Consuming El Che: Kordavision and Chicano Engagements with the Authoring and Political Branding of Che Guevara

• In Event: Cinematic Views of and from the Margins

Abstract

In the late 1960s the image of Che Guevara figured prominently in the iconography of diverse civil rights groups based in the US. Alongside the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, the Chicano Brown Berets modeled their collective identity through resemblance with the revolutionary icon, championed El Comandante’s image in their manifestations. Through flags, banners, posters and murals, the Brown Berets and most of the Chicano movement placed the white guerrillero of aristocratic Argentine origins, next to Mexican icons that personified "la causa": la Vírgen de Guadalupe, Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, and César Chávez. In this talk, I study Kordavision, a 2005 documentary by Chicano filmmaker Héctor Cruz Sandoval, about Alberto Korda, official photographer of the Cuban Revolution and "author" of Che's famous portrait "Guerrillero Heroico." I investigate his travel to Cuba in his quest for "the truth" behind this global symbol of revolt. An icon of the civil rights movements in the filmmaker's memories, Che has now become a point of contention between several actors (including the photographer and his estate, the Cuban state, multinational corporations and grassroots advocacy groups) that claim ownership over the political meaning and ideology associated with the until very recently copyright free semblance of Che that circulated in the public domain. Through Kordavision, this presentation discusses potential frameworks for thinking about the changing relationship between historical memory and contemporary communication technologies, especially in relation to authorship, copyrighting and ideas about the "correct" and "incorrect" use of images in today's mediated environments.

Author

• Carmen L Oquendo-Villar, International School of Design, Art and Architecture