Ché's Beret
Many, many people have asked me "what was the beret Ché Guevara wore?" and all I could do, was make a good guess. So yes, I was delighted when I found these two photographs by German photographer Thomas Hoepker of Arsenio Garcia Davila.
Davila was a combatant with Fidel Castro and survivor of the 1956 landing of the Granma in Cuba. He owns Ché Guevara's original beret and pipe. A model of the Granma (boat) sits on the table, in his house in Havana.
Now, what beret did Ché wear? It is definitely a French beret, with it's Bayadere lining and typical French heraldic label. Unfortunately, I can't enlarge the detail on the picture enough to tell, but I don't have the exact label in my collection. To me it seems to be either a Basque Authetique (by Laulhere) or a Fandango (made by Blancq-Olibet).
It is serendipitous that Che would end up wearing a beret. [He started out his Cuban journey wearing a visored patrol cap, that simply fell apart on him from use.] As his grandmother on his fathers side, family Lynch, was from Ireland but farther back still, he had traced his genealogy back to the Basque country! According to a conversation he had had with Jim Fitzpatrick in Ireland during a flight layover (bad weather), from the Soviet Union, he considered himself to be of Basque/Irish ancestry. Matthew
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