On March 5, 1960 as the sun set in Havana, thousands of people walked alongside a funeral procession with tears in their eyes. Only 24 hours prior, the French ship La Coubre had blown up in a thousand pieces at the port. This had been a purchase from the revolutionary Cuban government that ended in hundreds of people dying or being injured, most during the second explosion, which came half an hour after the first. This confirmed the speculation of the event being an act of sabotage.
Ernesto Guevara was at a meeting at the National Institute for Land Reform when a thundering blast shattered the windows and shook the whole building. By looking through the window facing the port, the Argentinean focused his gaze on the mushroom cloud coming from the loading docks of ammunition and knew he was witnessing a tragedy.
Guevara reached the location of the catastrophe at quarter to four. He witnessed and heard the second explosion only feet from the spot. His eyes were immediately lost in a deep trance which was only interrupted by his medical training when he helped aid the victims.
It wasn’t long before Fidel blamed the CIA for the crime during a speech. Guevara stood by his side dismayed at the unending procession of coffins. The revolutionary leader was overcome with emotion as the scene internally destroyed a man who’d given his life to fight social injustice. A few feet from the podium, Alberto Díaz Gutierrez was covering the tragic event. After capturing several moments of the caravan he turned the lens of his Leica towards Fidel, searching for the image to use on the cover of the Revolución newspaper the following day.
After a couple shots of the leader of the revolution, he observed a shaken man, with a sharp gaze and tightened jaw. A furrowed brow completed a stare of anger and disbelief. The palm trees in the background seemed to diminish the photographic composition, and a profile sticking out on the left seemed to beg the journalist to not capture this image. But the force of the picture drove him to do so more than a few times.
Hours later, Diaz Gutierrez confirmed the “impressive strength in his expression and the wrath focused on his gaze after witnessing so much death.” He titled it as “Heroic Guerrilla Fighter” and assured in interviews that despite the portrait not being an aesthetic ideal, it represented a “pissed off and pained” human being.
The image became a symbol of the Cuban Revolution and soon turned into one of the most reproduced and known pictures of the twentieth century. From the 3 Cuban Peso bills, the front of the Interior Minister’s Building at the Plaza of the Revolution, to coasters, condoms, t-shirts, books, student murals, and covers of pop music albums. It seems that everywhere you turn you can’t help but find Che Guevara staring at the parade of death.
Translated by María Suárez
