Che Guevara - Persona non Grata, or Business Journal Bigotry?
The big American chain store Target Corp has withdrawn a CD with a portrait of Che Guevara after heavy criticism. Target sold the disc with music for admirors of Che, and with the famous Alberto Diaz or Korda photo. They had slightly altered the photo so that a pair of auriculars were visible.
This was apparently too much for the business press. Columnists from some business papers condemned the selling of the disc with the Che photo. What'll be the next, Investor's Business Daily wrote: "Hitler's knapsack, Pol Pot's kitchen utesils, - or Pinochet underwear?" They think Guevara should be ignored because he presumably helped to promote Castro's communism in Cuba.
This is really hilarious. - And extremely hysterical! It's far beside the point to compare Guevara to Hitler and Pol Pot. He did a lot of good acts in Cuba. It was not his fault that it was difficult to get high economic growth on the island. The American embargo can get part of the blame for that!
These writers in the business journals do not seem to know much about history. Otherwise they would know the difference between a revolutionary leader like Guevara and the dictators mentioned.
posted by Cosmic Duck at 8:08 AM
4 Comments:
Cosmic,
I just came back from a two week trip to Cuba. We stayed in Santiago and Havana. Cuba is obstinate socialism in a sea of hostility and worse of economic warfare. It is not a rich country but it has generated wealth for its citizen in other manners, life expectancy, education and so on...Portraits of El Che are everywhere in Cuba and in every house. There are barely portraits of Fidel. Cubans love the Che and have great affection for him. he is their hero and he is the quintessence of the honest revolutionnary ideal, business writers or not.
Hi Sophia.
On Danish TV news a couple of days ago: Norwegians protest against the Scandic hotels, which is American owned, rejecting Cubans as guests. Uncle Sam seems to have a very long arm. It is the Helms Burton legislation that Cuba - and Cubans - have been suffering from for a long time.
All in all, the Cuban economy has been suffering also under the American embargo.
We were on a work visit for my husband with Cuban colleagues. Most Cubans blame the economic situation ont he embargos while at the same time they are open to criticise their regime on other matters. There is more freedom of expression in Cuba, as long as you don't threaten or try to topple the regime or conspire against it, than what we have in the west now. I visited the Cuban collection of contemporary art in Havana and most of the works were somehow critical of the regime and they were bought with government money. I cannot imagine such a thing in the US...
I think you're right. At this moment the Danish government together with the Jyllandsposten is waging a campaign against the freedom of speech of various writers, cf my newest post. This is hilarious when you consider it was the Jyllandsposten that started the cartoons crisis on allegations of muslims restricting freedom of speech.
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