Come Here To Me!

New commemorative stamp from An Post.

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the passing of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, shot in Bolivia having been captured leading a small revolutionary force against the Bolivian army.

In Ireland, there has been considerable controversy around the decision of An Post to issue a commemorative stamp to mark this anniversary. That the stamp is very much a celebration of one of the most important pieces of twentieth century Irish art, Jim Fitzpatrick’s Viva Che!, seems to have passed many commentators by.

In an Irish context, Guevara is very much associated with Fitzpatrick’s iconic artwork and the words of his father, who proclaimed following his sons death that “the first thing to note is that in my son’s veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels.” They were powerful words, even finding their way to the painted gable wall of a Derry house in time.

In 1949, General Tom Barry published Guerrilla Days in Ireland, considered by many to be the classic War of Independence memoir. While Ernie O’Malley would poetically capture the spirit of the people in On Another Man’s Wound, Barry’s memoir focused primarily on the IRA’s Flying Columns, the bands of men who terrorised patrolling Auxies and Black and Tans in the Irish countryside.

The IRA of 1919 did not invent guerrilla warfare, in an Irish (Michael Dwyer of the United Irishmen may claim that honour) or international context. In South Africa, the Boers adopted guerrilla army tactics so effectively during the 1899-1902 war, that the widespread internment of Boer women and children in concentration camps was used to break their morale. Zapata had his ‘dynamite boys’, the Italians their ‘Brigands’. What the Irish War of Independence did produce however was a remarkable volume of literature on guerrilla warfare.

In her biography of Barry, historian Meda Ryan discusses the international influence of Barry’s memoir, noting that its influence was significant enough to move many international fighters to contact Barry. One such figure was the Zionist radical (for radicalism is not exclusive to the Left) Menachem Begin, founder of the militant group Irgun and later sixth Prime Minister of Israel. Begin’s appeals to Barry are all but forgotten, but the same cannot be said of Che Guevara.

Guevara’s outreach to Barry was, Ryan notes, unsuccessful. Barry believed that the fight of Irishmen was at home, and though opposed to the Blueshirt threat in 1930s Ireland, had strongly discouraged Irish participation in the Spanish Civil War. It remains an interesting footnote in Irish history.

Maureen O’Hara in Havana, 1959.

While Guevara may not have encountered Tom Barry in the flesh, he did cross paths with many Irish people, including the celebrated Dublin-born actress Maureen O’Hara. Filming Our Man in Havana there in 1959, she was clearly smitten by the Guevara she met, remembering later in her memoir:

When we arrived in Havana on April 15, 1959, Cuba was a country experiencing revolutionary change. Only four months before, Fidel Castro and his supporters had toppled Fulgencio Batista… Che Guevara was often at the Capri Hotel. Che would talk about Ireland and all the guerrilla warfare that had taken place there. He knew every battle in Ireland and all of its history. And I finally asked, “Che, you know so much about Ireland and talk constantly about it. How do you know so much?” He said, “Well, my grandmother’s name was Lynch and I learned everything I know about Ireland at her knee.” He was Che Guevara Lynch! That famous cap he wore was an Irish rebel’s cap. I spent a great deal of time with Che Guevara while I was in Havana. Today he is a symbol for freedom fighters wherever they are in the world and I think he is a good one.

O’Hara found it hard to believe “how young and idealistic Che was…he had already helped to topple a dictator and liberate a nation.”