My Life With Che by Hilda Gadea

Author:Hilda Gadea
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473816541
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books

11

WE SPENT THE month of December in harmony. Sometimes Ernesto ate with us. He would entertain us with the daily stories from the hospital and his activities as a street photographer. The comments of the people he photographed were sometimes amusing, as was Patojo’s failure to deliver photographs on time, thereby losing clients. Ernesto took it all in stride; he could see the humor in it. He said he had continued to record his observations in his diary and that he expected to organize it one day.

Ernesto had also run into Alfonso Bauer Paiz, who had been the minister of economics and a good friend of ours. Bauer Paiz had been very surprised to find Ernesto taking pictures in the park. He invited him to the restaurant he was managing at the time, and told him what had happened to him and his family from the time they took asylum in the Mexican embassy in Guatemala.

My mail was forwarded from Guatemala and I found the letter Ernesto had sent, in which he wrote of his arrival in Mexico City, meeting the Central American doctor and the director of the general hospital, and of his job in the allergy ward. He also wrote that he contacted his father’s friend, the movie man Ulises Petit de Murat, who received him very well and invited him to his house. Murat’s daughter was very charming, and they served great meals in their house. He ended with a joke: “Come soon, because between the daughter and the beefsteaks, something’s going to happen.”

We laughed, and somehow reading that letter reinforced our reconciliation. I understood then that he had thought of me all the time I had remained in Guatemala and that he had sincerely wanted me to come to Mexico soon.

All during the month of December I was busy trying to get the necessary working permit. I went daily to the Ministry of the Interior and used whatever time I had left to meet with other exiles or to visit museums or nearby archaeological ruins.

The times Ernesto and I spent together were delightful. Sometimes he discussed poetry with Lucila, but mostly we discussed Latin American politics and also the Mexican Revolution, so much admired throughout our continent, a revolution that we now had a chance to witness firsthand. Unfortunately we could see that there was strong foreign pressure on the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party, the political party of the government) and that there still existed a large, cumbersome bureaucracy in public administration. The great aims of the Mexican Revolution had not been attained; the peasant did not possess the land. It is true that some banks extended credit, which unfortunately went more often to the wealthy farmer than to the poor peasant. We were aware that it was very difficult to change the situation because, under the auspices of the PRI, a national bourgeoisie had developed. Closely tied to the interests of the imperialists, this class wanted no change in the structure.

All over the world Christmas is celebrated by large dinners.

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