"Investigating Che, a treasure placed in my hands"

February 4, 2020

Recently recognized with the 2019 National Prize for Cultural Research, María del Carmen Ariet García, Doctor of Historical Sciences, has more than fulfilled the Martian principle that "to educate is to deposit in each man all the human work that has preceded him."

She has done so by making known, especially to children and young people, the figure of Ernesto Guevara, through the Documentary Collection "Life and Work of Ernesto Che Guevara" (1928-1967), a project of which she is the principal author, and which has been validated by Unesco within the Memory of the World Program, in its international category, in 2013, and by the Academy of Sciences of Cuba and Citma, in 2015.

About how she approached the Che, and what this work has allowed her, the full professor at the University of La Habana has expressed: "In 1982, working at the Center for the Study of America, where Aleida March, the Che's widow—with whom we always spoke during breaks about her relationship with him—was also a researcher, one day she proposed that I collaborate in organizing the archives left by the Che and that she kept in her house. Imagine, from the initial shock I went to exaltation, upon realizing the treasure she was putting in my hands. I don't need to explain the honor and significance of that proposal which covered many facets, from the human sense to the academic, even without knowing the dimension of its content, which exceeded any of my expectations, not having an exact precision of the flow so deep and conceptual that his oral and written thought contained.

"This is how I came to develop a periodization, in which I capture, in chronological order, his most outstanding moments and which has allowed it to be established as a methodology for the Center for the Study of 'Che Guevara', where I have worked since its foundation, in any dimension in which the Che is studied and researched."

Regarding her participation in the team searching for the remains of the Che and the other guerrillas who fell in Bolivia, she has expressed that "it was like a kind of culmination of a stage of work in the scientific order. Not only I, all of us who participated felt highly gratified, for having fulfilled the mission entrusted to us and for how much it contributed to our lives both professionally and humanly. I think we became better from every point of view."

María del Carmen points out that "The Che was an exceptional man for his example, for his humanism, his anti-imperialism, his Latin Americanism, his will, courage and determination in any sphere in which he ventured, above all, in the one he considered supreme, that of being a revolutionary as the highest rung. That portrays in him the respect and dedication to contribute to forming man in an integral way and to bet on a better world until giving the best of himself, and becoming a paradigm for all time."