BY VANNESSA HEARMAN
MELBOURNE Speaking through an interpreter at a press conference on June 27, Aleida Guevara, the eldest daughter of legendary Latin American revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, said the US government would dearly like to obliterate the Cuban Revolution.
"[US President] George Bush has made it very clear that Cuba might be the next target [after Iraq]. He has assured the Miami Cubans that, in his words, Cuba will be free." Freedom in Bush's terms, Guevara said, meant returning to the Cuba to the status of a US neo-colony.
With the "US government employing so-called 'dissidents' in our country, Cuba is in dire need of much, much solidarity and respect for its sovereignty right now", she said.
Aleida Guevara is visiting Australia to launch the second edition of the Che Guevara Reader and to speak at public meetings in Sydney and Melbourne in the first week of July. Her visit is sponsored by Ocean Press, a specialist publisher of books on Cuba.
A 42-year-old paediatrician and single mother of two girls, she has worked in Nicaragua and Angola as part of Cuban internationalist missions, providing health care to local communities. Her most recent mission was in Ecuador.
She is a member of the Cuban Communist Party. She and her family also manage the Che Guevara Studies Centre in Cuba, which aims to gather and disseminate Che's writings and ideas. Guevara is also involved with the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), a solidarity institute.
"Through my work with ICAP", Guevara said, "I have travelled extensively throughout various towns and villages of Cuba. I speak based on the reality of the Cuban people, which I see and experience myself every day. My version is the Cuban version, not that of the United States."
Cuban youth continue to have aspirations to "be like Che", Guevara said. She said her identification with the revolutionary values espoused by her father were "a product of the Cuban Revolution", rather than her genes.
"We are taught that we must give something back to society, to never forget the deeds of others, to engage in international solidarity. So in that way, I am just an ordinary Cuban woman."
@She said a revolutionary spirit continued to survive in Latin America today. She likened the spread of these ideas to "an underground river" flowing from north to south, linking those in struggle across the continent.
She said that it was necessary to struggle for a world where "people can have dignity and be in control over what they produce".
From Green Left Weekly, July 2, 2003.
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