The EconomistJuly 22nd 2017 The Americas 33C
HE GUEVARA was born in Rosario,
then Argentina’s second-largest city, in
1928 but did not stay long. Less than a year
later his family moved away. Yet his birth-
place has not forgotten the left’s warrior-
saint. A red banner marks the posh apart-
ment block where he was born. A four-me-
tre-high (13-foot) bronze statue stands in
Che Guevara Square. The city council fi-
nancesCELChe, a centre devoted to the
study of his life, and celebrates “Che week”
around his birthday in June. CELChe will
stage a concert to commemorate the 50th
anniversary of his death on October 9th.
Not everyone in Rosario thinks the be-
reted revolutionary, who was captured by
soldiers in Bolivia and killed on the orders
of the country’s pro-American dictator, de-
serves such reverence. Fundación Bases, a
liberal think-tank based in the city, has
launched a petition to persuade the city
council to remove the monuments. The
martyr was himself a killer, says Franco
Martín López, the institute’s director. Gue-
vara was second-in-command to Fidel Cas-
tro, whose Cuban revolution killed more
than 10,000 people. “No one here has any
idea aboutthe massacrescommitted dur-
ing the revolution,” Mr López laments.
Under the motto “a murderer doesn’t
deserve state tributes”, MrLópez’s founda-
tion has produced videos to educate Ar-
gentines, and rosarinosin particular. One
shows a clip of Guevara promising to “con-
tinue the firing squads for as long as neces-
sary” in a speech to the UNGeneral As-
sembly in 1964. In another, a narrator reads
out the accusatory suicide note of Rei-
naldo Arenas, a gay novelist who died in
1990 after suffering decades of persecution
by Cuba’s government. Mr López is look-
ing for a sympathetic councillor to present
the petition on the anniversary of Gueva-
ra’s death. More than 3,000 people have
signed it since its launch on May 2nd.
It is unlikely to persuade the council,
which has been controlled by the Socialist
Party since 1989. Norberto Galiotti, the ci-
gar-smoking secretary of Rosario’s Com-
munist Party, regards the foundation’s
campaign as a part of a pernicious effort to
erase Che from history, led by the coun-
try’s centre-right president, Mauricio Ma-
cri. After he took office in 2015 he removed
a portrait of Che hung in the presidential
palace by his populist predecessor, Cris-
tina Fernández de Kirchner. Mr Galiotti
suspects liberals are envious of Che’s post-
humous charisma. “You don’t see manykids walking around with Margaret
ThatcherT-shirts,” he observes.
Mr López does not expect the monu-
ments to come down. “The real objective is
to raise awareness of the issue and start a
debate,” he says. But some of Che’s fans are
not interested in dialogue. Fundación
Bases dropped plans to show the videos
on screens in Rosario because the advertis-
ing firm that operated them was “worried
people would smash them”, says Mr Ló-
pez. Che would have been pleased. 7Che GuevaraLocal anti-hero
ROSARIO
A liberal think-tank challenges the cult
of a left-wing revolutionaryHard to eraseO
N SATURDAY nightin Parque Poblado
in Medellín, young people gather to
drink, smoke and chat. Barbara and her
cousin Sophia have more serious business:
they hope to make enough money from
selling sex to live decently after fleeing Ven-
ezuela, where survival is a struggle.
Barbara, who is 27, prefers her former
occupation as the owner of a nail and hair
business in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital.
But polish and shampoo are as hard to find
as food and medicine, and so she has come
to Medellín. In an hour a sex worker can
make the equivalent of a month’s mini-
mum wage in Venezuela. Colombian pe-
sos “are worth something”, unlike Venezu-
ela’s debauched currency, the bolívar,
Barbara says. “At least here one can eat
breakfast and lunch.”Some 4,500 Venezuelan prostitutes are
thought to be working in Colombia; the
trade is legal in both countries. But until re-
cently they were often rounded up by po-
lice and deported back to Venezuela by the
busload. That changed in April, when Co-
lombia’s constitutional court ruled that
Venezuelan sex workers are entitled to
work visas. Mass deportations violate in-
ternational human-rights law, it said. “One
should weigh up the reasons they decided
to come to Colombia...and the specific situ-
ation they would face in Venezuela were
they to be returned,” said the ruling.
The case has its origins in Chinácota, a
tiny town an hour’s drive from the border
city of Cúcuta. Last year the town’s mayor
closed down the Taberna Barlovento, a bar
that also serves as a brothel, saying it vio-
lated zoning rules. Along with beverages,
the bar offers four bedrooms just big
enough to fit a mattress or two. Founded in
1935, the bar is a Chinácota institution, says
Nelcy Esperanza Delgado, its owner.
When the mayorshut Ms Delgado
down, she fought back in court. She and
the prostitutes who worked there, includ-
ing four Venezuelans, had no other in-
come, she said. Closing Taberna Barlo-
vento violated their right to work. The
court agreed, and the bar reopened.
The ruling is likely to encourage Vene-
zuelans who ply other trades. Daniel Pagés
of the Association of Venezuelans in Co-
lombia estimates that 1.5m of his country-
men are in Colombia, about 40% of them
without proper papers. The sex workers
are joined by electricians, mechanics, em-
panada vendors—all of whom are seeking
a way to cope with their country’s short-
ages and queues, and an inflation rate ex-
pected to exceed 700% this year. Many of
them commute daily from Venezuela.
They could use the court’s ruling on sex
workers to argue that they, too, are entitled
to work visas, says Andrés Delgado Gil, the
lawyer who argued Ms Delgado’s case.
Colombiansalong the borderare accus-
tomed to Venezuelans streaming across,
but the area’s sex workers do not relish the
competition. Venezuelans charge the
equivalent of $10-13 for a 20-minute ses-
sion; the Colombian rate is around $13-17.
Colombianscomplain thatthey are being
forced to cut their prices. While Colombia
is El Dorado compared with Venezuela,
economic growth is slow and the unem-
ployment rate is 9.4%. Colombians haven’t
forgotten that in 2015 Venezuela’s presi-
dent, Nicolás Maduro, blamed them for the
shortages and deported 1,100. Many forded
rivers on their way back to Colombia.
While the law is becoming more wel-
coming to desperate Venezuelans, Colom-
bians are growing increasingly nervous
about the influx. Barbara thinks other
countries offer bigger opportunities. She is
planning to move on to Ecuador, where
customers payin American dollars. 7Sex workers in ColombiaFrom cutting hair
to turning tricks
MEDELLÍN
Venezuelans fleeing poverty get the
right to work as prostitutes