Chesucristo, Man or Myth?

• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Beth Rosenblum
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20933889
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Becker / BOOK REVIEW 159

anticommunism”). Pavilack contrasts González Videla’s actions with those of Wallace,

who broke from the Harry S. Truman administration and campaigned for the presi-

dency of the United States on a leftist platform. Later, however, Wallace reversed course

and renounced his progressive positions as he moved rightward. Pavilack ably con-

trasts this move with that of the former Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas, who

moved leftward after leaving office.

Herrera González is to be commended for assembling an impressive collection of

essays that examines the diversity of experiences within Latin American communist

movements. One hundred years after the Bolshevik revolution sent shock waves around

the world, scholars are still debating its consequences for Latin America. This book

excels at providing us with a deeper and better understanding of the interactions among

militants, political parties, and intellectuals who operated in a transnational environ-

ment with an ever-present anticommunism. Drawing on new and multiple sources of

documentation, the contributors to this volume provide new perspectives on historical

processes in the formation of Latin American communisms. In the process, this book

opens a path to new questions that will inform future research agendas.

REFERENCE

Laforcade, Geoffroy de and Kirwin R. Shaffer

2015 In Defiance of Boundaries: Anarchism in Latin American History. Gainesville: University Press

of Florida.

Chesucristo, Man or Myth?

by

Beth Rosenblum

David Kunzle Chesucristo: The Fusion in Image and Word of Che Guevara and Jesus Christ.

Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016.

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20933889

Jesus Christ and Ernesto “Che” Guevara are not often mentioned in the same con-

text, let alone sentence, but the art historian David Kunzle goes so far as to combine

their names in a catchphrase for Chesucristo: The Fusion in Image and Word of Che Guevara

and Jesus Christ. The book, now published in German, English, and Italian, examines the

often-coincidental commonalities in the lives and artistic representations of these

“strange bedfellows” through thoughtful analyses of artworks, religious texts, histori-

cal scholarship, literature, and other art forms.

Kunzle first coined the term “Chesucristo” for his exhibition and catalogue Che

Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message at the Fowler Museum of the University of California,

Los Angeles, in 1997. He has since continued to grow his repository of artwork and texts

that portray a “Christified” (sanctified) Che and a “Cheified” (militant) Christ. This

book builds on his 2008 essay “Chesucristo: Fusions, Myths, Realities,” published in

Latin American Perspectives, and includes a more extensive discussion of the contexts in

Beth Rosenblum is a lecturer in art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Loyola

Marymount University.