Tuesday 9 October 2007



Che

I make a halt in my daily struggle to bow my head in respect and gratitude to the exceptional combatant who fell on October 8th, forty years ago; for the example he passed on to us as leader of his Rebel Army Column, which crossed the swampy grounds of the former provinces of Oriente and Camagüey while being chased by enemy troops.

He was the liberator of the city of Santa Clara, and the creator of voluntary work; he accomplished honorable political missions abroad and served as a messenger of militant internationalism in eastern Congo and Bolivia; he built a new awareness in our America and the world.

I thank him for what he tried but was not able to do in his home country, because he was like a flower prematurely severed from its stem.

He left us his unmistakable style of writing — with elegance, brevity and veracity — every detail of whatever happened to cross his mind. He was a predestinate, but he didn’t know it. He still fights with us and for us.

Yesterday, we commemorated the 31st anniversary of the killing of the passengers and crew of a Cuban airliner that was blown up in mid-flight, and we are on the threshold of the tenth anniversary of the cruel and unjust imprisonment of the five Cuban anti-terrorist heroes. We likewise bow our heads to them all.

It was with great emotion that I watched and heard the commemoration ceremony on TV.

Fidel Castro Ruz

October 7, 2007


Thousands of people march to La Higuera to pay tribute

LA PAZ.— Thousands of people, most of them young people from different countries, began a 60-km march to the village of La Higuera in southeastern Bolivia to participate in a vigil in memory of the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, who was murdered there 40 years ago.

The march began in the town of Vallegrande, where more than 7,000 people gathered from all over the world. Most of whom had not even been born when Guevara led the guerrilla warfare campaign in Bolivia that lasted almost nine months. The young people filled the town with their multi-colored tents.

The vigil would be the preamble to the main program planned for Monday, which was to feature the participation of President Evo Morales, according to Osvaldo Peredo, one of the organizers of the 2nd International Conference on Che Guevara, which began on Friday with cultural activities, colloquiums, exhibits and musical performances, the AP reported.

The main activity planned for today, October 8, will take place on the Vallegrande landing strip, where Che’s body was secretly buried together with those of his fellow combatants, and where they remained until 1997, when they were repatriated to Cuba.

Translated by Granma International



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