“In my son’s veins flowed the blood of Irish rebels,” once proclaimed Ernesto Guevara Lynch, father of the legendary Che Guevara, who was proud of his Irish roots and how his family built a new life in Argentina after fleeing Ireland during the Cromwell era.

Rebellious Irish blood was essential during Latin America’s emancipatory struggles — and it remains so today. Latinos and the Irish have been fighting imperialism together since the nineteenth century, when Irish immigrants, fleeing the famine and oppression caused by the British Empire, found in Latin America a new battleground to challenge the cruelty of colonialism.

The Irish and their descendants contributed to the formation of many of the new Latin American republics, such as in Chile with Bernardo O’Higgins or those Irish present in the Bolivarian army. The converse is also true — recall the Irish-Argentine Eamon Bulfin: it was he, born in Buenos Aires, who raised the Irish Republican flag at the General Post Office during the Easter Uprising in 1916.