The clothes make the Marxist

Have you ever seen something and wondered what it meant but forgot to Google it, and then keep seeing it but keep forgetting to look it up? Well, that was me a couple of years ago. \nI would always see these T-shirts, buttons, stickers and posters with this shadowy image of a hairy guy wearing a beret with a star on it. At first I really wanted one of the shirts. I saw one at Hot Topic, but the price tag was crazy high. So I waited, and I'm glad I did.\nThe hairy guy has a name, and it's a weird one, Che. Well Ernesto Rafael "Che" Guevara de la Serna, to be exact. He was nicknamed "Che" because he used to call all his friends that. This guy from Argentina was Fidel Castro's partner in crime when he took over Cuba in the late '50s. But he eventually left Cuba because Castro had other ideas for the country. He was a devout Marxist and revolutionary who led guerilla groups in Latin American and African countries. But enough with the history. \nI wonder how many people who wear or buy stuff with his picture on it actually know some of this. If I had to take a guess, I would say not that many. Most people probably just buy products with Che's face on them because they look cool or Jay-Z wears them. But I don't think that's a good enough reason. \nIf you have someone's picture on your shirt or have a poster of them on your wall, you'd better know who the hell they were/are. It's good to know his name, but knowing what he did and stood for is more important. By wearing his image, you're implying you respect him and his ideas. He died more than 30 years ago. Our parents might have heard of him during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but to our generation, he's just a fashion statement.\nHopefully that will change if enough people go see the new movie, "The Motorcycle Diaries." It's about Che's motorcycle road trip around South America. There's a book by the same name if you prefer reading. Mexican actor Gael García Bernal plays El Che (if you've seen any Mexican film in the last few years, you probably know who he is). Maybe this movie can give those wearing his duds an idea about the man behind the face.\nMost people probably wear Che clothes because he was a revolutionary and a martyr and they want to have that whole Rage-Against-the-Machine attitude, too. But you have to know the whole man. People don't wear band T-shirts if they don't know the band's lyrics. Che was great because he fought for the poor and for low-class workers, and he wanted everyone to have an equal opportunity, per the Marxist ideas. But that's not why people have him on their T-shirts and that's a shame.\nHis life was epic, and so was his death. He was killed execution style in Bolivia in the 1960s. He was so hated that his killers cut off his hands so his body wouldn't be identified, then they buried him in a secret grave. Historians just recently found his skeleton in 1997.\nYou might have heard his most famous quote, "It is better to die standing than to live on your knees." That pretty much sums up what he stood for. So if you have a T-shirt, button, poster or whatever, and you don't know who the guy with the beret is, maybe now you have a better idea. And because I do now, I can buy a T-shirt (as long as it's on sale).