The figure of Che has become a banner for noble causes

TEXT AND PHOTO: JOSE ANTONIO FULGUEIRAS—Granma daily staff writer—

SANTA CLARA.—The figure of Che is indelible and eternal, and has been converted into a banner for noble causes and struggles on behalf of the peoples, affirmed José Ramón Machado Ventura, member of the Political Bureau, during a visit with a group of combat doctors from the Rebel Army to the Memorial where the remains of Comandante Che Guevara and his compañeros have been laid to rest.

The leader noted that the 78th anniversary of Che’s birth was a special day for him and for his comrades, guerrilla fighters and doctors in the final year of Medicine when they joined the Rebel Army. Asked by Granma about the last time he saw Che, he replied visibly moved:

"I saw him for the last time in the Congo at the end of 1965. He was the one who gave me the news that I had been elected as a member of the Central Committee of the (Communist) Party, because at that point I was in transit there. ‘I heard on Radio Habana Cuba that they had constituted the Central Committee and you are in there,’ he told me the night that we met."

Machada Ventura revealed that he met Che when he went up into the Sierra in 1957. "I arrived where he had his camp in El Hombrito hollow. He delved into my ideas, my ideological position, and afterwards he took an interest in my conditions, my specialty, what I was doing, and immediately gave me tasks."

"When he was minister of industries and I was minister of public health, we came into contact, as many medicines were manufactured in the factories that he attended."

Che, together with Machado, José Ramón Balaguer, Sergio del Valle and Oscar Fernández Mell, were part of a group of some 60 doctors incorporated into various columns of the Rebel Army.

They were received here by Omar Ruiz Martín and Alexander Rodríguez Rosada, first secretary of the Party and president of the provincial government in Villa Clara, respectively.

After touring the Ernesto Guevara Memorial they visited other historic sites in the city, the Ernesto Guevara Cardiac Center, the Arnaldo Milán Hospital and, in the evening, attended a cultural gala in the Martí Library’s Caturla Hall.

Together with the people of Santa Clara, the group of guerrilla doctors are to participate today in a parade in tribute to the 78th anniversary of the birth of the heroic guerrilla and the 161st anniversary of that of Lieutenant General Antonio Maceo, which leaves the Antonio Maceo Park rotunda in La Vigía and ends at the Ernesto Guevara sculpture complex.