Sitting on the porch ledge of a nice white house, the kid’s legs dangle. He is wearing shorts and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows. Sandals fastened to the ankles are his footwear, and a rebellious lock covers part of his forehead. It is a reproduction based on period photographs, since no one knows for sure if Ernesto Guevara, the boy who spent the summer in the cozy town of Alta Gracia, ever got up there. But so is the bronze statue of him.
Who only a few years later would become the most acclaimed revolutionary guerrilla in history and known by the monosyllabic nickname of Che, was asthmatic. To alleviate his respiratory illness, the family spent the summers between 1935 and 1943 in a medium-sized house on the highest part of the Argentine town of Alta Gracia. Today it is recovered as a museum that narrates more the “private” life of Che Guevara than his activity as a liberator or minister, a position that he came to hold without much enthusiasm.
On the tour of the different rooms, there are a multitude of written and graphic documents –some video projections– that show what Che was like throughout his life. His middle-class family could afford those summers in an airy and healthy area of ??the province of Córdoba. In 1991, Villa Nydia, the English-style house that had originally belonged to an official accommodation organization, was declared a heritage asset by the City Council.
The famous trips of Che before becoming the most romantic of the guerrillas have a special section. The one he carried out riding his motorcycle La Poderosa II throughout South America, contemplating the misery of the people and the conditions of freedom restrictions, was the one that made him give up practicing as a doctor and wielding the submachine gun.
One of the objects that attracts the most attention in the exhibition is precisely the motorcycle. Like so many other “personal” objects on display, it is a replica. There is a bicycle and even a tricycle. In the photos from when he was a teenager, Che hardly smiles, he seems already worried about the future of humanity. In one of the pictures he wears a very stylish jacket and tie.
All the periods of Che’s life are collected in the tour of the house of Alta Gracia. In addition, the museum usually dedicates one week a year to organizing talks, debates, exhibitions, tributes and even dances.
The figure of Che Guevara, however, is not the only reason to go to beautiful Alta Gracia, a city of barely 50,000 inhabitants. Its center is monopolized by Lake Tajamar, an exaggerated name for what is an artificial water reservoir. But yes, it was built in the 17th century to supply water to the Jesuit fathers who settled there.
In fact, Alta Gracia has one of the five estancias of that religious order declared world heritage by Unesco, and it is the other great objective of the visit. The central building is the temple dedicated to Nuestra Señora de la Merced, but you can also see some of the attached buildings, such as the cloister. The obraje where the priests taught the natives how to handle textiles is now a public school.
In addition to these two cultural centers of attention, Alta Gracia is usually an escape valve from the somewhat suffocating city of Córdoba, a city that bypasses a million and a half inhabitants and has enough tourist attractions, but is also somewhat tiring due to its hectic pace.
Alta Gracia is two hours from Córdoba using the relaxed buses that ensure that it takes half that time. It has enough restaurants and accommodation to consider spending a night.
