 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. On the 9th of October 1967, Che Guevara was assassinated by the CIA and their Bolivian military contacts in Bolivia when he was attempting to build a revolutionary movement in the southern part of the continent as a link with the Cuban Revolution of 1959. On the 9th of October 2020, almost 20 publishing houses from around the world, from Tamil Nadu to Argentina, released two texts of Che Guevara, his letter to the tri-continental and man and socialism in Cuba, alongside an introduction by Ayaz Ahmed and a preface from the Institute of Che Guevara Studies in Havana, Cuba, written by Maria Garcia. This text, a free PDF, is coming to you in almost 20 languages, quite amazing. The cover has a painting of Che Guevara, it's a very elegant cover, just the painting and then the name Che in the different languages. The painting was done by Tings, who is the lead designer of Tri-Continental Institute for Social Research. Tings, welcome to People's Dispatch. Thanks for having me, Vijay. Well, it's quite a thing to do anything related to Che Guevara because the image of Che is so iconic. Let's go back a little bit and think about the iconic nature of Che. There's of course the famous photograph, which was taken by Corda during a rally where Che looks extraordinarily luminous really in that photograph. Then there were several posters done by Ospal, the organization in solidarity with the people of Africa, Asia and Latin America. So to do any kind of Che image things is extremely courageous. Can you talk a little bit about the iconography of Che and the painting that graces this cover? It's a big question. I mean, I think when approaching doing this book, which is a huge honor, I try to think of every single way to portray without drawing Che because of his face is so iconic. But at the end of it, I mean, there's actually an Ospal image, one of the posters you mentioned where there's an outline. It's almost a silhouette where Che's silhouette, the famous kind of him and a beret image is just the outline. And it's like he is a window into a kind of psychedelic world, another world, another kind of possible world. And I was thinking, maybe is there a way to refer to his image without drawing his image, but I think without with many conversations with different comrades, it's just really no way to avoid that. I think what's interesting about the corda image and the painting that ended up is that what I know it's from the rally is the moment that Corda, who was a fashion photographer, I think for that he had a specific eye to capture these iconic moments is he was about to get on to, he was already on the kind of, you know, the about to speak. And he he actually steps back and doesn't do his speech. And it's actually that moment where he's thinking about what to say, and he doesn't say, I don't know if that's true, but that's what I read. I think in this one, it's a bit different because you you already talked about the letter to the message to the tricontinental. So that was in my mind a lot. So the photograph that this is referencing is another one, not by Corda. It's of Che Guevara with his radio program, the Grilla radio program Radio Rebelde, which was what was set up during in the Sierra Maestra as a way to broadcast the guerrilla struggles of the July 26 movement. And then thinking about that and thinking about the message, it's actually where he is about to speak to us. And he is about to, he is just opening his mouth to say and this time he is giving us a message. So I think there is a connection there about how the painting came to be. It's a mixture of the legacies of him telling us something from the best for our future. Yeah, because the two texts, if you think of the two texts that are in the book, both of them are as if he is speaking into a mic, because message to the tricontinental is directly a statement that he wanted read out at the tricontinental meeting held in Havana, Cuba in 1966. That message was read out by Fidel Castro on behalf of Che Guevara and it's a speech about the need for world revolution. It's a brilliant speech and I hope people will go and read it in these free PDFs from, you know, as I say, almost 20 publishers, left publishers. The second text is Man and Socialism in Cuba, where it's an article written for a magazine in Uruguay, Marcha, where he is speaking about the logic of the Cuban revolution. So in that sense, these are both addresses to the world, one about the Cuban revolution and one about the world revolution. It was interesting that the image on the cover, therefore, is an image where he is, of course, on a mic, speaking into a microphone and he's delivering this message. But the other thing that I wanted you to reflect on a little bit from that image is the color scheme that you chose for the image itself. And it's interesting because, you know, the left has its own cliches and we have our own way of putting forward a certain very sometimes limited palette, you know, lots of red and, you know, lots of fists and red really is a way to characterize it. But you chose a whole different way of, you know, of coloring the painting. The painting has a very interesting set of colors. Could you talk a little bit about that? I mean, I think there's, the colors are a bit shocking even to me and I like colors. I think that speaks a little bit of the lineage. I think both ideologically, historically and visually, we have inherited, I mean, tricontinental as an institute is carrying the name of that very conference in 1966. And with that, as you mentioned, which came, it was organization that formally established out of that meeting. And they, I mean, a lot of what we have inherited as the incredible imagery poster legacy that came out of the Cuban revolution came out of that organization came out of Ospal. And actually there's a nice story I wanted to tell is that in the speech, it's obviously the famous line was Che Guevara said, Oh, we have to create one too many Vietnam's, which almost seems like a call for more and provide violence. But I think it was more of a call for a future. What can you need to do when people come together? What can we actually build? And Ospal did something amazing and both Ospal and Che Guevara, this person was deeply internationalist. And thinking about Vietnam is one of the main designers named Venetian Medeiros of Ospal. He was also the lead designer of the Department of Evolutionary Orientation of the Cuban Party, Communist Party, when the, what was at the height of the Vietnam War, and not just creating posters in solidarity with the struggle of the Vietnamese people, they decide to send this lead designer to the trenches in Vietnam. And he spent months marching along the Ho Chi Minh Trail with the guerrilla fighters, and he was supposed to come back with paintings, portraits of imperialism. And what he came back with are paintings that are maybe even more bold in color, more psychedelic than I, you know, I could even imagine doing, pinks, purples, bright green, and they were almost romantic images. There are soldiers walking on the trail. They're about the peasants that they encountered along the trail. They were about almost everyday life, everyday resistance in the struggle. And when he was asked about why he decided to do the paintings like this, why do you choose to show imperialism that way, he said, well, I am painting images alongside the promise that Ho Chi Minh gave, which is to create a Vietnam 10 times more beautiful. So in a way, I think these colors are necessary. It's maybe, you know, as a way to what I think human revolution taught us is that there's a broader humanity we need to encapsulate and that there's human feeling, human aspiration, human necessity. And unfortunately, I love red, I'm wearing red, my heart is red, but there needs to be more colors than capsulator, what human beings need. You said 10 times more beautiful, Vietnam 10 times more beautiful. You've been part of a process of creating poster exhibitions on these important keywords, you know, neoliberalism, you know, and now the most recent, and capitalism was the other one, and the most recent one is imperialism. There's a new photo exhibition that people can go and look at where artists from all the continents really have produced quite remarkable work with a range of colors, speaking of make Vietnam more beautiful, depicting imperialism. Could you talk a little bit about these poster exhibitions, a little bit about what you've learned in doing them and what comes afterwards? I mean, this, this was a pretty humble beginning. The idea was to contribute to, you know, the international process that is the international week of anti-imperialist struggles, the platform of hundreds of people's organizations across the world, was to contribute from the tricontinental side, a set of four posters to kind of elaborate visually these key core concepts that we have. And then from there we decide, oh, let's open this up to more than just what we produce internally. Let's have a call. Let's try to figure out what does imperialism, what does capitalism, what does neoliberalism? And we have one more, which is hybrid war. What do these mean in the people's context and conditions? How do they see it today? Maybe it's, maybe it's the red, red in the fist, but maybe there's much more to be expressed. And so we made an open call and we've done three rounds of online exhibitions and now we've had something like 165 artists from, from 40 countries, 40 organizations and touching every corner of the world. We have people who are, you know, who used to work at a car factory for many years, retired and haven't, haven't picked up a paintbrush since school days, feeling inspired. And he said, when we interviewed him, he said, well, we are the kind of people that never get to be exhibited. And he's an excellent painter. So he's been contributing several times. There are people who are kind of seasoned designers and artists of movements. There are people who there's one, Karmad, who is from a armed struggle movement in South Africa, who has been part of cultural movements for decades is also participating. So there's lineages we're following. And then also, you know, young designers who are for the first time creating a poster, trying to test out the tools, drawing by hand. So it's been a very incredible experience. And from there, I think what has happened is not only these online exhibitions, but people have been taking them already, despite being, you know, in a state of global pandemic, where, you know, physical exhibitions are difficult, people are already taking them into their own context. For instance, just yesterday was a 15-year anniversary of the Shack-Dwellers movement, at the Sali-Baza-Munjandolo in South Africa. And they decided to print out and decorate the entire space for their 15-year anniversary from these posters because they felt like the posters, and I saw some photographs, posters from Lebanon, from Indonesia, from India, from all parts of the world, we're speaking to them. And they chose to put these up in part of their celebration for 15 years. And we've had an exhibition in Malaysia where the Karmad put up a physical exhibition there. We've seen it kind of take on a new life because these images are speaking across languages and cultures and countries. So it's been a fantastic experience. I mean, it's important to also say that, as you said, there's one more coming, and that's on hybrid war. People can, of course, find out more about this at the tricontinental.org, also at anti-imperialistweek.org, and get involved in one way or the other. But the most important thing is they need to download in almost 20 languages a new text out on the 9th of October on the International Day to Abolish the CIA. Two texts by Che Guevara, cover by Ting's beautiful cover with colors that will shock you. So please go and download that. Thanks a lot for joining us at People's Dispatch. Thank you.