During our visit to the "National Beer Festival" of Argentina, with all of its German and Central-European music, costumes, architecture and beer-foamish pomp and circumstance (not to mention the Quilmes girls in their skin-tight leather outfits!), we decided we needed to take in a bit of local culture as well.
So, in the spirit of the Cordoban Sierra, we headed up to Alta Gracia, a Jesuit-founded town in the Sierra with the clearest of breathable air that was prescribed by one Dr. O'Donnell to one Ernesto Guevara in his adolesence to combat asthma. This young Guevara would go on to become the "Che" that is known worldwide and revered by the populist movements of Argentina and throughout Latin America today.
After being dumped by a bus at a crossroads a good ways out of the centre of town (as I have time and again discovered, the hard way, is Latin American custom!), we took a long taxi ride up to the old Guevara de la Serna/ Guevara Lynch residence. From my required readings of Pacho O'Donnell's (the son of the Doctor that recommended the Guevara family retreat to Cordoba) recent biography of el Che, I knew a certain amount about this particular household. But I was pleasantly and even uncomfortably surprised by some of the displays that met us there. I was pleasantly surprised by things such as the knowledge that Che was an avid chess player, and a keen cyclist who actually wrote a letter that featured in a "Raleigh" ad back in the 50s in Argentina, after his first Bike trip around the country (although an asthmatic, Che practiced 20-odd sports in his lifetime...he was also a poor dancer but an avid womaniser, according to the O'Donnell book, at least).
One of the most surprising things about the house was a small foxhole-style dugout, which, apparently, was the site in which the young Guevara children practiced guerrilla warfare games. The hole was covered with an iron mesh, to which was now permanantly attached a small toy shotgun. Eerie.
Back in the entrance to the house were displays of different articles bearing the Che resemblence...Cuban dollars (which a friend of mine on the trip, who had recently been to Cuba, actually had in his wallet until it was robbed in the Buenos Aires bus terminal as we departed on the trip), and even "Che" brand cigarettes. Despite his chronic asthma, Che smoked avidly until his death by assasination.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect, though, of the Che museum -- at least for me -- was the small kiosko two doors down, which is run by an ex-soldier of the Dutch military. This man, whose name I forgot to ask, is something of a Che fanatic, and his kiosko, which is in an old converted schoolhouse, is something of a shrine to "Che"dom. Che flags, che cigarettes, che drinks, che posters, che books, che figurines, che playing cards, che postcards, che boludos...What's more, the man is a living Che encyclopedia. Ask him any question about Che's life and he will have an anecdote ready, or a book in which he can look up a Che fact. Che, boludo, que macana! It is people like this that the Lonely Planet folks need to focus on more, as the visit to this kiosko really rounded off the trip to the Che museum for me. Above all, it was nice because I was wearing my boina, which is actually in the original stlye of the Cuban revolution, brought by Che with his criollo Cordoban background. The Dutch store owner remarked that I was only missing the white star. I decided it would be as well to stay where it was, beneath the giant Che flags in his store.
After the Che museum and the Kiosko, we headed in search of the Jesuit museum/mission, which was closed all during siesta. Following that, we stumbled upon a poetry festival in a municipal building, but as the heat and hunger were getting to us, we headed off in search of a restaurant. Before long, we found yet another Spanish restaurant and had another good feed of Iberian seafood, washed down with several jugs of Clerico (white wine sangria).
We took a PACKED bus back to General Belgrano, during which three of us hatched the idea for a Latin American villa miseria photo project, having been inspired to do big things after the visit to Che's house.
In the evening, we headed into town to gift shop and buy meat for an evening parrilla, which we put together with our own criollo hands, back at the ranch. After a great meal of beef innards and chicken, cooked over wood we had searched for and broken ourselves, we retired with some wine to star gaze, at the beautiful southern skyscene that is infinitely more visible in Cordoba than in Buenos Aires.
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