When Cuban pioneers shout their slogan, “We will be like Che!, they honor Marti’s legacy that, “…unfortunate is he who does not know how to be grateful” and ‘the nobility of man is memory’. Ideas that admiration and gratitude to the creators, in Buenos Aires, 28 years ago, of the first South American museum “Ernesto Che Guevara”, legitimate son of the Chau Bloqueo movement and that became a true school of solidarity with Cuba.
This is how Eladio Gonzalez Rodriguez (Toto) and Irene Rosa Perpiñal Saad – a happy couple, in the broadest sense of the word:
love, family, ideals and solidarity-, who gave themselves body and soul to the realization of this and soul to the realization of this endeavor, adding other people, and, as Irene acknowledges that they were greatly inspired by the book Cuba exists, is socialist and is not in a coma, published in 1992 by her fellow countryman, architect Rodolfo Livingston, a friend of Che.
What were the beginnings of such an original museum like?
Toto explained that the greater rapprochement with Cuba and the permanent demand for the end of the U.S. blockade of the island began precisely in 1992, when he and Irene visited the island as tourists in 1992, when he visited this Caribbean island as a tourist, together with Irene, and all the recognition he and all the recognition he received after offering his blood for the young Rolando Perez Rolando Pérez Quintosa, who died 37 days after being hit by bullets fired by people who were trying to seize a boat at Tarará nautical base, in Havana, to migrate to the United States, depriving three young combatants of their lives.
Before returning to his country, Toto left a note to Perez Quintosa, with his father, which was published by newspaper Trabajadores, motivating a wide exchange of correspondence between the Argentinean man and people from all over Cuba.
Toto added that, in spite of many sorrows, since its foundation in 1996, the museum was initially set up at 1457, Espinosa Street, in Caballito neighborhood, where ten years ago the Jewish Peronist lawyer Mario Gerardo Yacub (Toti) with his wife Lea and children were living. A man whose progresive ideas is on the list of missing ones in Argentine.
The founding ceremony of the museum was attended by Cuban General Harry Villegas (Pombo in Che’s guerrilla movement), Dr. Alberto Granado Jimenez and Architect Rodolfo Livingston, also friends of the Heroic Guerrilla Fighter.
The Museum, dedicated to the guerrilla Commander who, born in Argentina, was recognized as a Cuban citizen, who tried to create liberation movements in his country of origin.
There, the members of Chau Bloqueo received, organized in boxes, labeled, loaded, and shipped to Cuba donations over 480 tons in 7 years.
They contributed to relief needs caused by the lack of resources that had been coming from the socialist bloc and after the tightening of the U.S. blockade.
And then?
Irene, inspired by the ideas of other comrades, chose and rented a house on another street in the same neighborhood of Caballito, an old abandoned factory, whose warehouse was completely restored in order to organize the materials
on the life and work of the Comandante Guevara and the true history of the Cuban Revolution, which the enemies have always tried to distort.
Toto points out that since its founding it has operated as a cultural center, offering courses in music, history, dance, choirs, history, photography, pre-Columbian culture, book presentations, theater plays, concerts and debates benefiting some 20,000 people, until 2001, when it ceased operations due to the convulsive political-economic situation of Argentine, which resulted in widespread unemployment and the government of Carlos Menem also prohibited the sending of donations to Cuba.
It is for this reason that the rental of the completely restored space for such noble purposes came to end. So the home of Toto and Irene, besides serving as a work center, continued to give life to the Che Guevara Museum, which was visited by people from different parts of the world.
Toto says that, since its beginnings, the main interest has been to have to show the life and work of a man as universal as Che Guevara, but all the efforts have been fruitless because it has never been a priority issue for the City of Buenos Aires.
One of the many attempts was aimed at Rosario, Che’s hometown, but that municipality, but that municipality discarded the idea after having accepted it.
The idea was also considered, unsuccessfully, in a space in the building used by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, until, after some health problems due to the Covid-19, it was agreed to relocate the museum in Las Jarillas de Guandacol, in the province of La Rioja, so the museum was inaugurated on May 1, 2022 under the administration and care of Ricardo Aguilar and Marisin De Lisi, two educators that Toto and Irene consider to be very special beings.
They took everything into the museum to the house they live in on their own vehicle and in a matter of a few months, everything from the museum on Che Guevara and Cuba, was officially organized and instaled, part of the work Toto and Irene shared, and now expressed their gratitude to the new administrators of the place, which they often visit.
It was a very nice, organized and emotional inaugural event,” said Toto, ”with the participation of personalities, activists, writers, painters, sculptors, from La Rioja, who listened in the emotional voice of Irene of the genesis of the first South American museum dedicated to Comandante Guevara, and to their personal experience on the reality of Cuba, many times denied or distorted by the mainstream media, in addition to the book published by Livingston.
The event was enlivened by a guitar duet with the song Hasta siempre, which Cuban singer-songwriter Carlos Puebla dedicated to Che, and Toto himself declaimed the poem Che Guevara, by Nicolás Guillén, National Poet of Cuba.
Eternal homage to Che Guevara
Although the peoples of Cuba and Argentina are separated by some ten thousand kilometers and there are those who try to distance them with their retrograde ideas, it is vital to keep ideas, it is vital to keep the transcendent example of the legendary Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (from Rosario, 1928-1967), as a symbol of the new man and the rebellion of the new man and of the permanent rebellion against injustices.
Toto and Irene advocate that the historical memory of both peoples, who suffered from Spanish colonialism and, although they proclaimed their respective independence in 1816 and 1902, the Andean country suffers from the excesses and aggressiveness of a pro-imperialist government that, instead of fighting for the Latin American unity, is bent on destroying it.
The Commander of America was fighting for the return to the Andean country of its Malvinas Islands, which Great Britain has illegitimately occupied for almost two centuries, in spite of historical claims. In the same way he would do, as he did in his lifetime, for the departure of the military enclave that the United States maintains in the territory of eastern Cuba, in Guantanamo, against the will of the Cuban people.
Che Guevara would also look favorably on the growing number of tourists from his homeland to this Caribbean island, for which he fought so hard together with Fidel Castro, where children grow up happily, despite the vicissitudes caused by the blockade imposed and intensified for more than sixty years by the U.S. government, of which he warned: “imperialism cannot be trusted, but not even that much, nothing”.
To keep this memory alive, Irene and Toto, Ricardo and Marisín, together with the help of other supportive friends, never lose heart and never give up. They keep with special care the operation of the first South American museum in eternal homage to the Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara, the guerrilla fighter who -born in Argentina and recognized as a Cuban citizen- tried to create liberation movements in his country of origin, in the Congo and finally in Bolivia, where he was assassinated on October 9, 1967 in the little school of La Higuera, after being captured the previous day.
- Icap is distinguished for its solidarity - 30 de April de 2025
- Icap distinguishes German association Humanitarian Aid to Cuba - 3 de April de 2025
- Palestine Land Day was commemorated in Holguin - 31 de March de 2025