By Brian McDonald

                       For the daughter of Che Guevara, the visit to Galway on the west
                       coast of Ireland was something of a homecoming.

                       If she had chosen to walk on to the footpath outside the front door of
                       the Great Southern Hotel, where she was holding media interviews
                       and hosting a series of meetings, Dr Aleida Guevara would almost
                       certainly have met a distant relative.

                       And if she was in need of further reassurance about her
                       whereabouts, the Cuban paediatrician would probably have found it
                       just a stone's throw away, where Galway's most fashionable
                       nightclub is named after her homeland.

                       Dr Guevara is in the Republic of Ireland to explore her roots and, by
                       association, the family tree of her father, the Latin American
                       guerrilla leader. Galway was a vital stop. The town – population
                       60,000 – is home to the descendants of the Lynches, one of the 14
                       great tribes who once ruled the area.

                       Their influence continues. Lynch's Castle dominates the city centre;
                       Lynch's Restaurant does the best lunchtime trade on the west
                       coast; while the Lynch window, from where a mayor of Galway
                       hanged his son in medieval times, is possibly the town's biggest
                       tourist trap. But until Dr Guevara's visit, few tourists would have
                       been aware that Che Guevara was descended from those self-same
                       Lynches.

                       The history runs something like this. Patrick Lynch of Lydican
                       Castle near Galwaymarried Agnes Blake, and their second son,
                       Patrick, was born in 1715. Patrick left Ireland in the 1740s and
                       settled in Buenos Aires in 1749.

                       His merchant background – Galway as a coastal town was a
                       regular port of call for trading ships from around the world – served
                       him well in his new environment. He succeeded in business and
                       married Rosa de Galaya de la Camera, a wealthy heiress.

                       It was from this marriage that Che's grandmother, Ana Lynch y
                       Ortiz, was descended. She married Roberto Guevara Castro, and
                       their eldest son was Ernesto Guevara Lynch, who was born in 1900.
                       Ernesto married Celia de la Serna de la Llose in 1927, and their first
                       child, who would be known internationally as Che, was born in
                       Rosario, Argentina, in 1928.

                       Reflecting on her father in Galway yesterday, the military hero was
                       not what came immediately to the mind of Dr Guevara, but rather
                       the caring, sensitive man who deeply loved his wife and five
                       children.

                       "I was only four and a half years old when my father went to the
                       Congo, but I remember him having a very special feature – he was
                       very caring, very sensitive.

                       "We, his children, received all his tenderness. I remember one day
                       when he was with my brother. I realise now that he was saying
                       goodbye, but he was stroking my brother's head very tenderly.
                       Somehow, that left a mark on me," she said through an interpreter.

                       Dr Guevara, a paediatric consultant in Havana, insists that the two
                       sides of her father – the revolutionary and the caring father – serve
                       to make the complete man. "We, his family, understand all the
                       sacrifices he had to make. It must have been very difficult for him to
                       leave his wife and family behind and to chase his dreams.

                       "My mother was very much in love with my father. It was an
                       extraordinary love and if we as children have been socially useful, it
                       is because she educated and formed us."

                       The young Che trained as a doctor, but in 1953 he left his homeland
                       because of his opposition to the Peron regime. He went to Cuba,
                       where he joined the revolution led by Fidel Castro, which overthrew
                       the Batista dictatorship in 1959.

                       In 1965 he went to the Congo to fight against white mercenaries,
                       and later travelled back to South America where he attempted to
                       lead a peasant uprising in Bolivia. That conflict claimed his life in
                       1967.

                       During her visit Dr Guevara has given talks at meetings across the
                       Republic to promote understanding of Cuba.