Wonderful World, Beautiful People

Today I head to the Monumento Ernesto Che Guevara, a huge statue set in a vast arena and a fine memorial to Cuba's national hero. It's the only day the sun shines constantly and I jump a horse carriage to travel the two kilometres or so from Parque Vidal.

Beneath the monument lies a museum and the small, cave-like mausoleum where Guevara and some of his fellow rebels lie, their bones finally discovered in a secret mass grave in Bolivia in 1998.

Alone in the mausoleum, my fingers softly trace the carved likeness fronting Guevara's lair and how strange it seems now, that only five years ago I stood outside his birthplace in Argentina. The full circle; the beginning and end of someone that made a difference.

To one side burns an eternal flame, lit by Castro himself when his comrades were finally interred on Cuban soil.

But it's the life, the colour and the noise I love in Cuba, so no Blip of the monument, no touristy snapshot of the grave. Instead, I give you a woman who in her time has seen both sides of her country, from the crushing dictatorship of Batista to hard-won liberty (for all its faults), and lives her life in sadness and joy, like the rest of us. Ola.


words and image: pete thomson