Under the pseudonym Angalía, Monteagudo was part of the group of Cuban guerrillas, most of them black, who, under the command of Commander Guevara, went to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to prepare a liberation guerrilla at the request of African leaders.

‘On this 55th anniversary of the assassination of Commander Guevara in La Higuera, Bolivia, in 1967, the first thing that comes to mind is that we miss Che very much, because it was very difficult to deceive him. Furthermore, he had a philosophy: ‘he trusts, but he controls’, he narrated.

Monteagudo stressed the memories of Tatu (pseudonym of Che in the Congo guerrilla) are imperishable:

‘The demand he had we all liked, because he began by demanding himself’, and then adds:

‘Within his command, he had the habit of reprimanding you when you committed an indiscipline, but the minute he scolded you, he threw his hand on your shoulder and you felt the human warmth with which he persuaded you,’ he stressed.

He revealed that Che Guevara liked, when he had a cigar to smoke during off hours.

‘He was a smoker just like me. He knew I smoked tobacco, so he would light one in front of me and look at me mischievously, and after a while he would tell me: ‘Take Angalía’, then he would start laughing.

He discovered that Che distributed the cigars, but he wrote it down in a notebook.

‘He used to give you a cigar and write down the time and day. If you asked him again, he would take out the piece of paper and tell you: ‘Look, on such a day and at such a time, I gave you one. When you turned your back embarrassed he called you and gave you another ‘, recalled the ex-combatant.

The octogenarian Luis Monteagudo, from his home in this city of the center of Cuba, expressed that Che Guevara promulgated that he was willing to give his life for the freedom of any people in the world and fulfilled it.

‘We must follow the path he traced for us: fight against imperialism wherever it is,’ he affirmed.

ef/oda/jfd.