CHE’S AFTERLIFE

A semiotic history of one of the world’s most widely reproduced, ideologically fraught photographs.

First-time author Casey revels in the paradoxes behind the global dissemination of Alberto Korda’s famous 1960 snapshot of a defiant Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Argentine-born Cuban insurgent leader. This ubiquitous image has exploited a communist stalwart as a brand to sell vodka and condoms, turned an atheist into a patron saint of the downtrodden and entangled an opponent of private property in an ongoing worldwide copyright dispute. It adorns the T-shirts and dorm walls of millions of college students who have no idea who Guevara was, or that he stood for something more consequential than rebellious cool. Casey offers a comprehensive tour of the icon’s progress. In the mountains of Latin America, a tourist industry retraces Guevara’s circuitous path, while leftist activists and authoritarian governments both claim his legacy. In the streets of Thailand, he shares bumper-sticker space with right-wing icon Rambo, both of them shaggy jungle guerillas. In the galleries of Europe and the United States, artists, conservatives, radicals, gays, religious folk and entrepreneurs battle over what the photo means. The author, Buenos Aires bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires, sometimes bogs down in the minutiae of Latin American politics, but he maintains a clear focus on what the Korda photo says to him. For all Guevara’s failures as a revolutionary in the Congo and in Bolivia (where he was captured and killed), and for all the violent consequences of his idealism, Guevara remains to Casey a symbol of underdog resilience. Now that the image has been all but divorced from its initial context and meaning, he dreams that it can transcend ideology as well and become an icon of hope.

Meandering but heady exploration of a focal point of politics and popular culture.