Business Daily (Nairobi)
Salim Lamrani
4 October 2007
opinion
Mario Terán, a retired former non-commissioned officer sadly famous for having executed the legendary guerrilla, Ernesto Che Guevara, on October 9, 1967, in the tiny school of La Higuera in Bolivia, lives in complete anonymity in Santa Cruz.
Mired in poverty, he lives only on his miserable pension of a former soldier and had lost his sight, victim of a cataract that he could not treat lacking resources.
In 2004, the Cuban President, Fidel Castro, launched a broad and continental humanitarian campaign bearing the name of Operation Milagro (Miracle), supported by Venezuela, which consisted in operating for free on the poor of Latin American suffering from cataract and other eye diseases.
In 30 months, close to 600,000 people of 28 countries, including citizens of the United States, recovered their sight thanks to the altruism of the Cuban doctors. The stated objective is to operate on six million people by 2016.
The election of Evo Morales as President of the Republic of Bolivia in December 2005 has allowed Bolivians to access the humanitarian programme that Cuba started. Close to 110,000 Bolivians have been able to regain their sight without paying a single centavo.
Among these is one Mario Terán, who could shake off his grave illness thanks to the Cuban doctors. Pablo Oritz, who works for the daily El Deber of Santa Cruz, tells the story: "Terán had a problem of cataracts and was cured... by Cuban doctors for free... The fellow is a complete stranger.
Nobody knows him. He is a wreck and turned up in the Operation Milagro hospital. Nobody recognised him and he was operated upon. His son, who went to the newspaper to make an act of public gratitude, told us the story ... It was in last August (2006)."
At times the story holds some surprises like that Che's assassin was cured by doctors sent by Fidel Castro, the most loyal and intimate companion of the "heroic guerrilla". Terán owes his sight to the health emissaries who follow the internationalist example of the man he killed.
On the eve of the 40th anniversary of his end and despite the execrable international media campaign destined to sully the image of one of greatest revolutionaries of the 20th century, Che's example remains "big, very big, enormous" and shines "intensely" thanks to the sacrifice of the tens of thousands of Cuban doctors who... persist in the faith that another world, less cruel, is possible.
Lamrani is a French professor, writer and journalist specialising in relations between Cuba and the United States.
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