Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara’s daughter Aleida in India: What is the Guevaras’ connection to India?

Aleida Guevara, the eldest daughter of the Cuban Marxist revolutionary leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his second wife, Aleida March, has been a vocal critic of US policies on Cuba.

Aleida said she can never forget the love she gets in India and that she knows it is because she is the daughter of Che Guevara. (Photo source: Twitter/ Kanimozhi)

Written by: Neha Banka

5 min readKolkataJan 20, 2023 07:10 AM IST First published on: Jan 19, 2023 at 02:55 PM IST

This week, physician and human rights advocate Aleida Guevara has been making stops in and visiting several Indian cities. Guevara is the eldest daughter of the Cuban Marxist revolutionary leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara and his second wife, Aleida March. Guevara will be visiting the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal etc, accompanied by her daughter Estefania Machin Guevara.

In Chennai, members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) received her at the airport. While delivering a speech Wednesday at an event organised by the CPI(M) in association with the National Committee for Solidarity with Cuba on Thursday, she spoke at length about the various struggles Cuba encounters due to the economic sanctions imposed by the US.

The CPI(M) stated that Aleida Guevara, along with other speakers, “extended solidarity to the people of Cuba for their spirited fight against imperialism.” She had last visited India in 2019, a visit that coincided with the 60th anniversary of the Cuban revolution.

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The party statement said a meeting was attended by CPI state secretary R Mutharasan, DMK MP K Kanimozhi, Dravida Kazhagam (DK) leader K Veeramani, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK, formerly the Dalit Panthers) leader Thirumavalavan MP among others. “The speakers extended solidarity to the people of Cuba for their spirited fight against imperialism,” the statement said.

Who is Aleida Guevara?

In addition to being a doctor, Guevara is also a published author and her work ‘Chávez, Venezuela and the New Latin America’, includes interviews with former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. Guevara has also been a vocal critic of American imperialism, particularly Washington D.C.’s policies against Cuba.

During her 2019 visit to India, at an event in Kannur, Guevara was quoted by the Mathrubhumi newspaper as saying, “For more than 60 years, the US has been making our lives difficult. But we are not scared, we are fighting unitedly, that is our strength. I am a paediatrician. There was an eight-month-old sick baby in my hospital. The medicine for the cure was to be brought from the US. We had money but were unable to buy it because of the US siege, and the baby died. Another fact is that we have invented a medicine for lung cancer but it can’t be given outside Cuba because of the siege.”

Which cities is Guevara visiting in India?

This weekend, Guevara is scheduled to visit Kolkata for a two-day stay. While in the city, Guevara will be making several public appearances and speeches, including visits to the Jadavpur University campus, the iconic Coffee House and in Hooghly district.

The West Bengal chapter of the All India Peace and Solidarity Organisation (AIPSO) that has been organising her visit did not respond to requests for details of Guevara’s visit to the state or the issues that she will be addressing.

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Che Guevara’s India connect

India was one of the nations that recognised Cuba following its revolution of 1959. Shortly after, Fidel Castro sent Ernesto “Che” Guevara on a three-month tour of several countries in Asia and Africa, most of which were a part of the Bandung Pact – a coalition of countries that had recently achieved independence from colonial powers.

These countries included Morocco, Sudan, Egypt and Syria in the African region; Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Myanmar (formerly Burma) in South Asia; Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong; as well as Yugoslavia and Greece.

A year after Guevara’s visit to India, the two countries officially established diplomatic relations and opened embassies in the respective capitals. During his visit to India, one of the stops that Guevara made was Kolkata, where in addition to engaging in other work, he also documented the city in a series of photographs.

Those photographs were later compiled into the book titled ‘Self Portrait by Che Guevara’ and have also been archived by the Centre for Che Studies in Havana, Cuba. Among his many visits across Kolkata, one included a stop at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), of which there is an iconic photograph of the revolutionary leader inside the ISI campus.