A trip to Argentina would not have been complete without a visit to Museo del Che Guevara (the Che Guevara Museum) at Alta Gracia. I’ve always been fascinated by leaders and revolutionaries; their ideals, characteristics and the drive it takes to fight for a cause.
Yeah he killed people, in battle and execution, but no where near the thousands claimed. He saw how capitalism raped the indigenous people of Latin America and took a stand against it. If we had more people like Che today we would never have been subjected to the Bush Administration, who’s foreign policy killed 100′s of people a day in Iraq. In my opinion he is there with the best of them: Gandhi, Ho Chi Minh, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.
The museum gave a thorough account of his life. Pictures, letters and explanatory panels telling the story of his childhood, his youth, the revolution and his role in international affairs. Books, gifts, his old bicycle and motorbike (famous after the book and movie ‘Motorcycle Diaries) which I got to sit on are on display. There were also many pictures of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro’s visiting in 2006.
A quick overview of his life from a combination of sources:
The South American revolutionary idol Ernesto Che Guevara was born in Rosario in 1928, but moved to Alta Gracia as a child after doctors diagnosed him with asthma. Guevara lived here from 1935-1937 and 1939-1943.
The story of this obscure Argentine doctor who abandoned his profession and his native land to pursue the emancipation of the poor of the earth began with a voyage. In 1956, along with Fidel Castro and a handful of others, he had crossed the Caribbean in the rickety yacht Granma on the mad mission of invading Cuba and overthrowing the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Landing in a hostile swamp, losing most of their contingent, the survivors fought their way to the Sierra Maestra. A bit over two years later, after a guerrilla campaign in which Guevara displayed such outrageous bravery and skill that he was named comandante, the insurgents entered Havana and launched what was to become the first and only victorious socialist revolution in the Americas.
The images were thereafter invariably gigantic. Che the titan standing up to the Yanquis, the world’s dominant power. Che the moral guru proclaiming that a New Man, no ego and all ferocious love for the other, had to be forcibly created out of the ruins of the old one. Che the romantic mysteriously leaving the revolution to continue, sick though he might be with asthma, the struggle against oppression and tyranny.
By the time Che Guevara was murdered in the jungles of Bolivia in October 1967, he was already a legend, not only in Latin America but around the world.
Inspirational. Where do I sign up…
