Like many Puerto Rican children of relative privilege raised amongst books, I had a huge black and red poster of Che Guevara on my adolescent wall. I can’t say I ever got to know him well, but it was a comfort to live with Che all those high school years, his inscrutable eyes staring out at the horizon, perpetually ready for combat.
I trusted that he would make sure that I never lose the fire to fight "imperialism" through the tough times ahead, namely, growing up in a country in which the most revolutionary act is to go shopping. But just as many thought that the colorful and media-savvy Mexican Comandante Marcos would keep the tradition on this side of the Atlantic and succeed Che Guevara as the twentieth-first century’s warrior icon, here comes Osama, the Sheik.
Or should I say, the Che-ik.
In many Muslim countries, Islamic fundamentalists — and even your average Hammed — routinely rally around Osama’s likeness as reproduced in posters, television, and book covers. Bin Laden has even given the pan-Arab network Al Jazeera, a bona fide exclusive celebrity to boost ratings and expand its audience base. Re-transmitted to American and European viewers, Osama’s run has also become the ultimate "survivor" show, even prompting the cancellation of other similar programs. I guess it’s hard to compete with seeing real bombs fall on real people on a weekly basis.
Although for most Latinos — many of whom still idolize Che — comparing the Argentinian to Osama would appear farfetched, I first realized that there was something to it after hearing more than one person comment on bin Laden’s good looks. After doing some double takes on these folks — and the man himself — I noticed that even people who don’t like Osama (or Che for that matter) agree that the fellows are not only natural born killers but killer gigolos as well. The consequences of Osama’s appeal are so frightening for some, that U.S. networks avoid showing his face on TV, and confounded journalist Joan Walsh has called the bin Laden phenomenon, "creepy charisma."
The clincher seems to be that despite their involvement in gruesome acts, Osama and Che are soft-spoken, intelligent men, who willingly abandoned comfortable lives to share in the misery and glory of "revolution" against the world’s greatest superpower. Although not "common" men themselves — Che was a doctor, Osama a millionaire businessman — they managed to articulate the frustrations of the world’s dispossessed at times of great unrest.
True, Guevara was on the side of modernity, but both Che and Osama share the belief that the world should come under one system, led by a "new" breed of militants. Osama even adds the layer — not to say, veil — of "chic Araby," the European-American erotic fascination with all things Arab. For if Che Guevara can easily be cast as a Latin Lover — Antonio Bandera has, in fact, already played Che on the screen — Osama recalls the envied luxuries of the harem (he reportedly has three wives), and non-Western (hence, wild) sexuality. Nor surprisingly, more than one Internet site features doctored pictured of a naked bin Laden having sex with a wide range of humans and other mammals.
Still more impressive — and unlike other widely loathed figures like Adolph Hitler — American popular culture has developed what can only be called a carnivalesque fascination with bin Laden’s image. While it took decades for Che to become a revered symbol of resistance — or more accurately, nostalgia for resistance — Americans have immediately placed bin Laden’s mug in every imaginable commodifiable object, from urinals to T-shirts, from toilet paper to animated cartoons on the Internet. Although the intent is to show contempt for the Sheik, the effect is more like a perverse license to have "fun" with the enemy.
Fittingly, Osama and Che experienced anti-American radicalizing moments when they came into contact with the CIA in controversial anti-Communist campaigns. For Che, it was the CIA-led invasion of Guatemala that led to the ouster of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954; for bin Laden, the war to expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. Coming full circle, Che came to die at the hands of CIA-trained Bolivian troops, bin Laden maybe become a martyr to his sympathizers by succumbing to the Green Berets. Ironically, although both believe that hatred and violence were revolutionary tools, and have theorized the use of guerrilla warfare and terrorism as the weapons of the weak, destroying these men was — and now is — a double-edged sword.
As with Che, legend will likely attribute Osama deeds that he probably didn’t do and a saintliness that he surely doesn’t have. But while Che’s military and political achievements are modest, during Osama’s reign of terror, he has managed to prompt the U.S. Congress to crack down on civil liberties — making the country more authoritarian — and has served as a catalyst to bring God back into the public schools and general culture — pressing the nation to become more religious. From deep inside one of his hellish caves, bin Laden must be smiling, as Che approvingly lights a cigar.
