Aleida March de la Torre

Cuban woman known mainly for having been the second wife of Ernesto Che Guevara. She presides over the Che Guevara Center for Studies and holds the copyright to his writings, including several texts still unpublished.

Aleida March was born and grew up on a 20-hectare farm in Manicaragua, owned by her father, in the rural area of Santa Clara. She came from a family of poor white peasants, socially only slightly differentiated from the guajiros, or poor black peasants, who were even poorer.

As a young woman she went to study Pedagogy at the University of Santa Clara. She began to take interest in politics when Fidel Castro carried out the attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. She became involved and joined the 26th of July Movement, starting in 1956.

When civil war began in 1957, Aleida actively participated in underground work for the M-26-7 as a messenger for the person in charge of Villa Clara, with a reputation for being bold and courageous. She was not afraid of anything. She was very self-sacrificing, serious, single and had no fondness for parties.

Aleida's ideas, like those of many M-26-7 activists "from the plains," were marked by her outright opposition to the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and the desire to establish a liberal democracy.

She met Che Guevara in the midst of the civil war when he arrived with Column Eight to fight in the region, in October 1958. They fell in love at that moment and began to live together.

Shortly after the fall of Batista's dictatorship, Aleida March and Ernesto Guevara were married on June 9, 1959, in Havana.

Together they had four children:

Aleida Guevara March, Camilo Guevara March, Celia Guevara March, and Ernesto Guevara March.

Aleida March currently presides over the Che Guevara Center for Studies, located in the house they shared in Havana.

Forty years after Che's death in Bolivia and encouraged by her children, Aleida decided to reveal secrets she had carefully guarded; they are not political nor do they aim to change Che's biography, but they reveal the myth in his private life.