Mayor pulls her support for Guevara monument
Date Published: 08-Mar-2012
by Dermot Keys
Libertas founder Declan Ganley has welcomed Galway Mayor Hildegarde Naughton’s decision to withdraw her support for a controversial proposal to erect a monument of Ernest ‘Che’ Guevara in the city.
The decision to honour Guevara’s Galway heritage with a monument was unanimously approved by Galway City Council but the proposed monument still requires formal approval before it can be built.
The Argentine revolutionary’s Irish ancestry can be traced back to Galway through his maternal grandmother, Ana Isabel Lynch.
Mr Ganley said the erection of the monument would be a “mistake” and noted the objections raised by US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Chairperson, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Congressmen Mario Diaz-Balart and David Rivera.
“It is not good for Galway to have senior US politicians expressing such concerns,” Mr Ganley said. He added that many Americans could not understand why the people of Galway would want to “insult and wound them” by commemorating Che with a monument.
“Galway should not risk its reputation, its image, its future, and its deep links with the United States by allowing this offensive monument to be built in our city. It will drive away tourism, jeopardise investment, and leave us all the poorer.”
“I welcome the fact that Mayor Naughton has come to see this for the risk that it is, and I hope that common sense will prevail over the extremist views of a small minority.”
The design which is currently being considered is for a five-metre high monument on the Salthill Promenade.
The commemorative sculpture will be entirely funded by the Cuban and Argentine Embassies and a design by Simon McGuinness will now go before the Galway City Council’s Working Group for approval.
Simon McGuinness told the Galway City Tribune that the image is a “total homage” to Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick’s iconic 1968 Che poster, which was based upon a photograph by Alberto Korda. “It has three plate glass panels of varying heights which represent man, image and ideal,” Mr McGuinness explained. For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.