| Che
Guevara's Irish Roots
By
Brian Rohan
Last summer
in Bolivia, government authorities scoured the countryside
in search of a skeleton with no hands. Eventually, the corpse
was found and its identity verified It was Che Guevara, the
Latin American revolutionary who was "disappeared"
in October, 1967.
The discovery,
on a remote mountainside outside Vallegrande — helped solve
questions surrounding the death of the enigmatic Guevara.
After a failed peasant revolt, Guevara had been surrounded
and killed by government forces, who amputated Che's hands
as proof of his death. The body was buried secretly, in an
unmarked grave, in the hopes of not creating a martyr. Of
course, the attempt failed. In the 20 years since his death,
Guevara's long-haired and fiery image has become world-famous
among everyone from armed revolutionaries to rock-and-roll
bands looking to sell T-shirts. Still, much of Che Guevara's
life remains a mystery.
One little-known
fact about Ernesto Guevara ("Che" was a childhood
nickname) is that he was of Irish heritage. He was born in
Buenos Aires in 1928, the first child of Ernesto Guevara Lynch
and Celia de la Serna. Ernesto Guevara Lynch's mother, Ana
Isabel Lynch, with whom Che's family lived for years and to
whom Che grew especially close, was the daughter of immigrants
who had sailed to Argentina from County Galway, Ireland, at
around the time of the Irish Famine.
As a white-skinned
Argentinean descended from local nobility on his mother's
side, Che lived among the more privileged ranks of his country's
class- and race-conscious society. The family plantation was
lost after a series of poor investments made by Che's father,
and the family was forced to move into a fifth-floor apartment
with Ana Isabel Lynch. It was in these years that Che grew
close to Grandma Lynch.
In time,
Che rebelled against the class structures of Latin American
society, and sought to lead the continent's poor in a Marxist
revolt against both domestic dictators and capitalist imperialism.
He became world-famous as the right-hand man to a young Fidel
Castro, in the improbable overthrow of Cuba's Batista regime.
Guevara,
a starry-eyed, impetuous spirit, grew tired of post-revolution
life and thought little of Castro's offer of a position in
Cuban government. He wanted to return to the continent, where
he saw ideal conditions for a peasant revolt in the mountains
of Bolivia. Before leaving the island, Guevara discarded a
wristwatch given him by Castro in favor of an old gold one
belonging to his father, a family heirloom passed on from
Grandma Lynch. Guevara would later be killed while wearing
that watch in Bolivia.
This
article was from http://www.irishamerica.com
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