Who was Che Guevara ?

In 2007 a French and a Spanish journalist made a case that the body brought to Cuba was not actually Guevara’s.

The Cuban government refuted the claim, citing scientific evidence from 1997 (including dental structure) that, it said, proved that the remains were those of Guevara.

Guevara would live on as a powerful symbol, bigger in some ways in death than in life. He was almost always referenced simply as Che—like Elvis Presley, so popular an icon that his first name alone was identifier enough.

Many on the political right condemned him as brutal, cruel, murderous, and all too willing to employ violence to reach revolutionary ends.

On the other hand, Guevara’s romanticized image as a revolutionary loomed especially large for the generation of young leftist radicals in western Europe and North America in the turbulent 1960s.

Almost from the time of Guevara’s death, his whiskered face adorned T-shirts and posters. Framed by a red-star-studded beret and long hair, his face frozen in a resolute expression, the iconic image was derived from a photo taken by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960, at a ceremony for those killed when a ship that had brought arms to Havana exploded.

At first the image of Che was worn as a statement of rebellion, then as the epitome of radical chic, and, with the passage of time, as a kind of abstract logo whose original significance may even have been lost on its wearer, though for some he remains an enduring inspiration for revolutionary action.