Netflix Show Calls Out People Who Wear Che Guevara Shirts

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By Elias J. Atienza

The Netflix show “One Day at A Time,” based on the 1975 series of the same name, tells the story of a divorced Cuban-American mother raising two children. In the family’s story, come details about Cuban culture, as Vulture points out, things such as “Abuelita’s cafetera (coffee maker) and her salsa-playing alarm, the quinceñaera photo album, Penelope’s guayabera shirt, and even Echo Park, where the Cuban-American family lives.”

Interestingly though, the show also captures something else about the culture. That being Cuban-Americans intense hatred for Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Two men, who are responsible for driving a million Cubans into exile and imprisoning political opponents, among other horrible things.

The scene comes as the landlord, Schneider (Todd Grinnell), enters the apartment with a Che Guevara shirt on. It elicits response of disgust from the various family members; Penelope (Justina Machado), the mother yells at Schneider,”Do you have any idea what this come mierda (commonly interpreted as dumb-ass) did?”

“Grew an awesome beard and modeled for t-shirts?” the man cluelessly says.

The family explained that Guevara was not Cuban, but was Castro’s right-hand man. The daughter, Elena (Isabella Gonzalez), further explains why Cuban-Americans hated him so much.

“He burned books, he personally banned music, he personally oversaw executions, he’s a mass murderer,” she exclaims, while the other family members say that wearing a Che Guevara shirt is like wearing a Hitler shirt in the presence of a Jewish family or a Kanye West shirt in the presence of Taylor Swift.

The showrunners wanted to bring more attention to that issue.

“We live in a world where people can have opinions and spread things about something they don’t know anything about,” says co-showrunner Gloria Calderon Kellett to Vulture. “There is a danger to that, and it seems like such a ripe opportunity for us to laugh and make fun of something but also talk about something real. You see these shirts a lot. It’s interesting that people are putting things on their bodies without knowing what it represents.”

Many of the writers of the show did not know the significance of the shirt to Cuban exiles and were surprised to see the reactions coming from them.

“So many of them did not know!” Kellett said. “In fact, we watched a lot of videos online and there were was one where some teachers were on strike and they were wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. And somebody asked them if they know what that means and they said, ‘Yeah, revolution!'”