When Fidel met Che — a revolutionary love-in that changed history

Times

6 days ago

For some it was sacrilege. For others, it was a fitting ending. The bulldozer that rumbled across a cobbled square in the centre of Mexico City had an unusual load perched in its front bucket: bronze effigies of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.
The statues of the revolutionary figures were removed from public view last week in the latest twist in a row that has pitted the conservative mayor of the historic Cuauhtémoc borough against the left-wing president of the republic.
Since 2017, the bronze images of the Cuban leader and his Argentinian-born comrade have been on display on a bench in the city's leafy Tabacalera park. The installation, commissioned by a previous left-wing mayor of the municipality and apparently paid for with about £25,000 of public money, commemorates the men's first meeting 70 years ago in a nearby apartment.
It was an encounter that changed the course of history. After a conversation, which went on for most of the night, the pair agreed to co-operate to overthrow the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Their plot succeeded and the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959, caused shockwaves around the world. It eventually led to the establishment of a pro-Soviet outpost, 90 miles from the United States.
The artwork by Óscar Ponzanelli, a renowned Mexican-Italian sculptor, showed the two bearded men, in combat clothes, appearing relaxed. Castro, notebook in hand, is also holding one of his then trademark cigars. Guevara is clutching a pipe.
From the day of its unveiling the display caused division. While many on the left, including supporters of Mexico's current ruling Morena party, saw it as a symbol of an inspiring struggle, others lambasted it as a tasteless monument to a dictatorship.
Detractors would periodically splatter the statues with paint and those that revered Castro and Guevara would lay flowers at their boots.
Firmly of the view that the commemoration had no place in a Mexican square is Alessandra Rojo de la Vega, 39, a fiery anti-communist who last year was elected mayor of the Cuauhtémoc borough.
Last week she instructed the display be removed. Her justification initially avoided politics. She said the main problem was that it had been installed without the necessary planning permissions.
But she has since not hidden her loathing for the men the statues depict, both of whom are accused of a catalogue of human rights abuses, including overseeing the execution without trial of hundreds of their enemies.
'A murderer is no less a murderer just because he belongs to the left,' she told a Mexican radio station last week.
As locals ask what might happen to the valuable artwork, which is currently in warehouse storage, the mayor's proposal is to auction off both statues, with proceeds going to the refurbishment of local parks. She believed there would be no shortage of wealthy bidders, who she described as 'closet communists' with a 'cult for oppression'.
'Since you love your idols so much, now you can take them home … but this time you must pay for it with your own money, not that taken from the people,' she said in a post on Instagram.
Such remarks have not impressed Claudia Sheinbaum, the Mexican president, whose left-wing government is an important regional ally of Cuba. At her daily press conference she weighed in on the controversy, saying that those who accuse the left of a cancel culture — she was criticised for permitting the removal of a statue of Christopher Columbus from one of Mexico City's main thoroughfares in 2020 — should look in the mirror.
'You can't remove a statue, a monument, just like that,' she said, accusing the mayor of being 'tremendously intolerant'.
She also pointed out that de la Vega appeared 'hypocritical', given photographs published online revealed the firebrand had been to Havana on holiday. De la Vega said the trip was ten years ago when 'she did not understand politics'.
Sheinbaum has since insisted that the Che-Fidel encounter recalled 'a historic moment' and merited a public display.
The men met in 1955 after being introduced by Castro's younger brother, Raúl. The elder Castro, then 28, had just been released from a Cuban prison after leading a failed attack two years before against Batista's army. He had moved to Mexico, intent on planning further revolutionary activities.
Guevara, then 27, a doctor from an affluent Buenos Aires family, had been travelling through Latin America by motorcycle, a journey that had only reinforced his Marxist ideas.
The meeting, in the home of a Cuban exile, concluded with Guevara agreeing to join Castro's movement, serving as a doctor and a fighter. In November the following year they set sail for Cuba with 80 other men aboard an old cabin cruiser called 'Granma'. Most of those in the ragtag group were killed shortly after landing on the island.
Historians have said that the Castro-Guevara partnership was key to the armed revolution's unexpected success, with the Argentinian's ideological clarity and guerilla warfare instincts complementing Castro's gift for leadership.
'They were loud talkers,' recalled Guadalupe Rojas, a neighbour, in an interview with NPR in 2018. 'My mother-in-law lived in the apartment above and she'd tell me how 'those Cubans' would be up for hours.' Castro would later become renowned for delivering, in 1960, the longest ever speech in the history of the United Nations, lasting four hours and 29 minutes.
The end of the partnership between Castro and Guevara has long been the subject of debate. By the mid-1960s, there was evidence they were disagreeing. One source of contention was the idealistic Argentinian becoming disillusioned with the Soviet Union's economic policies, which he saw as too capitalist, while Castro was careful to avoid any public criticism of his benefactor.
In 1966 Guevara, encouraged by Castro, set off for Bolivia, where he attempted to foment a revolution. Underfunded and undersupplied, the mission was a disaster. In October 1967 he was captured and executed. Two decades later Jaime Niño de Guzman, a Bolivian army officer who was with Guevara the day before he died, said his captive told him, several times, 'Fidel betrayed me'.
Castro died in 2016, aged 90. He had outlasted ten US presidents. His revolution is still seen as inspirational by many around the world, but much of his island, a one-party state, is in economic ruin.
Perhaps aware that effigies of politicians can eventually attract as much opprobrium as adoration, one of his final wishes, which was enacted into law after his death, was that no statue depicting him should ever be erected in Cuba.