page_title: Guerrillero Heroico
section_title: Copyright status
hierarchical_section_title: Guerrillero Heroico / Copyright status
caption_attribution_description: English: A pro-revolution billboard along a highway in Cuba showing Che Guevara in the Guerrillero Heroico pose - with Che's slogan of "Hasta la Victoria Siempre" (Until the Everlasting Victory Always).
context_page_description: Guerrillero Heroico is an iconic photograph of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara taken by Alberto Korda. It was captured on March 5, 1960, in Havana, Cuba, at a memorial service for victims of the La Coubre explosion. By the end of the 1960s, the image, in conjunction with Guevara's subsequent actions and eventual execution, helped solidify the leader as a cultural icon. Korda has said that at the moment he shot the picture, he was drawn to Guevara's facial expression, which showed "absolute implacability" as well as anger and pain. Years later, Korda would say that the photograph showed Che's firm and stoic character. Guevara was 31 years old at the time the photograph was taken.
  Emphasizing the image's ubiquitous nature and wide appeal, the Maryland Institute College of Art called the picture a symbol of the 20th century and the world's most famous photograph. Versions of it have been painted, printed, digitized, embroidered, tattooed, silk-screened, sculpted or sketched on nearly every surface imaginable, leading the Victoria and Albert Museum to say that the photograph has been reproduced more than any other image in photography.
context_section_description: For decades the famous image was unhindered by international copyright agreements, because Cuba was not a signatory to the Berne Convention. Fidel Castro described it as a "bourgeois concept" which meant that artists and advertisers were free to use Korda's work as they pleased. Legally, Cuban Law no. 156 signed on September 28, 1994, to amend part of Law no. 14 of the 1977 Copyright Act (Article 47), states that pictures taken in Cuba fall into the public domain worldwide, 25 years after their first use. As for the United States, since the image was first published in Cuba without compliance with U.S. copyright formalities and used in Cuba before February 20, 1972 (more than 25 years before Cuba signed the Berne Convention in 1997) it is also generally, although not universally, considered to be in the public domain.
  Despite conflicting claims about whether or not the image could have copyright established, Korda's children have sought to control commercial use of the image from defamation. Korda's daughter Diana Diaz pursued a 2003 lawsuit in France against a Paris-based press rights group Reporters Without Borders, for using the Che photograph in a poster campaign decrying Cuba as "the world's largest jail", aimed at dissuading French tourists from vacationing in Cuba after the jailing of 29 dissident journalists. In suing the group for 1.14 million euros, Diaz's lawyer, Randy Yaloz remarked that "we are going after everyone who betrays the moral rights of my client". Moral rights are a separate component of copyright law that are not recognized in the U.S., but are recognized in some other countries, notably in France where Diaz filed the lawsuit. Moral rights aim to protect the integrity of a work from defamation, distortion, slander, or offensive mutilation, even if the originator no longer owns the copyright. However, Reporters Without Borders stopped using the image before any legal judgment was rendered.
  Ariana Hernández-Reguant addressed the image's copyright status in 2004 in her article Copyrighting Che: Art and Authorship under Cuban Late Socialism. She expressed a skeptical view towards Korda's heirs being able to establish ownership over the image, noting in reference to the lawsuits involving the image, "There was never any official ruling on whether the depiction constituted a violation of copyright." The author goes on to state that: "Korda took the picture while working for a state-run newspaper, his actual property rights would be questionable under both Cuban and international law."
  In 2007, law student Sarah Levy also addressed the potential legal status of the image in Cuba. It was her ultimate contention that "in Cuba the copyright protection in Korda's Guevara photograph would have already expired, and despite the claims of ownership from Korda's heirs, the State would now hold any rights associated with the photograph." In regards to the more commonly disseminated stylized version of the photograph, lawyers say it will be an uphill struggle to deter non-photographic use of such a widely reproduced image, other than in countries like Italy where laws protect image rights.
  Guevara's heirs also believe they have legal justification to prevent the image's "exploitation" or slander. Guevara's Cuban widow Aleida March stated in 2005 that "We have a plan to deal with the misuse. We can't attack everyone with lances like Don Quixote, but we can try to maintain the ethics of Guevara's legacy." In reference to this pronouncement, Guevara's daughter Aleida Guevara told Reuters, "It will be costly and difficult because each country has different laws, but a limit has to be drawn."
caption: A 2009 highway billboard with Che's slogan of "Hasta la Victoria Siempre" (Towards Victory, Always).
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