More Than A Statue

Last Saturday (06/14) Argentina, the birth place of the global revolutionary, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, finally paid homage to the guerrilla fighter who was killed on the orders of the United States in 1967 during the Bolivian Revolution.

Thousands of Argentine's celebrated what would have been Che's 80th birthday.

No Argentine has left a bigger mark on the world than legendary revolutionary Guevara, yet there has been no major monument in his homeland. Yet, his face has sold a millions of hats, t-shirts, buttons, and bags. I have a few myself.

In an interview earlier this month two of Guevara's children said they were tired of seeing their father's image used to sell everything from T-shirts to vodka, calling the growth of the revolutionary as a global super-brand. Aleida Guevara, the eldest of Guevara's four children by his second wife, Cuban revolutionary Aleida March, said the commercialization of her father's image contributed to tension between rich and poor in some countries. "Something that bothers me now is the appropriation of the figure of Che that has been used to make enemies from different classes. It's embarrassing," she wrote during an Internet forum sponsored by the Cuban government. "We don't want money, we demand respect," wrote Guevara, who is a trained physician like her father.

To learn more about this fascinating revolutionary visit http://www.che-lives.com/ or http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB5/index.html