This is a story about bloodlines and the Irish military diaspora.

 

 

Part One

In County Galway, Ireland, and in Bilbao, Spain,

and the Río de la Plata, Argentina, in the 17oos.

 

 

An Irish emigrant called Patrick Lynch came to the Río de la Plata in the 1740s. For much of the colonial period the estuary formed by the Paraná and Uruguay rivers was an economic and cultural dead-end due to the prohibition of trade across the Atlantic. Consequently, the region was only accessible by a mammoth overland trek through South America. Patrick’s journey then was arduous. But nobody could have predicted the impact his inauspicious arrival in Latin America would have on the region over the next 250 years.

 

 

Patrick was born in 1715, the second son of Captain Patrick Lynch of Lydican Castle in County Galway and Agnes Blake. He left Ireland in the 1740s, initially heading to Bilbao. The curse of emigration was nothing new to the Lynches and the Blakes. Both families counted themselves among the 14 Tribes of Galway — the dominant commercial and political families in the region — and their defeat to Oliver Cromwell had already compelled many of Patrick’s ancestors to move abroad.

 

From Bilbao, Patrick made his way to the Río de la Plata as a Regidor and later became a captain in the Milicias. In 1749 he married the heiress Rosa de Galayn y de la Camara in Buenos Aires and partly due to his new bride’s familial wealth he established himself as a successful landowner.

 

But it is in Patrick’s descendants however, where the real story lies.

 

 

 

 

Part Two

In Valparaiso, Chile, and in El Callao and Payta, Peru,

and at the battles of Chorillos and Miraflores,

and in Madrid and Tenerife, Spain,

and in Rosario, Argentina, between 1817 and 1928.

 

 

Patrick’s grandson, Estanislao Lynch, became an officer in the Argentinean Army of the Andes, the force assembled by general José de San Martín to liberate Chile from the Spanish Empire in 1817. Estanislao settled in Valparaiso, where he became a prosperous merchant. He and his wife, Carmen Solo de Zaldívar y Rivera, had a son on 18 December 1825 named Patricio.

 

Patricio Lynch joined the Chilean navy in 1837 at the tender age of 12 and fought against Peru and Bolivia in the War of the Confederation. At still only 15 he joined the Royal Navy, where he served for the next seven years. Dispatches noted his bravery. The Chilean navy commissioned him as a lieutenant upon his return home in 1847, and his exploits during the War of the Pacific between 1879 and 1884 made him a national figure. Once again, the allied powers of Peru and Bolivia were Chile’s nemeses.

 

In September 1880, Patricio led a force of 3000 men to raid the Peruvian coast between El Callao and Payta in what would become known as the “Lynch Expedition”. He also played a significant role in the capture of Lima on 15 January 1881, fighting in the battles of Chorillos and Miraflores. As the Military Governor of occupied Peru, a post he held until the end of the war, the forces under his command held firm against determined opposition from Peruvian guerrillas, helping to secure a Chilean victory.

 

Patricio Lynch finished his naval career as a rear-admiral, and in 1884 became Minister Plenipotentiary to Spain. However, while in Madrid he fell ill and died on 13 May 1886 off the coast of Tenerife as he sailed home. In recognition of his service, the Chilean navy have named several ships in his honour. And in the Magallanes Region, in the province of Última Esperanza, lies Patricio Lynch Island.

 

But the most famous of all Patrick Lynch’s descendants is the eldest child of Ernesto Guevara Lynch and Celia de la Serna y Llosa. Born on 14 May 1928, in Rosario, Argentina, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna is better known to the world as Che . . .