Bichir Leads Cuban Revolution in 'Che'

Demián Bichir has a deep Cuban accent. He walks around a Latin Caribbean jungle stroking his beard and puffing on a puro. He's more cubano than an Emilio Estefan house party. Funny thing he's a proud Mexican. The seasoned actor got the role of a lifetime portraying Fidel Castro in the Steven Soderbergh-directed Che films—The Argentine and Guerrilla. In the Ernesto Guevara biopic, his Cubanese is flawless and goes beyond inserting "chico" in every other sentence. Along with the Benicio Del Toro-led films, you can also catch Bichir in Showtime's Weeds as the mayor of Tijuana. Here he chats with SiTV.com about playing Castro, Che's impact on pop culture and Barack Obama. ¡Sigue leyendo, chico!

SiTV.com: How do you prepare to portray Fidel Castro?
Demián Bichir: It's an enormous fortune to have a role like this in your hands for obvious reasons. You want to have access to three-dimensional characters that have tons of emotions and so forth. It's doubly lucky that it comes in a Steven Soderbergh film where Benicio De Toro is the lead. Fidel is someone who everyone knows and there's ton of material you work off of. He's a person for which you couldn't explain the modern history of Latin America and the world.

SiTV.com: Has the Cuban government reached out to you yet?

DB: No, not yet. I'm assuming they'll see it. If the next time I go to Cuba and my photo is at the airport and it says "Wanted" then I'll know they didn't like it. Now, if they send me a case of Cuban cigars then I'll know they did. (Laughs).

SiTV.com: What's your take on the commercialization of El Che?

DB: The thing is that these guys were like rock stars. When the revolution began they were on the cover of Time! Not only for the fact that they won a war with 12 men...it wasn't until later that they formed a military force. From there on they won the revolution. It was an unprecedented event and they became world famous. Add to the mix that they were charismatic. Then came this famous picture taken of El Che and it goes around the world. That image is the most reproduced image in the 20th Century. You see it in every march. There are many people who sport a t-shirt with Che, a coffee mug with Che, a Che tattoo even and they don't know who he really was. These films hopefully will give these people the background to that image.

SiTV.com: A few years back Jay-Z wore a Che shirt while his platinum Roc-A-Fella chain swung back and forth. All I thought was, "Damn, Che would choke him with that chain."

DB: I think Che would start laughing. He would say to himself, "Look at the irony of life." In our world today where the world economy is collapsing is when you can see the value of what occurred in Cuba. This island that has been economically isolated, blocked from the world has been able to survive. For generations they've been the best athletes, doctors and no one has died of hunger. They have the lowest infant mortality rate and a ton of things that we don't have in Mexico. And Mexico is not blocked and Mexico is a supposed democracy. There's something we're doing wrong. What if Cuba would have been able to live its revolution without any block?

SiTV.com: As a Mexican how did you react to Barack Obama's win?

DB: It's curious because in every part you have open minds and extremists. It's real clear that the extreme leftists, the ones who favor censorship and who believe that a country maintains itself through the few rich families it has are now really distraught. But the ones who are more generous, the progressives, the lovers of art are extremely happy of Barack Obama's win. Yet, like in everything, everyone is going to have to help because he can't do it alone.