kept a journal that was posthumously published under his family’s guidance as The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey (2003) and adapted to film as The Motorcycle Diaries (2004).
What was Guevara's plan to bring about socialism?
This became the cornerstone of his plans to bring about socialism by means of a worldwide revolution.
What was Che Guevara's vision?
Guevara expounded a vision of a new socialist citizen who would work for the good of society rather than for personal profit, a notion he embodied through his own hard work. Often he slept in his office, and, in support of the volunteer labour program he had organized, he spent his day off working in a sugarcane field.
Where is Che Guevara buried?
Che Guevara was secretly buried after he was killed in Bolivia in 1967, but in 1997 a skeleton that was believed to be his and the remains of six of his comrades were disinterred from a mass grave near Vallegrande, Bolivia, transported to Cuba, and reinterred in a memorial and monument in Santa Clara.
How did Che Guevara change his appearance?
Before he departed for Bolivia, Guevara altered his appearance by shaving off his beard and much of his hair, also dying it grey so that he was unrecognizable as Che Guevara. On 3 November 1966, Guevara secretly arrived in La Paz on a flight from Montevideo, under the false name Adolfo Mena González, posing as a middle-aged Uruguayan businessman working for the Organization of American States.
Why did Che Guevara go to Africa?
In early 1965, Guevara went to Africa to offer his knowledge and experience as a guerrilla to the ongoing conflict in the Congo. According to Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella, Guevara thought that Africa was imperialism's weak link and so had enormous revolutionary potential. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had fraternal relations with Che since his 1959 visit, saw Guevara's plan to fight in Congo as "unwise" and warned that he would become a " Tarzan " figure, doomed to failure. Despite the warning, Guevara traveled to Congo using the alias Ramón Benítez. He led the Cuban operation in support of the Marxist Simba movement, which had emerged from the ongoing Congo crisis. Guevara, his second-in-command Víctor Dreke, and 12 other Cuban expeditionaries arrived in Congo on 24 April 1965, and a contingent of approximately 100 Afro-Cubans joined them soon afterward. For a time, they collaborated with guerrilla leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who had helped supporters of the overthrown prime minister Patrice Lumumba to lead an unsuccessful revolt months earlier. As an admirer of the late Lumumba, Guevara declared that his "murder should be a lesson for all of us". Guevara, with limited knowledge of Swahili and the local languages, was assigned a teenage interpreter, Freddy Ilanga. Over the course of seven months, Ilanga grew to "admire the hard-working Guevara", who "showed the same respect to black people as he did to whites". Guevara soon became disillusioned with the poor discipline of Kabila's troops and later dismissed him, stating "nothing leads me to believe he is the man of the hour".
Why did Che Guevara settle in Guatemala?
Pleased with the road the nation was heading down, Guevara decided to settle down in Guatemala so as to "perfect himself and accomplish whatever may be necessary in order to become a true revolutionary.". A map of Che Guevara's travels between 1953 and 1956, including his journey aboard the Granma.
What did Che Guevara consider Batista?
In this vein, he considered Batista a " U.S. puppet whose strings needed cutting". Although he planned to be the group's combat medic, Guevara participated in the military training with the members of the Movement. The key portion of training involved learning hit and run tactics of guerrilla warfare. Guevara and the others underwent arduous 15-hour marches over mountains, across rivers, and through the dense undergrowth, learning and perfecting the procedures of ambush and quick retreat. From the start Guevara was instructor Alberto Bayo 's "prize student" among those in training, scoring the highest on all of the tests given. At the end of the course, he was called "the best guerrilla of them all" by General Bayo.
What did Che Guevara learn from his father?
Guevara learned chess from his father and began participating in local tournaments by the age of 12. During adolescence and throughout his life he was passionate about poetry, especially that of Pablo Neruda, John Keats, Antonio Machado, Federico García Lorca, Gabriela Mistral, César Vallejo, and Walt Whitman.
What was Che Guevara's role in the Cuban Revolution?
Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime. Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government.
Where did Che Guevara go to study medicine?
In 1948, Guevara entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. His "hunger to explore the world" led him to intersperse his collegiate pursuits with two long introspective journeys that fundamentally changed the way he viewed himself and the contemporary economic conditions in Latin America. The first expedition in 1950 was a 4,500-kilometer (2,800 mi) solo trip through the rural provinces of northern Argentina on a bicycle on which he installed a small engine. This was followed in 1951 by a nine-month, 8,000-kilometer (5,000 mi) continental motorcycle trek through part of South America. For the latter, he took a year off from his studies to embark with his friend Alberto Granado, with the final goal of spending a few weeks volunteering at the San Pablo leper colony in Peru, on the banks of the Amazon River.
Why is Che Guevara so famous?
Why Is Che Guevara Famous? Che Guevara was a very well known figure of the Cuban Revolution. He worked with Fidel Castro and traveled the world in an effort to cause revolutions. He is a symbol of radical revolution for those who are underrepresented because of capitalistic society. Advertisement.
What was Che Guevara's role in the Cuban Revolution?
He assisted with the Cuban Revolution and was instrumental in training people to resist the intrusion of the United States in the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Why did Che Guevara travel to the United Nations?
In some ways the United States felt that he was inciting drama and discord across the world.
What was Guevara's literacy rate in Cuba?
At the start of his literacy campaign, the literacy rate in Cuba was between 60 and 75%. He determined that the lack of educational facilities was the main reason for the depressed literacy rate. In order to increase literacy, Guevara asked the Cuban governments to build schools and focus on teaching the peasant class how to read and write.
Why did Che Guevara want to help?
An experience in Guatemala, where Guevara wanted to help initiate a major land reform that was stopped by the United States, confirmed that for him that the U.S. was a capitalist figure that was set on keeping fair reforms from occurring. This fueled his belief that armed struggle was the only way in which to effectively promote revolutionary change.
Did Che Guevara have sympathy for the poor?
It is said that Guevara always had a special sympathy for the poor and downtrodden in society. This sympathy would be further developed as he grew older and had the opportunity to travel the world. While studying and eventually practicing medicine in throughout Latin America, Guevara was deeply moved by the extreme poverty which he felt was incredibly unjust.
Was Che Guevara ruthless?
Guevara was known to be very ruthless in when dealing with traitors, spies and enemies while being considered very heroic to those that fought with him. In some instances, it is even said that Guevara’s enemies had respect for his dedication to his cause and his willingness to take certain risks.
How long is Che Guevara's tour?
Cuba also offers a '14-day "Che Guevara Tour", (organized in collaboration with the Ernesto Che Guevara center in Havana) – which allows travelers to follow the historical footsteps of Che Guevara in his guerrilla struggle to oust Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
What does Che Guevara's propagation represent?
Conversely, to those ideologically opposed to Che Guevara's belief in World revolution, or to those that resent his veneration because of his violent actions, his propagation represents shallow ignorant kitsch, idolatry worthy of spoof makeovers, parody, or even ridicule.
How many poems are in Che in Verse?
To coincide with the 40th anniversary of his execution, Che in Verse reproduced 134 poems and songs from 53 countries about the enigmatic revolutionary. The book examines how Che was celebrated or remembered from before his death to the present day, and also explores Guevara's own interest in poetry. It reveals among other things considerable interest in the Argentine revolutionary among radical writers in the US, and contains 19 poems by North American poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, John Haines, Greg Hewett, Michael McClure and Thomas Merton.
What is Che Guevara's legacy?
He has become, as author Michael Casey notes in Che's Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image, "the quintessential postmodern icon signifying anything to anyone and everything to everyone.". Che Guevara's likeness has undergone continual apotheosis while being weaved throughout the public consciousness in a variety of ways.
Where is Che Guevara's mural?
A mural of Che Guevara faces in Granada, Nicaragua. Appearances of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara (1928–1967) in popular culture are common throughout the world. Although during his lifetime he was a highly politicized and controversial figure, in death his stylized image has been transformed into a worldwide emblem for an array ...
What is a market marsala?
According to Hannah Charlton, editor of Che Guevara: Revolutionary and Icon, "By the 1990s the global market saw the emergence of what Naomi Klein has called a "market marsala"—a bilingual mix of North and South, some Latin, some R&B, all couched in global party politics.".
Where is Che statue?
A large artistic Che statue in Oleiros, Spain.
How many children did Che Guevara have?
The image of a father doesn't exactly spring to mind when we see Che Guevara's defiant image splashed across shirts, posters and book pages. However, the controversial revolutionary was actually a father of five. His children were all born between 1956 and 1965. Four of his children are still alive today.
What did Che Guevara do to bring the revolution to more countries?
Guevara wasn't content to merely finish a revolution in Cuba. He was determined to spread his ideals around the world. He tried to use the same tactics that won him victory in Cuba in both Bolivia and the Congo.
What are some interesting facts about Che Guevara?
10 Facts that You Might Not Know About Che Guevara. There are many things that make Che Guevara an interesting and remarkable part of both Cuban culture and world history. He is undeniably one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century. It is to be expected that such a controversial and complicated personality would leave ...
Where did Che Guevara study medicine?
Che Guevara may have gone on to be a great physician if he hadn't taken an interest in Latin American politics. He studied medicine at the University of Buenos Aires before leaving school to travel on his motorcycle.
Where did Che Guevara travel?
Guevara traveled to Japan, India, Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Thailand, Yugoslavia, Morocco, Sudan, Syria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Burma for diplomatic purposes following the Cuban Revolution.
Did Guevara's hands get amputated?
His Hands Were Amputated After His Death. Bolivian officials needed to prove to the public that they had truly killed Guevara following his execution. Bolivian military doctors amputated his hands and preserved them in formaldehyde before sending them to Buenos Aires for fingerprint identification.
When was Che Guevara's body found?
His Remains Were a Source of Mystery for Decades. A retired Bolivian general finally revealed the location of Guevara's remains in 1995. Several countries worked together for two years to use the information provided by the general to find the revolutionary's remains in a mass grave.
What did Che do in South America?
During his time studying medicine, Che embarked on two trips through South America—a solo journey in 1950 on a motorized bicycle and an 8000-mile trek that started on a vintage motorcycle with friend Alberto Granado in 1952. On these trips, he saw intense poverty and the exploitation of workers and farmers. After witnessing “the shivering, flesh-and-blood victims of capitalist exploitation,” Che was determined to fight the system. His account of his second journey, first published in Cuba in 1993 as The Motorcycle Diaries, became a New York Times bestseller and a critically acclaimed 2004 film.
Why did Che settle in Guatemala?
Che settled in Guatemala in 1953 partially because he approved of the way the country’s president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, had redistributed land to peasants—a move that angered the country's elite and the powerful U.S.-based United Fruit Company. That same year, a CIA-backed effort forced the democratically elected Arbenz from power. A ruling junta elected the right-wing Castillo Armas to the presidency, and then restored United Fruit Company’s land. Che was radicalized by the event, and it was the first time he participated directly in revolutionary activities, fighting with a small group of rebels (unsuccessfully) to retake Guatemala City.
What is Che Guevara's nickname?
It’s a filler word, something like saying dude, mate, or pal. If he’d been Canadian, his nickname might have been Eh.
What was Che's second journey?
After witnessing “the shivering, flesh-and-blood victims of capitalist exploitation,” Che was determined to fight the system. His account of his second journey, first published in Cuba in 1993 as The Motorcycle Diaries, became a New York Times bestseller and a critically acclaimed 2004 film. 7.
What are some interesting facts about Che?
1. HE WAS PART IRISH. Che’s great-great-great-great-grandfather was Patrick Lynch, who emigrated from Ireland to what is now Argentina in the 1700s. His father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, has been quoted as saying , "The first thing to note is that in my son's veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels.".
What are some interesting facts about Ernesto Guevara?
10 Facts About Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. BY Scott Beggs. June 14, 2018. Keystone/Getty Images. Far more than just an image on a dorm room wall, Ernesto Guevara was a 20th-century Renaissance man. He was a doctor, political philosopher, diplomat, military strategist, and best-selling author who challenged the capitalist status quo with words ...
What was Guevara's role in Cuba's economy?
That gave him an unparalleled amount of power to direct the country’s economy, which he used to try to reduce Cuba's dependence on sugar exports and trade with the United States in particular. He also made his disdain toward money itself known by signing Cuba’s notes simply as Che.
Why is Che Guevara so famous?
Today, he is remembered for his leftist radicalism and anti-imperialism. His commonly referred to name, Che, reflects his status as an icon so famous that he is recognised by his first name alone. Similarly, a photograph of Guevara has become globally celebrated, adorning endless T-shirts and posters worldwide, and becoming a symbol of resistance during times of war.
Why did Che live in Guatemala?
Che lived in Guatemala in 1953 in part because he admired the way the president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, redistributed land to peasants. This angered US-based United Fruit Company, and later the same year, a CIA-backed coup forced president Arbenez from power. A ruling junta then elected the right-wing Castillo Armas to the presidency and restored United Fruit Company’s land.
Why was Che Guevara nicknamed Chanco?
No stranger to nicknames, at school Guevara was nicknamed ‘Chanco’, meaning ‘pig’, due to his scruffy character and reluctance to wash.
What was Che Guevara's role in the Cuban Revolution?
A prominent communist figure of the Cuban Revolution, he went on to become a guerrilla leader in South America and was responsible for the spread of communist ideas around the world before his eventual execution at the hands of the Bolivian army in 1967.
What was Guevara's role in Cuba's economy?
This included being named president of the National Bank in 1959, which gave him the power to effectively direct the country’s economy, which he used to reduce Cuba’s dependence on sugar exports and trade within the United States, instead increasing trade with the Soviet Union.
Why was Pablo Neruda homeschooled?
Owing to his asthma, he was home-schooled, which is where he was first introduced to poetry. Upon his death, he was carrying a well-worn green book of poetry he’d copied by hand, featuring work from Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, and Nicolás Guillén. He also enjoyed Whitman and Keats, amongst others.
What is the meaning of the name Che?
The short, memorable, and unpretentious name ‘Che’ is an Argentine interjection that is generally used to call attention, in a way that is similar to ‘dude’, ‘mate’ or ‘pal’. He used it so frequently that his Cuban compatriots, who perceived the word as foreign, branded him with it. The word is almost always used in informal settings among friends and family.

Overview
Ernesto "Che" Guevara was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, writer, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.
As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and w…
Early life
Ernesto Guevara was born to Ernesto Guevara Lynch and Celia de la Serna y Llosa, on 14 June 1928, in Rosario, Argentina. Although the legal name on his birth certificate was "Ernesto Guevara", his name sometimes appears with "de la Serna" and/or "Lynch" accompanying it. He was the eldest of five children in an upper-class Argentine family of pre-independence immigrant Basque, Spanish (Ca…
Guatemala, Árbenz, and United Fruit
On 7 July 1953, Guevara set out again, this time to Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador. On 10 December 1953, before leaving for Guatemala, Guevara sent an update to his aunt Beatriz from San José, Costa Rica. In the letter Guevara speaks of traversing the dominion of the United Fruit Company, a journey which convinced him that the …
Mexico City and preparation
Guevara arrived in Mexico City on 21 September 1954, and worked in the allergy section of the General Hospital and at the Hospital Infantil de Mexico. In addition he gave lectures on medicine at the Faculty of Medicine in the National Autonomous University of Mexico and worked as a news photographer for Latina News Agency. His first wife Hilda notes in her memoir My Life with Che, that for a while, Guevara considered going to work as a doctor in Africa and that he continued to …
Cuban Revolution
The first step in Castro's revolutionary plan was an assault on Cuba from Mexico via the Granma, an old, leaky cabin cruiser. They set out for Cuba on 25 November 1956. Attacked by Batista's military soon after landing, many of the 82 men were either killed in the attack or executed upon capture; only 22 found each other afterwards. During this initial bloody confrontation Guevara laid do…
International diplomacy
In December 1964, Che Guevara had emerged as a "revolutionary statesman of world stature" and thus traveled to New York City as head of the Cuban delegation to speak at the United Nations. On 11 December 1964, during Guevara's hour-long, impassioned address at the UN, he criticized the United Nations' inability to confront the "brutal policy of apartheid" in South Africa, aski…
Congo
In early 1965, Guevara went to Africa to offer his knowledge and experience as a guerrilla to the ongoing conflict in the Congo. According to Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella, Guevara thought that Africa was imperialism's weak link and so had enormous revolutionary potential. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had fraternal relations with Che since his 1959 visit, saw Guevar…
Bolivia
In late 1966, Guevara's location was still not public knowledge, although representatives of Mozambique's independence movement, the FRELIMO, reported that they met with Guevara in Dar es Salaam regarding his offer to aid in their revolutionary project, an offer which they ultimately rejected. In a speech at the 1967 International Workers' Day rally in Havana, the acting minister of th…
Overview
Appearances of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara (1928–1967) in popular culture are common throughout the world. Although during his lifetime he was a highly politicized and controversial figure, in death his stylized image has been transformed into a worldwide emblem for an array of causes, representing a complex mesh of sometimes conflicting narratives. Che Guevar…
Genesis
Pop's depersonalization and standardization simplified Che's image and helped align him with the masses, at the same time certifying his image as everyman. Pop's aesthetic pushed towards absolutely unambiguous and uninflected meaning and repeatability. Warholian Pop deals with outlines and surfaces rather than full chiaroscuro. This reduction of the real world provided the perfe…
In advertising
There's something about that man in the photo, the Cuban revolutionary with the serious eyes, scruffy beard and dark beret. Ernesto "Che" Guevara is adored. He is loathed. Dead for nearly 40 years, he is everywhere – as much a cultural icon as James Dean or Marilyn Monroe, perhaps even more so among a new generation of admirers who've helped turn a devout Marxist into a capitalist co…
In art
Possibly more than the Mona Lisa, more than images of Christ, more than comparable icons such as The Beatles or Monroe, Che's image has continued to hold the imagination of generation after generation.— Hannah Charlton, The Sunday Times
• British pop artist Sir Peter Blake has referred to Guerrillero Heroico as "one of t…
In entertainment and media
• American comedian Margaret Cho, on the cover of her stand-up act Revolution (2003) combines her face into an obvious appropriation of Che Guevara's famous graphic-portrait.
Che Guevara was an amazing character. He's a person that changed the world and really forces me to change the rules of what I am.— Gael García Bernal, po…
In fashion
I don't want people to use my father's face unthinkingly. I don't like to see him stitched on the backside of a pair of mass-produced jeans. But look at the people who wear Che T-shirts. They tend to be those who don't conform, who want more from society, who are wondering if they can be better human beings. That, I think he would have liked.— Aleida Guevara, daughter of Che Guevara
In politics
The guy's face is shorthand for "I'm against the status quo." He's politics' answer to James Dean, a rebel with a very specific cause.— David Segal, The Washington Post
• In February 2008, a minor internet-based "controversy" emerged when a local news report in Houston, Texas, featured the independently funded office of Cub…
In religion
It's like he is alive and with us, like a friend. He is kind of like a Virgin Mary for us. We say, "Che, help us with our work or with this planting," and it always goes well.— Manuel Cortez, a campesino who resides next to the schoolhouse where Guevara was executed
Che Guevara's unlikely transformation into a "sanctified" figure began immedia…