Happy Birthday, Comandante Che
by Gary Phillips
Today, June 14, marks the birthday in 1928 of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Jr., one of five children, in Rosario, Argentina. Ernesto senior was said to have made and lost small fortunes in shipbuilding, maté growing (a bitter green tea), ranching and real estate. Che's mother, Celia de la Serna, was of aristocratic stock.
An asthmatic, sickly baby, when the family moved to Buenos Aires, his dad would take junior out in his diapers on the balcony in the morning and sit him on his lap under the rising sun. He'd also give him cold baths. At four, his arms and legs were thin for his age. The family moved again to the higher altitude of Alta Gracia in Córdoba. By the time he was fourteen, Che was a muscular youth who was pretty good at hitting pigeons with rocks aimed from his slingshot.
Apropos of the comandante's birthday, there was an article in last week's Long Beach Press Telegram about the lovely folks at the Cuban Travel Services who hope for normalization of relations with the island nation. CTS was the agency that hooked up the FourStory crew on our recent trip to Che's adopted home. Click here to read the piece.
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