Tuesday, August 09, 2011

"Shooting Victim's Sister Seeks Meaning Of Graffiti Quotes"

This is a tad weird.
SAN ANTONIO -- Besides sharing a name, Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara and San Antonian Raul "Che" Gonzalez were killed four decades apart -- Guevara by the Bolivian army in 1967; Gonzalez by an unknown shooter on June 10.

Now they are linked by two of Guevara's famous quotes.

Someone left the first message at the crime scene soon after the 32-year-old father and music producer was shot in the face and chest behind a strip mall at Ingram and Callaghan.

Gonzalez's sister, Sandy Levy, said she can only speculate why someone first scrawled, "Go ahead and shoot, coward, because you're only killing a man. I am Che."

"It made me sad because it made me realize how much my brother meant to this community," Levy said.

The second Guevara quote appeared most recently at a laundromat at Wilson and Cincinnati, near where Gonzalez's mother still lives.

Levy said their mother was taken aback when she went there to dry her laundry and saw what was crudely scrawled at the entrance, "I don't care if I fall as long as someone picks up my gun and keeps on shooting. I am Che."
(from KSAT-12)

I doubt this has anything to do with the shooting victim. I think someone is using Che Guevara as a pitiful source of inspiration for the mysterious graffiti, but the similarity to San Antonio's Che Gonzalez is purely coincidental. Someone's trying to be clever and edgy (if references to Che Guevara could ever be "edgy" anymore), and Gonzalez's family sees meaning in it, but I don't think they have anything to worry about.

No comments: