Cuba (7): Santa Clara and Che Guevara

A Memorial to a Flawed Hero

Cuba

Breakfast Amusements

Cuba’s default breakfast is a big plate of fruit followed by an omelette, toast and jam.

The jam is resistible. It is red, though nothing in the flavour suggests red fruit – or any fruit at all – and is solid enough to be carved. The fresh fruit, though, is excellent, a joy every morning, while the omelette is negotiable.

Breakfast was served by Maydi’s gofer and this morning our Swedish neighbour asked for a boiled egg instead of an omelette. The gofer nodded. ‘Hard boiled,’ our Swedish friend continued, ‘very hard boiled.’ ‘How many?’ asked the gofer. ‘Seven.’ ‘Seven?’ she replied thinking she had misheard. ‘Seven,’ he repeated firmly, holding up seven fingers. She looked surprised, turned and headed downstairs to the kitchen.

I waited a little then ventured ‘Do you really want seven?’ ‘Yes’ he said, I like eggs very hard boiled.’ ‘One egg boiled for seven minutes?’ He looked at me like I was being obtuse. ‘Of course.’ ‘I think,’ I suggested, ‘you have just ordered seven eggs.’ ‘No!’ ‘Yes, that’s why she looked so surprised.’

After a moment's thought he shook his head, pushed back his chair and headed for the kitchen. Minutes later laughter could be heard from below as light dawned. English is the lingua franca of the tourist trade, sometimes as a legacy of the British Empire, more often under the influence of Hollywood. It is convenient for English speakers, though it makes us lazy; we are notoriously poor at learning languages. It can also lead to amusing misunderstandings.

Today we travel from Trinidad on the south coast, north to Santa Clara then northwest to Jibacoa on the coast just west of Matanzas

North to Santa Clara

A driver turned up precisely on time at 9 o’clock. He had a shiny new Hyundai and wore a mask and plastic gloves so as not to catch any nasty diseases from us. Even from our tourist bubble we had seen the world beginning to change; Covid behaviours that would become commonplace were new and, I thought, a touch comical. I was wrong about that.

Our Well Protected Driver

We were headed for a seaside resort on the north coast, an hour from Havana, but with a detour to the mausoleum of Che Guevara in Santa Clara on the way.

Santa Clara is 100 km north of Trinidad, a journey scheduled for 2 hours on the slow and sometimes busy road around the Sierra Escambray. Our first hold-up was in Trinidad as one the queues which are a feature of Cuban life was spilling onto the road. I do not know what they were hoping to buy, but we had heard that soap was currently in short supply. The queues are a consequence of the American ‘bloqueo’ - a subject I will return to next post.

Queue for something in Trinidad

We had expected driving round the Sierra to be scenic, but the mountains were always too far away and usually screened by roadside vegetation.

A Less than thrilling picture of the Sierra Escambray

The road was in good condition, though at times narrow and, to start with, busy with buses and lorries. The countryside looked poor, scrubland with occasionally fields prepared for planting and some sugar cane and manioc.

Ploughed fields north of Trinidad

We overtook one ox-cart, several tractors and many horse-drawn vehicles. There were also cars and vans, and buses apparently converted from army trucks, the windows well above passenger head height.

Driving north from Trinidad

There were a few villages, straggles of poor dwellings….

Village south of Manicaragua

...and a shop without a queue – perhaps they had nothing to sell.

Village shop, south of Manicaragua

An hour and a quarter into the journey we reached Manicaragua, the first small town we had encountered.

Manicaragua

It looked a little more prosperous than the surrounding countryside….

Manicaragua

…as did much of the last part of the journey to Santa Clara.

Santa Clara

Santa Clara

Santa Clara was founded in 1689 by two extended local families and 37 former citizens of San Juan de los Remedios which lies on the coast to the north. Remedios was continually being ravaged by pirates and the 37 wanted a quieter life. Santa Clara outgrew Remedios long ago and is now the fifth biggest city in Cuba with a population of some 250,000.

In 1958 Santa Clara was the scene of the final battle of the Cuban revolution. After preliminary skirmishes two columns led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos advanced on the city on the morning of the 31st of December. The defence was chaotic and brief, government forces capitulating by mid-afternoon. Twelve hours later Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba allowing Fidel Castro to enter Havana and assume the presidency.

We saw almost nothing of the city. Our driver took us west round the efficient circunvalación to the Che Guevara Mausoleum which lies just a just a couple of hundred metres inside the ring-road.

The Ernesto Guevara Sculptural Complex

The Sculptural Complex is a large concrete plinth, with a statue of the great man on a column, a bas relief of him in action and three stones, two inscribed with Guevara’s credo, and a third with more words than I care to translate.

The Ernesto Guevara Sculptural Complex, Santa Clara

The statue is described as being 7m high, but I suspect that includes the column. The words underneath are Hasta la victoria siempre (‘Ever onward to victory’ – Spanish word order can sometimes appear eccentric to the anglophone).

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Santa Clara

The bas relief shows the advance of Guevara’s column on Santa Clara.

Bas relief, Ernesto Guevara Sculptural Park

The inscription in the corner translates as ‘Commander Ernesto Guevara was assigned the mission of leading a column of rebels from the Sierra Maestra to the province of Las Villas.’

Three inscribed blocks are, I feel, too much writing for a ‘sculptural complex’ but then Fidel Castro was famous for his immensely long speeches, so perhaps that is the Cuban way. Below is the middle-sized block…

The medium sized inscription Ernesto Guevara Sculptural Complex, Santa Clara

…which roughly translates as ‘I feel so much a patriot of Latin America, of every Latin American country, that whenever necessary, I would willingly give my life for the liberation of any Latin American country, asking nothing, exempting nothing and exploiting no one.’ 

Che Guevara: A Very Brief Biography

Born in Rosaria, Argentina, in 1928 Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was from a comfortably-off middle class family with leftist inclinations.

Che as a medical student in 1950
Photo in the Public Domain, sourced from  Wikipedia

In 1948 he entered the University of Buenos Aires as a medical student and played rugby for the Club Universitario de Buenos Aires (prophetically known as CUBA).

During his student years he took two long motorcycle trips through South America. Everywhere he saw poverty, hunger and disease caused by the greed of the powerful, and came to view Latin America as a single entity in need of a continent-wide revolution.

He qualified as a doctor in 1953, and in 1954 went to Guatemala where the democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz’s land reform programme had transferred unused land from the American United Fruit Company to peasant farmers. In May Árbenz was replaced by the vicious authoritarian Castillo Armas in a coup organised for the United Fruit Company by the CIA. Guevara concluded that it was no co-incidence that Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, was also on the board of the United Fruit Company. Wanting to fight on with the Communist youth militia, Guevara was disappointed when Árbenz bowed to the inevitable and capitulated.

Che in Cuba, 1958
Photo in Public Domain, sourced from Wikipedia

He escaped to Mexico City and was working as a doctor when he was introduced to the Castro brothers. Cuba’s President Batista was another repressive leader controlled by US business interests and Guevara agreed to help the Castros overthrow him. He participated in guerrilla training, intending to be their combat medic.

In the event his charisma, physical strength and courage made him much more than that. After the revolution he became Fidel Castro’s de facto Number 2, travelling widely to present the Cuban case to world leaders.

Guevara was a revolutionary not an administrator, so in early 1965 he left Cuba for the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) with a small Cuban force, offering his experience and expertise to the Marxist Simba movement. By November he had concluded that the rebel leaders were corrupt and the venture a failure. He wrote: ‘we cannot liberate, all by ourselves, a country that does not want to fight’

Che in Bolivia, photo in Public Domain sourced from Wikipedia

A year later he was in Bolivia, hoping to foment a pan-Latin American Marxist Revolution. However, expected support from local dissidents did not materialise and nor did help from the Bolivian Communist Party which Guevara described as "distrustful, disloyal and stupid". His well-equipped guerrilla force of some 50 men scored several early successes but he was unable to recruit from among the local inhabitants, many preferring to become government informants.

On the 8th of October 1967 Bolivian forces surrounded Guevarra’s encampment and in the following action he was wounded and captured. The next day he was murdered – some called it an execution – and later buried in an unmarked grave.

Once dead ‘Che’ was a martyr, and lived on as a poster boy for every student’s wall.

The poster on our spare bedroom wall!

The Che Guevara Mausoleum and Museum

The sculptural complex sits on the top of a low hill. Round the back is the entrance to the Museum and Mausoleum which are beneath the concrete plinth. We were unsure whether it was open to all or if we needed tickets, but when the door opened to admit a waiting group, we tagged on behind.

The mausoleum, to the left is dark and sombre.

In July 1997 after a year’s searching near the Bolivian town of Vallegrande, Cuban geologists and Argentine forensic anthropologists discovered two graves containing seven bodies. Dental records positively identified one body as that of Che Guevara. On 17 October 1997, Guevara's remains, along with those of six of his fellow combatants, were laid to rest with full military honours in this purpose-built mausoleum. Fidel Castro lit the eternal flame.

We stood among the graves in silence for a moment.

To the right is the museum. It tells the story of Guevara's life with many photographs and documents and a sprinkling of objects he used – his water bottle, his pipe, his compass etc. Neither the mausoleum nor the museum permitted photographs.

Over the road from the museum/mausoleum is a neatly tended, tiered graveyard and we walk round reading the names and dates. Most were of those who died during the revolution, but there were more recent burials too as the revolutionary generation passes quietly on. Nobody stopped me taking photographs there, but I have none. Oh, well.

On to Jibacoa

Leaving the complex we returned to the circunvalación and took the link road to the A1 Autopista Nacional which runs for 360 km down the island's spine southeast from Havana. It is nor particularly impressive or well-made as such roads go, but it is more than sufficient for the meagre traffic.

The A1, Autopista Nacional

Our driver stopped for lunch at a service station. He had a sandwich while we waited patiently for the coffee machine to be mended. Our table had a good view of the television where Covid was receiving extensive coverage. After filmed reports from China and Europe a Cuban minister appeared to explain the local measures. Spanish is easy when it is a matter of reading the captions, but when anyone speaks we quickly become lost.

Back on the road we passed the junction where we had turned south to Cienfuegos three days ago, and 30 km later swung north towards Matanzas. We passed through much richer agricultural land than in the morning with fields of sugar cane, maize, oranges and bananas.

We hit the coast at Matanzas, known as the home of the rumba, but more obviously to us the home of tank farms and other oil installations. 35 km further east is Playa de Jibacoa and the Memories Resort where we were originally scheduled to stay three nights, but it would now be two as Covid was shutting down European airlines.

Memories, Jibacoa and Che (again)

The next post will be about the Memories resort – it will be a short one – but our stay gave us time to think about what we had seen. And here are some thoughts.

Lynne meditating beside the sea

The student accommodation of my youth, basic as it usually was, was often adorned with a poster of Che Guevara. I never had one then, but I have one now, so was Che a real hero?

He was certainly a man of great charisma and energy and he was totally sincere in his belief that Marxist revolution was the only way to improve the lot of the common people. But apart from Cuba, revolutionary success eluded him. And maybe he had a death wish. When his Congo venture was failing, he had to be persuaded from sending his Cuban troops home and staying on alone to fight to the death. And fight to the death was what he did in Bolivia.

In Cuba he had turned up with the Castros and a small force and recruited a large one. Did this experience lead him to believe that successful revolutions needed only a charismatic leader and a small force prepared to grow.?

It worked once, but he had been accompanied the Castro brothers, Cubans who knew their country. How did this middle-class Argentinian white boy look to Congolese villagers or Bolivian peasants when he arrived in their midst and announced he was their saviour?

The idle rich in the worker's paradise - but the idle are not that rich and the paradise is less than entirely paradisiacal

He met Juan Perón shortly after leaving the Congo. Perón’s verdict? He was an immature Utopian. Society needs Utopian thinkers, and just possibly maturity is an over-rated quality; my problem with Che Guevara is that he was an immature Utopian with a gun.You don't make people better by shooting them.

So, no hero then, but will I take down my poster? No I won't, Guevara, who died in 1967 symbolises the spirit of 1968. I was an 18-year-old starting University in September 1968. I knew it was a special time, but I did not really appreciate it. Perhaps the poster is a mild reproach to my younger self for not quite getting it, for being genuinely immature but not Utopian enough.

Cuba

Part 1: Havana
Part 2: Havana to Viñales
Part 3: Walking the Viñales Valley
Part 4: Viñales to Trinidad de Cuba
Part 5: Trinidad (1) The Town
Part 6: Trinidad (2) Valle de Los Ingenios
Part 7: Santa Clara and Che Guevara
Part 8: Jibacoa and a Strange Trip Home