Che, R.I.P.

In memory of the 44th anniversary of Che's execution, I offer this post from my old blog:


If you are like me you had those moments where you ask yourself, "why is it, when I'm drinking Guinness, that I so often think of Che Guevara" and, if you're even more than me, you might have written it off as residual anger from when that multinational corporate monstrosity that also owned Burger King bought out Guinness and turned it mediocre, and thus the thoughts of Che must just be a sublimated hope for their kind to be ended, etc. But, no, that's not it. You think of Che when drinking your stout because Che was a quarter Irish. Indeed he is sometimes revered in Ireland, as you can see above. His grandmother (most accept this) was Anna Isabel Lynch from Galway, and his father (whose surname was Lynch - Che's legal name did not contain either of his parents' surnames but it was often written with Lynch as the last name) once stated that "the first thing to note is that in my son's veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels." Perhaps this explains why American 20somethings are prone to both wear Che t-shirts and love the IrishCelticDisneylandish theme. Though when I was in Ireland the young Americans there certainly did not seem to be communists, flopping their parents' credit cards about as they did. Anyway someday I might just fulfill my dream of going to Cuba and when there, I think I will drink a Guinness in honor of Che.


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I also like this story (from Wiki), of Che after having been caught, and after having spat in the face of a Bolivian admiral, he flirts with a local village school teacher and calmly agitates for revolution:

The following morning on October 9, Guevara asked to see the "maestra" (school teacher) of the village, 22-year-old Julia Cortez. Cortez would later state that she found Guevara to be an "agreeable looking man with a soft and ironic glance" and that during their conversation she found herself "unable to look him in the eye", because his "gaze was unbearable, piercing, and so tranquil." During their short conversation, Guevara pointed out to Cortez the poor condition of the schoolhouse, stating that it was "anti-pedagogical" to expect campesino students to be educated there, while "government officials drive Mercedes cars" ... declaring "that's what we are fighting against."