ALEIDA GUEVARA, daughter of the Argentinian-Cuban revolutionary leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara, will be speaking at various events across Britain.

Aleida is a doctor of medicine and director of the Che Guevara Studies Centre, Havana — a Cuban institution that keeps the personal archives of her father, and promotes his life, work and thought. She has also worked as a paediatrician in Angola, Ecuador and Nicaragua, and is author of the 2006 book Chavez, Venezuela and the New Latin America.

Writing ahead of her visit, she said: “Do I have hope for humanity? None of us has a crystal ball, but if we want a different world, we need to work to achieve it. We can’t wait for it to fall out of the sky. We have a duty to forge that future ourselves.”

Aleida will be speaking at a number of public events jointly organised by Cuba Solidarity campaign and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

The Cuban doctor has been outspoken on the liberation of Palestine for many years and is an ambassador of the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine (GCRP). 

Speaking at a GCRP conference in 2023 she said: “It hurts me that we are still in the process of returning to Palestine, when we should have been today at the stage of talking about development projects for the people who have returned to Palestine. We demand a return to Palestine, because the world seems deaf and blind to the crimes of the zionists. The Palestinian people need us all to be by their side, so we will continue to struggle and fight until liberation.”

In March 2024, while attending a meeting of world leaders for peace in Chile, she recalled her father’s first visit to Gaza in 1959 during the earliest months of the revolution, and only 11 years after the Nakba, when over 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland. 

She told Prensa Latina that “the blockade against Gaza must be broken, food and medicine must be allowed in, it is essential to learn that the Palestinian people should not continue to suffer from hunger and disease.”

As a leading paediatrician Aleida will also be at the Latin America Conference in London where she will also speak about the impact of the US blockade on the health sector in Cuba.

She is passionate about the need to protect the NHS which was the inspiration for Cuba’s own world-renowned service, established after the revolution. 

“Public health is a human right because you must not exploit human suffering as a commercial activity. Once you had perhaps the best health service in the world — now it’s being privatised in gigantic leaps. So, what are you going to do about it? Because if these victories came from years of struggle by workers, how is it possible for you to permit those things to be lost? Be strong and defend what you have against rampant privatisation.”

International solidarity is one of the most beautiful things about the Cuban people.

“All Cubans have had their own experience with solidarity. Some as teachers, some as doctors, others as instructors. For example, we have all had some type of experience on internationalist missions. And even if one has not been on a mission personally, there is always a family member who has. From an economic point of view, offering free medical training meant economic sacrifice for the Cuban people, but it’s truly a beautiful thing, and it makes one feel very proud to be Cuban.”

Cuba is going through an incredibly tough time now and the Trump/Rubio-led US administration has just returned the island to the spurious State Sponsor of Terrorism List. 

The next few months will undoubtedly see further attacks against the island. Solidarity with Cuba, as with Palestine, is more crucial than ever. 

Yet despite the difficulties Aleida, and the Cuban people, continue to do what they can to assist people across the globe. 

As Aleida makes clear: “We feel proud to have worked in so many different parts of the world, always carrying our message of solidarity while at the same time learning more about the need for love, understanding, and respect among us all.”

Aleida Guevara March, Cuban paediatrician, committed internationalist and daughter of Cuban revolutionaries Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Aleida March, will be speaking in London, Liverpool and Sheffield this week.

Full details and tickets for all events here: https://tinyurl.com/AleidaCSC.

Tuesday February 4, LONDON, 6.30pm (doors 6.15pm), Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, WC1H 9BD. 

With Omar Barghouti, founder of the BDS movement, and in London, Ben Jamal, PSC director, and Bernard Regan, CSC national secretary, and in Liverpool, Kevin Courtney, CSC chair.

Wednesday February 5, SHEFFIELD, doors 6.30pm, United Reformed Church, Norfolk Street, S1 2JB. Free entry. Please arrive early to avoid disappointment.

Thursday February 6, LIVERPOOL, 6.45pm (doors 6.30pm), The Casa, 29 Hope St, L1 9BP. With Omar Barghouti and Kevin Courtney, CSC chair. Free entry. Please arrive early.

Friday February 7, LONDON, 6pm “The Right to Peace”: Student Movements and Anti-Militarism, with Vijay Prashad, Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, W1B 2HT.

Saturday February 8, the Latin America Conference — sold out.