[NYTr] AFP: Cuba, Bolivia commemorate Che Guevara

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Dave Muller (southnews)

AFP - Oct 9, 2007

Cuba, Bolivia commemorate 40th anniversary of Che Guevara's death

By Rigoberto Diaz

Agence France-Presse

LEFTIST leaders and sympathisers marked the 40th anniversary of the 
death of revolutionary icon Ernesto Che Guevara today in Cuba, where he 
is buried, and Bolivia, where he was killed in 1967.

Cuba's Acting President, Raul Castro, led the main event under a giant 
bronze statue of the guerrilla fighter in the town of Santa Clara, some 
300 kilometres (186 miles) east of Havana.

Convalescing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, 81, was absent, but a homage he 
penned was read in public. The Argentine-born doctor-turned-guerrilla 
was "a flower torn up prematurely by the stem. I bow my head to pay 
tribute - with respect and gratitude - to the exceptional warrior," 
Castro wrote.

Guevara's Argentine widow Aleida March, 71, attended the event, along 
with his four children Aleida, Camilo, Celia and Ernesto. Guevara had a 
daughter with his first wife, a Peruvian revolutionary, both of whom
are dead.

Loudspeakers also blared an October 3, 1965 recording of Castro reading 
a farewell letter that Guevara wrote as he prepared to join the 
guerrilla war in the Congo.

Guevara's youngest son, Ernesto, honoured his father by roaring by on a 
bright red motorcycle along with 37 members of Cuba's Harley-Davidson 
motorcycle club.

The drive-by memorialised Guevara's ride across Latin America in the 
early 1950s on his Norton 250, immortalised in the book - recently 
turned into a movie - The Motorcycle Diaries.

Guevara fought a key battle in Santa Clara in 1958 during the Cuban 
revolution. In 1997 Castro buried Guevara's remains in this town after 
his bones were discovered in Vallegrande, Bolivia, where soldiers 
executed him after he was captured in 1967 as he tried to spread
Marxist revolution to South America.

In Vallegrande, at the main Bolivian event, leftist President Evo 
Morales told a crowd of 3000, including a former guerrilla fighter from 
Cuba and leftists from six nations, that Che will be remembered "for
his political ideology and for giving his life for others".

"This struggle continues, as long as there is capitalism, as long as 
neo-liberalism does not change," Mr Morales said as the crowd roared in 
support.

The leftist Venezuelan Government honoured Che by unveiling a monument 
at Pico del Aguila, some 4000 metres (13,100 feet) above sea level in 
western Venezuela.

"This is a sacred place," said Culture Minister Francisco Sesto, noting 
that both Che and 19th century liberator Simon Bolivar visited the site.

In Miami, the capital of the rabidly anti-Castro Cuban exile community, 
the views on Che were not as positive.

"He is the symbol of anti-Americanism, of violence. I don't think he 
should be remembered for anything good," said Felipe Salinas, a
resident of Miami's Little Havana.

"Like many people," said Maria Carrera, another exile who left Cuba a 
decade ago, "I was a Che fanatic. But since I arrived in Miami I don't 
defend him any more. Here we receive information, which does not happen 
in Cuba, about Che ordering many executions."

Che is a complex person that blends legend and reality, said Uva de 
Aragon, a Cuban-American academic at Florida International University.

"We'll still have to wait many years for history to deliver a definite 
judgement on Che, when the passions of both sides have passed," she
said.

Born in the Argentine city of Rosario, Guevara was shocked to witness 
the economic disparity of the region during his travels across Latin 
America in 1952 and 1953.

Guevara met Castro in Mexico in 1955, and quickly joined the uprising 
against then Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. By the time the 
revolution triumphed in January 1959, Guevara was a key player.

The guerrilla leader was convinced that violence was necessary to 
overturn the unjust social order in Latin America.

After leaving Cuba and leading a group of Cuban revolutionaries
fighting with Marxist guerrillas in the Congo, Guevara travelled to
Bolivia, arriving in late 1966.

He led a small clutch of rebels for 11 months trying to spread 
revolution, but found little support.

The Bolivian army and two Cuban-American US Central Intelligence Agency 
agents captured an ill Guevara in the village of La Higuera, and 
executed him on October 9, 1967. He was 39.