Fidel Castro visited Argentina in May 2003 and spoke at the Law School at the University of Buenos Aires. Initially scheduled to be in an auditorium, Fidel Castro spoke before tens of thousands of students and others who had gathered at the university. This is an excerpt of the May 26, 2003, speech at the university and is response to calls from the audience that he speak about Che Guevara, one of Argentina’s most famous sons.
I have been asked to speak about Che. I cannot speak at length here, it would not make sense under these circumstances, but I can say a few things. I spoke about him this morning in front of the statue of San Martín, and I will remember him always as one of the most extraordinary personalities I have ever met.
Che did not join our troop as a soldier; he was a doctor. He was in Mexico by chance. He had been to Guatemala, and had traveled through many places in the Americas. He had been in mining areas, where the work is very hard. He had even been in the Amazon, working as a doctor in a leprosy hospital.
I will discuss one of Che’s characteristics, one of those that I admired the most, of the many that I much admired.
Every weekend, Che tried to climb to the top of Popocatépetl, a volcano on the outskirts of Mexico City. He would get his gear together—it is a very high mountain, capped with snow year-round—start climbing, make a colossal effort, and never reach the top. His asthma always kept him from making it. The following week he would once again try to climb to the top of “Popo,” as he called it, and would not make it. But he would keep going back to try again, as if he could spent his entire life trying to climb Popocatépetl, even if he never reached the peak. This gives you an idea of his determination, his spiritual strength, his perseverance, which was one of the characteristics I most admired in him.
The other was that whenever a volunteer was needed to carry out any particular task, back when we were still a very small group, Che was always the first person to step forward.
As a doctor, he stayed with the sick and wounded. In certain circumstances, when we were in the open air and being pursued from different directions, the main force would have to keep moving, leaving a visible trail so that the doctor could stay behind with those he was caring for somewhere nearby. There was a time when Che was the only doctor, until other doctors came forward to join us, so there he was.
Since you are asking for anecdotes, I remember an action that was extremely hazardous for everyone involved. News of a landing on the north coast of the province had reached us where we were gathered in the mountains. We recalled the ordeals and suffering we went through in the first days after our own landing, and as an act of solidarity with those who had just landed, we decided to undertake a rather daring action. From a military point of view, it was not a wise decision: to attack a unit that was well entrenched on the coast.
I will not go into the details. As a result of that battle, which lasted three hours—we were really quite lucky and had managed to cut off communications—but after three hours, during which, as usual, Che had shown exemplary conduct, a third of the participants in the fighting were either dead or wounded. This was highly unusual. So he, as a doctor, attended to the enemy’s wounded. There were enemy soldiers who were not wounded, but there was a large number who were, and he attended to them along with our own comrades.
You cannot imagine that man’s sensitivity! I remember that one of our comrades was fatally wounded, and Che knew it. We had to get out of the area quickly, immediately, because we did not know when the first planes would start to arrive. Miraculously, none had showed up during the battle, although the first ones usually arrived within 20 minutes. Luckily, we had managed to wipe out their communications with a few well-aimed shots. We had gained some extra time, but we needed to attend to the wounded and withdraw right away.
He told me about this later and I will never forget it. One of our comrades was inevitably going to die. He could not be moved. Sometimes when fighters are seriously wounded, they cannot be moved, and you simply have to trust in the fact that you have treated the enemy’s wounded, you may have taken a number of prisoners and you have always treated them with respect. There was never a single case, ever, of a prisoner taken in combat being mistreated or executed. We sometimes gave them our own medicines, which were extremely scarce.
This policy, truly, contributed a great deal to our success in the war, because in any struggle, you must earn the respect of the enemy. In any struggle—I will repeat it again—those who defend a good cause must behave in such a way as would allow them to earn the respect of the enemy.
On that occasion, we had to leave behind a number of wounded comrades who could not be evacuated, and some were very seriously wounded. What struck me most was what Che told me later, with great sadness, that when he realized this one compañero had no hope of surviving, he bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
These are some of the things I can tell you about Che as a man, as an extraordinary human being.
He was, as well, an extraordinarily cultured man, a man of great talent. I have already spoken of his persistence, his determination. After the triumph of the revolution, he was more than willing to accept any task assigned to him. He was director of the National Bank of Cuba, where a true revolutionary was needed at that moment—and at any other moment, of course—but the revolution had just triumphed, and its resources were very scant since the country’s reserves had been stolen.
Our enemies joked about it; they always make jokes, and we make jokes as well. According to this particular joke, which had a political intent, I announced one day, “We need an economist,” and Che raised his hand, but it turned out he had misheard me. He thought I’d said we needed a communist, and that is why he ended up being chosen. Well, Che was a revolutionary, a communist, and an excellent economist. Being an excellent economist depends on what you believe should be done by the person in charge of a sphere of the country’s economy, in this case the National Bank of Cuba, and Che did it as both a communist and an economist. It is not that he had a degree, but rather that he had read a lot and observed a lot.
It was Che who promoted the idea of voluntary work in our country; he himself went out to do voluntary work every Sunday. One day he would do farm work, another day he would test out new machinery, another day he would do construction work. He left us this legacy of a practice that millions of Cubans came to adopt, following his example.
He left us so many memories, and that is why I say that he is one of the most noble, extraordinary, and selfless people I have ever met. This would be of no significance if I did not believe that there are millions and millions and millions of people like him among the masses.