“In some ways, La Pastera has a strong symbolic weight; looking back at its history, I can say it’s much more than 18 years. Because, well, if we go back to the origins, it’s ground zero, it’s the passage of Ernesto Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado, and the solidarity of the local workers,” its director, Dario Fuentes, told Prensa Latina.

  While passing through those Patagonian lands, they needed to spend the night, but no one would give them a place to stay. They found the night watchman in that old shed, who opened the door for them to sleep that night, and they ended up staying for a week. They liked the surroundings, experiencing that Andean setting, Fuentes recounts.

  “La Pastera, Che Museum” was inaugurated on June 20, 2008, as part of the celebrations for the 80th anniversary of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s birth. It is housed in a 1946 wooden shed in San Martin de los Andes, within the grounds of the Lanin National Park Administration, originally used to store hay for horses—hence its name, “La Pastera” (The Hay Barn), its director remembers.

  Che and Alberto passed through there during their first motorcycle trip through Latin America in the summer of 1952. The space came about through a loan agreement between the State Workers Association and the National Parks Secretariat.

  Years passed, the building endured dictatorships, attempts to demolish it, and even sales, until ATE (Association of State Workers) arrived and fulfilled the desire to create a space dedicated to Che Guevara. After renovating it, we inaugurated it on June 20, 2008, with his daughter, Dr. Aleida Guevara, in attendance.

  The site, he continues, has received visits from many people connected to Che, such as his brother Juan Martin Guevara, his friend Calica Ferrer, and Yola Guzman; “we even displayed La Poderosa, the motorcycle he used on his Latin American journey, for a while.”

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