"Fidel has said that he still dreams of my father being alive"

Excerpt from the speech given by the daughter of Ernesto Che Guevara, Dr. Aleida Guevara March in Vancouver on April 2, 1998 at the Hebb Theatre at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

In getting to know the reality of the American Continent, this young man was being modified. It showed him that there was another reality in the world that there are men and women who die of hunger and of need. It showed him the racial problems that existed in the American Continent, problems caused by the society of consumerism; when a poor woman is no longer useful to her children because she is no longer economically able to provide for her home, she is cast off to a corner without any consideration. This also hurt Che Guevara. This man leaves Argentina with the desire to discover worlds, and to perhaps become a great scientist, the one who discovers the cure of leprosy, now has discovered a perhaps sadder, more complex disease, which is worse and more generalized. So he tries to change this by finding a solution for these people. This is how he arrives in Mexico and he meets Fidel Castro.

Now this is when one of the campaigns that most bothers me personally took place, the one that says that my father and Fidel did not get along and for that reason my father left Cuba; or there are some who go further by saying that Fidel abandoned my father and is the one responsible for his death. There is nothing more false than this! The friendship between these two men began in Mexico. All of them were taken prisoner but since there was nothing against these comrades, they had to be released, except my father who was already classified as communist, a word which for long time and still today sounds bad to some. But the truth is that Fidel Castro does not abandon him; having been able to go on with his comrades to continue the struggle, he decides to remain until my father is freed. As a result, in my father's personal dairy, he states that he has just seen an enormous strength in this leader. This is how they arrive in Cuba and their friendship grows stronger, they mutually respect and admire each other as comrades; but this friendship and human relationship is made more, let's say, indestructible, during the years they spend together building a new society for Cuba. I am witness that at times they did argue, but the way that two good friends might argue over social or economic problems. Arguments to grow, to know each other's position and to improve it in practice.

In reality, my father, made Fidel commit himself that after the triumph of the Revolution he could be free to continue the struggle outside Cuba. My father never renounced his Argentinean citizenship and perhaps, his greatest ambition was to achieve for his people what he had achieved in Cuba. In a speech at the United Nations he states very clearly that with the permission of the authorities of Latin America, he felt as a Latin American as any of them, and he was a great admirer of Simon Bolivar and of José Martí. Therefore, his greatest dream was freedom, the economic and political independence of the American Continent.

Fidel arranges his trip to the Congo. He says that there has been a request that someone from Cuba go to help the African revolutionary movement and my father accepts the mission. The problem is that Cuba has always had a very powerful enemy, too close to us for our liking, and the CIA has never wasted its time. So in 1965 a campaign against Fidel and Raúl Castro commences in which they stated that Fidel and Raúl are the ones who murdered my father. Therefore, Fidel has no other choice than to make public my father's farewell letter. In this letter which you are surely familiar with, my father says farewell to the Cuban people. The African Revolutionary movement has internal conflicts and after my father had been in the Congo for one year, he himself decides that movement has no future and he decides to withdraw. But he didn't want to go back to Cuba because he had already officially said goodbye to the Cuban people. And once again Fidel Castro swings into action and he get my father to return to Cuba, using for this purpose a very special messenger who works as hard as Fidel and my father combined, my mother. And she makes my father understand that the only place that he can prepare himself is Cuba.

I have to say that at this time in my father's life there are very fine definitions and there is also a high quota of sacrifice. Because another thing that has been said many times about my father is that he was an adventurer. On an occasion he admitted it, but that he was one of those adventurers that risk their skin to prove what they were made of. And this man has to say goodbye to his children. Already disguised, transformed as "old Ramon", he wants to say goodbye to us. So he invites us to a dinner as if he were a friend of my father's. Because this person who is in front of you has always been talkative, he could not reveal himself to me because the next day I would be saying, "..I saw my dad, I had dinner with him and he is in such and such a place". This could not be. This is the last evening he saw us. And much later, we found out that that had been my father. But something happened there that marked me for my whole life. Because after having dinner and talking with my father, I continue playing with my siblings and I fell down and hit my head. I remember it was a pink marble table. Just having finished eating dinner my father took me in his arms, he acted as a father and as a doctor but one way or another he made me feel that he loved me because a little while later, he and my mother began talking, one in front of the other. I started walking around my mother saying, "I have to tell you a little secret". At that time I was just 5 years old and you know that the secrets of small children are said out loud. My poor mother already had disagreeable experiences with me, because once when I was in an elevator with her, the Cuban national poet got on to the elevator and as you may remember, our national poet, Nicolas Guillen, was a somewhat ugly man. There I also told my mother a little secret, I said," Mom this man looks like a chimpanzee" and it goes without saying that the national poet never spoke to me again. So then, with these kinds of comments, my mother was very afraid of what I might have to say. Finally, it seems that my father made some signals to her allowing me to talk to her and I told her, "Mom, I think this man is in love with me". Now this can cause laughter but at that moment it was a very difficult situation for my father because he would have liked to take me on his arms and tell me that, yes he was in love with me because he was my father. Although I was denied that possibility, I knew that no man had ever loved me with that intensity. That was the last night we were together.

Now after going through difficult and wonderful moments in my life, I have another great father beside me. That's why I have said that the problem between my father and Fidel is totally false because all these times Fidel has been by our side. This past year(1997), we received the remains of my father..It was an extremely emotional moment, but when I hugged my uncle Fidel; I tried to make efforts to protect him because the pain and the emotion I saw reflected in his eyes was of a great friend and a great brother. In some statements Fidel has said that he still dreams of my father being alive and he discusses with him the problems of every day life in Cuba. We are living very difficult moments in Cuba today. But the thinking of Che, his example, his action is perhaps more present that ever because in these difficult moments there is a great need for this kind of men in order to resist and to grow in the face of these difficulties.

I will read a short story passage to you, of things that he wrote down for the Cuban people but I think they can serve any body in any part of the world.

In this period of building socialism we can see the new man being born. His image is not yet completely finished -it never could be-since the process goes forward hand in hand with the development of new economic forms. Leaving out of consideration those whose lack of education makes them take the solitary road toward satisfying their own personal ambitions, there are those, even within this new panorama of a unified march forward, who have a tendency to remain isolated from the masses accompanying them.

When I think of the people in Cuba, I am certain that we are creating a new person but it is undeniable that in these economic times that we are living there are some people who are straying, who do not understand perhaps the most wonderful aspect of socialism which is that you as an individual do not have significance, now you are part of a bigger picture which is the people.