Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born in Rosario on 14 June 1928 and died in 1967. SILAS traces his father's line, through Ernesto Guevara Lynch, back six generations to Patrick Lynch of Lydican Castle, Co. Galway, born in 1715. The descent is documented but remote: two centuries and a mixed family separate the two men, and SILAS finds no evidence that Guevara identified with Irish culture. In a 1950 diary note he mentioned the mix of Irish and Galician blood in his veins, and in a 1969 interview his father spoke of descent from Irish rebels. Other accounts place the Galway ancestor closer: the Irish Echo names a grandmother, Ana Isabel Lynch, who left Galway during the Famine, and Patrick Comerford's blog a great-grandmother Isabel.

His visits to Ireland were diversions. In 1964 he gave a televised interview at Dublin Airport after fog closed Shannon. On 13 March 1965 his Prague–Havana flight was diverted to Shannon and he stayed at Hanratty's Hotel in Limerick, where Arthur Quinlan of the Irish Times interviewed him; SILAS treats Quinlan's account, in which Guevara spoke of his Lynch connection, as a likely source of misinformation. Kilkee, Co. Clare, marks a reported stay in September 1961 with a plaque at the Strand Hotel, a large image on the sea wall and, since 2011, the Che do Bheatha festival. Eric Ellis cites the hotel register for 11 September 1961; the festival gives the 12th. The artist Jim Fitzpatrick says he served Guevara as a sixteen-year-old barman in Kilkee in 1961, a meeting Comerford places in 1963, while a letter in History Ireland argues that his only Kilkee visit was on 13 March 1965 and calls the meeting fictional. The date is disputed.

In 2012 a Galway city councillor said a monument to him had the council's unanimous support. US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen urged the council to reconsider, calling Guevara a mass murderer and human-rights abuser; no source confirms whether the monument was built. On 9 October 2017 An Post issued a €1 stamp using Fitzpatrick's 1968 image, derived from Alberto Korda's photograph, and justified it by his descent from Patrick Lynch. Critics in Ireland and among Cuban-Americans objected; supporters argued that the stamp fitted his Irish background and the standing of the image. The first printing of 122,000 sold out and An Post ordered more.