Santa Clara, Cuba

I’ve headed out from Cienfuegos, through the suburbs, and then the countryside. The old bus bumps and swerves along, past sugarcane fields, jungle-draped mountains, and friendly villages. From the window, I see sombrero-clad old men sitting drinking beer outside cantinas, donkeys looking for shade under the old buildings, labourers with shouldered tools returning for siesta from the fields. I watch Cuba’s rural life until finally, we pull into Santa Clara Central bus station, and I walk out into the hot midday sun. 

Athough the capital of Villa Clara province, Santa Clara retains the charms of a sleepy, provincial town. At this sweltering hour, the place is virtually deserted, so I head to my hotel to pass some time in siesta until the day cools slightly. As the shadows begin to lengthen, I can explore the town. Santa Clara is known principally for its revolutionary history, and it was here that Ernesto “Che” Guevara won the final battle of the Cuban revolution. 

Che was not a Cuban, but an Argentine, and not a soldier, but a doctor. He grew up in a relatively affluent family and spent his youth motorcycling around Latin America. During this time, he witnessed the many injustices endured by the peasantry, the poor, and the indigenous. Then, when in Guatemala, he was present during the overthrow of the democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz (and ensuing civil war and brutal dictatorship), by the CIA and the United Fruit Company after he requisitioned land from the Company (the Company were payed the market value of the land, but had consistently understated the value of their land to avoid taxes) and redistributed it to the destitute peasantry. These experiences of injustice led to the development of strong political convictions in the young man, and he began to search for fellow revolutionaries.

In the mid-1950s, he met Fidel Castro. He joined him in the Cuban revolution and fought with him in eastern Cuba’s Sierra Maestra mountains. Finally, he arrived here, in Santa Clara, at the head of the revolutionary forces, derailing Batista’s deadly armoured train, defeating his soldiers, and sweeping away the former regime. 

After the revolution, Che worked busily in the Cuban government, helping some and harming others. His literacy campaign resulted in a previously largely illiterate population gaining the ability to read and write. Next, he oversaw the redistribution of land, much of it expropriated from landowners without compensation, to the island’s peasants. He then worked as the director of the national bank, famously signing new banknotes simply as ‘Che’ in the spirit of comradeship and rejection of bourgeois formality. He also presided over post-revolutionary tribunals. These trials punished many war criminals, torturers and murderers, but also resulted in the exile, imprisonment or death of innocents who were believed to be enemies of the revolution, or who dissented against the new direction of the Cuban nation.

His work on the socialisation of the healthcare system provided medical care free at the point of use to all Cubans as a constitutional right. Cuba’s healthcare system is now among the best in the world. Today, it can boast a litany of achievements: it has caused life expectancy in Cuba to surpass that of many richer nations (including the USA), drastically cut infant mortality rates, and eradicated the once rampant diseases of polio, rabies, measles and tetanus. It has also developed vaccines for certain types of lung cancer, Meningitis B (a world first), and COVID-19, and has become the first country in the world to eliminate HIV and syphilis transmission from mother to child.

Cuba also trains foreign healthcare workers free of charge in its Latin American School of Medicine, sending them back to their home countries to serve their communities after graduation. It has also established a long tradition of sending ships filled with highly trained medical professionals to countries in the developing world without proper healthcare infrastructure or suffering from an acute medical crisis, for example, during the West African Ebola crisis, saving and improving the lives of millions. 

Che, living up to his image as a romantic hero, could not settle down in Cuba for long. In 1965, he left the island to aid the struggle elsewhere. This adventuring eventually cost him his life in the Bolivian jungle. After his death, his body was brought back here to Santa Clara, the site of his greatest triumph. Today, he is a hero of the Cuban state, and people from all provinces of the island come here to pay their respects.

I take one last walk around Che’s mausoleum, reflecting on his fascinating but complicated legacy. Not everyone benefited from the Cuban revolution, and for those forced into exile, or whose families suffered repression under the new regime, Che’s legacy is far more painful. Despite this, he remains an icon to many, a symbol of hope, defiance, and the power of courage, compassion, and solidarity. Whether you agree or disagree with his politics, Che, the historical-poetic figure, embodies a belief we should all hold close: a belief in the ability of human beings to work together to make their world a better place.