N A T I O N A L

Havana. June 9,  2003

Memories of Che
BY JOAQUIN ORAMAS

YOUNG Giovanni was keen to learn every detail regarding the guerrilla that had been murdered in the Bolivian community of La Higuera, whom he had heard talked about in his home and who was respected by the Vallegrande campesinos as if he was an envoy sent from God. Relating his first impressions of Che he says that he is well known today by the inhabitants of Vallegrande and La Higuera for his ideas and his battles on behalf of the poor.

In his adolescence, Giovanni Osinaga Eguez gradually learned more about the mythical combatant and participated in walks and commemorative events in his honor, taking organizational responsibility for those held for Comandante Che Guevara and his comrades on the 25th anniversary of their death.

However, back then he couldn’t comprehend why his great-aunt, nurse Susana Osinaga always maintained a respectful and admiring silence when people talked of the guerrilla leader, and never disclosed her memories of what happened on October 9, 1967 in the small local hospital where she worked. He understood why many years later, on reading the book De Ñancahuazú a La Higuera (From Ñancahuazú to La Higuera), which quoted what had taken place there.

Susana completed her session at the hospital by washing the bloodied body of the heroic guerrilla, which remained there for several hours. The Bolivian soldiers threatened the nurse with death if she breathed one word of what she had seen and heard in relation to Che and the other murdered guerrillas. Giovanni stated that Che’s body had 14 bullet wounds, according to his great-aunt. The young man began to question her on those dramatic days of 1967 and found out that she had kept his socks and boots, a jacket, camera and other belongings of the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary, some of which the soldiers took from her and the others that she later handed over to the Cuban authorities.

The small Vallegrande hospital room visited by people from the area and other locations, including abroad, is exactly the same today as it was when Susana washed the Comandante’s body. The walls are covered with slogans and messages of affection and admiration for Che and his comrades, who fought and died in Bolivia.

Elderly inhabitants recount that when Che was laid out in the hospital, campesinos who passed by and saw him affirmed that it was the figure of Christ. Today, people living in the area pray to Che and ask for miracles when they have personal problems, if they have lost an animal and, if there is a drought, for rain, comments Giovanni, now a Bolivian doctor currently attending the Comandante Manuel Fajardo Hospital in Havana.

The soldiers removed the bodies of the dead prisoners from the hospital during the night of October 9 to bury them in unknown graves uncovered years later by Cuban forensic specialists after long and arduous research.

The young Giovanni came to know the struggles and thinking of the heroic guerrilla and dreamed of being like him. With that idea in his mind he approached the Cuban embassy in La Paz to apply for a scholarship to study medicine on the island, as that option was impossible for the son of a humble family in Bolivia.

In 1995, Dr. Giovanni Osinaga Eguez graduated in Cuba, where he is now specializing in orthopedics and traumatolgy. For two years he worked in La Higuera, precisely at the medical post established in the little schoolhouse where Che and his comrades were killed.

He affirms that he owes his training as a doctor and specialist to Cuba, where he is currently engaged in further studies as a hand specialist, and where his little son Santiago Ernesto was born. "It is Che’s thinking that has made me a doctor and I have spent years studying and specializing in Cuba," he states. Going deeper into the concept that is an intrinsic part of his training, he recalls that, on completing his degree, he lent his services in La Higuera, "educated in the humanitarian concept of Cuban doctors." In his early professional experience there he came up against inequalities in terms of patient care.

"In Cuba the first thing that they do in hospital is to offer medical attention that can include X-rays and other complimentary services. But in Bolivia, when a patient reaches the hospital, the first question is whether he or she has money or not to cover the radiography, as a minimum. If they don’t arrive with money, they are just left abandoned on a stretcher, nobody admits them and they’re left to their luck¼ " comments the young specialist, adding:

"The misery existing there hurts me, the places where there is no drinking water, electrical or sewerage facilities and you can swell the sewage in the air. The people are living in terrible backwardness and suffering from ailments eliminated years ago or unknown in Cuba, like Chagra’s Disease and malaria, to quote just two that could be studied in Bolivia in order to care for patients."

He relates the case of the pregnant woman with a serious complication that was threatening her life and that of the baby. As the conditions did not exist in La Higuera to solve the problem, the woman was rapidly transferred by car to the closest hospital, at least 30 kilometers distant. The doctor managed to save their lives. "That night I felt an unforgettable satisfaction and tremendous gratitude for the career I had chosen and the training I received in this beloved island," he concluded, after affirming that the people of La Higuera attribute the saving of the mother and child to a miracle of Che.

Since he returned to Cuba the area of La Higuera and its surroundings have been left without a doctor and the converted medical post (the old schoolhouse), established there as a tribute to Che, has become a kind of museum. Close to 2,000 persons have been left without medical attention.

La Higuera’s medical post has disappeared, for which reason, now a hand specialist, Dr. Giovanni proposes to relocate in Eastern Bolivia (Santa Cruz), "always with the principles in which we were educated, attending to the whole population without asking patients how much money they have." That is what he recommends to all the students at the Havana Latin American School of Medical Science, to whom he reiterates: "don’t lose the vocation or the humanitarian training in solidarity that you have received in Cuba."