INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION REPORT

A Conversation with Internationalist Aleida Guevara, MD

By Gail A. Reed

Dr. Aleida Guevara March, pediatrician.

Aleida Guevara was 23 when she first traveled through Latin America - the same age as her father, Che Guevara, when he embarked on the eye-opening motorcycle adventure that would become the prologue to his legacy and basis for an award-winning film. For Aleida Guevara, who was a medical student completing her internship at the time of her own explorations, international service was also an awakening: "My first patients were Nicaraguans," she told MEDICC Review . "And Nicaragua was where I learned to live in a world very different from my own," and where she made her own life's commitment.

She recounts an experience from those days in Nicaragua, where the high rate of infant mortality made even health personnel more accustomed to death than life. "I'll never forget," she says, "trying to intubate a baby, my head under the lid of the incubator, a laryngoscope in one hand, aspirating with the other, no more hands to use. So I asked the nurse to hand me a tube, and she replied: 'Why are you trying so hard, little doctor, when the Lord is asking for him?' I couldn't imagine that; I was trying to save the baby's life.Experiences like this one had a tremendous influence on me, made me reflect, and respect life all the more. This just couldn't be: I had to help somehow so that people could live better, have dignity as human beings."

It was in Nicaragua, and later serving in other Latin American countries, where Dr. Guevara began a journey into her own heritage. "We Cubans have a piece missing from our lives," she says. "We are children of Spaniards and Africans, a bit of Asians, but our indigenous culture was snatched from us [ when the Spaniards decimated the native population of Cuba, eds. ]. Latin America still has this privilege: there are thousands of indigenous populations. And that makes me a little envious, you know? Because we need to redeem who we really are."

Reflects Dr. Guevara: "The indigenous people and their roots give me strength. And they have taught me important lessons. A Guayu woman in Venezuela said to me 'I don't want to be seen by a white doctor.' And when I asked her why, she said, 'Because white doctors ask you what your name is, what your address is, where you live.but what does that have to do with the pain I have?' And you know, when a child came into my office in Cuba, I'd been asking: 'What's the child's name? What polyclinic does he belong to?' I was making a mistake. She was the person who taught me that I first have to ask: 'What's wrong? How is the child feeling? How can I help?' What's important is to begin this doctor-patient relationship with what really matters. And I have her to thank for teaching me that."

With her MD under her belt, Dr. Guevara, one of four children of Dr. Ernesto 'Che' Guevara and Aleida March, went on to become a pediatrician at Havana's Higher Institute of Medical Sciences. Just before beginning her studies in pediatric allergy, she left home once more to serve in Angola. "How many centuries of colonization has that continent endured? How much have they been mistreated, humiliated, abused? And who can erase that? When I was in Angola, sometimes patients would bow their heads to me. So I would put my arm across their shoulder. I would take their wraps and tie the children on my back as they did, but I couldn't break through centuries of humiliation with all the tenderness and affection in the world. I couldn't break through everything they had suffered as a people. I needed a lot of patience and I kept trying; with a look, with a touch..And little by little, you show that you come from a different world, that you don't come to do harm. But first you have to break through a whole host of cultural impositions that have resulted from centuries of colonial domination. You have to be very patient, and have a lot of respect for people, be willing to learn many things."

I was reminded of a conversation recounted to me between her father 'Che' Guevara and members of Cuba's first international medical team, in Algeria, 1963. The dialogue was going along fine until one Cuban physician complained that they were telling the Algerians what they needed to do, but that they weren't doing it. Replied Guevara: "So then what makes you different from the colonialists?"

"Ah, yes!" says Aleida Guevara. "Because sometimes you go somewhere with the best of intentions and you want to try to improve life, but you don't realize that you're imposing a culture that is not theirs. That's why I say respect is the key."

"The truth is, I lived a very short time with my father," she goes on. "I was barely four-and-a-half years old when dad left Cuba, so the most important person in my life really is my mother. She raised us with very strong values: honesty; the capacity to love; and to understand another person - even though you don't manage to comprehend them completely - but at least to respect them. So I always say, look, the most important thing that my dad left for me was to have fallen in love with a woman like my mother.".

Nevertheless, she says, her father influenced her decision to go into medicine in at least two ways: first, he was a doctor himself. And second, the sensibility that comes from being his daughter. "Here in Cuba," she says, "I'm a very privileged person in the sense that I receive affection from people without deserving it - that is, just because I'm the daughter of a man whom they love very much. And you get to the point where you say: How do I give that back? And I think that this was the strongest influence on my determination to become a doctor. I found it was a way to return what I'd received."

"So, I spent one year in Nicaragua, two in Angola, and that's how I was able to repay a bit of the debt I'd accumulated. That is, I'm the daughter of an internationalist man, so the least I can do is return a bit of that, no? My brothers and sisters, too. Little by little, we've gone about repaying the kind of affection we've received."

Aleida Guevara has also become one of thousands of Cuban physicians to serve in other developing countries, a practice begun early in the 1960s, when the country itself had few physicians. And over time, she emphasizes, sending so many professionals abroad has represented a sacrifice for them and for Cuba itself - precisely, she says, what makes South-South cooperation special. "When you give because you have extra, it's not so significant. But when you give even though you need something yourself, that's when human beings learn important values, and I think that this is the best thing that Cuba has done: paid attention to instilling such values."

"And certainly Cuban history is also full of solidarity. The first internationalist in Cuba they say was an indigenous man - the chief Hatuey - who came [from the island of Hispaniola] to warn us that the Spaniards were no good, right? We have a saying: 'Lucky are the people who can forget what they have given and remember what they have received. So that solidarity needs returning somehow.'

Our conversation turns to the film, The Motorcycle Diaries , based on the book by 'Che' Guevara: "Young people certainly like the film," she says, "and I think it's because they see a reflection of themselves. You see, there they are, two young guys doing crazy things - crazier still in the book! If you read the book that the film is based on, the one my father wrote when he was 23, there you'll see the craziness, how wild, but also how honest he was. Because, I might have done a lot of crazy things in my life, but it would never occur to me to write about them! This man did it, unfazed. So people see themselves reflected in the film."

"It also brings the image of Che much closer to young people - so they realize that he's not a myth, not an icon. He's simply a person, like you, like me, who was capable of overcoming his own weaknesses to be more helpful, more useful to others, which is what's important for us as human beings.

"For me, it's very special because I read the book before it was a book, when it was still just a pamphlet. My mother gave it to me, without telling me who had written it. So I began to discover who this person was, and by the time I figured out it was my father, I swear I felt as if I was riding behind him along all those mountains, through all those places.

"In that sense, the film is something else: not only a song to the life of a man like Che Guevara, but also recognition for a continent that has been very much forgotten. To see meadows, mountains, snow, water, all the natural treasures that we have as a people, all the diversity that we have as a people, but at the same time, to realize that we ourselves, uniting our strengths, can do wonderful things like this film - it's a song to the Americas really. Even the artists embody this, hailing from Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Peru and the Brazilian director. In the coming together of these Latin American countries, a film was created that can be understood by English-speaking men and women, from such different cultures, and has managed to awaken their sensitivities, to bring the image of Che closer, but also to pique their interest in Latin America .".