Cuba will punish state employees who created two colognes named after Ernesto “Che” Guevara and former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, the government announced on Saturday, swiftly quashing plans to market the fragrances honoring the leftist icons.
Test bottles of colognes named “Ernesto” and “Hugo” were produced by state pharmaceutical company Labiofam with the aim of selling them domestically and internationally.
A report on the project on Thursday generated waves of reaction online, with many readers mocking the project and some Cuban government supporters blasting it as disrespectful.
The Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, headed by Cuban President Raul Castro, said in a front-page announcement in the nation’s main newspaper that it would take unspecified disciplinary measures against figures involved in the project.
The report did not identify those facing punishment.
“Symbols are sacred, yesterday, today and forever,” the committee declared in a statement also read on state television and radio throughout the day.
While it was unclear what actions were being taken against the cologne’s creators, the announcement described them as “disciplinary measures,” a term that can be used to describe punishments ranging from a chiding by a supervisor to criminal prosecution.
The vice president of Labiofam, Cuba’s largest state-run natural products company, declined to comment on Saturday.
The colognes’ creator seemed to have no expectation that their plan could cause controversy on an island flooded by nearly constant official tributes to Guevara, Chavez and fellow Latin American socialist founding fathers.
However, the exposure to the rough-and-tumble commentary of global online media appears to have taken aback both Cuba’s leaders and the state employees who now face punishment.
“When it hit international social media it became a laughingstock of sorts, but it clearly came out of an overabundance of zealous revolutionary fervor, which never before was faulted,” said Ann Louise Bardach, a longtime Cuba watcher and author of the book Without Fidel.
She said the fact that the products in question were fragrances may have been an additional irritant for Cuba’s leaders.
“How dare they feminize, with a cologne, the great macho models of the revolution,” Bardach said.
Guevara’s image long has been appropriated for products as diverse as clothing and automobiles, often running into objections from his family.
Cuba has not shied from capitalizing on Guevara’s popularity, selling T-shirts, postcards and posters with his image in state-run stores for tourists.
Venezuela, meanwhile, is awash in merchandise bearing Chavez’s face that is often worn by supporters of the socialist government, including many of those working in Cuba.
Labiofam officials said they had been openly working on the colognes for more than a year and a half, and the project received a brief, uncritical mention on state television earlier this week.
They also said that they saw the colognes as a respectful homage to Guevara and Chavez and said the two men’s families approved the project.
The state announcement said the families had not, in fact, approved it.
“Initiatives of this type will never be accepted by our people or by the revolutionary government,” the executive committee said.
Columnist Monica Rivero on Friday wrote on the official Web site Cubadebate that “reactions to the news have ranged from outrage to satire.”
“At this point, the only thing left to demand is that these bottles never get to a shop window, part of a shady commercial strategy that is indiscriminate and profane,” Rivero wrote.
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