Viva Irlanda! Exploring the Irish in Argentina

An incredible bond that still remains strong

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One of the clan , Juan, was an early settler in the area and the other, Vice Admiral Eduardo O’Connor was an explorer and revolutionary leader who was descended from an "Irish Yankee"  that emigrated from Chicago to Argentina in the early nineteenth century. He too became a commander of a navy,  leading the insurgent forces that fought against President Juárez Celman in 1890.

The Irish, of course have not been slow in providing their share of revolutionaries, and the most famous and iconic (or notorious depending on your point of view) of all Argentinian rebels, Che Guevera, was born in Rosario, a city not far from Buenos Aires. His father declared "the first thing to note is that in my son's veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels."

His grandmother was a Lynch from Galway  and they were reportedly very close when Che was a child. It is sobering to think that the perennial teenage idol Che Guevara would be 82 wo now if he had lived  and Argentina has endured a lot of turmoil and change since his birth. The Argentinean Irish have changed as well.

Back in Buenos Aires , I sought out Dr. Guillermo McLaughlin, an eminent Argentine-Irish genealogist and historian of the Irish in South America.

Guillermo is the editor of the Southern Cross ,  which was established in 1875 and the oldest newspaper anywhere in the world catering for the Irish Diaspora. Guillermo is sixth-generation Irish, but  is as enthusiastic about his Irish connections as anyone might be who just landed off a boat from Ireland.

He told me there were seven or eight different waves of Irish emigration, the largest of which was the arrival of the farmers from the midlands mainly in the mid nineteenth century. He said the earliest mention of  the Irish in Argentina was the record of three Galway men who sailed with Magellan in 1520 when he sailed around Tierra del Fuego .

After that there were various arrivals of ‘wild geese’ from Spain; Irish soldiers serving with the unsuccessful attempts by the British in the early 1800s to seize control of the Spanish colonies  around the river Plata (many of these Irish soldiers deserted and swapped sides) and then there were the various missionaries and religious orders throughout the years and the landowners and workers and whole families who followed the first wave of settlers  in the mid nineteenth century.

"The first settlers did not integrate totally at first in the Argentine community," said Guillermo. "They had their own churches, hospitals, schools and clubs. They did not speak Spanish but their children did and they eventually  became part of the wider community  while still maintaining their Irish links. You  can find today, in some cemeteries in Argentina various graves with Celtic crosses and inscriptions in homage to Irish ancestors. And it is not surprising to find in some rural areas Irish descendants speaking with a notable Westmeath accent, though they have never been in Ireland and are grandsons or great-grandsons of Irish born emigrants to Argentina."

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