13/8/12

The Irish Times

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

'Che' memorial plan raises hackles

LORNA SIGGINS, Western Correspondent

FOUNDER Declan Ganley has described plans to erect a memorial celebrating Galway city’s links with Argentinian guerrilla fighter Che Guevara as a “monument to a mass murderer” . Mr Ganley said that “significant concerns” about the plan had been raised with him by members of the US business community during a trip there last week and that he feared it would “cast a shadow” on Galway’s international reputation.

Warning that it would “damage investment”, he said “we would not build a monument in Galway to Stalin, or to Pol Pot, or to Idi Amin, or to Oliver Cromwell”. “Che Guevara was just as violent, just as brutal, and just as insane as any of them. We would never dream of honouring them, and we should not dream of honouring him, either,” Mr Ganley said in a statement yesterday.

Mr Ganley claimed that the proposal was “nothing more than the pet project of a small number of extremists in the Labour Party”. “If the people of Galway knew the truth about this man, they would never allow it to be built,” he said. “Che Guevara is responsible for the deaths of an untold number of people in his brutal quest for power in South America. Alongside Fidel Castro, he instituted a regime in Cuba from which people have been fleeing for decades. He worked to deny people the right to vote, the right to own property, and the right to freedom of religion. He persecuted Catholics with a psychotic zeal.”

city Labour Party councillor Billy Cameron, a member of the Cuba Support Group, said the proposal had the full support of the city council and was currently before a public arts subcommittee. Funding is to be provided by the Cuban and Argentinian embassies.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara de la Serna’s grandmother, Ana Lynch y Ortiz, was descended from one of the Lynch family of Galway who emigrated to Argentina in the mid-18th century. Guevara referred to his grandmother’s Irish roots during a stopover in Shannon in 1965.

Mr Cameron confirmed that he had received a number of emails from the United States “bordering on the abusive” in the past week since an opinion piece was published on the proposal in a daily newspaper. “One would question who Mr Ganley’s US contacts are, and [whether] they have connections with members of the US business community based in Miami, Florida,” he said. “I won’t get into a mud-slinging match with Mr Ganley, but he is obviously being fed information from the extreme right.”

He questioned whether Mr Ganley was aware of human rights violations involving US support, including the celebrated case of six-year-old Elián González and the impact of the prolonged economic embargo on the island. Mr Ganley said the memorial will be taken as “a grievous insult by the millions of Cubans forced into exile around the world”.

Irish Examiner

Friday, August 03, 2012

US official warns over Che statue plan

By John Fallon and Declan Rooney

Officials in Galway have been warned by a leading US politician that there will be ramifications if they proceed with a plan to erect a statue to Che Guevara in the city. The chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the House of Representatives, Peter King — who has Galway roots — has urged Galway City Council officials to shelve their plans to commemorate the Argentinian revolutionary figure.

The plan to erect a statue to Che Guevara was first proposed by Labour Party Councillor Billy Cameron and initially received widespread support from councillors, but subsequently confusion arose about the willingness to put a permanent structure in place.

During his traditional St Patrick’s Day visit to the America, Taoiseach Enda Kenny was also given a letter by the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, calling for the erection of the statue to be blocked.

In a letter to the city’s former mayor, Cllr Padraig Conneely, on House of Representatives-headed paper, Mr King admitted their could be ramifications for the city, should they go ahead with the controversial statue. “This is a matter of considerable concern within the Irish-American community and should be addressed,” he said in the letter this week.

GALWAY ADVERTISER, MARCH 22, 2012.

Che do bheatha Romero

Insider has noted the reaction of people of the political persuasion of Declan Ganley to the idea of Galway erecting a monument (at no cost to the taxpayers) to Che Guevara and it prompted him to pen the following in response to Mr Ganley’s slurs that Guevara was a “mass murderer”, just to set it in context.

By The Insider

So, what have a Central American Archbishop and an Argentinean born revolutionary with Irish blood got in common? Absolutely nothing you might say - one a man of God and the other of the gun, both poles apart? Not so. Read on.

Archbishop Oscar Romero – martyr

Archbishop of San Salvador Oscar Romero, in speaking to the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium on February 2, 1980, said:

“In less than three years, more than 50 priests have been attacked, threatened, calumniated. Six are already martyrs - they were murdered. Some have been tortured and others expelled [from the country]. Nuns have been persecuted. The Archdiocesan radio station and educational institutions that are Catholic or of a Christian inspiration have been attacked, threatened, intimidated, even bombed.

“Several parish communities have been raided. If all this happened to persons who are the most evident representatives of the Church, you can guess what has happened to ordinary Christians, to the campesinos, catechists, lay ministers, and to the ecclesiastical base communities. There have been threats, arrests, tortures, murders, numbering in the hundreds and thousands….

“But it is important to note why [the Church] has been persecuted. Not any and every priest has been persecuted, not any and every institution has been attacked. That part of the Church that has been attacked and persecuted is that which put itself on the side of the people and went to the people’s defence. Here again we find the same key to understanding the persecution of the Church: THE POOR.”

One month later, on March 24, Archbishop Romero was assassinated while celebrating Mass at a small chapel in a hospital only a day after he called on Salvadoran soldiers to stop carrying out the government’s repression of the poor and violations of basic human rights.

Romero would have been considered by Rome to be a safe pair of hands for the post to Archbishop of El Salvador. Liberation theology priests feared his conservative views would negatively affect their commitment to the poor.

It was the assassination of his personal friend Fr Rutilio Grande, a progressive Jesuit who had been working on self-reliance groups among the poor campesinos that changed his views: “When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought, if they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path.”

A cause for beatification and canonisation was opened for Romero, and Pope John Paul II bestowed upon him the title Servant of God. He is often referred to as “San Romero” or St Romero by Catholics in El Salvador. He is one of the 10 20th century martyrs who are depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey in London.

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara – martyr

Ernesto Guevara-Lynch and Celia de la Serna y de la Llosa both came from wealthy backgrounds but had a huge social conscience which was to rub off on their son Ernestito, who would in adulthood be nicknamed ‘Che’.

The young Ernesto suffered from asthma. As a child he was forced to decide whether he would become a victim or a survivor. His strength of character made the choice easy: Ernestito did not choose victimhood. His parents were determined he should lead as normal a life as possible. They encouraged him to practise sports, to swim and enjoy the outdoors, and he determined early on that he would not let the asthma bring him down or interfere with anything he wanted to do.

In his teens, Guevara had been attracted to the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi who advocated non-violence, but when he was captured in Bolivia at the age of 39 he had a weapon in his hand.

He had turned to violence early in life when he decided on the futility of any other way of resisting European and US dominance. The Irish revolutionary Tom Barry, whose tactics were studied by Che said: “The British had gone down in the mire to destroy us and our nation and down after them we had to go.”

These words would resonate in the ears of Che. Similarly the USA had gone down in the mire, not of a nation but of a whole continent.

Che was not black, he was not hungry, nobody had trampled him underfoot, he had access to education and yet he understood like no one else the plight of those who had nothing - THE POOR.

You do not have to accept all his ideals and political choices to see that Che’s was a remarkable, inspiring, and in many ways, exemplary life. He started life as a carefree upper-class Argentine boy in search of fun and adventure. His fun and adventures across a continent opened his eyes to the plight of the disenfranchised, the dispossessed, the exploited, and the poor, which led him to become a revolutionary who would fight for the downtrodden of two continents and lay down his life for his fellow man.

The New York Times journalist Herbert L Matthews who spent time with Che during the Cuban revolt says: “His dedication to his revolutionary beliefs was deeply religious. Che had a missionary’s faith in the innate goodness of man, in the ability of workers to dedicate themselves to ideals and to overcome selfishness and prejudices. It was the other side of the coin of his indignation against injustice and exploitation of the humble. He saw the solution in an exalted form of Marxism that would bring freedom and brotherhood. Such men are born to be martyrs.”

Oscar Romero and Che Guevara - both larger than life, so their enemies had to kill them-only to discover that they were both larger than death. The enemy and commonality: IMPERIALISM.

The belly of the beast

Finally if Mr Ganley is looking for mass murderers he need look no further than “the belly of the beast”. Has Mr Ganley ever heard of the School of the Americas, better known as the “School of the Assassins” formerly based in Panama but in recent times based in Fort Benning, Georgia?

He might contact Fr Roy Bourgeois of School of the Americas Watch or even US Congressman Joseph Kennedy (another one of our own).

“The US Army School of the Americas is a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world” said Kennedy. Oscar Romero was murdered by one of the school’s graduates cum laude.

The Irish Times - Monday, March 5, 2012

Coversy over Che memorial

Sir, – Declan Ganley trots out the usual erroneous anti-Cuban propaganda in his vitriolic denunciation of Che Guevara (Home News, February 29th).

I presume he is sincere in his beliefs, but the historical facts, though difficult to digest, are important too.

Let me just add two quotes to the discussion. The first is from former CIA agent Philip Agee: “There was no person more feared by the company [CIA] than Che Guevara because he had the capacity and charisma necessary to direct the struggle against the political repression of the traditional hierarchies in power in the countries of Latin America.”

The second is from Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara. A Revolutionary Life: “I have yet to find a single credible source pointing to a case where Che executed ‘an innocent’. Those persons executed by Guevara or on his orders were condemned for the usual crimes punishable by death at times of war or in its aftermath: desertion, treason or crimes such as rape, torture or murder. I should add that my research spanned five years, and included anti-Castro Cubans among the Cuban-American exile community in Miami and elsewhere”.

I have a copy of the Jon Lee Anderson book which I am quite happy to lend to Mr Ganley if he wishes to acquaint himself with the facts and the truth about Che Guevara, one of the greatest heroes of our times – and a man full of faults like the rest of us. Che also died for the poor, the disenfranchised, the dispossessed and the exploited, when he could so easily have enjoyed his comfortable life in government and done nothing. Instead he sacrificed his life for others.That is why he is regarded as saintly by so many of the poor in Latin America and admired by so many others around the world.

Che, of course, was no latter-day saint, he was an idealist and a revolutionary and it can easily be argued that today much of Latin America is free and democratic because of his example; quite rightly he is commemorated everywhere on the continent by the new socialist governments who all readily acknowledge his sacrifice. Perhaps one day his vision of a unified Latin American continent will come to pass.

As the artist whose work has inspired this proposed submission to Galway County Council let me add that I am proud to be involved in any monument to such a man.

My own hero Nelson Mandela referred to Che Guevara as “an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom”. I wish we had such a person in Ireland today who could so inspire us, who could fight to lift us out of this unjust system of Sippenhaftung – the collective punishment of the Irish people for the transgressions of others; someone who could bring to justice to the gangsters, bankers, lawyers, accountants and politicians who have destroyed and looted – and continue to loot, with their vast pensions and payoffs – our own country; and to see them account for their crimes. – Yours, etc,

JIM FitzPATRICK,

Artist,

Burrow Road,

Sutton, Dublin 13.

Galway Advertiser March 22nd 2012

Dont be ignorant of Guevara's real atrocities, says Irish Cuban victim

Dear editors:

As a victim of Che Guevara’s atrocities, as a historian, and as a Cuban of Irish descent, I am deeply disturbed by the fact that the city of Galway is planning to erect a monument to Ernesto “Che” Guevara. I don’t mind one bit if those behind this monstrous project want to believe lies – that’s their right in a truly free society – but it would be wrong to allow their abysmal ignorance or wilful blindness to stand unchallenged. Those who think highly of Che may be surprised to hear it, but they have way too much in common with Holocaust deniers.

Che was my neighbor in Havana, and I actually saw him in the flesh several times. He lived in an opulent mansion just a few blocks from my very small house, and also ran the prison of La Cabaña, where some of my relatives ended up being tortured and murdered. Their crime? Voicing an opinion different from Che’s. Or, in the case of my uncle, simply having a son who voiced an opinion contrary to Che’s. The awful truth about Ernesto “Che” Guevara is that he was a violent thug with despotic tendencies. Che’s admirers prefer to think of him as a righteous warrior, and often cite certain books that portray him as a saint. I hate to break the news to them: Some books are full of lies.

Fortunately, others are not, like the memoir Cuba 1959, La Galera de la Muerte, written by Javier Arzuaga, the priest who accompanied all of Che’s victims to the firing squad during the first nine months of the so-called Revolution. Read it and weep, please, all of you who love Che. We Cubans are the only people on earth who knew the real Che – as opposed to the icon stamped on all sorts of merchandise – but there are many in the world who tune us out, discredit our testimony, and would love to gag us. Somehow, the lie is preferable.

Why?

Ignorance and blind faith. To praise Che, one must overlook mountains of evidence concerning his crimes. But why would anyone do that, willingly? Because some people –especially those who see all of history as nothing but class struggle – need a saint to venerate, someone who they think embodies the cause of the downtrodden. Ironically, though most Che lovers tend not to admit it, they act very much like religious zealots: as they prefer to see it, Che was a saintly crusader for the poor, so everything he did must have been good, and anyone harmed by him must have deserved it. So what if he killed Cubans willy-nilly, without trials, including plenty of poor peasants? Or helped establish one of the most repressive regimes on earth? Or built concentration camps for dissidents and gays, including one with a sign over the front gate that read “Work will make real men out of you”? It's what needed to be done. It was just. And in this warped religious view of Che the idol, and of politics in general, we who call that false history into question are worse than heretics. We are the unjust cretins who still deserve to be killed by the likes of Che.

Everyone in Galway and Ireland should know this: Che has a lot in common with Oliver Cromwell. Like Cromwell, Che proclaimed himself a liberator and felt justified in committing thousands of atrocities in a land other than his own, all in the name of a higher cause. Like Cromwell, Che stole everyone’s property too, for a sacred purpose. As for reputation: Cromwell received plenty of good press and adulation from those on his side, just like Che. To Cromwell’s admirers – and he had plenty who would eagerly build him monuments – the Irish people were inconsequential obstacles to a higher goal, or worse, despicable papist wretches who deserved no mercy.

Allow me to propose a radical solution to this controversy: if Galway wants to honor Che with a monument, it should also build one for Cromwell, right next to it. It’s only fair.

Carlos M. N. Eire

T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies

Yale University