Santa Clara city and Che Guevara have remained closely related by strong bonds of admiration, sacrificy and heroism. It was like a love at first sight which flourished in the last days of December.

Santa Clara city and Che Guevara started a related history that began with grapeshot, the gunpowder of those days of the historic battle that transcended until the subsequent peace periods.

30 years after the death of the heroic guerilla fighter (Che Guevara). His mortal remains, which were hid for a long time and were identified near of an aviation runway in Valle Grande settlement in Bolivia, returned to that city finally.

Once his mortal remains got to Havana city, the highest tributes were then paid to him by his children and comrades, led by Fidel Castro that were then waiting for him, especially Aleida Guevara March who was only seven years old when his father fell in combat.

Visibly moved, Aleida said:

“It´s been 30 years that our parents said good bye to us and the majority of us were then really minors. We are men and women now. We perhaps lived period of time with lots of pain and sorrow for the first time. We did know how things happened and we suffer because of it. Their mortal remains get to us and they do not get to us defeated; they return as heroes, even forever young, courageous and strong. No one could ever take that away from us as they will be always alive near their children in their town. They knew that they could return to their motherland whenever they then decided and the fact that our people would heal their wounds with tenderness.”

Aleida Guevara talked to the leader of the Cuban Revolution when she expressed:

“They knew that you would continue being their friend, their chief and that is why we are asking you to honor us by receiving their mortal remains. They even much more than being our parents, they are children of our town which you represent properly. So we want you to receive the mortal remains of the comrades who return to their motherland. We also give you our lives. We shall overcome.”

On Octiber 17th , 1997, Che Guevara, along with his comrades from the Bolivian guerrilla, got to Santa Clara. Fidel Castro received them on behalf of the Cuban people and said:

“We have not come to say good bye to Che Guevara and his heroic comrades, we have come to receive them. I see Che Guevara and his companions as a reinforcement and as a detachment of invincible combatants that includes not only Cubans this time but also Latin American ones who have come to fight near of us and writing new pages of history and glory.”