Beyond Globalization: Making New Worlds in Media, Art, and Social Practices

8. The Man, the Corpse,and the Icon in

8 The Man, the Corpse, and the Icon in Motorcycle Diaries Utopia, Pleasure, and a New Revolutionary Imagination j cristina venegas And if there is any hope for America, it lies in a Revolution, and if there is any hope for a Revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley to become Che Guevara. —Phil Ochs An eyewitness reported that upon facing his executioner in the little schoolhouse in the Bolivian highlands, 39-year-old Ernesto “Che” Guevara said, “Shoot, coward. You’re only going to kill a man.”1 After he and his comrades were executed, Guevara’s body was flown to the nearby town of Vallegrande, laid out Christ-like on a deathbed in an austere laundry-room with halfopened eyes. The eerie image of his death was captured in photographs and on film. Newspapers reported that communist Revolutionary pursuits in Bolivia had come to an end. The date was October 9, 1967. If his contribution to the Cuban Revolution had not already immortalized him, the events following Che Guevara’s death secured his mythical status in the pantheon of revolutionary heroes. A symbol of ideological resolve, tenacity , and moral conviction, the revolutionary’s body, now a corpse, became invested with immense political meaning both by those who venerated him and those who scorned him. His hands were severed in order to make a definitive identification, his face disfigured in a crude attempt to make a death mask, and the corpse, arms tied behind the back, was tossed into an unmarked grave by the Bolivian military. For Vallegrande, where these events Motorcycle Diaries took place, the dead Che literally became a Christ symbol and a lay saint. Buried in anonymity, his enduring presence became legendary in the Bolivian mountains. Popular culture referred to la maldición del Che, the Che curse, a narrative that reiterated mythic post mortem events, telling of mysterious tragedies suffered by many of the people associated with his capture and execution. It is a fact that most of those involved died within the next decade. The novelistic account of the deaths is woven into the mythology of Che, confirming the great loss of the Argentine guerrilla hero to Latin America, and to the ideology of the Left. It is a formidable narrative of revolution, inflated with heroism and idealism. The real story adds ridiculous irony to the sublime fiction. The severed hands and death mask were hidden away by a Bolivian general who admired Guevara’s ideals. The CIA pursued the general until he left Bolivia to live in Cuba. Before leaving, he gave the hands— in a jar filled with formaldehyde—to a Bolivian journalist who in turn kept them hidden under his house until he was able to return them to Che’s family . Thirty years later, in 1997, Guevara’s remains were found buried near an airstrip in Vallegrande, and returned to his family in Cuba, where he received a state funeral in the province of Santa Clara, site of a then newly built museum and mausoleum.2 Amid celebrations to commemorate his memory, Fidel Castro symbolically declared that Che was, “fighting and winning more battles than ever.”3 Whether brought to life by mourning, filmmaking, or commerce, the complexity of Che Guevara’s “resurrection” is worthy of examination as a factor in postmodern consumerism, in which politics have become a matter of style in search of substance. Traveling Revolutionary Texts The chronicle of Guevara’s death and his iconic status are no secret. These topics have filled the pages of at least eight books, and fueled several feature films and documentaries. Yet an evolving significance of the life and legend lies outside these media, in various strands woven around the representation of Guevara. This is seen particularly in the renewed circulation of his image and ideas surrounding the worldwide release of Walter Salles’s film Diarios de motocicleta (Motorcycle Diaries, 2004). In the film, the character of Ernesto Guevara evolves in the adventure of travel. His nascent consciousness discovers the “other” Latin America, and the gulf between disadvantaged people and the ruling system of power. Observing man, corpse, and icon in motorcycle diaries 139 motorcycle diaries first the plenitude of the land and its people, Ernesto focuses on commonalities woven together, and on geography, forging new ideas about political identity. The people he encounters are marked by the violence of colonialism...