Remembering Che: My Life with Che Guevara
March was Guevara’s second wife and the mother of four of his five children. After four decades of chosen silence, she reveals in her memoir many interesting and sometimes surprising aspects of her life and her life with Guevara. She was raised in a rural section of Las Villas province, and she aspired to become a teacher. Like many youthful and idealistic Cubans, she despised the Batista dictatorship, so joining the July 26th underground resistance seemed a moral imperative. Her account of her activities, primarily gathering and conveying information, is harrowing and inspiring. Her meeting with Guevara and the flowering of their relationship are recounted with emotion, but she avoids excessive sentimentality. March understandably ignores some of Guevara’s unpleasant traits, including his ideological rigidity and his intolerance for the failures of others. Still, the inclusion of previously unpublished letters to her show a seldom-seen side, as he seems capable of deep personal attachment as well as longings for the domestic life he has sacrificed. This is the informative and poignant story of a rather modest woman thrust into the center of some important historical events. --Jay Freeman