Freddy Alborta's photo of the dead Che Guevara

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Photo of the dead Che Guevara
Freddy Alborta , 1967

Link to the picture
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The photo of the dead Che Guevara taken by the Bolivian photographer Freddy Alborta was taken on October 9, 1967 in the wash house of a hospital in Vallegrande . There had Bolivian soldiers brought the revolutionaries after they took him prisoner and in a schoolhouse in La Higuera had shot. Of the photos taken, Alborta's black and white photography is the best known and is also one of the most famous Guevara photographs. It shows officers, soldiers and civilians who have placed themselves around Guevara's body. The photo was analyzed by art critics and historians and taken up in works by artists.

Emergence

The Argentine doctor Ernesto "Che" Guevara took part in the Cuban Revolution as comandante of the rebel army . After their victory over dictator Fulgencio Batista at the beginning of 1959, he was temporarily Minister of Industry and head of the National Bank of Cuba . In April 1965 he left Cuba to take part in revolutions in other parts of the world. A first mission in the Congo failed in November of the same year.

A year later, in November 1966, Guevara flew to Bolivia, where he founded the rebel army Ejército de Liberación Nacional , which consists mainly of Bolivians and Cubans . But this attempt at revolution also failed within a year. On October 8, 1967, in the Quebrada del Churo gorge, there was a battle with a company of rangers from the Bolivian army under the leadership of Colonel Gary Prado Salmón . Four guerrillas died in it, the Bolivian Aniceto Reinaga Gordillo and the Cubans René Martínez Tamayo , Alberto Fernández Montes de Oca and Orlando Pantoja Tamayo . Three soldiers died on the side of the army. Che Guevara was wounded in the calf. Together with the Bolivian Simeón Cuba Sanabria , he was then captured by the soldiers and taken to the schoolhouse in the nearby town of La Higuera . There he was interrogated by the Bolivian officers Gary Prado Salmón, Andrés Selich Chop and Miguel Ayoroa, as well as the CIA agent Felix Rodriguez . On October 9th, the order came from the high command in La Paz to eliminate Guevara. He was then shot by Sergeant Mario Terán . The army had previously executed Simeón Cuba Sanabria and the Peruvian Juan Pablo Chang Navarro . Of the remaining ten Guevara fighters, five managed to escape to Chile , where the Partido Comunista and the Partido Socialista gave them protection. The others were killed in Bolivia.

The laid body of Che Guevara. Photo of a CIA agent

On the day of his death, Che's body was placed on a stretcher that was attached to the runners of a helicopter so that it was flown to Vallegrande and brought there to the wash house behind the Nuestro Señor de Malta Hospital. Here the body was washed and the evidence of the fatal shot from close range removed, which would have contradicted the announcement by the military that Guevara had died of his battle wounds. In addition, the beard and hair were trimmed for easier identification and a doctor injected formaldehyde to delay the decomposition. The body was presented to the more than 20 journalists and photographers who were flown in by the Bolivian military. One of them was Freddy Alborta, a young freelance photographer. He took several photos of the body. According to his own statement, he did not take photos for the press alone, but paid attention to the shooting angle and the composition in order to produce artistic photographs. Some of the photos show the corpses of two of Guevara's comrades, who were lying on the floor in front of Guevara, who was laid out. They were not washed, so there were large stains of blood on their clothes and bodies.

General Alfredo Ovando Candía's suggestion that Guevara should be beheaded in order to keep the head as evidence was rejected. Instead, two death masks were made and his hands were cut off, which were then stored in formaldehyde. Then he was buried like his six comrades in arms in a secret grave.

description

The photo shows the body of Che Guevara, which is laid out. She is lying on a stretcher that has been placed on a concrete tub. Guevara wears trousers, his upper body, lower legs and feet are bare. His head has been placed slightly elevated so that his open eyes appear to be facing the viewer. There are several men behind Guevara. A Bolivian officer has one hand on Guevara's head, another points a finger at Guevara's upper body. There are three civilians between the two. Two soldiers can be seen on the left, one of whom is clearly carrying a rifle. On the left edge of the picture you can see parts of a man who is photographing the scene. Between the photographer and the concrete tub you can see part of a person's arm on the floor. It probably belongs to one of the six Guevara soldiers who were killed. The exact identity is not clear. According to photographer Freddy Alborta, the officer who points his finger at Guevara's corpse is Colonel René Adriazola, who had nothing to do with the death of Che Guevara.

analysis

Rembrandt - The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp.jpg
Rembrandt's The Anatomy of Dr. Tulip
Andrea Mantegna - The Lamentation over the Dead Christ - WGA13981.jpg
Mantegna's Lamentation of Christ


Shortly after Che Guevara's death, the British art critic John Berger published an essay in which he deals with photos of the dead revolutionary. There are two almost identical versions. In one, Berger dedicates himself to Alborta's famous photo, in another he analyzes a photo that shows only three other people besides Guevara's corpse, including an officer holding a handkerchief in front of his nose. What both essays have in common is that Berger compares the respective photo with two paintings, on the one hand Rembrandt van Rijn's baroque painting The Anatomy of Dr. Tulp , on the other hand the Lamentation of Christ by the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna .

Rembrandt's painting shows an anatomy demonstration by the doctor Nicolaes Tulp on a corpse, attended by seven spectators. This means that the number of people depicted in the painting and Alborta's photography is identical. In Berger's view, paintings and photographs are also very similar in the arrangement of the people in relation to the corpse. In Alborta's photograph, the position of doctor was taken by the officer on the right. The people to his left stared at the corpse as intensely, but impersonally, as Tulp's onlookers would. Here, however, Berger is wrong, because in Rembrandt's painting none of those present looks at the corpse.

Mantegna's painting shows the dead Jesus Christ . The angle of view of the corpse and the positioning of its hands and head resemble Guevara's corpse in Alborta's photo. The cloth that covers the lower body of Jesus has folds similar to those of Guevara's trousers. In contrast to Guevara, Jesus' eyes are closed. The grieving people on the left at Mantegna are also missing in Alborta's photography.

Another photo of the dead Che Guevara was later compared with the painting The Body of Christ in the Tomb by the German painter Hans Holbein the Younger . Similarities between the body and Jesus are said to have already been established by the nuns who washed it. Also for Freddy Alborta he looked like Christ because of the open eyes. External similarities and similarities between the life stories of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ later developed into an important part of Guevara's reception, to which the British art historian David Kunzle even devoted an entire book. They were not only picked up in art and literature, but also used by Christian groups. The British Churches Advertising Network, which describes itself as an "independent ecumenical group of Christian communicators", published the Meek poster in 1999 . Mild. As If. , on which a portrait of Jesus can be seen, strongly reminiscent of the well-known two-tone portrait of Guevara based on the photo Guerrillero Heroico . The action, on which numerous press reports appeared, aroused negative reactions from the British churches.

reception

The photos of the dead Che Guevara, especially the well-known photo by Alborta, received an extensive artistic reception. For example, the Canadian- born Mexican artist Arnold Belkin painted a series of four acrylic paintings between 1972 and 1975 , which Alborta's photo with Rembrandt's painting The Anatomy of Dr. Connect tulip . In The Anatomy Lesson , most of Rembrandt's painting is unchanged, only the corpse has been replaced by a collection of geometrical bodies that look like robot components and that together are vaguely reminiscent of a human body. In anatomy lesson II , subtitled with Tableau manifeste, homage to Che Guevara, Pablo Neruda , Salvador Allende , tulp was transformed into a robot-like shape. The two men on the left in Rembrandt's painting have been replaced by menacing-looking forms that are reminiscent of helmeted military robots. Che Guevara's body is now lying on the dissection table. In anatomy lesson III , almost everything in the scene is robotized, only Guevara's head is still human, but faded. His arms and legs are missing and his body has been gutted. In the fourth painting, Anatomy Lesson IV , the roles are reversed. Che Guevara has now taken on the role of Tulp, five of his fellow combatants can be seen as spectators with rifles at the ready. The corpse consists of disintegrated, robot-like shapes. The paintings are in four private collections and were presented only once together in 1975 in the exhibition Muertes Históricas (German for "historical death"). While the author Michael Casey sees the paintings as “a sequential commentary on the nature of evil and truth in a dehumanized, science-oriented society”, for David Kunzle the paintings deliver “a lesson about the revolution, its enemies, theirs Defeats and - maybe - their victory ”.

The Argentine artist Carlos Alonso also dedicated several paintings to the merging of Alborta's photography with Rembrandt's Anatomy of Dr. Tulip . The artist emphasizes that he did not know John Berger's essay. Among the works is an acrylic painting from 1970, on which, in addition to Tulp and his audience, you can also see a modern surgeon with a giant knife. Comic-like speech bubbles are integrated into the image . A spectator of Tulp asks “De que murio?” (“What did he die of?”) In Spanish, to which Tulp replies in Dutch “Vermoord door CIA” (“Murdered by the CIA”). A drawing by Alonso shows several laughing military men behind Guevara's corpse. It is entitled The Mocking of Che , a reference to the biblical mocking of Christ .

The American artist Ruth Weisberg also devoted four works to the dead Che Guevara. Her main work Deposition shows Alborta's photography. The tub is highlighted in such a way that it looks like a grave in which Che Guevara will be placed. It is surrounded by a deep black, from which only the upper bodies of the men standing behind Guevara protrude. Guevara's head and left side are surrounded by a light that looks like a halo. Weisberg also added a perspective network of red lines that look like the floor and ceiling of the room.

Photos of the dead Che inspired other artists. In 1993, the Italian artist Paolo Gasparini combined several of them with photos of everyday life in Latin America to create the photo mural The Body of Che . The copper engraving Suppressed Tolerance by the Swedish graphic artist Lars Hillersberg shows Che's dead body, on which markings were made that are based on the typical representation of the various cuts of beef and pork . On them are terms like “The Truth About Che” and “I Was Che's Massage Therapist”. Next to Che is a salesman with a meat cleaver in his hand, a crucifix can be seen in the background . David Kunzle sees this work as a " sardonistic comment [...] on the commercial exploitation (and Christianization) of Che". From Kunzle's point of view, its counterpart can be found in a work by Gavin Turk , who made a wax figure of himself as a dead Che Guevara on the stretcher and the washing trough, an "unusual, possibly unique example of narcissism " for Kunzle .

Albortas and other photographs of the dead Che Guevara were also processed on film. The 16 mm film El Día Que Me Quieras (German “The day you will love me”, named after a well-known tango and love song by Carlos Gardel ) by the Argentine artist Leandro Katz from 1998 is dedicated to the history of photography and Albortas himself and, in addition to an interview with the photographer, includes film recordings made of Guevara's corpse, as well as current recordings from Vallegrande. In the 1983 film Under Fire by Roger Spottiswoode , the protagonist, a US photographer, is asked by Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua to take a photo of their recently fallen leader, in which he appears alive, in order to protect the USA from others To dissuade arms deliveries to the dictator Somoza and to keep the revolution alive. This idea of ​​a living, killed rebel leader reminds David Kunzle strongly of Alborta's photography.

literature

  • Jon Lee Anderson: Che. The biography . List, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-548-60122-9 (English: Che Guevara. A Revolutionary Life . Translated by Barabra Steckhan, Gabriele Gockel, Christiane Krieger, Sonja Schuhmacher).
  • John Berger : Che Guevara Dead . In: Aperture . tape 13 , no. 4 , 1968, p. 36-38 , JSTOR : 24471426 (English).
  • Michael Casey: Che's Afterlife. The Legacy of an Image . Vintage Books, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-307-27930-9 (English).
  • David Kunzle: Che Guevara. Icon, Myth, and Message . UCLA Fowler Museum Of Cultural History, Los Angeles 1997, ISBN 0-930741-59-5 (English).
  • David Kunzle: Chesucristo. The fusion of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in pictures and text (= Wolfgang F. Kersten [Hrsg.]: Zurich Studies in the History of Art . Volume 20/21 ). De Gruyter, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-034792-0 (English: Chesucristo. The Fusion in Image and Word of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ . Translated by Martin Steinbrück).
  • Jeffrey Skoller: The Future's Past: Re-Imaging the Cuban Revolution . In: Afterimage . tape 26 , no. 5 , 1999, p. 13-15 (English).

Web links

Commons : More photos of the dead Che Guevara  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jon Lee Anderson: Che. 2011, pp. 550, 586.
  2. ↑ There are different reports about the time when Juan Pablo Chang Navarro was captured. While Jon Lee Anderson ( Che. 2011, p. 662) reports that he was captured wounded on the morning of October 9th, David Kunzle ( Chesucristo. The merger of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in pictures and text. 2016, pp. 332–333) that he was captured on November 8th together with Che Guevara and Aniceto Reinaga Gordillo.
  3. ↑ Jon Lee Anderson: Che. 2011, pp. 656-664.
  4. ↑ Jon Lee Anderson: Che. 2011, p. 669.
  5. ↑ Jon Lee Anderson: Che. 2011, pp. 666-667. Michael Casey: Che's Afterlife. 2009, pp. 178-179.
  6. ↑ Jeffrey Skoller: The Future's Past: Re-Imaging the Cuban Revolution. 1999, p. 13.
  7. ^ A b Jeffrey Skoller: The Future's Past: Re-Imaging the Cuban Revolution. 1999, p. 14.
  8. ↑ David Kunzle: Chesucristo. The fusion of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in pictures and text. 2016, pp. 183-184.
  9. ↑ Jon Lee Anderson: Che. 2011, pp. 667-668.
  10. ↑ Michael Casey: Che's Afterlife. 2009, pp. 182-183.
  11. ↑ David Kunzle: Chesucristo. The fusion of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in pictures and text. 2016, p. 307.
  12. ↑ John Berger: Che Guevara Dead. 1968.
  13. ^ John Berger: Che Guevara: The Moral Factor . In: The Urban Review . tape 8 , no. 3 , 1975, p. 202-208 , doi : 10.1007 / BF02177360 (English).
  14. ↑ John Berger: Che Guevara Dead. 1968, p. 36.
  15. ↑ Michael Diers : "Public Viewing" or the elliptical picture from the "Situation Room" in Washington . In: Michael Kauppert, Irene Leser (Ed.): Hillarys Hand. On the political iconography of the present (=  cultures of society . Volume  11 ). Transcript, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-8376-2749-7 , pp. 165-185 , here: 172-174 .
  16. ↑ John Berger: Che Guevara Dead. 1968, p. 37.
  17. ↑ Fernando Diego García, Oscar Sola (ed.): Che. The rebel's dream . Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-352-00614-8 (Spanish, original title: Che. Sueño Rebelde . Translated by Angelika Bussas). Quoted in: David Kunzle: Chesucristo. The fusion of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in pictures and text. 2016, pp. 311-314.
  18. ↑ David Kunzle: Chesucristo. The fusion of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in pictures and text. 2016, p. 342.
  19. ↑ David Kunzle: Chesucristo. The fusion of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in pictures and text. 2016.
  20. ↑ David Kunzle: Chesucristo. The fusion of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in pictures and text. 2016, pp. 290–291.
  21. ^ David Kunzle: Che Guevara. 1997, p. 89. David Kunzle: Chesucristo. The fusion of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in pictures and text. 2016, pp. 312-313. Michael Casey: Che's Afterlife. 2009, p. 183. The titles of the paintings come from Chesucristo . In Che Guevara , the following titles are given: Annual Anatomy Lesson , The Anatomy Lesson II. Tableau Manifeste, Homage to Che Guevara, Pablo Neruda, Salvador Allende , The Anatomy Lesson III, and The Final Anatomy Lesson .
  22. ↑ David Kunzle: Chesucristo. The fusion of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in pictures and text. 2016, p. 317.
  23. ↑ David Kunzle: Chesucristo. The fusion of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in pictures and text. 2016, pp. 178, 182.
  24. ^ David Kunzle: Che Guevara. 1997, p. 91.
  25. ^ Christophe Blaser: Christ-Che in Three Contemporary Works of Art. In: David Kunzle: Che Guevara. 1997, pp. 92-93.
  26. ↑ David Kunzle: Chesucristo. The fusion of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in pictures and text. 2016, pp. 319-320.
  27. ↑ Jeffrey Skoller: The Future's Past: Re-Imaging the Cuban Revolution. 1999, pp. 13-14. David Kunzle: Chesucristo. The fusion of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in pictures and text. 2016, pp. 299-300.
  28. ^ David Kunzle: Che Guevara. 1997, p. 92. David Kunzle: Chesucristo. The fusion of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in pictures and text. 2016, p. 296.