[News] Aleida Guevara: "Che is back again"

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://groups.io/g/cubanews/topic/77304244 CUBADEBATE: Aleida Guevara:
"Che is back again"
October 3, 2020
------------------------------

Aleida Guevara as a child with the leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel
Castro. Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee

When she was four years old, she saw, in the gloom of Mom's room, Dad
caressing Ernesto's head, as if he were saying goodbye to the youngest of
the children. A month after turning five, she heard Fidel Castro
<http://www.cubadebate.cu/etiqueta/fidel-castro-ruz/> on television and
there, while he was reading a farewell letter, she discovered her mother in
tears. At the age of six, Aleida Guevara
<http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2017/06/14/mi-padre-el-che-anecdotas-de-aleida-guevara-fotos-y-video/>
learned
that "daddy", as she says to Che, had died. October is definitely a sad
month.

She wears the same eyes and sometimes the smile gives her away more than
the surnames, although Guevara is Guevara and comes from the very southern
cone, from the roots of a continent.

At sixty years of age, Aleida - Che's doctor, pediatrician and daughter -
says that she inherited a love for photography from the guerrilla commander
and clarifies, raising her index finger, that her brother Camilo is a
better photographer than she. As her father called her, Aliucha is proud of
her insularity, of a country that Ernesto Guevara loved like her own, where
she made a Revolution and a family. From here the commander would have to
leave, leaving her loved ones, because "other lands of the world demanded
the assistance of her modest efforts."

- This October 3 marks the 55th anniversary of Che's farewell letter
<http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2017/10/03/la-historica-carta-del-che-a-fidel-su-despedida-hacia-la-inmortalidad-facsimil-y-video/>
. How
did you feel the first time you read it, especially when he says “I don't
leave my children and my wife anything material and it doesn't make me sad:
I'm glad it is so”?

The first time I heard it, it was very small and it struck me because I
also saw my mother on television with my uncle Fidel who was reading that
letter. I didn't quite understand what it was about, but my mom was
crying. She always educated us in the idea that we could be children of a
very special man, but for that reason we should not receive anything
special. The Revolution would give us what we need to develop as human
beings, period. They have asked me in Argentina and various places "what my
dad left me" and they give me fits of laughter because he had nothing
material to leave behind, only his example.

- At one point in the farewell letter to Fidel, Che states: "I am also
proud to have followed you without hesitation, identified with your way of
thinking and seeing and appreciating the dangers and principles. How
similar and, at the same time, different, were Ernesto Guevara and the
Commander in Chief?

>From a human point of view they are very similar. Che learns to respect
Fidel as a true military leader, especially during his time in prison in
Mexico. They all got freedom except for my father and another colleague
because they are branded as communists and pro-Soviet. Fidel told me that
anecdote years later: “I went to discuss with your father in jail because I
had warned them not to say their political condition, but there I realized
that Che did not know how to lie, not even if his life depended on him.
that". The Commander could have left on the Granma yacht without him, and
he didn't. He managed to get Daddy released and they left together for Cuba.

Che and Fidel, together with little Aleida. Photo: Courtesy of the
interviewee.

–The letter is written as if Che knew that it was probable that he would
never return ...

All the guerrillas have to prepare this terrain and create awareness that
it can happen. The bullets have no name. He says it in the letter: that the
truth hit them all because in a true Revolution, either you win or you
die. There is no other. His dream was a free, independent, united America,
as one nation.

- When Che left Cuba, you were barely 4 and a half years old. What image
with your father do you remember, do you have intact in your memory?

Two images. One is in my mom's room. She has my brother Ernesto, a newborn,
leaning on her shoulder and my dad is behind him, dressed in military
clothing, with a very large hand touching the baby's head. She is doing it
with such tenderness that that moment is forever engraved on me. At that
moment he had to have thought many things: "Will this little boy recognize
me one day? Will he understand why I will not be by his side when he grows
up? ..." Perhaps in those thoughts lies the greatness of my father. Not all
human beings have that strength and it must always be respected.

Che as a family. Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee.

“And the other image is when he transforms into Ramón and welcomes us. My
mother takes us to see a friend of my father, "old Ramón", in a safe house
in Pinar del Río. When we go to dinner he serves red wine on its own, but
Daddy usually drank it with water. There I jumped like a spring and said:
'you are not my father's friend' and I explained that Daddy drank red wine
with water. I went to the end of the table where he was sitting and poured
the water into his glass because 'that's how he was rich.' Mommy says the
man was excited about it.

“Afterwards, the four brothers continued playing and I slipped and hit my
head on a marble table. Then 'old Ramón' took me in his arms, he felt me
immediately, and I felt something that was not normal for me: a strange
man, who would protect me like this? Then I spoke to my mother because I
had to tell her a secret and I told her in full voice: 'Mom, I think this
man is in love with me.

“A long time later my mother told me that this man was my father, but it
still had to be kept a secret. I grew up with the feeling that my dad loved
me, they weren't just papers, letters, they were gestures, feelings,
because a child doesn't lie. When a child feels these things it is for real
”.

–You tell in the documentary *Absence Present* that Che kissed her very
hard ...

Daddy squeezed me while he kissed me and that made me wake up. I got a
little scared of the dark because I was looking at a guy I hardly saw, at
night and giving me those squeezes ... On one of her trips, Mommy tells her
that in a book there is a story about a little lion that accompanies a
child with fear until the little one gains strength and the lion leaves
because the child loses his fear. She explains to him that I have received
that reading very well. So one of my dad's few expenses is buying me a
stuffed lion.

-He was an austere man ...

My father? Tremendously. And with good reason. He was leaving in the name
of a people that did not have, as we say, where to tie the goat. How was he
going to spend money on us? That was not logical, but also, he did not have
time either. He traveled with the minutes counted and participated in one
activity after another. Going to a store to buy something from us was
impossible. However, Daddy buys me the little lion and it was extraordinary
for me because my stuffed animal always accompanied me and I gradually lost
my fear of the dark. And already in her last trips she brings me a doll.

Che with his family. photo: Courtesy of the interviewee.

–In his farewell letter to his children, Che tells them: “Always be capable
of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone in any part of the
world. It is the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary ”. Has Aleida
Guevara taken it with her?

Most of us Cubans have taken it with one. At this point it pains me a
little that our doctors do not talk about him because generations of Cuban
doctors have been educated with the example of Che. He is the first
revolutionary doctor. When I was studying the last year of Medicine, Fidel
brought us together and suggested that Nicaragua needed doctors, the
Sandinista Revolution had just triumphed, and he asked us how many of us
wanted to do the internationalist internship. A lot of boys between 22 and
23 years old went there.

“Then the threat against that country begins and Fidel decides to get all
the women out of there. We discussed that at one point because I felt I was
failing my teammates. We were all together. Why are we leaving? It didn't
seem fair to me. I remember saying, 'Man, don't hurt me. I consider myself
your daughter, and when the generals send their troops the first must be
their children. ' Then, in the few things that Fidel wrote to me, he said:
'I can never hurt you. Do not think that. It's just to protect them. ' Then
I go to Moa, in Holguín ”.

-From Managua to Moa ...

Tremendous change. At that time, Moa was one of the richest cities in Cuba
from an industrial point of view, but poorer in terms of social
structure. This looked like an American West. I had several confrontations
in Moa because, unfortunately, we as human beings tend to settle, sometimes
in a certain position, to only receive the benefits, but not to give the
sacrifices that a public position in this country entails. And I lived
those things there, and they cost me my tears. But it is my country, and I
am not silent about anything.

“After a year I return to Havana and the request for missions arrives
again. I went to the Ministry of Public Health, I introduced myself as a
doctor at the 'Pedro Borrás' hospital and they told me that Angola was
where I should go. There I said: 'No, I just left Nicaragua at war and
Angola is my turn, at war!' But I accepted. I remember I was leaving on
October 6th, hear this: October 6th! When I got home my mom almost had
seizures that day. She shut herself up to cry. But she had taught me to be
socially useful.
Angola: "The two hardest years of my life"

“I have been working with children with tuberculosis. I remember Celson. I
will never forget. He was waiting for me at the door of the tuberculosis
ward and I tied the cloth around my back and gave him a walk around the
perimeter of the hospital. Celson was happy with that. I remember that the
director of the center, a Portuguese pichon, told me insulted that I was
making fun. I replied: 'You are wrong. Look at that kid's face. Don't you
see her happy? For me that is the most important thing and what I need to
face one day in this hospital: Celson's smile. You can't take it from me. '

Celson, one of the tuberculosis children Aleida treated in Angola. Photo:
Courtesy of the interviewee

“I remember another boy who slept in a naked doorway under some newspapers
with which he covered himself. That day I was the guard in the building,
and our boss kicked a bundle of papers and from there the boy came out. He
got up, folded the newspapers, and tucked them under his arm. Look, boy, I
still can't talk about it. It was such a pain that I went upstairs and took
off the olive green sweater I was wearing and it was hot. I went
downstairs, called him and put it on him. That little boy looked at me and
said 'dad'.

“I tried to help him, I took him to the shelters, but he ran away
again. Until he didn't come back anymore. That is why I think that it is
not possible that some people do not feel the enormous privilege we have of
being Cubans and maintaining a society where the life of the human being is
more important than any money in the world. That is the most beautiful
thing that men like Che have left us ”.

Aleida during her two years of mission in Africa. Photo: Courtesy of the
interviewee

- What would Che love today? What would make you angry?

I would be very proud of the Cuban doctors. Despite all the economic
problems we have had, we have not lost the most beautiful quality of a
revolutionary as he said in the letter: "to feel the injustice committed
against anyone in any part of the world." Our doctors do it every day with
the Henry Reeve brigade
<http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2020/09/26/registran-formalmente-candidatura-del-contingente-medico-cubano-henry-reeve-al-premio-nobel-de-la-paz/>
,
for example, or with the Latin American School of Medicine ( ELAM
<http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2019/11/13/preside-diaz-canel-acto-por-aniversario-20-de-la-elam/>
 ).

“On the other hand, Che was always a very critical man, therefore, he would
make us many remarks about today's Cuba, especially regarding the
self-employed. He would never understand. No way. That, in the long run, is
a small cancer in our society, because people start to think only in their
pockets. But sometimes you have to make decisions that, although they are
not always the right ones, are the ones that are within our reach. And you
have to learn to walk with them ”.

- And to you, does it not bother you that sometimes Che's ideas are used
opportunistically?

- That they put them as a slogan and don't feel them, and don't live them,
of course it bothers me. The good thing is that at least they say them.

-But sometimes they say them without consciousness...

But he who has it listens to it. Perhaps whoever uses it did it to finish a
beautiful speech, but the one who does have a conscience hears it and knows
that it is not being practiced as it should be. Opportunists we can have
everywhere and we must rescue many values that have been lost in the
special periods lived.

- At what times have you said to yourself "if my father were here"?

A lot of times! When I brought my oldest daughter into the world and she
was opening her eyes after the anesthesia for the cesarean section, I saw
two men next to me: they were Ramiro Valdés and Oscar Fernández Mel. "What
are you doing here?" I say to them, and they reply: "Since your father is
not here, we are here." Only! And of course I miss it. I wish I could have
seen Daddy with his grandchildren on his knees, talking to them and
teaching them much more than I can teach my daughters. Those things happen
to you like a flash to your head.

Moments of the birth of Aleida Guevara's eldest daughter. Photo: Courtesy
of the interviewee.

- In one of his speeches, Che states that the goal of the new generations
is that they forget him and the Commander in Chief. But perhaps in that he
was wrong. What do you think?

That was in one of the last speeches he made to the young people of the
Ministry of Industries, in which he told them that their goal one day is to
forget Fidel, him ... At first when I read it I said “but is my dad crazy?
" But he said it in the sense that, when we surpassed everything that they
preached to us with their example, then it would not be necessary to have
them so present. And that's what he's telling us: the goal is to overcome
them and be better human beings than they are. But we have not yet been
able.

- What has been the greatest affront that you have experienced from the
people towards Che?

When you see people who are not able to move for a child who is dying, for
example. My dad said that the life of a single child was worth more than
all the gold on earth. And it is what I also feel as a doctor and a human
being. To see someone who does not show indignation at seeing a child die
hits me a lot.

- And the greatest gratitude?

I work with the Landless Movement in Brazil. And they practice Che every
day. When you see men and women, sometimes with a cultural level that is
not high, but capable of feeling that man and putting it into practice,
then you say “he is multiplying”. Che returns again, with the shield over
his arm. What to tell you about the Cuban doctors who went to fight Ebola
without really knowing what they were going to face, risking their lives…
Che is there. As a daughter, I really appreciate it. It's seeing your dad
again. In combat.

During the Interview. Photo: Jorge Luis Coll / Cubadebate

Aleida Guevara is currently 60 years old. Photo: Jorge Luis Col /
Cubadebate.
In video, excerpts from the interview with Aleida Guevara

ANDY JORGE BLANCO <http://www.cubadebate.cu/autor/andy-jorge-blanco/>
[image: Andy Jorge Blanco]

Cárdenas, 1996. Student of Journalism at the University of
Havana. Presenter of "Nexos", the Channel of the University of Havana. He
has been awarded in the National Contest of University Journalism "Manolito
Carbonell".

   - Aleida Guevara: "Che is back again, with the shield over his arm" (
   Photos and video)
   <http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2020/10/03/aleida-guevara-el-che-vuelve-otra-vez-con-la-adarga-al-brazo-fotos-y-video/>
   October 3, 2020 |
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