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Admirers of Ernesto “Che” Guevara have contributed more than three tons of bronze keys, kitchenware and old instruments for a statue to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Argentine revolutionary’s birth.

“My idea was to do a collective work,” said sculptor Andres Zerneri, 35.

“I wanted thousands of people to send small pieces of bronze to be involved in the production of the sculpture.”

Zerneri received about 15,000 donations from as far away as Australia and Mexico — as well as from Cuba, where Guevara fought in Fidel Castro’s revolution.

In Argentina, 90 collection points were set up to receive objects while others were sent by mail from abroad.

Those that weren’t bronze or were unsuitable for melting down were affixed to the lower part of the statue, Zerneri said.

“I wanted to incorporate everything that people sent in,” said Zerneri, who said he spent 2 1/2 years completing the work.

The 4-metre figure will be taken by boat from Buenos Aires, where Zerneri has his studio, to Rosario, Guevara’s hometown.

There, it will be unveiled on June 14, Guevara’s birthday, as part of the city’s commemorations.

The statue will stand in a square to be renamed “Plaza Ernesto Che Guevara.”

Celebrations will include a photo exhibition and a concert by Argentine musicians, said Horacio Ghirardi, Rosario’s government secretary.

The connection with Guevara draws tourists from around the world to Rosario, a port town 300 kilometers up the Parana River from Buenos Aires, said Ghirardi.

“Che’s figure has become a worldwide icon of the fight for ideals,” Ghirardi said in a telephone interview.

When Guevara was four, his family moved to Alta Gracia in the central province of Cordoba, where the drier climate was better for his asthma, said childhood friend Carlos Ferrer, whose father was Guevara’s doctor.

“For me, he will always be my friend Ernesto,” said Ferrer, 79, author of a book called “De Ernesto al Che,” which in Spanish means “From Ernesto to Che,” on their experiences together.

Ferrer said the Guevaras were comfortably off, living on income from family land.

The nickname Che comes from the Argentine habit of using the word to attract someone’s attention.

“When he was living in Argentina, he wasn’t a political militant, but the trips to Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama, showed him how poor and abandoned people were,” said Ferrer in a telephone interview from his home in Buenos Aires.

“He never believed in politicians until he met Fidel.”

In 1953, Guevara and Ferrer took a train to northern Argentina at the start of a trip that was supposed to end in Venezuela.

There, they planned to meet up with Alberto Granado, who had crossed South America with Guevara the previous year on a journey that was portrayed in the 2004 movie “The Motorcycle Diaries.”

Their travels together ended in Guayaquil, Ecuador, when Guevara took a banana boat to Panama.

From there he traveled to Guatemala and Mexico, said Ferrer, who continued to Venezuela.

In Mexico, Guevara met Castro, who was in exile after being released from the Cuban jail where he had been held for leading an uprising against dictator General Fulgencio Batista.

In 1956, Castro, Guevara and about 80 followers crossed the Caribbean in a boat called the Granma to embark on the guerrilla war that ended in Batista’s 1959 ouster.

Castro transformed Cuba into a communist state, seizing land and nationalizing sugar mills, ranches and oil refineries.

After serving as president of the National Bank of Cuba and Castro’s industry minister, Guevara tried to install communism in other countries, including Bolivia, where he was killed in 1967.

Zerneri modelled his statue’s head from a 1960 photo of Guevara with long hair, a moustache and a beret adorned with a star.

The portrait by Alberto Korda is the most reproduced image in the history of photography, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum says in its description of a 2006 exhibition on Guevara.

The body of the statue depicts Guevara walking on a rocky road.

“I liked the metaphor of showing him walking on a hard and difficult road with his eyes fixed on the future,” Zerneri said.

BUENOS AIRES

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