Father Anthony Dominic Fahy, Irish Chaplain of Argentina

Father Fahy's tomb

As you enter the main gate of the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, continue walking straight in and on the right side perhaps within 100 yards, you will find a monument, the burial place of Almirante Guillermo (Admiral William) Brown, the Irishman who is considered to be the Father of the Argentine navy. On the left side, a bit further in, you will find an ornate monument with an angel facing forward and holding a plaque in his hands that simply says “Father Fahy”. This is the burial place of Father Anthony Dominic Fahy, OP, the most famous Irishman in nineteenth century Argentina.

Anthony Fahy (or Fahey as he himself preferred, but it never stuck) was born in Louchrea, Co. Galway on January 11, 1805. His parents, Patrick Fahy and Belinda Cloran were proprietors of a brewery in the town. They had seven children before Patrick passed away. Belinda subsequently married a cousin of her first husband also surnamed Fahy in 1816 and they had 3 children. Of Belinda's ten children, five went into the priesthood or religious life. At age 22 Anthony entered the Dominican Order and did his novitiate year in Athenry, pronouncing his first vows in August 1829. Then he went on to Rome for his philosophy and theology studies. He was ordained a priest in Rome at the Basilica of St. John Lateran on March 19, 1831. For the next three years he remained in Rome advancing his studies.

In 1834 he was missioned to St. Joseph's in Somerset, Ohio, which was then a backwoods kind of place where the priests had to travel long distances on horseback to reach their flocks. Father Anthony lasted only two years in Ohio, when in1836, because of “broken health” he returned to Ireland to recuperate. After a two year hiatus, he requested to be sent back to Ohio but his request was denied. Instead he ministered in a parish in Galway for the next three years. In 1839 he was appointed Prior of the Dominican community of Black Abbey in Kilkenny.

Beginning in the 1820's the Archbishop of Dublin, Daniel Murray, was responsible for sending a priest to minister to the spiritual needs of the growing Irish immigrant community in Argentina. In 1843 this chaplaincy had been vacated but the archbishop didn't have a priest to spare so he requested the bishop of Ossory, William Kinsela, to look for a replacement. Kinsela knew Anthony Fahy and remembering his desire to return to the missions in America, offered him the opportunity in Argentina and he readily accepted. Father Anthony Fahy sailed into Buenos Aires harbor on January 11,1844, his 39^th birthday.

At the time of Fahy's arrival in Argentina there were an estimated 3500 Irish people living in Buenos Aires. He took up residence at the Santo Domingo convent and started celebrating Mass at the church of San Ignacio where his predecessor, Father Patrick O' Gorman had made arrangements to have the Irish community gather weekly. Later he relocated the community to the Franciscan chapel of San Roque where there were benches, pulpit, confessional and organ. He also moved into another home given to him rent-free through the generosity of Thomas Armstrong, a wealthy Westmeath-born Protestant who arrived in Buenos Aires in 1817.

Father Fahy's activities on behalf of the Irish community quickly became all encompassing. He made himself available to assist his people in every human capacity, as financial adviser, marriage counselor, judge, interpreter, employment agent and especially as matchmaker. When he saw that there were not enough marriageable women in the Irish community, he wrote back to Ireland and arranged for a large number of young ladies from his own Loughrea area to emigrate to Argentina.

Father Fahy with top hat

As time progressed Father Fahy achieved numerous accomplishments. In 1847 he launched the Irish Relief Fund to aid famine victims in Ireland which was then in the throes of the great famine. He collected and sent 411 Irish punts to the Archbishop of Dublin. In 1848 he opened the Irish Immigrant Infirmary to assist sick newcomers. So many new arrivals were coming off the transatlantic ships overwhelmed by fatigue, malnourishment, and other ailments from the long journey that he saw this as a necessary response.

In the same letter that Fahy wrote to the Archbishop of Dublin with the famine relief funds, he also strongly encouraged that more Irish people consider immigrating to Argentina. He wrote:

"May God bring Irish immigrants to this country instead of going to the United States. Here they will feel at home, will have plenty of work and experience the friendliness of the local people; very different from what they are experiencing in the U.S. Which forces them back to Ireland. There is no better country in the world to come especially with a poor family. The vast plains lying idle, eager for hands that want to cultivate. The government offers all kinds of protection and encourages people from abroad."

Fahy also encouraged the poorer laborers who remained living and working in the city of Buenos Aires to consider moving out into the pampas. On his trips to the countryside, he saw that the folks out there were better off than those in the city. He encouraged these city folks to save some money and invest in land and to raise sheep in the countryside. He often even accompanied them on their first visit to the bank to open savings accounts so that they might achieve their goals.

By 1848 it was evident that Fahy was achieving great success in his ministry and outreach to the Irish community of Argentina. He made it his business to know all the right people in high places so that when necessary he could use these contacts to aid the members of the Irish community. However, two matters arose which cast long shadows over his influence and his role in Irish-Argentine society.

Camila O' Gorman

The first had to do with a young lady, Camila O' Gorman, a twenty year old from a very well-to-do family who fell in love with a young priest, Ladislao Gutierrez, and became pregnant. The two eloped and traveled north intending to cross into Bolivia or Brazil. Because the president, Juan Manuel de Rosas, a ruthless dictator by this time, saw their actions as an affront to his campaign to uphold his code of morality and honor, he put out the alarm for their capture. They assumed new names and tried to remain hidden. After a time when things had cooled and the alarm was called off because the authorities thought that they had escaped, they set themselves up as teachers in a remote town still in Argentine territory where they were favorably received. At a party in their honor they were recognized by another priest who turned them in. After a short imprisonment, Rosas the dictator, ordered them to be executed. They had no trial and no opportunity to present testimony. Rosas consulted Father Fahy about the matter and Fahy concurred that such actions warranted “exemplary punishment” for “the priest who had sullied his church and the wayward girl who not only lead a priest astray but also gave the industrious and well regarded Irish-Argentine community a bad name!”

Camila O' Gorman, eight months pregnant, and Ladislao Gutierrez, the priest, tied to chairs side-by-side were executed by a firing squad in August 1848. Many people were horrified and repulsed by this barbaric act so much so that the dictator never really recovered from this horrific event and four years later fled for his own life to England where he died in poverty.

Juan Manuel de Rosas

The second matter also had to do with the dictator, Juan Manuel de Rosas. By 1849 the world-at-large had become aware of the ruthless and bloodthirsty tyrant who with his iron fist was ruling Argentina. An article in the Dublin Review accused Rosas of great cruelty and unbelievably Fahy wrote a rebuttal in La Gaceta Mercantil (Rosas' official government paper) saying:

“All that is stated in the libel inserted in the Dublin Review in regard to supposed crimes and assassinations of a Mazhorca Society in the service of the police, which are fancied in that production as proved at former periods; all that is said of the profanation of churches and sanctuaries and the other suppositions of this stamp … are but a tissue of contemptible falsehoods.”

Needless to say, Fahy's rebuttal to the Dublin Review article was very well received by Rosas. It was published in two different editions in one week. Then a few days later a special edition was published with the Fahy response and several editorial comments all in Spanish, English and French for world-wide consumption. Fahy had endeared himself to the regime but he must have left many people wondering why he chose to defend Rosas. A man of the gospel condoning the policies and actions of a tyrannical dictator left many people in this Catholic society wondering what was really in Fahy's mind.

But somehow Father Fahy escaped the recriminations of his flock. While they feared and felt only contempt for Juan Manuel de Rosas, Fahy continued to gain the admiration of his people because of his total dedication to their every human need.

In 1854 Father Fahy sent a sizeable sum of money to All Hallows college in Dublin to educate six young priests for the mission in Argentina. He was concerned about the quality of Argentine priests and wanted his priests to be trained in the classical Irish tradition. Of the non-Irish priests he said that they were “adventurers from Europe whose ambition is to make money and often give more scandal to religion than edification.”

Fahy's six new Irish priests began to arrive in 1860. At first he had them stay in his house while they were adjusting to their new environment and learning Spanish. After this orientation period Fahy sent them out to the various areas where the Irish community lived.

At Fahy's behest eight Sisters of Mercy of Baggot Street, Dublin, arrived to a great welcome in February 1856. They were to work in the Irish Immigrant Infirmary. In time the infirmary became transformed into the educational institution called St. Bridget's College. The sisters also opened a girls home, another college, Mater Misericordiae Academy and three more schools in regional towns.

Sometime around 1860, Fahy's outlook began to turn pessimistic on the conditions for the further immigration to Argentina. In a letter back to Ireland he stated that “this is a most unfortunate country … The liberty, or rather unbridled license of the press has corrupted the people dreadfully, and the influx of the dregs of Spain and Italy has added considerably to the immorality of the nation.”

Writing to the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda in Rome in 1861, Fahy said “having resided in this Province for the space of seventeen years, I am able to form a sufficient idea of the wants of the Churches in this Country and the only remedy for its innumerable evils.” He said that Argentines had no real interest in the Church and blamed this on “the philosophy of the last age and all the bad books of France.”

What was happening was that the immigrants of the earlier era who came and worked hard to save some money, then went out to buy or rent large tracts of land to raise sheep. Once all the cheap land was bought up, the more recent newcomers who came without capital to invest, could only find work as laborers on the farms or in the cities and seemed to have little hope of upward advancement. More recently arrived immigrants were having a tougher time than the earlier ones. This Fahy reflected in his statements such as:

“The Irish are being elbowed out by the Italians. Our people have given themselves entirely to sheep-farming which until recently has been quite profitable as well as easy. But the best land for grazing is also the best land for tillage, and the Italian comes and offers a higher rent for the land, and so ousts the sheep farmer.”

This is the same cycle that occurred in the American West. Once all the land was claimed, there was no more to buy and to gain wealth from. And so less supply means higher re-sale and rental prices for the land. Add to that the always present difficulty for the newly arrived Irishman to have to learn a new language in this new land. The Italian could pick up the Spanish language more easily and so had less of a disadvantage. And if he came with some financial resources, he was much better off than the Irish immigrant who was coming with nothing from a country just recuperating from the Great Famine.

In Memory of the Victims of the 1871 Yellow Fever Epidemic

By 1870 - 1871 the yellow fever epidemic was rampant in Buenos Aires. More than 13,600 people died. Father Fahy was busy ministering to the sick and the dying. When he himself passed away on February 20, 1871, the newspapers reported that he died of yellow fever after ministering to a sick Italian woman. However his death certificate clearly states that “ … he died from heart disease.” His remains were initially entombed in the vault of the diocesan clergy in Recoleta cemetery but later removed to the monument built by Earley sculptors of Dublin.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Grandson of Galway

In the early part of 2012 there was a bit of a row going on about the Galway city council's decision to celebrate Che Guevara's roots from the Galway Lynch side of his family. The council voted unanimously to place a memorial to “Che” (nickname for friend or buddy) Guevara near Eyre Square in their city center. Several Irish businessmen as well as two Cuban-American congress members and an Irish-Cuban Yale professor registered their strong discontent that this infamous revolutionary who reportedly was responsible for the execution of thousands of Cubans in the 1959 Castro-led revolution was being honored in this way. And as if that wasn't enough, in the town of Kilkee, Co. Clare (where Che himself once supposedly spent the night), the organizers of a local Che Guevara festival have announced that his daughter, Aleida Guevara, had signed on as one of the speakers at their event to take place in September 2012.

At the same time an article appeared in the Irish press reporting about a poll that was conducted in the United Kingdom that ranked Michael Collins to be Britain's second greatest enemy behind Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (the Turkish nationalist military leader who defeated the British in the war for Turkish independence). The article said that Collins even outranked Rommel, Napoleon and George Washington (curiously no mention of Hitler). And there was not even a whimper about this in the Irish press. That's probably because they knew that the wind would blow away the memory of this poll in a month's time. But a physical memorial will last longer than a poll, a lot longer. Was the Galway council looking to attract more tourism to their area especially in economically hard times? If so, could they not have found some other less controversial way to promote their area's history and beauty? Of course, but they probably believed that this move would undoubtedly bring in more tourist money in the immediate future. What's not to like about some extra cash in the coming years! Anyway, the monument has yet to be erected and probably never will. 

So who was Che Guevara? You have seen his caricature on millions of posters, tee-shirts, tattoos and the like, all around the world. The Irish graphic artist, Jim Fitzpatrick, first drew Guevara's figure (see above) in 1967 from a photo entitled “Guerrillero Heroico” (Heroic Guerrilla Fighter) taken by Alberto Korda. It is this depiction of Che that has become one of the most widely disseminated figures in the modern world.

Family tree on display in the Guevara home in Cordoba, Argentina

And how was Che Guevara Irish? Che's great grandfather Patrick Lynch, left Ireland for Argentina and settled in Buenos Aires. He married Rosa de Galaya de la Camera, a wealthy heiress and they had a daughter, Che's grandmother, Ana Lynch born in 1851. She married Roberto Guevara Castro, and their eldest son was Ernesto Guevara Lynch, Che's father, who was born in 1900 (the mother was 49 years of age when her eldest son was born???). Ernesto married Celia de la Serna de la Llosa in 1927, and their first child Ernesto, who would be known internationally as “Che”, was born in Rosario, Argentina, in 1928. Young Ernesto Guevara de la Serna Lynch was the eldest of five siblings. His father, always proud of his Irish heritage, once commented regarding his son's temperament that "the first thing to note is that in my son's veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels."

Che (left) with parents and siblings

The Guevara family created an intellectual atmosphere in their home, instilling in young Ernesto a keen interest in literature, science and philosophy. As a youngster he was a voracious reader and excelled in school. In 1948 he entered medical school at the University of Buenos Aires graduating in 1953. His medical studies were interrupted for a year-long motocycle journey through Latin America with his friend Alberto Granado. On the trip he kept notes of their experiences which he later wrote in book form entitled The Motocycle Diaries. In later years it became a New York Times best-seller and was made into a film by the same name in 2004.

This trip brought the young Guevara and his friend into contact with common people along their route. In Chile they were exposed to the harsh life conditions of workers in the copper mines. In Peru they saw dehumanizing poverty among the peasants of the countryside and in a leper colony along the Amazon River they saw the self-sacrifice and community spirit of those who were outcast from the rest of society. These experiences led Ernesto to analyse the conditions that were imposed by the haves of society that compelled the have-nots to live as they did. He felt that all people had the right to share the earth's resources in such a way that they could all share a more dignified life.

After he graduated from medical school in 1953, Che decided to go on another trip north to pursue his dream of creating a better world free from the grinding poverty and inhumanity that he had witnessed on his first trip. This journey took him through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. In Central America he came into contact with the extensive operations of the United Fruit Company, and saw how they operated by taking control of the land formerly farmed by poor defenseless peasants and was now employing them for sub-human wages and offering no benefits.

In Guatemala, where democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz was expropriating uncultivated lands and redistributing then to landless peasants, Guevara liked what he saw and began to settle down. United Fruit owned large tracts of uncultivated land and stood to lose a substantial portion of their wealth from this land reform program. Through United Fruit intervention, Arbenz was utlimately overthrown by the CIA-assisted Guatamalan army. Prior to this, Che's Peruvian economist girlfriend, Hilda Gadea, had introduced him to some Cuban exiles living in Guatemala who were associated with Fidel and Raul Castro. But for the moment his task was to stay out of the clutches of the new government and so he sought refuge in the Argentine embassy until he could obtain safe passage out of the country.

His next stop was Mexico City where he made direct contact with the Castro brothers who were planning to return to Cuba to overthrow the corrupt regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista. After his Guatemala experience and through long dialogues with Fidel Castro, Che came to a clearer understanding that the struggle to establish the ideals he believed in required even armed conflict. This was the key turning point in Che's life and approach. His encounter with Fidel Castro, according to biographer Simon Reid-Henry, led to a “revolutionary friendship that would change the world.”

In November 1956, Guevara set out with the Castro brothers and their band of 82 men on the Granma, a small yacht they had purchased to cross from Mexico to Cuba. Shortly after landing, the group was decimated by an attack of Batista's soldiers. Sixty men were killed or captured leaving the rest, including Guevara and the Castro's, to regroup again in the Sierra Maestra mountains.

On horseback near Santa Clara

After almost two years in the Cuban mountains skirmishing with Batista's army, Che was gaining the confidence of the locals and recruiting many of them for his forces. He was developing a military prowess that helped gain the upper hand for the revolutionaries. His intuitive ability to overcome the enemy was recognized by Fidel even though he was thought to take some wild chances. His small band of men once stopped a Cuban army battalion of 1500 men by surrounding them and killing many of their soldiers.

Their campaign had progressed through most of the provinces of the island nation until January 1, 1959 when Batista, recognizing that his end was near, boarded a plane and fled to safety with more than 300 million dollars. The next day Che Guevara and his forces entered Havana and the revolutionary battle was over.

At first Castro placed Guevara in charge of the purge of former Batista henchmen, including those considered to be traitors, informants and other war criminals. His sense of “revolutionary justice” compelled him to authorize the execution of thousands after conviction by collective trials. He had become a hardened man even before this when he personally executed traitors and spies during his days in the mountains. His essay “Death of a Traitor” in which he tells of how he personally executed Eutimio Guerra, is clear evidence that Che, the man of high ideals who at first struggled to uplift the dignity of the common man, had now become a hardened aggressor. He himself wrote in a letter to his friend, Luis Paredes Lopez, in Buenos Aires: “The executions by firing squads are not only a necessity for the people of Cuba, but also an imposition of the people.” It was here that many reasonable people  who up to this point had admired him, now parted his company. Mob justice held sway.

At different points in time Che held other important posts in the new revolutionary government. He was the head of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, the head of the Cuban Literacy Campaign, the Finance Minister, the President of the National Bank, and the head of the Instruction Department of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. It was in this latter capacity that he trained many of the soldiers who repelled the CIA-financed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 that attempted to overturn the Castro revolution. In addition, Castro sent Guevara on several diplomatic missions to the Soviet Union and the Eastern European communist bloc countries seeking aid for the continuance of their revolution.

With Khrushchev in Moscow

When the United States discovered the presence of Soviet nuclear war-headed missiles in Cuba in October 1962, a stand-off between President John Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev ensued. Through negotiations the two parties worked out a behind the scenes agreement in which Russia would withdraw their missiles from Cuba while the US would withdraw its bombers from bases in Turkey. Castro and Guevara had no say in the agreement and felt betrayed by the Soviets. They wanted an armed conflict with the US and not a negotiated settlement. From this point on, while Castro tried to maintain a diplomatic stance vis-a-vis the Soviets because he needed their continued financial assistance, Guevara took every opportunity to attack them openly. This began a rift between the two comrades that only seemed to widen as time passed.

In 1965 while on another diplomatic mission that took him to several west African countries as well as to Egypt, China and North Korea, Che also stopped off in Ireland and celebrated St. Patrick's Day in Limerick City. He wrote to his father with tongue-in-cheek: “I am in this green Ireland of your ancestors. When they found out, the television came to ask me about the Lynch genealogy, but in case they were horse thieves or something like that, I didn't say much.”

As a result of this trip, Che was re-directing his attention away from Cuba and becoming more interested in exporting his brand of revolution to other countries. Later that year, with a small band of Cubans, he went to the Congo and collaborated with guerrilla leader Laurent-Desire Kabila. It didn't take long for him to see that Kabila's men were undisciplined and lacked the will to really make the revolution happen. He became disillusioned and saw that his efforts were leading to failure. He summed it up in the words: “we can't liberate by ourselves a country that does not want to fight.”

Che now felt that he could no longer return to Cuba because he had submitted his written resignation from all his government posts to Fidel Castro and had renounced his Cuban citizenship. Fidel read this letter to a rally in Havana, an act which, in Che's mind, solemnized his separation from Cuba.

He next turned his attention to South America and to Bolivia in particular. With his band of 50 men Che scored several early successes in his battles against the Bolivian army in early 1967. However he did not know that the US had been tipped off about his new revolutionary effort and was sending CIA special operatives into Bolivia to counteract him. This factor, in addition to his inability to recruit support from the locals in the Vallegrande area, put him at a serious disadvantage. On October 8, 1967, with the intelligence and support of these CIA operatives, Bolivian troops captured Che. He was taken to La Higuera, to a small schoolhouse where he was held until the next day when he was executed by a Bolivian army sargent on the orders of Bolivian President Rene Barriento.

Che's body was buried in an unmarked common grave where he lay for 30 years. In July 1997 a team of Cuban and Argentine specialists uncovered the grave finding seven bodies. By matching dental records still on file in Cuba they were able to identify the skeletal remains of Che Guevara. Subsequently his remains were moved to a mausoleum in Santa Clara, Cuba where under his command, his forces had dealt the decisive blow to the Batista regime in 1959.

 "He who lives by the sword will die by the sword." 

Matthew 26:52

Further reading:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara

http://www.jimfitzpatrick.ie/update/che.html

http://www.biography.com/people/che-guevara-9322774