Argentina decides to jump on the Che Guevara bandwagon

Today, this new statue of Ernesto "El Che" Guevara is being paraded round the streets of Buenos Aires before it sets sail (literally, it's travelling by boat) for Guevara's city of birth, Rosario, where it'll find its permanent home. Of course his face is already everywhere in South America, from enormous stone busts in Venezuela to murals in Cuba to painted on the back end of buses in Bolivia, and all points in between. Seems like his home country has finally decided to get in on the act.

The artist, Andres Zerneri, made the statue from metal donated by around 15,000 people, and included around 75,000 keys in the melting pot. All this a is a far cry from just a few years ago, when this humble Otto found himself walking down Araoz St. in the centre of Buenos Aires and remembered it was the same street the Guevara's called home for many years. On visiting the house number where Che lived, there was nothing to commemorate him. Friends now say there is a big brass plaque there, too.