BY PILAR AGUILERA
Aleida Guevara, Cuban-born daughter of renowned Argentine revolutionary socialist Ernesto Che Guevara, will speak at public meetings in Sydney and Melbourne in early July on the theme "Che Guevara, War and the Fight for Global Justice".
Aleida Guevara was only four and a half when her father left Cuba. Although their time together was limited, she still holds many memories of her father. She described one of these memories in a recent documentary shown on Cuban television: "In different ways each of those memories showed me in one way or another that despite the short amount of time that we lived together, my father had won the affection, love and respect I have always had for him."
She was seven when her father was killed in Bolivia in 1967.
Aleida Guevara is a pediatrician in Cuba. In the 1980s she completed two internationalist missions to Nicaragua and Angola. In 1982 she finished her medical degree in Nicaragua and graduated from the Autonomous University of Nicaragua and the University of Havana. She travelled to Angola in 1986 to work at the Josina Machel Hospital, where she was recognised for her work in helping to combat cholera.
She often speaks in public about Che's legacy and is able to connect his ideas and his writing with modern-day Cuba and the world. She is an eloquent and entertaining speaker, and does not romanticise her father. She has often commented on the use of Che's image, especially of the way it is unthinkingly used in the West, where you can buy anything from "Che lip balm" to Che ice-cream!
Although she carries the mark of being the daughter of one of the 20th century's icons, Aleida Guevara has emerged as a prominent political figure in her own right. She was a keynote speaker at this year's World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
She will be speaking in Melbourne on July 2 at Storey Hall, RMIT, and in Sydney on July 5 at the Eastern Avenue Auditorium, University of Sydney. For more information phone (03) 9326 4280.
From Green Left Weekly, June 11, 2003.
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