Red Tag Sale: Library Sells Che Timepiece - December 14, 2004 - The New York Sun

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Red Tag Sale: Library Sells Che Timepiece
BY MEGHAN CLYNE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
The New York Public Library calls it a bit of "whimsical pop culture." But to some local Cuban-Americans, the Che Guevara watch sold in the library's gift shops is a symbol of evil. "Revolution is a permanent state with this clever watch, featuring...

December 14, 2004 Edition > Section: New York


Red Tag Sale: Library Sells Che Timepiece
BY MEGHAN CLYNE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
December 14, 2004

The New York Public Library calls it a bit of "whimsical pop culture." But to some local Cuban-Americans, the Che Guevara watch sold in the library's gift shops is a symbol of evil.

"Revolution is a permanent state with this clever watch, featuring the classic romantic image of Che Guevara," the library's Web site says. A red star, trailed by the word "revolution," measures seconds.

The timepiece, along with watches featuring Einstein and Shakespeare, is available for $40 online and in library gift stores.

Maria Werlau, president of the Free Society Project - a nonprofit human rights organization documenting the victims of Cuba's communist revolution - denounced sales of the watch as "outrageous." After not having calls to the library returned, she wrote a letter of protest to the institution's president, Paul LeClerc.

Ms. Werlau, who was born in Cuba and moved to the United States as an infant, said she assumes the library "put this on their list of products because they were ignorant of who this man is." She said popular culture has "made Guevara an icon of freedom, but he's the opposite of that-the antithesis of freedom." Most people who wear Che paraphernalia "have no idea he was a mass murderer," Ms. Werlau said.

Ms. Werlau said the Free Society Project has a list of about 180 people for whose executions in Cuba Guevara was directly responsible, but the list doesn't include what they estimate to be several undocumented cases - or people who lost their lives because of Guevara's revolutionary activities throughout South America and Africa.

Ms. Werlau, comparing Ernesto Guevara's legacy to those of other dictators and mass murderers, said: "He was dedicated to his ideals. But so were Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin."

A spokeswoman for the New York Public Library, Tina Hoerenz, said that under no circumstances would the library sell Hitler merchandise. When informed that some Cubans felt that selling a pop-culture image of Guevara was the moral equivalent of glorifying Hitler, she replied, "I don't know what to say about that."

Ms. Hoerenz also provided a statement about the watch from the library, which declined further comment: "In its collections and shops, The New York Public Library has materials representing a diverse range of issues and views. Our essential interest is, in fact, to represent the widest range of humanity's ideas, historical changes, and personalities. It is not the Library's policy to censor or limit its offerings based on outside political current."

As for the Guevara merchandise, Ms. Hoerenz compared the watch to other "whimsical" trinkets offered at the gift shop - such as librarian action figures and dancing-cat pins.

To Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, however, there is simply no comparison. Mr. Montblanc is the president of the Westside Heights Citizens League, an organization he said has many Cuban-American members. Mr. Reyes-Montblanc has also written a letter of protest to the library in response to what he calls the "extremely vociferous objections" Cuban-Americans in his community have to the library's selling the watch.

Mr. Reyes-Montblanc, who was born in Cuba and came to America as a 10-year-old in 1959, dismissed the library's censorship defense, saying, "It's the same excuse that everyone else uses."

"It's not censorship," Mr. Reyes-Montblanc said. "We are not calling for them to take the Che Guevara books out of the library - those books are protected by the First Amendment." The watch, he said, was a business issue - and a poor business choice.

Mr. Reyes-Montblanc said that if the library did not pull the watch from its shelves, he anticipated protests from the Cuban-American community.

There were no protests yesterday outside the gift shop at the library's mid-Manhattan branch, on Fifth Avenue at 40th Street. There, the Guevara timepiece was not on display, and only one remained in stock. A clerk said the watches "definitely sell." She said she wasn't aware of any complaints from shoppers during the month the watch had been for sale.

Patrons yesterday didn't have complaints about the timepiece. Responses included, "It doesn't disturb me" to "I'm not concerned, per se." Kathy Brown, 36, said she thought it was just "a trendy pop-art piece, not a political statement." Ed Kirtz, 33, lamented the gap between the number of people who have read Guevara's work, and who understand and sympathize with his ideas, and the number of people sporting Guevara apparel. To address the disparity, he said, he'd prefer an increase in the number reading and understanding Guevara to a decrease in the number wearing Che T-shirts.

None of those patrons was Cuban-American.

Neither is Dita Sullivan, who Ms. Welau said has strong opinions about the library merchandise.

A photographer and writer whose work focuses on popular culture in the Caribbean, Ms. Sullivan, a Queens resident, is married to a Cuban refugee and lived in Cuba during the late 1980s and early 1990s."You don't have to be Cuban to not want the face of a butcher sold in our public library," Ms. Sullivan said.

She said, as did Ms. Welau and Mr. Reyes-Montblanc, that it was inappropriate for a library, of all places, to be glorifying Guevara. There are no free and independent libraries - and no freedom to read at all - in Cuba, Ms. Sullivan said, largely because of Guevara's work. She pointed to the example of Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, a blind human rights activist who was imprisoned and beaten for trying to run a Braille library out of his home.

As a taxpayer, Ms. Sullivan said, she was also angered by the library's "idolizing destruction and murder."

In 2002, the library received $201,920,000 in city, state, and federal funds. According to Ms. Hoerenz, the library gift shop does not receive public funds.

Ms. Sullivan - who said her husband wakes up screaming, 10 years after fleeing Cuba, with nightmares about still being on the island - is infuriated by ignorance about Guevara.

"I wish more Americans would bother to learn something" about Guevara, she said. "And no one should buy this watch."