- Title: CUBA: Che Guevara's ideals still remembered in Cuba
- Date: 5th October 2007
- Summary: (EU) HAVANA , CUBA (OCTOBER 01, 2007) (REUTERS) CUBAN DISSIDENT AND EX-GUERRILLA WHO FOUGHT WITH GUEVARA IN THE CUBAN REVOLUTION, ELOY GUTIERREZ MENOYO CUBAN DISSIDENT AND EX-GUERRILLA WHO FOUGHT WITH GUEVARA IN THE CUBAN REVOLUTION, ELOY GUTIERREZ MENOYO, SAYING: "I tell you, if he was alive he would probably be protesting against (the failed Cuban system) just like me.
- Embargoed: 20th October 2007 09:17
- Keywords:
- Location: Cuba
- Country: Cuba
- Topics: History,People
- Reuters ID: LVA3L5O03PZCJ5ALSENQZZFLZPNC
- Aspect Ratio: 4:3
- Story Text: Ten years ago the body of the revolutionary Ernesto "Che"
Guevara was triumphantly returned to Cuba, the country where had he joined Fidel Castro in an armed uprising that ousted a U.S. backed dictator in 1959.
Guevara had been executed after his capture by troops in Bolivia, and for 30 years no one could find his body.
Then in 1997 it was announced his grave had been found, and although he had previously renounced all of his government titles and Cuban nationality, he still returned as a hero - complete with a ringing tribute from Castro and full military salute.
Today, a decade later and four decades since his death and his name still stirs deep emotions in Cuba.
Older Cubans who fought with him remember Guevara as an austere and demanding leader who drove his outnumbered men into battle with dictator Fulgencio Batista's soldiers.
Isidoro Rodriguez was one of the men who fought alongside him, and at 78-years-old Rodriguez still sheds a tear when speaking about the man he describes as a hero.
"He was our hero, a Cuban. He was a hero, and not a guerrilla. No, he was a hero of the people," Rodriguez said as he began to cry.
Rodriguez was an illiterate wood-cutter when he smuggled weapons and medicine under his logs to Guevara's rebels in the Escambray hills of central Cuba in 1958.
The young Guevara had inspired him, and Rodriguez said he wishes his hero had never left Cuba.
"It was hard to let (Guevara) go from here (Cuba). He shouldn't have ever left," Rodriguez said.
"Fidel held him back but we still lost him. We lost him."
For those who are too young to remember Guevara, however, stories of the Argentine-born revolutionary have to be learnt.
Every morning Cuban school children raise their hands in salute of "El Che".
"Pioneers for Communism, we will be like Che," they chant.
The image Castro's government wants young Cubans to remember of Che Guevara is of selfless revolutionary, who encouraged voluntary work by setting an example with his own sweat, pushing a wheelbarrow at a building site or cutting sugar cane in the fields with a machete.
"El Che was a very important figure in our country, and he was also a person that helped our country a lot and he is remembered by all of the Cuban people," said 14-year-old student Ense Nianza Media.
"Not just for me, but for all Latin Americans I think he was a great figure, a revolutionary. Unfortunately I was not alive during his time, but just like Fidel, he inspired a fair degree of respect in me," said Richard, a tourist from El Salvador.
Biographer John Lee Anderson describes how Guevara executed traitors in cold blood with a bullet shot in the head during the guerrilla struggle in the Sierra Maestra mountains, a task his Cuban comrades-in-arms could not stomach.
When Batista fled Cuba and Castro's disheveled guerrillas marched into Havana, Guevara set up his office in the La Cabana fortress overlooking the city, where he oversaw the trials of Batista henchmen and executions by firing squad in the moats.
Government officials, however, deny these accounts, preferring to use the name of Che Guevara to stoke support for the current administration.
"I am certain that if Che Guevara was here he would be doing exactly what we are doing here now, with more creativity than me, with more wit, he was a very profound thinker and in truth he spent a lot of time in that - thinking, reflecting, with a very free, creative spirit. He never fit into the mould. The only mould he did fit into was that of a revolutionary, and he followed that to the letter," said Cuban National Assembly president, Ricardo Alarcon.
Guevara's widow, Aleida March, his second wife with whom he had four children, prefers to stay out of politics.
"My job is to direct the Che Guevara Studies Center, and I think I am doing that pretty well. That is my job, but I don't want to give media interviews because if I do one then afterwards it will make my life very difficult. Excuse me," March told Reuters.
As the ailing Fidel Castro, 81, fades from the political stage, Cubans also appear to be too concerned with makingmeet in the inefficient state-run economy that Guevara advocated to pay attention to his lofty ideals anymore.
Besides the massive steel silhouette overlooking Havana's Revolution Square and his image on Cuban banknotes, one former guerrilla commander says there is little else left of Guevara in contemporary Cuba.
Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo was the leader of the Escambray front until Guevara showed up. He always admired Guevara the guerrilla fighter but not the communist, a view that led him to oppose Castro and cost him 22 years in Cuban prisons.
"I tell you, if he was alive he would probably be protesting against (the failed Cuban system) just like me. He would have been put in prison - I was put in for 22 years. At best, El Che would have stayed out of jail that long, but he probably would have been put away in the end. It needs to be asked, why Che left and went away to Bolivia," Menoyo said.
Will the Cubans ever be able to forget Guevara though? It seems unlikely, at least for some time.
"It seems to me that an image like Che's will not be easily erased from the Cuban imagination, independently of the transformation that ocurrs, even in the worst case scenarios like a radical change in the political orientation of the island. Even with that, it seems to me that it is a figure that will be difficult to erase from history," said Cuban analyst Waldo Ansaldi from his Buenos Aires office in Argentina.
The anniversary of Che Guevara's death is on October 9. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2020. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None