BY HILDA CUZCO
Cubans celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Battle of
Santa Clara, one of the final decisive battles of the Cuban
revolutionary war, with a December 30 rally and military
ceremony honoring Haydée Tamara Bunke, known by her nom de
guerre Tania, and nine other combatants who fought with Ernesto
Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967.
Raúl Castro, minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) of Cuba, presided over the ceremony. Accompanying Raúl Castro was Commander of the Revolution Ramiro Valdés, who also participated in the interrment of the combatants in the same mausoleum where Che Guevara and six other were interred Oct. 17, 1997.
Brig. Gen. Delsa Teté Puebla, the only woman general in the FAR, led the troops in the military ceremony, who were reviewed by Brig. Gen. Enrique Acevedo.
Guevara, an Argentine-born revolutionary who became a central leader of the Rebel Army in the struggle to overthrow the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, led a unit of Bolivian, Peruvian, and Cuban combatants in Bolivia in 1966-67.
Their effort was aimed at toppling the military regime there and forging an international movement capable of accomplishing in countries throughout Latin America what working people in Cuba had proven was possible by taking power. Che was wounded in combat and captured on Oct. 8, 1967, and the Bolivian military, after seeking agreement from their mentors in Washington, murdered him the next day.
At the 1997 ceremony for Guevara and his comrades, Cuban president Fidel Castro had described the internationalists who fought in Bolivia "as reinforcements, as a detachment of invincible fighters, who this time include not only Cubans but Latin Americans coming to fight alongside us and write new pages of history and glory."
The remains of Tania and the others, recently recovered in Bolivia, were flown Santa Clara from Havana December 29 and taken to the José Marti' library in a military procession.
The participation of women in the ceremony in Santa Clara, and other events paying tribute to the one woman combatant in the Bolivian campaign, was particularly notable. The Cuban daily Granma reported that 80 women, as well as members of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution and children in the Pioneers, headed the procession. They were joined by combatants from the column led by Guevara in the Cuban revolutionary war, which won the surrender of Batista's forces in Santa Clara on Dec. 30, 1958.
Nadia Bunke, Tania's mother; Aleida March, the widow of Che Guevara, and her children; and survivors of the Bolivian campaign Brig. Gen. Harry Villegas (Pombo) and Col. Leonardo Tamayo (Urbano) attended. The Cuban press described a seemingly endless line of men and women of all ages who then came to the library to pay homage to the fallen combatants until past one in the morning. The first to pass were 2,000 members of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC).
At the December 30 rally Commander Valdés pointed in his speech to Tania's courageous life in the revolutionary movement. Born in Argentina in 1937 to German parents who had fled the fascist regime, Bunke was one of the many young people drawn to the example of the Cuban revolution. In Bolivia Tania served as part of the underground support for the guerrilla led by Che, until her cover was blown and she joined the combatants in the mountains. She fell in combat on Aug. 31, 1967.
Valdés noted that her mother did not hesitate in deciding that Bunke's remains should be buried in Cuba, as did the relatives of the other fighters. The revolutionaries honored along with Tania, known as well by their noms de guerre, are: Octavio de la Concepción y la Pedraja (Moro), Manuel Hernández Osorio (Miguel), and Mario Gutiérrez Ardaya (Julio) of Cuba; Francisco Huanca Flores (Pablito), Julio Luis Méndez Korne (Ñato), Roberto Peredo Leigue (Coco), Aniceto Reinaga Gordillo (Aniceto), and Jaime Arana Campero (Chapaco) of Bolivia; and Edilberto Lucio Galván (Eustaquio), of Peru.
The combatants who together with Che Guevara made up the "reinforcement brigade" welcomed in October 1997 are: Alberto Fernández (Pacho), Orlando Pantoja (Antonio), René Martínez Tamayo (Arturo), and Carlos Coello (Tuma) of Cuba; Simón Cuba (Willy) of Bolivia; and Juan Pablo Chang (Chino) of Peru.
Granma quoted Valdés that in welcoming Tania and the other internationalist fighters, "we can state that the Reinforcement Brigade, now strengthened, is made more invincible - by the power of their example, their morale, and their revolutionary message - for the present and future generations.... The times, the conditions, and the methods may change, but we can say that 31 years since the fall of Che and his comrades of the Bolivian guerrilla, the objectives for which they fought remain both a necessity and an inspiration for the future of Latin America."