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railroad trestle spanning a chasm; explored a dangerous abandoned mine shaft; and played torero with an irascible ram. He and his
barra
companions once went around Alta Gracia shooting out the streetlights with their slingshots. Ernesto and a friend, Juan Míguez, settled a score with a member of a rival gang by defecatingonto the ivory keys of his parents’ grand piano. And then there was the glorious occasion when Ernesto shot burning firecrackers through an open window into a neighbor’s formal dinner party, scattering the guests.
    Ernesto’s antics earned the Guevaras some local notoriety, but the family stood out in other ways. “Bohemian” is the term most often used to describe their buoyant, disorderly household. They observed few social conventions in their home. Neighborhood youngsters who arrived at tea-time or supper were invited to stay and eat, and there were always extra mouths to feed at the dinner table. The Guevara children made friends indiscriminately. They played with the sons of golf caddies and others whose homes were in “lower” Alta Gracia.
    It was Celia
madre
, however, who made the greatest impression as a free-thinking individual. Elba Rossi, the headmistress, recalled that Celia set the record for many “firsts” for women in the socially stratified community. She drove a car and wore trousers, for instance. Others cited Celia’s smoking of cigarettes as a direct challenge to social norms of the day.
    Celia got away with these radical-seeming gestures because of her social standing and her displays of generosity. She regularly drove her own children and their friends to and from school in the family car they had dubbed La Catramina (The Heap), a massive old 1925 Maxwell convertible with a jump seat in back. She inaugurated the practice of giving each child in school a cup of milk by paying for it herself, a custom later adopted by the local school board to ensure that poorer children had some nutrition during the school day.
    Unlike most of their neighbors, the Guevaras espoused anticlerical views. Ernesto Guevara Lynch’s mother was an atheist, and he had had a secular upbringing. The religiously schooled Celia’s views were less certain, and throughout her life she retained a penchant for the spiritual. When they first arrived in Alta Gracia, Celia had attended Sunday Mass, taking the children with her, but according to her husband she did so for “the spectacle” more than out of any residual religious faith.
    Yet, for all their libertarian views, the Guevaras shared with many other lapsed Catholics a contradiction between belief and practice, never entirely forsaking the traditional rituals that ensured social acceptance in their conservative society. Although they no longer attended church, the Guevaras had their children baptized as Catholics. Ernestito’s godfather was the wealthy Pedro León Echagüe, through whom Celia and Ernesto Guevara Lynch had met, and who had persuaded Ernesto to seek his fortune in Misiones.
    By the time Ernesto junior entered school, however, Celia had stopped going to Mass, and the Guevaras asked for their children to beexcused from religion classes. Roberto remembered playing after-school soccer games formed by opposing teams of children: those who believed in God and those who didn’t. Those who didn’t invariably lost because they were so few in number.
    Ernesto’s fellow students in Alta Gracia recalled, unanimously, his quickness in class, although he was rarely seen studying. He didn’t seem to have a competitive urge for grades, and his own were usually mediocre. It was a phenomenon that mystified his father. This theme was a constant refrain during Ernesto’s formative years. His father never seems to have understood what made his eldest son tick, just as he never completely understood his wife, Celia. To him, Celia was “imprudent from birth” and “attracted to danger,” and she was at fault for passing these traits on to their