Some aspects of Chicago life are so scoured raw by excess attention — particularly from advertising copywriters trying to inject a bit of local color into their plugs — that mere mention of them is enough to draw a wince of pain. Deep-dish pizza and ketchup on hot dogs leap to mind. Please, no mas.
The St. Patrick's Day version is dyeing the Chicago River green and chugging green beer in Irish pubs. You'd think these were Ireland's only contributions to the world.
As St. Patrick's Day looms, I try to shine a light in the more neglected corners. In previous years I shared a bit of the work of the Irish writers whose grim black-and-white portraits stare mutely from pub walls, or celebrated Hazel Lavery, the Chicago beauty name-checked in a Yeats poem, whose face graced Irish banknotes for nearly half a century.
This year I'd like to mention famous Irish revolutionaries Michael Collins, Daniel O'Connell and Che Guevara.
Ireland's revolutionary spirit was born, never forget, from nearly a millennium of oppression, as the English invaded Ireland in 1169. In 1494 ...
What's that? Still chewing on Che Guevara? What's he doing there? The Argentine revolutionary whose face stared down from countless 1960s college dorm rooms? Not aware, are you, of the Irish roots of the man who helped overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959?
"The first thing to note is that in my son's veins flowed the blood of Irish rebels," said his father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, whose forebear Patrick Lynch left Galway in 1749, bound for Argentina.
The connection isn't a big secret — Ireland put Guevara on a stamp in 2017 to mark the 50th anniversary of his death. Though I learned about the Irish/Argentine connection in a more direct fashion.
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