The ceremony after the arrivals of the ossuaries of the Argentine-Cuban commander and other guerrillas to the Ernesto Che Guevara memorial 26 years ago, was presided over by the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, who lit the eternal flame for those who fell in Bolivia in f the heroic compound in this city.

In his speech on October 17, 1997, Fidel Castro described Che Guevara as a moral giant, and defined his guerrillas as a reinforcement detachment for the work and defense of the Cuban Revolution.

“Only in the world with which he dreamed, for which he lived and for which he fought is there enough room for him,” the Commander-in-Chief stressed.

Che Guevara’s coffin had arrived in Cuba from Bolivia on July 12, 1997, after his remains were found on the Vallegrande airstrip, in the state of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

The welcome ceremony to Cuba was presided over by Fidel Castro in a televised event and followed by millions of Cubans from the military airport of San Antonio de los Baños, in Havana.

Subsequently, the heroic procession traveled all the way to Santa Clara on the evening of October 14, when it was honored by a vigil in the Caturla Hall, on the edge of the Leoncio Vidal Park, where hundreds of people from Villa Clara and all Cuba paraded.

Together with Che Guevara, the bodies of Cuba’s Alberto Fernández Montes de Oca, Carlos Coello, René Martínez Tamayo and Orlando Pantoja, as well as Bolivia’s Simeón Willy Cuba and Peru’s Juan Pablo Chang, were buried.

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