CHEGUEVARA SPECIAL

The commandant's world

60-vintage-car Old is gold- A vintage car in Havana drives by a mural showing (from left) Che Guevara, Cuban national hero Jose Marti and Fidel Castro | Reuters

Che Guevara is all over Cuba, and is still revered as a great fighter and an inspirational leader

You will not find a memorial to Fidel Castro in Havana, but Ernesto Che Guevara is all over the place—at the Plaza de la Revolución, at the Museum of the Revolution, and in the shops selling products with his pictures and the shining metal star. It is not that Cubans are uncomfortable with Fidel's memory, but their great leader wanted his greatest warrior to be remembered more. Fidel's mortal remains lie in a humble cemetery in Santiago de Cuba. But he built a mausoleum for the Argentine who had joined a battle that was not his.

Che's remains were found in an unmarked pit on an airstrip in Vallegrande, Bolivia, in 1997. Fidel brought them to Santa Clara, 300km from Havana. While the Cubans who fought with Che in the battle for Santa Clara in 1958 lie buried just outside Che's mausoleum, those who died with him in the Andean mountains in Bolivia find a place inside the chamber under the 15m-tall bronze statue of Che on the move with a bandaged left arm, overlooking the magnificent square. "No photographs," said the matronly woman guarding the door to the chamber. "No bags, either."

Actually, there are two chambers. Inside the first, one can hear the water flowing, an attempt at recreating the sounds of the Ñancahuazú river in southeastern Bolivia, where Che set up his first camp. An eternal lamp lit by Fidel burns in the dimly lit chamber, which has plaques for the 18 fighters who died in the impossible battle against the 2nd Rangers of the Bolivian army trained by US Green Berets. Beyond the plaques are the mortal remains of those found at Vallegrande. Che's plaque is at the centre.

The second chamber, better lit, has exhibits from Che's early life in Argentina, his medical certificates, his personal belongings, including the wallet and personal effects of Tamara Bunke aka Tania, the East German girl killed in combat in Bolivia. The streets of Santa Clara are full of the memories of the warrior, who seized the city in 1958, forcing dictator Fulgencio Batista to flee the country with whatever he could lay his hands on.

An open museum in the heart of the city contains four closed wagons and an open one, next to the railway line to Havana. Batista had sent these wagons, filled with arms and ammunitions, and 400 soldiers to reinforce the barracks of Santa Clara, which already had 2,500 soldiers and 10 tanks. On December 29, Che's troops uprooted the rail lines and placed a Caterpillar bulldozer on the mouth of the broken tracks to stop the train. It rammed into the bulldozer, beyond which there were no rails, and derailed. The soldiers fired from portholes in the wagons, but Che's men threw Molotov cocktails at the train. As the wagons heated up, the soldiers came out and surrendered, with their 22 carriages of anti-aircraft and machine guns. It gave a great fillip to the rebel army, which was short on arms and ammunition. After that, the soldiers in the garrison surrendered without a fight.

61-Arley-Varona Living like Che- Arley Varona with the man who calls himself Che. He lives deep inside Sierra Maestra, and leads a life similar to the one led by the revolutionaries in the late 1950s.

The battle for Santa Clara was one of Che's independent operations in the Cuban revolutionary war that lasted three years. In the midst of the battle, Che fell in love with a pretty combatant called Aleida March. She had been a peasant girl who trained to be a teacher, but ended up in the 26 July Movement, named so by Fidel to commemorate the daring attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, which led to his conviction and release from jail 22 months later. In her book Remembering Che, she describes how she came across a copy of 'History Will Absolve Me', Fidel's famous self-defence during the Moncada trial, and was bowled over.

Aleida mostly worked as a courier for the revolutionaries till she met Che at his camp in the Escambray Mountains. She had gone there to deliver money taped to her body. In her book, she remembers asking Che to help remove the tape which was hurting her. Later, he began taking her around in his jeep, and sometimes she acted as his secretary, taking notes. In her memoirs she claims she even had the power to correct him on occasion. With her knowledge or not, romance was blooming. Che confessed to Aleida that his marriage to the Peruvian economist and communist Hilda Gadea was over, but not entirely. The formality of a divorce remained, and it was done in 1959 after the revolution, before Che and Aleida became man and wife.

Hilda had met the penniless and jobless Che in Guatemala in the 1950s, during his second journey through South America. His first journey, with Alberto Granado on the Norton 500cc motorcycle they named La Poderosa, is much discussed thanks to a book he wrote and the movie called The Motorcycle Diaries. It is, however, his second journey that shaped Che the revolutionary, Che the communist, Che the anti-imperialist. He greatly admired the democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz regime in Guatemala, as is evident from the letters he wrote to his mother at the time, and when Arbenz was toppled by the US-backed puppets, his political orientation was complete.

Che was a floater, and for a while Hilda became the anchor, the provider. They got married in September 1955 after she became pregnant, but the marriage did not last long—Che joined Castro on a leaky boat called Granma (which is preserved at the Museum of the Revolution,) to wage war in Cuba.

Fidel and Che hit it off the moment they met in Mexico City. Castro was not a communist, and his only aim was to overthrow Batista, and an armed struggle seemed the only way out. Che's position was different. At first he was not convinced, but he was attracted to the romantic adventure "and the notion that would be well worth dying on a foreign beach for such pure ideals". Even as the Granma expedition team trained in Mexico, they were raided by Mexican police units in March 1956, and Che and many others were jailed. When Castro visited them, Che apparently told him to continue without him, to which Fidel replied, "I will not abandon you."

"Precious time and money had to be diverted to get us out of the Mexican jail," writes Che in his Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War. "Fidel's personal commitment towards people he holds in high esteem is the key to the fanatical loyalty he inspires." The 82-member Granma team finally landed on Cuban shores on December 2, 1956, and after a long walk made it to the Sierra Maestra ranges without most of their weapons and ammunition. Over the next two years, Che's stature grew from a physician to a tenacious warrior to the great and ruthless commandant. Fighting alongside him was Camilo Cienfuegos, whose quicksilver reflexes earned him quite a reputation. After the war ended, Cienfuegos was appointed head of armed forces, but in October 1959, while returning from a mission from Camaguey, his Cessna 310 went missing over the Straits of Florida.

Both Che and Cienfuegos occupy the pride of place in Plaza de la Revolución, where Fidel has delivered many a stirring speech, looking at the steel outlines of the faces of his two great commanders. Che's visage adorns the walls of the ministry of interior, with his famous words of salutation: "Hasta de la victoria siempre (Ever onward to victory)." The words with the visage of Cienfuegos on the wall of the ministry of informatics and communications are more down to earth: "Vas bien, Fidel (You are doing fine, Fidel)." And thereby hangs a story, narrated by Che's biographer Jorge Castaneda. The fun-loving Cienfuegos used to be by the side of Fidel at most of his public appearances. At one such appearance in Colombia, a dove settled on Fidel's shoulder. Fidel turned to Cienfuegos and asked: "Voy bien, Camilo (How am I doing, Camilo)?" Ever the loyalist, Cienfuegos said exactly what the leader wanted to hear.

Che had a different sort of relationship with Fidel, with the licence to disagree at times. The public perception of the asthmatic doctor with good looks, thus, is more romantic. The memory of Cienfuegos is celebrated with as much fervour, with children floating flowers in water on the anniversary of his disappearance, but a certain kind of reverence and adoration is reserved for Che.

Cuban children are brought up in the history of the revolution. They start their day saying, “We will be like Che”. "Education is compulsory from the age of six," said Arley Varona, who works with the state-controlled tourism department, Cubacan. "Apart from other subjects, students also learn about our heroes. As they move into higher classes, they learn in detail about the revolution."

All over Havana, the spirit of the revolution is kept alive in various museums, and the people are well aware of what took place back in December 1958. That gives them the strength to overcome the sanctions imposed by the US since 1959. Though they have free access to education and medical care and the ration books ensure that the families do not go hungry, most Cubans earn so little that sometimes they cannot afford even milk for their children. The young couple Sandro and Bayami, as they took me around old Havana, bought a packet of milk powder for their infant daughter for Rs 650 in the black market.

After the collapse of the sugar industry, tourism is the only money-spinning sector. “We survived the blockade, with help from the socialist bloc countries,” said Arley. “But when Soviet Russia collapsed, our economy was the hardest hit.” Arley started off as an English teacher with a monthly pay of 15 Cuban convertible pesos (one peso=one US dollar). He later became a customs officer, with a slightly better pay. Then he made the wise decision of joining the tourism sector as an English speaking guide. “Now I can provide for my family with the generous tips I get,” he said. Arley's dream is to buy a car, a used one. Not a really old one, but a Soviet-made one that would cost upwards of 20,000 pesos. “The people who drive these old cars are not mechanics, but magicians,” he said. “They themselves repair the vehicles.”

The really costly ones are the vintage convertibles. And its owners are the highest paid in the country! “I can take you on a trip around Havana for $40 an hour,” offered Carlos, owner of a vintage car. When I told him that I would rather hire a state-owned taxi that cost half the amount, or a Russian one that would cost even less, he said, with a sneer, “You are wasting your time.”

The medical education in the country is said to be the best, with the emphasis on prevention rather than cure, but Cuban doctors make money only out of the country. “We export a lot of talent, you see,” said Arley.

Despite the hardships, the Cubans are a happy lot. They are happy that they made their revolution and withstood the economic onslaught of a great power, even though critics say that the blockade only helped hide the shortcomings of the leadership. Their president, Fidel's younger brother Raul, will step down this year and 2018 could see a new leader for Cuba. But Cuba watchers are not expecting major changes straightaway.

Meanwhile, the legend of Che continues to grow. Deep inside the Sierra Maestra, near a waterfall called El Salton or the big jump, lives a man who calls himself Che. He grows his own crops and lives like a revolutionary, shunning the luxuries of modern life. Of late, he is getting some visitors who are willing to buy his produce, but he has no use for their money.

And then, there are those who believe in the infallibility of El Comandante. When Hurricane Matthew hit Cuba in September 2016, the government asked people living in the coastal areas to move out to safer places. A farmer in Baracoa, in the eastern part of Cuba, stayed put in his wooden house and he was untouched by the hurricane. When journalists asked him why he did not move out, he said, pointing to a picture of Che, "I didn't move, because I knew he was going to protect me."

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