CUBA: ‘Che’ Guevara’s Family Remains Sceptical

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 27 1995 (IPS) - Confused but not surprised by recent revelations of the whereabouts of the remains of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the eldest of the legendary guerrilla fighters’ grandchildren told IPS that “what is important is not where he is buried, but where his ideas are best understood.”

Like other relatives of the Argentine-Cuban guerrilla fighter who was killed in Bolivia in 1967, Canet Sanchez Guevara does not feel qualified to judge whether the remains of his grandfather should be returned to Cuba, or buried where he lived out his last days.

Only one of Guevara’s five children, Aleida, gave an idea of how she feels, recalling that her father had said that “wherever a man falls, that’s where he remains.”

“I don’t really understand what’s behind this declaration, 28 years after the fact. It confuses me,” Sanchez Guevara told IPS, referring to the statements’ made by retired Bolivian General Mario Vargas Salinas during an interview last week with the New York Times.

Vargas, who participated in the extrajudicial execution and secret burial of Guevara in 1967, told the daily that the corpse was buried under the landing strip of the airport of Vallegrande, Bolivia.

“Although I don’t have details, I am suspicious, because any declaration about ‘Che’ is good publicity for whoever makes it,” said Sanchez Guevara.

He said he had read several times that his grandfather had been buried, which contradicted the official version that he was cremated and his ashes were scattered throughout the jungle.

The world has been closely following the case since the whereabouts of Guevara’s remains were revealed last week, and Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada ordered the corpse to be returned to Cuba.

But most Cubans, including the Guevara family, have had access to little information, as the ‘Granma’, the Communist Party’s official organ and the only daily sold in the country, has kept silent.

“I heard the news on the radio, and I don’t know what to think,” a 58-year-old Havana resident told IPS, after listening to ‘Radio Reloj’, apparently the only station that has reported on the case.

The rumour has spread, but most Cubans are sceptical, 28 years after the death of one of their heroes.

Neither those who have researched the life of Guevara nor his former comrades-in-arms have publicly commented on Vargas’ revelations.

That includes Adys Cupull and Froilan Gonzalez, who in 1992 published the book “The CIA Against Che”, which revealed information on two possible locations where the remains of Guevara and several of his companions could be buried.

According to reports that the two researchers had access to in the 1980s, the two locations are 200 metres apart. And one of them is next to the landing strip of the Vallegrande airport.

In a recent television interview, the authors said they know where Guevara was buried. But they refused to reveal their sources.

“I had never heard anything concrete until Adys and Froilan said on television that the location was known,” Ana Maria Erra, the widow of Che’s father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, told IPS.

Erra said that since the moment of Che’s death, all kinds of speculations reached the family, but the information had never come from “such informed” people who “had been in Bolivia so many times” as Cupull and Gonzalez.

“Only rumours reached us about something that had always been a mystery,” she said, adding that her husband “never accepted any of the versions.”

Nevertheless, a close family friend told IPS that Che’s father used to tell his friends that his son’s body had been thrown onto a highway that was being built, and asphalt laid over it.

But “in Cuba, there is only one person authorised to talk about these things, and he won’t talk until everything is clarified,” said a professor at the University of Havana, alluding to President Fidel Castro.

The professor recalled that “the same thing happened when Che died. The cables arrived, but his family members and the press kept silent until everything was verified and official information was released.”

Discussion is now concentrating on whether Guevara’s remains should be returned to his family in Havana, or if Vallegrande Mayor Hoover Cabrera’s request to keep the corpse and raise a monument in the guerrilla fighter’s honour should be accepted.

“It would be really good if he were here in Havana,” said Sanchez Guevara. But he added that if it is decided otherwise, “that wouldn’t change anything. ‘Che’ will still be the same for us Cubans.”