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Bones of Cuban activist 'Che' Guevara to get hero's burial
October 11, 1997
Web posted at: 3:36 p.m. EDT (1936 GMT)HAVANA (CNN) -- Cuba is marking the 30th anniversary of the death of revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Thousands of people began filing Saturday past his bones, which are being displayed through the week in Havana and then Santa Clara, where they will be interred in a sort of shrine.
The box containing his remains, draped with a Cuban flag, will be buried Friday, after days of ceremonies. By honoring Guevara, the government is turning the iconoclastic rebel into a kind of icon, a socialist saint.
Guevara was killed in Bolivia in 1967 at age 39 during a failed attempt to begin a socialist uprising there. He had earlier tried, and failed, to bring revolution to the Congo -- where one of his allies, Laurent Kabila, came to power this year in a bloody uprising.
But despite those failures, Cubans remember the physician and political activist who was Fidel Castro's chief lieutenant and a guerrilla leader in the 1959 Cuban Revolution that brought Castro to power.
Young doctor joined Castro
The young Argentine doctor joined Castro's band of revolutionaries in 1955 while working as a roving photographer and part-time laboratory researcher in Mexico.
Guevara commanded the greatest battlefield victory of Castro's revolution: the battle of Santa Clara in December 1958 that forced dictator Fulgencio Batista into exile.
After the fight to rout Batista came the new government, in which Guevara also played a part, advocating stronger ties with the Soviet Union and fighting for a radical land reform measure. He also helped found Cuba's state news agency, Prensa Latina, and had a hand in forming the armed forces.
But along with those enduring legacies were several failures. As head of the Central Bank and later, the Ministry of Industry, he pushed Cuba to industrialize, stocking Cuba with inefficient Soviet-bloc factories it often did not need, with little accounting for costs or profits.
Other revolts failed
He was also among the first in Cuba to aid revolts elsewhere, but particularly in Latin America. The movement toppled no Latin American governments and often led to the harsh repression of leftists.
His Congo mission in 1964, which lasted only a year, was one such effort. He renounced his Cuban citizenship but relied on Cuban aid to help rebels in that African nation.
Then, Guevara secretly organized another revolution, this time in Bolivia. Over the course of a year there, several Cubans led by Guevara failed to build popular support for a Communist revolution. The Bolivian army tracked him down, took him prisoner and executed him on October 9, 1967.
In a special expedition to Bolivia, Guevara's body was finally found in July in a mass grave. The remains of six former comrades-in-arms, in caskets, also will be on display with Guevara's remains. Their bones also were unearthed in Bolivia and brought to Cuba.
"He is more alive than ever," Castro said of Guevara in a speech this week.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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