EDITION 87

MAY 2008

Sinaloa in the Genealogy of Che Guevara

By Joaquin Lopez
Chronicler of Teacapan, Sinaloa

The image of Che Guevara taken by Alberto Diaz Gutierrez, better known by his professional name of Alberto Korda, is the most widely reproduced picture in the history of photography. For young generations, this iconic photo is representative of a rebel who stands fighting in favor of social justice. Che Guevara, the man, his ideals and image, keep on inspiring endless literature, films, opinions and passionate political discussions.

When 18th Century California saw the arrival of the first crowd of Sinaloan immigrants, it welcomed among them the Castro family, the ancestors of Ernesto Che Guevara. This discovery we found in the work of historian Rina Cuellar and published in the collection "Sinaloa Encuentros con la Historia" (2003).

Don Antonio Nakayama, the most prolific contributing writer to the history of Sinaloa, said that San Felipe y Santiago de Sinaloa was a town that had 9 Spanish colonizers and a large Indian population in 1591 that is, the largest populated settlement in those days. Don Antonio took this information from a census taken in 1765 by Durango bishop Pedro Tamaron y Romeral, when the village was the operating center of the Jesuit community.

It consisted of 327 families for a total of 3500 individuals. This data reveals why this town was selected by Mexican army captain Juan Bautista de Anza to recruit the majority of the people who first settled Alta California.

Che Guevara's distant relatives were descendants of General Joaquin Isidro Castro, who was born in the Villa de San Felipe y Santiago de Sinaloa in 1732, his wife Margarita Martina Botiller and their 7 children. All of them made the journey in 1775 from Sinaloa to California with many other families. This singular adventure was sponsored by the Spanish Crown whose intentions were to reinforce their dominion over extensive unpopulated territory in Alta California, this because England, France and later the United States demanded rights over its jurisdiction.

From an interview granted by Che Guevara's father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch to Russian historian I. Lavretski (1969) and from some Web pages we gathered some genealogy information on the Lynch, Guevara and de la Serna families, we were able to confirm the rumor that Che Guevara came from aristocratic landowner ancestors. We also found out that there was a close ancestral relationship between these families that includes marriage among cousins, something confirmed by Guevara Lynch who states that he and his wife Celia de la Serna y Llosa were distant cousins. A closer look into these relations shows that one Juan Marin de la Serna participated with Guillermo Lynch in an Argentinean revolt in 1890.

Guevara Lynch also talks about the odyssey lived by his Argentinean forebears during the first half of the 19th century when the brothers Juan Antonio and Jose Gabriel Guevara Calderon de la Barca fought side by side with Lieutenant Francisco de Paula Esutaquio Lynch y Zavaleta (1817-1886) against the forces of General Juan Manuel Rosas. Defeated during the battle of "Quebracho", the Guevaras were declared enemies of the nation and their properties confiscated. To save their lives they had to go into exile to neighboring Chile, where they would meet other Argentineans like Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, educator, soldier and a politician who became President of Argentina, but perhaps better known for his book "Facundo", a literary Argentinean classic on Gaucho culture.

Lieutenant Lynch was a descendant of Irish immigrant to Argentina, Patrick Lynch y Blake and Rosa Galayn de la Camara, one of their grandchildren, Patricio Julian Lynch y Roo, became the richest man in South America as a result of his involvement in gun smuggling.

One day while the Guevaras were talking to Sarmiento and others at a café in Valparaiso de Chile in 1848, the news of the California gold rush arrived there. Infected with the gold rush fever, the Guevara brothers, Lynch and other Chileans like famed Joaquin Murieta, embarked towards San Francisco. According to Don Ernesto, the Guevara brothers spent some time in the Golden Gate until they were able to sell their brig, then they went to Sacramento in search of gold.

For the third Argentinean of the story, Lieutenant Lynch, life had reserved a twist of fate, upon his arrival he met a young Chilean lady by the name of Eloisa Ortiz, her husband Carlos Eldridge had died and left her with a young son. She and Lynch were married soon after they met. Lynch did not want to expose his young bride to the risks of gold mining and rejects the idea of joining the Guevaras in their gold digging adventure, he decided to open a bar in San Francisco and named it "The Placers of California" a double meaning because in Spanish placer also denotes pleasure.

The Guevaras did not find their gold riches, they returned in low spirits to San Francisco the following year. Lynch took them in and gave them jobs in his bar, it was there that they met don Guillermo Castro, a local aristocrat married Maria Luisa Fermina Peralta. The Guevaras got jobs as administrators of Castro's San Lorenzo Ranch, mentioned above as current city of Hayward. Juan Antonio met don Guillermo's daughter Concepcion, married her and had a son named Roberto Guevara y Castro, he was born, according to Cuellar, on June 28th, 1855. It was around this time when California was surveyed, annexed and later incorporated as a State of the Union. This would bring disastrous results for the Castro-Guevara family.

In the year of 1838, the Mexican Government had granted several land titles in Alta California to various descendants of Sinaloan colonizer Joaquin Isidro Castro, two of his grandchildren, Guillermo Castro García and Martina Castro Lodge, received more than 65 square kilometers each.

San Lorenzo Ranch, property of Don Guillermo covered what now are the cities of Hayward, San Lorenzo and Castro Valley. His cousin Martina got the land where the City of Santa Cruz and Carmel stand now. The latter is such an exclusive town today that one of its mayors (1986-1988) was none other than actor Clint Eastwood.

Several generations of Martina's heirs, like actress Anita Fallon reaped the economic benefits of being landowners, their wealth was not exempt of tragedy, though. Grandma Martina Castro Lodge, suffered a mental breakdown when she found out she had been swindled out of her own estate by her younger husband, sons and daughters in law.

Another descendant of Joaquin Isidro Castro was General Jose Castro (1808-1860). He was one of the main defenders of the Mexican territory when the US forces arrived to invade California and the rest of the country. As an acknowledgement for his bravery his name is part of the historic memory of the city of San Francisco, preserved in a theater, a street and the Castro District, the largest gay community on the planet.

The city of Hayward web page and Mrs. Cuellar assert that don Guillermo Castro lost this and other properties due to his addiction to gambling. While it is true that many land grants and signatures were counterfeited by corrupt Mexican officials to grant large portions of land, the historic truth supported by documents and events that reveal the facts about the enormous land theft against Mexican nationals remains to be told and acknowledged. Che Guevara's destiny was marked however, because if it had not been for the land swindled from his family, he would probably had been just another rich Californian land owner.

In his story, Che Guevara's father reaffirms that out of the Lynch-Ortiz matrimony was born a daughter named Ana and declares: "Remember friend, that Ana Lynch Ortiz is my mother, Che's grandmother". On the Lynch family web page it is stated that Lieutenant Lynch was also the Argentinean Consul in San Francisco. Also, in Che Guevara's birth certificate, sailor Raul Lynch signs as witness; probably Che's uncle.

We found some discrepancies between what Mrs. Cuellar reports and Don Guillermo's account. He says that don Guillermo had an only daughter and the historian found 8 brothers and 3 sisters, he also says that the family lost all of their properties by fraud, and that the family appealed for many years, taking the case to the Supreme Court but the Court ruled in favor of the squatters, on top of that the family had to pay the cost of a long trial.

The version of Mrs. Cuellar is no different from the one available on the Hayward web page. It states that "By the year 1865 Don Guillermo Castro had economic difficulties because of his addiction to gambling. He had to sell all of his properties to pay his gambling debt, and then he decided to move to South America bringing with him almost all of his family which included his son in law Juan Antonio Guevara and his grandson Roberto who traveled with him and settled in Chile".

There is nothing new that one can report on Che Guevara's life and times. That is why we decided to reveal something about those forebears whose experiences lived on and manifested in his life. Forty years after his death and close to his 80th birthday, we wanted to celebrate the Sinaloense side of a man who continues to be an emblem against social injustice. This is also to recognize that in Sinaloa, from Teacapan in the south to San Blas to the north he has a lot of cousins, one of them, don Jesus Castro was the Mayor of Mazatlan.

In closing, and in line with the meaning of che in Argentina and Uruguay, according to Don Ernesto, che is a word that comes from the Guarani language of the Plata region and means "mine". Adopted by Argentineans, to say che, depending on the intonation or context, it expresses a whole range of human passions; awe, enthusiasm, grief, tenderness, approval or protest. The denotation reminds us of Octavio Paz dissertation in his Labyrinth of Solitude on the word "chingar", a much utilized word throughout Mexico which curiously also starts with the Spanish alphabet letter "che".

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Ernesto Che Guevara

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara march through La Havana

 

 

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara

 

 

Lynch Family