8th October: Che Guevara

In Bolivia, Che Guevara is seen as a saint by farm workers who actually pray to him for assistance and for rain. They honour him particularly on this, the date on which he was captured in La Higuera. 10 things you might not know about Che Guevara:

1. He was half Irish. His full name at birth was actually Ernesto Guevaro Lynch. His father said of him, "in my son's veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels". During a world tour, Che stopped off in Limerick City to celebrate St Patrick's day and wrote to his father, "I am in this green Ireland of your ancestors."
2. He was a geeky kid who suffered from asthma, played chess and loved poetry. He could also recite Rudyard Kipling's "If—" from memory. Although he did like sport as well - swimming, football, golf, shooting and cycling; he was an avid rugby player and played at fly-half for Club Universitario de Buenos Aires.
3. He was a qualified doctor. He got his medical degree at the University of Buenos Aires in 1953. He had a particular interest in leprosy, and for a while, considered going to Africa to work as a doctor.
4. He not only read poetry, but wrote it as well. He once wrote a poem dedicated to an elderly washerwoman who was one of his patients. To him, she represented "the most forgotten and exploited class" and in the poem he promised to fight for a better world for all the poor and exploited.
5. The 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries was based on Guevara's own account of a motorcycle trip he took through South America while he was a student.
6. He once took part in a fishing contest along with Fidel Castro and the writer Ernest Hemingway.
7. He became known as "Che" rather than "Ernesto" because he often used the Argentinian interjection, "Che" which is similar to the word "Eh" as used by Canadians.
8. He was allergic to Mosquito bites. When bitten, the bite would turn into a painful cyst the size of a walnut.
9. When he was Finance Minister under Fidel Castro in Cuba, he would sign bills simply, "Che" to signal how much he despised money and capitalism.
10. His executioner was an alcoholic sergeant in the Bolivian army called Mario Terán. Terán volunteered for the job because three of his friends, all called Mario, had been killed by Guevara's guerillas. When it came to pulling the trigger, though, Terán hesitated slightly, causing Guevara to utter his last words: "Shoot me, you coward! You are only going to kill a man!" After the execution a military doctor cut off Guevara's hands so that they could be sent to Buenos Aries, where the police had his fingerprints on file, for formal identification.