The bronze statue of Ernesto Che Guevara arrived in Rosario, its city of birth, today, after four days travelling by boat up the Paraná river from Buenos Aires, where it was made. I wrote about el Che's monument in February, after I'd read about plans for the celebrations of Ernesto Guevara's 80th birthday (June 14th).
The statue came at noon, and I guess I could've been there, but didn't know and I was exhausted, and expected at home for lunch. There was a welcome celebration at the Flag Memorial Park, and then a parade that took the statue to the place where it will be set up, its own Plaza Ernesto Che Guevara within Parque Yrigoyen, on 27 de Febrero Blvd. The next two weeks there'll be a whole lot of Che Guevara-related activities organized by the Municipality, which is (I'm told) spending its last cents on these events. (The economy is going badly, what with inflation and public employees' pay rise and all.) Yours truly expects to be present at least in some of them.
The statue of Che Guevara arrives — caught by a fellow Flickr'er!
Stumble it!
That statue is impressive...! Greetings
ReplyDeleteIronic how the Che statue arrives in Rosario at the height of the Farmers Protest.
ReplyDeleteThe model of equality, sharing and official opposition of big business to be honored in a city that is currently the center of protests against those very beliefs.
Ironic indeed. Though I think irony is only what we see when we can't understand complexity - the fact that things aren't so clear-cut as they seem.
ReplyDeleteMyself, I respect the ideas that Ernesto Guevara fought for, but I'd rather not have anyone like him trying to implement them on my country in the same way as it was done in Cuba. I think the statue is a good idea; it reminds us of a great man, with equally great faults, that was born here. And it's good for tourism, too. In my one of my previous articles about this I commented that having a visible reminder of someone is a good way to get people to think about that person's life and work.
I do agree with you about remembering a great man. If nothing else, Che stood up and fought for what he believed in and never took no for an answer. He even died fighting for his beliefs, something we could all learn from.
ReplyDeleteIn a day and age where nobody has a backbone and governments go against the will of the people throughout the world, its a shame that we do not have strong leaders anymore.
I have always found it Ironic that the ICON of communism, socialism and comrade life should be a POP ICON in the countries he fought so hard to defeat Something about buying a Che t-shirt at a FootLocker seems wrong!