Not everyone in Che Guevara’s hometown of Rosario, Argentina have a soft spot for the communist revolutionary.
Under the motto “a murderer doesn’t deserve state tributes”, Mr López’s foundation has produced videos to educate Argentines, and rosarinos in particular. One shows a clip of Guevara promising to “continue the firing squads for as long as necessary” in a speech to the UN General Assembly in 1964. In another, a narrator reads out the accusatory suicide note of Reinaldo Arenas, a gay novelist who died in 1990 after suffering decades of persecution by Cuba’s government. Mr López is looking for a sympathetic councillor to present the petition on the anniversary of Guevara’s death. More than 3,000 people have signed it since its launch on May 2nd.
It’s unlikely that the monuments will be removed, but it goes to show that the romanticized memory of Che is not shared by all of his countrymen.
