It embarrasses how we celebrate anything that’s even remotely “Irish”, or that we take such pride in something as trivial as the birthplace of someone’s grandfather. I remember reading, at the height of his popularity, a newspaper article that called Obama, and I quote, “Ireland’s greatest export”. It was obviously tongue in cheek but I wouldn’t let something like that get in the way of a good cringe spasm. I would put something like this in a similar category.

Galway needs a proper traffic management system in place and it wouldn’t cost a lot to have the prom cleaned of dog poo 7 days a week. We’ve enough statues thank you.

Ah just put one up of Bertie instead

I think what the US Congresswoman means is he was a human rights abuser who did not pursue American interests. This woman should have no weight in whatever is decided

The irony of putting a statue of Che Guevara up anywhere in Ireland given the current goings on is tremendous!
Obviously doing it for the lolz :-D

How about we start with our own hero’s and put up one of Michael Collins?

God another bloody monument – there is a very ugly palm tree in white metal in Sandymount erected by the Mexican ambassador. It’s horrible and I quess a councillor got a nice trip with his wife to Mexico. Can we take it down? Who was consulted? Just put these things up wherever they like. They will become Grafitti monuments over time.

I don’t care what the opinion of a foreign politician is. Why should I, as long as it is not offending anyone?
What I do have a problem with is spending the limited tax Euros we have on yet another statue. Spend it on caring for the elderly is Galway or some other practical purpose.

Why should we be influenced by anyone else. Do we get a say on the fact there is a statue outside the House of Parliament in London of Oliver Cromwell a man whose brutality against the Irish is well documented.

Can no one understand that the council are NOT paying for it, it’s a gift. Can no one read before jumping on the old “we should be fixing potholes and cleaning dog shit” chestnut. Sure read the Mahon tribunal report to see how councils are “funded”. Che be rolling in his grave

What do we need a statue for when half the bloody students are wearing che t- shirts.

I think there should be a don’t care option in your poll….

Let’s just erect a statue of benicio del toro instead

People on here keep saying that the Cuban and Argentinian embassies are funding it, but that is only partly true. They have been approached for ‘some’ funding, but will not be paying for the entire construction. The Council will have to ‘pay their share’.

My only problem with this plan is that the Galway-Che connection is embarrassingly tenuous. In true Irish style we try and grab the coat-tails of any significant people we think have even the slightest connection to this country. I voted no because what connection did Che have with Ireland really, to the point of deserving a statue?

A staue of Che simply doesn’t belong in Galway. The fact it’s a gift or that the Americans aren’t happy about it is irrevelant.

I don’t care a toss about statues…….. but haven’t we had enough of foreign politicians’ interference!

The Republican can be told where to go when it comes to criticising human rights issues given the steady stream of misogynist, homophobic and religiously bigoted laws her party keeps trying to push through. That said, Che is not deserving of such hero worship, as fascinating and complex as he was. We would first have to justify the executions of over four hundred “enemies of the revolution”, most of whom were civilian opponents and were executed for little more than political position. All excuses that the right did worse things or that this always happens after a revolution can’t change the fact and are really only a change of subject. He was a formidable fighter in Cuba but everything else in Africa and South America was a disaster.

I`m not saying I agree with the council about the statue but i think the yank should sling his hook, bloody cheek of him.

Whatever about yanks and sources of funding, are those voting in favour of the statue aware that Guevara, by his own admission, personally carried out summary executions without trial? Is this the sort of person we should be celebrating? If so are we also going to forgive those who executed Irish patriots?

Enda should tell the congress woman that unlike her. We live in a democracy and he has no influence or place in overturning a democratic vote of democraticly elected representatives

Was he not someone who killed homosexuals ??? He seems glorified by the left but to be honest he seemed anything but pluralistic or liberal. In fact could he be described as a fascist ???
Seemed to be his way or the highway .

Would we put up a statue of Hitler or Mussolini if they were found to have a piece of Irish blood.

As far as I am aware Cuba has monuments commemorating our Revolutionaries, I believe there is a memorial to the Hunger Strikers in Cuba, so I think it would be a nice gesture of solidarity. Hasta La Victoria Siempre.

Do you really want your community to be remembered for building a monument to a man who said in Havana on April 16, 1967 that “Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy.”

Che Guevara’s call to action in a hemisphere with too many military juntas led to new military juntas in countries that had not known them before in their history: Brazil, Ecuador, Honduras, Panama, Uruguay, and Suriname all had their first military juntas after Guevara’s Message to the Tricontinental. Other countries such as Chile who had known a military junta between 1924 and 1931 in reaction to communist threats embraced Augusto Pinochet who remained in power for seventeen years. With the exception of Nicaragua, Che Guevara’s prescription for revolution in Latin America led to a generation of military dictatorships and harsh repression. In Nicaragua it led to a Marxist dictatorship and civil war.

Honoring a mass murderer who advocated a totalitarian system that took 100 million lives in the 20th Century is shameful. After Che Guevara who is next Carlos the Jackal, Josef Stalin or Adolph Hitler? Glorifying men of violence serves to glorify violence why not build a monument to Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. or Leo Tolstoy? Why not honor those who successfully fought injustice using just means?

http://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2011/10/rejecting-violence-and-hatred.html

How dare this Congresswoman interfere in a local matter, to her he may be a criminal but to millions Che was hero and yes Galway absolutely should celebrate his Irish connections!!

Better him than Bertie…

I’m going to make a che statue for Wicklow at no cost

Are there not enough local people they could honour instead of this notorious fascist homophobe?

Che wanted the result of the Cuban missile crisis to be an atomic war. “What we affirm is that we must proceed along the path of liberation even if this costs millions of atomic victims.”

Although I rather like this quote from the Bearded Man in the Beret, in a different context than Cuba.

“If any person has a good word for the previous government that is good enough for me to have him shot.”

Its interesting to think about the perspective’s of region’s here. In the United States, Che is seen as a murderer, terrorist, Communist who’s image is only good when he’s being bastardised on the front of some mass produced product. South of the border, he is seen as a hero, martyr, and champion of the people whose image should be displayed but also venerated.

Some say he was a mass murderer without asking themselves who he was executing. When you realise that the people that were on the receiving end of his bullet were the very people that had been murdering the people of Cuba for decades, I certainly know what I think about him. Of course he’s hated in the US, he helped bring about the downfall of one of their elitist lap dogs, and inspired many more to do the same across and entire hemisphere (and still it).

Yay for glorifying dead terrorists. For the 1968ers in France and Germany he might have been a hero, but for the people of South America, he was a murderer.

Maybe have a lenin statue in Dublin, stalin in cork, Castro in Limerick and Mao in waterford, Lets celebrate the failure of communism.

What is Che’s legacy ? What did he achieve ? Cuba is a police state with a very low standard of living. There are people who are a lot more worthy of recognition in Ireland that someone who have long ago been forgotten about except for Jim Fitzpatrick’s image on Teeshirts.

There is a mural in my city Derry commemorating Che Guevara , is it for the same reasons that Galway is remembering him?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/20923094@N04/2350075819/

In my opinion, Enersto “Che” Guevara Lynch was and is an inspiration, this man was very proud of his Irish roots and we should be proud of him.

Che’s father once said of him: “The first thing to note is that in my son’s veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels”, this a 1969 interview. He went on: “Che inherited some of the features of our restless ancestors. There was something in his nature which drew him to distant wandering, dangerous adventures and new ideas”.

This was a man who personified the very thoery of revolution, the world is a better place due directly to his actions and he continues to inspire people to question the core of an often rotten establishment.

Maybe Ireland needs a Che’esque figure currently to bring about change in how our government approaches the future as I believe we have somewhat lost the dangerously adventurous spirit that has made this world a better place trough our Irish ancestors that left for foreign shores troughout history.

We need a Che in Ireland now, he stood up to corrupt regimes and was for the people, he was a doctor and visited leper colonys and saw the way the poor were mistreated while corruption blossomed we should be proud of his irish connection he stood up for what was right

I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people. ”
— Guevara’s conclusion

Historians and biographers now agree that the experience had a profound impact on Guevara, who later became one of the most famous guerrilla leaders in history. “His political and social awakening has very much to do with this face-to-face contact with poverty, exploitation, illness, and suffering”, said Carlos M. Vilas, a history professor at the Universidad Nacional de Lanús in Buenos Aires, Argentina.[8]

In May 2005, Alberto Granado described their journey to the BBC, stating: “The most important thing was to realise that we had a common sensibility for the things that were wrong and unjust.” According to Granado, their time at the leper colony of San Pablo in the Amazon also proved pivotal. Recalling that they shared everything with the sick people and describing Guevara’s wave on departure as follows: “I got the impression that Che was saying goodbye to institutional medicine and becoming a doctor of the people.”[9]

According to his daughter Aleida Guevara in a 2004 article, throughout the book we can see how Guevara became aware that what poor people needed was not his scientific knowledge as a doctor, but his strength and persistence to bring social change.[10]

I think a few people on here better educate themselves about who and what Che Guevara was about,for he was fighting against the very thing that has the world in a total mess today,the elite few taking full control of everything on the planet.Che Guevara did kill folks,he was ruthless,he had to be every bit as ruthless as his enemy was,believe me folks if your not as ruthless as your enemy,you will not last to long in any war.Thats the nature of war.The real true thing i admire about the man,he could,nt be bought.To many people like to have a twisted right wing agenda when it comes to matters relating to this man,but if they ever took the time to research Che Guevara,s life and death they would realise it took a lot of courage to do what he did.Stick up the statue and let the young people ask about this man of courage.less of the nonsense.Tiocfaidh ar la.

Galway Co Council are you scraping the barrel & that desparate for figure heads for statues??? Have you loads of money to spare since all the flooding? How about u cop yourselves on & fix the polluted drinking water system & drains & roads & lighting before sticking up statues of oppressive dictators!!!

It’s like something Mayo would do like a statute for Mr
Flynn

Regardless of who is paying for the statue he has nothing to do with Galway! What will be next – the embarassing sight of our Taoiseach presenting some of his relatives with a certificate of Irish heritage???

Why Galway? Surely a town with such incredible attractions as ‘The Spanish Arch’ and ‘A Boat Museum’ doesn’t require such a great statue. Put it in Ballyjamesduff, if ever a town needed a statue its Ballyjamesduff.

Marxist and Socialist regimes have murdered more than Nazis. Yet it still seems to seem be an ideology that is acceptable in civilised circles. I wonder if some one was proposing a statue to Lord Haw Haw in Galway what the reaction would be? It seems someone like Guevara who shared an Ideology with the murderous Stalin is somehow more acceptable to those other lunatics who shared an ideology with Hitler. Just wondering also why comments on this have failed to be updated ?

The republican was calling Che “a mass murderer and human rights abuser.” – has she a short memory?

George Bush? (He gets even a national library!)
Dick Cheney?

The congresswoman should sort out her own if she feels too that she has to be giving out about others!

How can a council made up of people from multiple different political parties and who were elected in free elections, vote to erect a statue of a guy whose main accomplishment in life was to help create a one party state with no free elections in decades?

Lets keep the anti american tripe going anyway,they only country investing here and vacationing here,let the commie’s have their statue to che,

Galway has always been proud of it’s individualism, culture and diversity. It is for the people of Galway to decide what we use to commemorate our heritage. The statue proposed is not in fact a statue but an artists representation of the famous image of Che create many years ago by another Irish artist.

That congress-woman should have just shut up, chances are it wouldn’t go ahead. Now most people (me included) would like to see it set up just to stick it to a nosy bloody right wing American.

If the council want to erect Che let them pay for it, the country has no money

In a time of economic destitution a statue to a playboy south American terrorist is of course a top priority… Don’t people realise that more than likely RATE PAYERS will be hit for this ludicrous grandiosity?

Only in Galway.
Put it up during race week, so all the nobs and sleeveens can gawk at it and rivers of piss can flow around it.
Christ almighty, is this what people down there are worried about?

All the Guevara acolytes in Ireland that are in Government now, such as Gilmore and Co. are the ones who are implementing the household charge. If there is a viable alternative to capitalism it’s not socialism and people need to recognise that it’s a failed 19th century ideology. And it’s practitioners from Lenin to Guevara need to forgotten about not have statues built to them.

We need a bit of imaginative thinking in dark times. Put the statue up. It will give us something different to talk about. And it might be lovely.

Ya should care.

The man almost started off WW3, so I would not agree with it.

I like the idea, but is this really the right time to blow chunks of money on this statue? The country is broke, and the Council recommend building a statue? I think they need a new council…

I’m in favour of the statue, but is this really the best use of the Councils limited finances? I think a bit of cop on is what this shower need. The country is f*cked! Wake up Galway CoCo!!

it’s a bizarre use of GCC funds. Why not start with a statue of Walter Macken, or the Ferocious O’Flahertys (may god protect us from them)?

a statue of che guevara? if the members of galway city council want to pay for this out of their own salaries then by all means erect it! another waste of public money just like that massive toothpick in o connell st! oh im sorry i should have said the spire!

Chuck, I must concede that the iconography surrounding Che Guevara has indeed been romanticised in recent years. That being said, anyone who takes more of an interest past wearing a certain t shirt, i.e being in favour of a permanent statue being erected in their country, must surely have a knowledge of what Che believed in and his actions in the Revolution in Cuba. In the same way most people are aware of the ideology and actions of James Connolly, Robert Emmett, Wolfetone or any number of statues erected to those who fomented revolution in this country.