The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

more varied … [and] far more exciting” than the bureaucratic centralist aesthetic of
eastern European socialist states. In spite of fears that the near “saturation” of Che
images in Cuba in 1968 in the “Year of the Heroic Guerrilla” might result in a
“repetitive, dogmatic, and … purely mechanical” world of posters, Che poster
iconography reflected a “continuing vitality”, which for Kunzle seemed to “flow from
the vitality of the legend itself”. While there certainly was a “stereotyped Che image”,
the iconography that emerged around Che varied and departed from this in
“innumerable” ways, and with Cuban public and poster art having absorbed and
activated a range of styles and influences, the image of Che has been “couched in a
truly international visual language”. Apart from its “permanent presence” in homes,
community centres and in the workplace, the anniversary month of Che’s death,
October saw a “constantly changing” array of Che portraits on bright billboards,
which provided “sudden moments of beauty” in drab urban settings. 130
It is the Che poster, however, that has been “his enduring and ever renewable public
monument”. The image of Che “embodying an egalitarian ideal” has challenged
“social isolation and elitism”, as well as the social cleavages that began to take hold
with new tourism and “dollarisation”. While many Cuban posters were official
productions of state agencies and institutions, a substantial number were the result of
people’s “very real affection” for Che, representing “a spontaneous expression of
popular feeling”. Through the Che image, Cubans also continue “to export the idea of
revolution”. In the 1960s and 1970s, Che was “a hero of Leftist and student movements
throughout the world”. His image offered “fresh revolutionary inspiration” to protest
movements in cities across the world, and was often used as a symbol in anti‐war
demonstrations and rallies against US imperialism. It came to stand for heroic
resistance itself. But Che’s image was also taken into circuits of youthful rebellion in
the west, and turned into a commercialised cult of “nostalgia for revolution” through
keyrings, lapel pins, necklaces and stereotyped posters. Che’s image became a banal
130 David Kunzle, Che Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message, pp 21‐24.
100