HAVANA: The widow of legendary Cuban-Argentinean Ernesto Che Guevara unveiled her memoir, Evocation, last week, in which she narrates her six years with Cuba s hero before he left her to spread the revolution in Africa.
Aleida March, 71, dedicated her book to my children, my greatest source of inspiration and to her late husband s comrade-in-arms, former Cuban president Fidel Castro, to whom I owe everything.
I ve never given an interview to reporters, nor will I ever do so. Everything I have to say is written down in this book, March said on presenting her memoir published by Casa de las Americas.
She said that after finding it hard to think back to her few years of conjugal life with Guevara from 1959 to 1965, the inspiration for Evocation came some years ago from a friend s suggestion she write a movie script on her life with Che.
I wasn t too enthusiastic about the idea. However – I thought that, above all, I owed it to my children, and I started putting down my memories; I began writing about my life, said March, a mother of four and the director of Cuba s Center for Che Guevara Studies.
March admitted lacking a vocation as a writer, but in her book I put down in black and white my fondest memories.
The early years of Guevara, as a medical student traveling with a friend across South America on a motorcycle in 1952 and 1953, were brought to the big screen in Walter Salles 2004 Motorcycle Diaries, starring Mexico s Gael Garcia Bernal.
Guevara, who at 29 became a Cuban and internationalist guerrilla leader, was tracked down and killed in the Bolivian jungle on Oct. 9, 1967. – AFP
