Santa Cruz, Bolivia - The Cuban Five and the also Hero of the Republic of Cuba, Orlando Cardoso Villavicencio, will pay tribute here to Commander Ernesto Che Guevara, when 48 years of his assassination in La Higuera are marked today.

René González, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and Antonio Guerrero as well as Cardoso Villavicencio will join President Evo Morales to pay tribute to the well-known Argentine-Cuban soldier, killed on October 8, 1967.

The day before, the Cuban men were received by the Bolivian Defense Minister Reymi Ferreira, at the University Gabriel René Moreno of the eastern Bolivian department.

In the presence of relatives of some of the members of the guerrilla of Che in Bolivia and local authorities, Ferreira stressed that the legacy of the Cuban heroes is an example for current and future generations of Bolivians and young people around the world.

Also, Senator Adriana Salvatierra, said she was honored for the presence of the six Cuban heroes, and stressed that the moral strength and their revolutionary convictions led these men to face the psychological torture they were subjected to. Cuban anti-terrorist fighters and Colonel Cardoso Villavicencio, arrived to Bolivia on Monday, the day they were received at the Quemado Palace -seat of the government- by President Evo Morales, who awarded them the Order Marshal Andrés de Santa Cruz, in the rank of Knight.

Similarly, the six heroes of the Republic of Cuba were received in the Plurinational Legislative Assembly by the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Gabriela Montano, and her counterpart in the Senate, José Alberto González.

This Wednesday morning they met with members of the Cuban medical mission here, as well as with students of the school José Martí in the capital.

Fernando, Ramón, Antonio, Gerardo and René, as they are called by Cubans, were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on September 12, 1998 in Miami, where they were monitoring anti-Cuban terrorist groups located in the south of Florida.

René and Fernando González were released in 2013 and 2014, respectively, after serving their sentences, while the other three returned home on December 17 2014, as part of negotiations between Cuba and the United States, which gave way to the process of normalization of their bilateral relations.

Meanwhile, Cardoso Villavicencio was taken prisoner during the Somalian invasion in Ethiopia, and remained 10 years and seven months in prison during the regime of Mogadiscio at that time.