Cuban cologne creators to face punishment

HAVANA — Cuba will punish state employees who created two colognes named for Ernesto “Che” Guevara and late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the government announced 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. An Associated Press report on the project Thursday generated waves of reaction online, with many readers mocking the project and some Cuban government supporters blasting it as disrespectful.

Cuba’s Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, headed by President Raul Castro, said in a front-page announcement in the country’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.

A man shows two bottles of cologne, one called “Ernesto,” honors guerrilla leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and “Hugo,” for the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2014. Formulated by a French company and produced in Cuba, the colognes are being presented this week at a Labiofam convention in Havana. (Franklin Reyes/Associated Press)

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 to AP 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. But 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.