Why did Ireland put Che Guevara on a stamp?

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 contribution 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.

Fate took me to Argentina five years ago. In my pre-visit due diligence — typing “What to do in Buenos Aires” into Google — the first thing to come up was Recoleta Cemetery.

I hurried to the 14-acre necropolis. What I found was a maze of downcast angels and crumbling masonry, long-sealed doorways and weeping cherubs. With so many noteworthy tombs — Luis Firpo, “The Bull of the Pampas” is buried here, as is Eva Peron — you’d think the Irish would not stand out, but they do, particularly an emerald green plinth dedicated to Admiral William Brown, the Mayo-born founder of the Argentine Navy.

Chicagoans focus on Irish railroad workers as if laboring were the only profession the Irish went into. Well, that and the police. And politics. But as an island nation, Ireland of course has a strong seafaring tradition. Probably the most famous American sailors of World War II were the Sullivan brothers — Albert, Francis, George, Joseph and Madison — five siblings who served aboard the U.S.S. Juneau and perished together when the ship was torpedoed in 1942.

Despite offering up heroes aplenty, the Irish were once loathed. Americans thought they were genetically inferior — lazy, ugly, drunken loafers and strumpets. That’s why St. Patrick’s Day was plucked out of the ecumenical calendar to become a civic holiday — a besieged and ridiculed community trying to assert its pride with a parade. Protestants once picketed this obviously unacceptable display of popery . The parade route was later taken by other once-despised groups, like the LGBTQ+ community. Maybe its time for a Jewish Pride Parade.

Don’t mistake progress for lack of need. The Chicago Gay Pride Parade was well on its way to becoming another generic, everybody-in-the-pool festival, like St. Patrick’s Day, when hatred flared up from a reninvigorated intolerant religious right.

While it’s good that the Irish aren’t loathed any more, generally, we ought not let memories of animus against them sink into mere nostalgia. The myth of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow starting the Great Chicago Fire began as a slur. The dirty Irish in their firetrap shanties heedlessly burning the city down around them. Few cared whether it was actually true. The same sort of baseless hatred directed at immigrants today, tarred as criminals, even though immigrants have always been more law-abiding than native-born Americans. We blame them for our own flaws.

I’m always amazed at how more established ethnic groups can shake the pig mire off their boots and immediately start kicking newcomers, declaring how their great-grandfather — lampooned as a loathsome paddy guzzling his whiskey — was a saint who played by the rules. In your dreams.

Enough. Me, I’ve already celebrated the holiday in my fashion, by the acquisition of a loaf of fresh Irish soda bread from Sunset Foods. Didn’t last 24 hours, that loaf. Ah well, I guess that means it’s time for another.