Legacy of Che

Both Che’s economic thought and his dramatic life have created a significant legacy. In Cuba, his economic views have been both abandoned and adopted at various different points in post-revolutionary Cuban history, to the extent that Yaffe has called it a “Guevarist pendulum” (“Guevara’s Enduring” 61). In the Cuban historical epoch of the Special Period after the collapse of the USSR, Fidel would use the intellectual legacy of his fallen comrade to attempt to revitalize the country (Augustin 46). Beyond the country of Cuba, Che’s legacy can also be seen, although in a very different form. In some countries such as the United States, photographical depictions of him have been highly commodified into garments, or as decorative facades on cups (Larson and Lizardo 426). This initial commodification began at the same time of the Cuban revolution and was extremely popular among leftist subcultures, as well as by some less dedicated to communist ideology (Larson and Lizardo 428). His popularity also grew in the late 1990s when new information about the where-abouts of his corpse was revealed to the public (Larson and Lizardo 428). Also in the 1990s the Neo-Zapatistas movement in certain areas of Mexico utilized the aura of Che in pictorial form (Larson and Lizardo 429).

Examples of Che Iconography