Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, in the light of the struggle – Libération

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, in the light of the struggle – Libération
Fidel
      Castro
      and
      Che
      Guevara,
      in
      the
      light
      of
      the
      struggle
      –
      Libération

Funny summer for a meeting

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Funny summer for a meetingdossier

In the 1950s, the Argentinian idealist travels through Latin America. One summer night in Mexico, he meets the charismatic Cuban revolutionary. Through passionate discussions, an immediate friendship will be born between the two men who will overthrow the dictatorship in Havana.

It is the story of a lawyer who convinces a doctor in the humid heat of a Mexican night. In the middle of the rainy season, in the depths of a foggy room, drowned in the smell of cigars. The lawyer is tall, he wears a still timid moustache. He has the hard face of a determined man, slightly narrowed eyes that fall, rarely, on his smile. The doctor is smaller. Still hairless, but not for much longer. He laughs easily, but when he listens, his eyebrows furrow. They veil his dreamy gaze. “Too beautiful to be intelligent”, said to herself when she saw him, the one who became his companion, Hilda. Both men are approaching their thirties. The first is almost 29, the second has just celebrated his 27th. In 1940, Mexico City had seen Trotsky die and with him a certain left. Fifteen years later, the capital sees all the revolutionaries in Latin America parade. The Revolución, the real one, is about to give birth. On that night in the summer of 1955, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara meet for the first time.

Fidel has just arrived in Mexico. Two months earlier, the Cuban authorities had granted him amnesty after almost two years in prison. He was to serve fifteen years for his attempted coup against the regime of Fulgencio Batista. The young man had not supported the colonel’s coup d’état. This was what had pushed him to attack the Moncada barracks on July 26, 1953, in the hope of provoking a general insurrection.

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