Che Guevara's daughter: "Respect for differences is the basis of a healthy society"
When I arrive she is sitting alone at the podium in a House of Commons Committee Room while preparations go on around her for a meeting in support of the Miami Fiv Evidently she is tired after more than a week of meetings and interviews in many parts of the UK, campaigning for decent treatment for these prisoners, maltreated by the United States justice system.
Fighting injustice and providing medical care are the issues which have concerned her most.
She is trained as a pediatrician and nowadays works at the William Soler Hospital in Havana, but the years she spent in
Angola, Ethiopia and Nicaragua have made her aware of the pain suffered, especially by children in developing countries.
Suffering which is made worse by corrupt and despotic regimes, and nowadays by neo-liberal economics. And this is where the personal becomes political: the Cuban Revolution expanded internationally during the 1970's, and Che was executed in Bolivia as a result.
Talking about her life and the Cuban Revolution today, she also focuses on the simplicity of relations between people, the importance of honesty and mutual tolerance, in a way that recalls the writings of Tom Paine over 200 years ago during the United States Revolution.
Today these simple concerns may seem childlike in political terms, but now that the United States has become a monster spreading war and consuming resources all around the planet, we can contrast them favourably with the way the greatest power on earth is still attempting to crush the Cuban Revolution, like a jealous child.
In conversation with The Prisma, Aleida Guevara asks us to look at how much of the modern world has been made inhuman, by so-called advanced societies.
This article was originally published on Sep 23 2012, and the interview can be read in full with photos on the Prisma Multicultural Newspaper website: https://theprisma.co.uk/2012/09/23/aleida-guevara-respect-for-differences-is-the-basis-of-a-healthy-society/