Iran: Islamist, Socialist Revolutions Don't Mix Says Aleida Guevara

international | anti-capitalism | other press Thursday October 04, 2007 14:30 by pat c

The Iranian Junta attempted to use the daughter and son of Che to whip up support for the Islamists and to do down Socialism. This backfired spectacularly when Aleida Guevara made it clear that Che was a Communist and an Atheist.

An attempt to rope in the son and daughter of the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara to forge a parallel between Iran’s Islamist revolution and the socialist revolution in Latin America through a four-day conference has ended in fiasco. After Aleida Guevara protested from the podium against perceived distortions of her father’s ideology by the first Iranian speaker, Haj Saeed Ghasemi, the four-day ‘Che Like Chamran’ conference, that started Sep. 25, was aborted and the Latin American guests whisked away.

Aleida Guevara

"The people of Cuba, Fidel (Casro) and Che Guevara were never socialists or communists. Fidel has several times admitted that he and Che and the people of Cuba hated the Soviets for all they had done. Today communism has been thrown into the trash bin of history as it was predicted by Ayatollah Khomeini," Ghasemi told the conference and added that the only way to save the world was through the ‘’the religious, pro-justice movement’’.

An indignant Aleida, however, started her own address "in the name of the people of Cuba". "We are a socialist nation," she asserted. She advised him to "always refer to original sources instead of translations to find out about Che Guevara’s beliefs. My father never talked about God. He never met God. My father knew there was no absolute truth. "

At a meeting later with students of Amir Kabir University of Technology, where the leftist groups are particularly strong, Camilo Guevara told students he approved of all that his sister had said at the conference, ISNA reported.

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