----- Original Message -----
From: mart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Cuba SI <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2000 5:13 AM
Subject: [Cuba SI] TANIA
This is a tribute the life of Haydee Tamara Bunke Bider, or "Tania" as she was known
to her Comrades. She was murdered, along with Che and the rest of his band of heros in
Bolivia. She now rests, in a place of honour, in the mausoleum in Santa Clara, in
Cuba, her adopted land. She died a martyrs death, in the cause of peace, freedom and
justice. May her spirit be with us,always!
Comrade mart
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TANIA, FEMALE GUERRILLA OF CUBA
by Alma Bond
More than three decades after her death in Bolivia during Ernesto ``Che''
Guevara's fateful last revolutionary mission, the remains of Cuban national
heroine ``Tania the Guerrilla'' have been returned to her adopted
homeland.``Tania,'' whose real name was Haydee Tamara Bunke Bider, was the
only woman on the legendary leftist rebel's 1967 Bolivia expedition.
Her bones were found in a coffin in the remote Bolivian town of
Vallegrande in September, 1998 during a search for the bodies of the
guerrilla forces led by Ernesto Che Guevara. The grave was discovered in
the grounds of the Rotary Club near Valle Grande's airpost runway, four
hundred eighty miles (seven hundred seventy kilometers) southeast of the
capital La Paz. Tania's remains were formally buried in December of 1998 at
a mausoleum in the central Cuban city of Santa Clara, recently built to
house the remains of Guevara and those who joined his unsuccessful effort
to bring about a revolution in the Andean nation.
Tania was born in Argentina on November 19, 1937 of German parents
who emigrated to Argentina to escape Nazi persecution. They subsequently
returned to their country to participate in the reconstruction of the
German Democratic Republic. Tania was raised by Communist parents, who
continued to do underground work after they emigrated to Argentina. She was
admitted to the United Socialist Party of Germany when she was eighteen
years old. According to her mother, this was the atmosphere in which Tania
was brought up. She believed that a Communist was a Communist and a
revolutionary wherever he was, even though the country he was in might not
be the one where he was born. In a very deep sense, Tania lived out her
parents' dream.
Tania had a deep abiding interest in Cuba from the time she was an
adolescent, and was thrilled to come to Cuba from East Germany in May 1961
at the age of twenty-four. While there, she worked in the Ministry of
Education, the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, and on the
national executive board of the Federation of Cuban Women. She met Che
when he was on a trip to the German Democratic Republic at the head of a
Cuban trade delegation, and joined his band out of sincere love and loyalty
to him and his revolutionary dream.
According to a neighbor, "The most striking thing about her - the
common denominator of her personality - was her smile, a gay, open,
beautiful smile." She was slender, of medium height, with deep green eyes
and almost blond hair which she wore in a braid down her back. She had an
elegant manner and a beautiful melodious voice. Her laugh, like her voice,
was deep, and could really sound forth. Maria Elena Capote, in a Special
for Granma International, wrote "She almost always wore a militia uniform:
olive green pants ballooning out at the ankles, boots and a light blue thin
denim shirt. An olive green beret slanted over a wide forehead. That's
what she looked like when she was taking journalism classes in Havana. She
was the image of a young European woman, much more than Latin American,
until she spoke in her perfect Spanish, laced with a light Argentinean
accent."
Because she was born in Argentina, she spoke Spanish fluently, and
was able to assume various identities for her undercover work. Thus she was
known as Tamara Bunke in Cuba, Haydee Bidel Gonzalez in Europe, Marta
Iriarte in Berlin , and Laura Gutierrez Bauer in Bolivia. She usually wore
no make-up, and her concept of a true woman was one who did not need to
wear elegant, expensive clothes, nor to avoid work that would hurt her
hands. She didn't like to buy new clothes, and when she was forced to
purchase some in Brazil in order to keep up her disguise, her tendency was
to buy the cheapest ones she could find. This, she explained to "Mercy,"
her teacher and contact, was because it was so hard for Cuba to obtain
dollars. "Wouldn't it be wonderful," she said with tears in her eyes, "if
instead of their sending me dollars, I could send dollars to Cuba?"
A few anecdotes speak further of her innate generosity. After
inviting Tania to have coffee with her, one of her teachers at the 1961
students' congress commented that a small embroidered handkerchief Tania
was carrying was very pretty. She answered that she had made it herself. A
few days later, after having washed and ironed it, she gave the
handkerchief to her teacher. Another time, she insisted on swapping
apartments with a Chilean comrade who had four children. Tania was living
in a three-bedroom apartment, while the family occupied one with only two.
She said to her friend, "There isn't enough room for all of you in that
apartment."
Tania was given a very good musical and political education by her
parents, and her views on many different questions always predominated in
student groups. She was popular for her ability to play the accordion and
the guitar with great feeling for her colleagues, who were impressed with
her knowledge of music, including the classics. She taught classes in the
guitar to the Federation of Cuban Women, and also was a collector of folk
songs from Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, and from all over Latin
America.. If she had lived, in all likelihood she would have written a book
about her findings. She had a special charisma that captivated all those
who spoke with her, perhaps because of her way of listening attentively to
what people said, or the wealth of knowledge she displayed, without seeming
ostentatious or pedantic.
Tania quickly became one of the most important comrades of the
Federation of Cuban Woman and carried out every task she was assigned, no
matter how trivial it seemed. Once she went for an interview to be aired on
a radio program sponsored by the Federation. She carried and installed an
old and defective tape recorder. Capote said that she herself would not
have bothered with the interview, as she felt the information it would
provide wasn't worth the effort Tania was putting into it. But her
enthusiasm was as great as if she were interviewing a minister on matters
of life and death importance. According to her, "Anybody who can't do small
things will never be able to do great ones." She was unique in how deeply
she submerged herself in her work and in her unconditional loyalty to the
Revolution. She won the affection and esteem of all who knew her.
Tania also had quite a temper. Once when she was riding in a taxi
with Mercy, he said he had no Brazilian money with him and asked her to pay
the driver. Tania really blew up. "This isn't right," she said. "You didn't
exchange your dollars so I 'd have to pay for the ride. From now on we go
fifty-fifty on all expenses." A phrase frequently on her lips was, "All
right, enough of that!"
Tania spent a very busy time in Brazil learning intelligence
techniques from Mercy. A typical day consisted of class programs in
shadowing and counter shadowing, carbon and invisible writing, methods for
obtaining data and data checking, counterintelligence and its work methods,
and a review after dinner of what had been studied during the day.
Despite their frequent arguments, she became quite attached to
Mercy. When it was time from them to say good-by, she tried to avoid him.
He wouldn't allow it, and said, "Even though we've had plenty of arguments,
I want you to know I am very happy to have given you lessons. Since we
don't know what will happen, I want to remind you that above all our
watchword is PATRIA O MUERTE." She put her head on his shoulder and said
through her tears, "Patria o Muerte. Later, he said that Tania had acquired
from him in a single month the knowledge and skills it had taken him a year
to learn. He added that she was proud of having been chosen for special
work to aid the Latin-American Revolution.
Despite the revolutionary struggle which absorbed all her time, she
never stopped writing long letters and sending newspaper clippings and
pieces of speeches. to her family in Germany. She said, 'I don't want them
to be misinformed. I want them to know the truth about what's happening,
directly from me." She frequently showed her comrades photos of her
relatives, her parents, and her brother and sister-in-law. Her family was
central in her life, and no one was surprised when she decided to return to
Europe as a translator on a delegation in order to see her parents and
family in Berlin
After the vigorous training period, she was selected to establish
relations with representatives of the Bolivian ruling class and army, and
to create favorable conditions for opening the guerrilla front. She arrived
in that country at the end of 1964, and was known there by the name of
Laura Gutierrez Bauer. While it is known that she had a lover who was a
revolutionary, as stated in Rojas and Calderon's book, Tania, his name has
been unacknowledged publicly. Although no information on the matter is
presently available to this writer, one cannot help but wonder if Tania
selected the name of Gutierrez because she was involved in a love affair
with her fellow martyr, Mario Gutierrez, with whom she fought side by side
and who was killed and buried with her.
As a result of her successful work, Tania was informed in early
1966 by a Cuban connection that she had been admitted into the Communist
Party of Cuba. She then began to work directly with the guerrilla forces,
attending to the indoctrination of new combatants and the logistics of
transporting them to the area of operations.
Subsequently, she herself became an active member of the guerrilla army,
joining the group led by Comandante Vitalio (Vilo) Acuna, known as Joaquin.
As Guido Peredo (known as Major Inti), the young Bolivian who
became the leader of the revolutionary struggle for Bolivia after Che's
death and who himself was killed by the Bolivian army, said in his
introduction to Rojas and Calderon's book, "For the work to be successful,
individual self-imposed discipline is essential...All the 'old' life is
buried in the past...The embryo of a new and different human being begins
to appear, that of a person willing to make more and more sacrifices with
more and more joy...Tania traveled that road, daily rejecting the values so
important to other people."
As a member of the guerrilla army, Tania was imperturbable.
Although she wasn't used to them, she silently endured the long treks
necessary for guerrilla tactics and refused special treatment as a woman.
She insisted on being treated just like the rest of the comrades in the
guerrilla groups, and was able to break through the barriers which still
prevent women from being fully accepted members of society. One of her
greatest moments came when Che afforded Tania the honor of considering her
just one more fighter by giving her an M-1 rifle. Climbing up and down all
kinds of mountains and steep cliffs was difficult, and at times, when the
guerillas had to scratch and claw their way over the rocks, had to be done
with ropes,. Tania often managed to keep up with the leaders better than
some of the other comrades.
The members of her command died on August 31, 1967, when the
column was betrayed by a countryman and ambushed by Bolivian soldiers on
the river banks of Vado del Yeso. Tania was twenty-nine years old.
When she entered the water coming out of the underbrush, soldiers in
hiding saw a blond woman, thin from long marches and extreme deprivation of
food, sleep, and proper clothing, who seemed very beautiful to them. She
wore camouflage battle trousers, soldiers' boots, a green and white striped
faded blouse, a knapsack, and a submachine gun. When Tania heard shots, she
raised her arms to bring her weapon over her head into shooting position.
It is not known whether she was able to fire any bullets. A soldier shot
her through the lung, and along with the Peruvian doctor, Negro, she fell
into the water. Negro, who saw that she had been wounded, tried to save
Tania, and let himself be carried along with her by the current of the
river they were fording. When he reached the shore, he saw that she was
dead. Seven days later, on September 6, 1967, soldiers continuing the
search for Tania found her body and knapsack on the shore where Negro had
left it. It was taken the next day to the Pando Regiment and buried at the
spot where it was found, approximately two-thirds of a mile (one kilometer)
from where Guevara's remains were unearthed in July, 1997.
Since Tania the Guerrilla's remains were discovered, a new image
of her mother has traveled around the world. She was photographed kissing
the urn that will keep her daughter's remains forever, after thirty-one
years of waiting. The ossuary Nadia Bunke had hugged and kissed was
carried into the Marti Library of Santa Clara shrouded with a Cuban flag.
Nadia Bunke said she knew she would bury her Tania some day and refused to
die until she could accomplish this wish. When asked where she wanted her
daughter to be buried, Nadia Bunke answered with no hesitation that she
should be buried in Cuba with Che and their comrades. She was then asked
which flag should be placed over her daughter's remains. She answered,
"Under the Cuban flag", since her daughter had fought and given her life
for Cuba as a member of its Communist Party.
Thousands of citizens from Santa Clara laid flowers at the entrance
of the library where they paid homage to Tania and the other nine members
of the guerrillas commanded by Che. When Tania's remains were laid to rest
in the Comandante Che Guevara Monument in Santa Clara, she received an
impassioned testimonial from the Cuban people.
Raul Castro, first vice-president and general of the army,
attended the funeral service for Haydee Tamara Bunke (Tania) and the nine
other fighters who died in Bolivia. The heroes' remains were placed along
with those of Che and seven other fallen revolutionaries.
Although Tania was in love with life, according to her mother she
placed above all else the revolutionary duty she felt - the duty to take
part in Latin America's revolutionary struggle. That was how she was raised
and the way she wanted to live. The Revolution was her purpose in life. It
was clear in all her conversations, her character, her temperament, and her
crusade to bring about the ideals in which she believed. She did with her
life what she intended to do, and became the person she wanted to be. As
such, her stay on earth, though grievously short, was an unqualified
success.
She left behind a poem entitled "To Leave a Memory," the first few
lines of which are:
So I must leave, like flowers that wilt?
Will my name one day be forgotten
And nothing of me remain on the earth?
I think it would please her to know that thirty-three years after
her death, a stranger from the United States is speaking about Tania in her
beloved Cuba to a large international audience, the vast majority of whom
never knew her either.
**************
Alma H. Bond is a psychologist fascinated by the story of Tania the Guerrilla, a
courageous and dedicated young woman who lived her life as she wished, but paid a
tragic price for it at the youthful age of 29. She says that this article in no way is
meant as a political treatise, but is an impartial
attempt to present Tania as a real person to those of us across the miles and the
generations who were not fortunate enough to have known her.
Alma Bond is author of many books reflecting on her work as a psychologist. In her
early years, Bond worked as an actress. She took part in the 1999 Conference on
Radical Philosophy and Sociology in Havana where she presented the paper above.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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Remember four years of good friends, bad clothes, explosive
chemistry experiments.
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