HAVANA, Cuba.- Antonio Maceo (1845-1896) and Ernesto Che Guevara (1928-1967), two heroes who shared not only June 14 as the date of their birthdays, but also from different times they adopted a common ideal: the revolutionary and Latin American cause.

Maceo, with as much force in his mind as his arm, son of parents who instilled the love for the homeland, became one of the most connoted chiefs of the Mambisas combat armies in the liberating wars against the Spanish colonialism in Cuba in 1868 and 1895.

Che Guevara, Argentinian by birth, Cuban by conviction, to whom the mountains of the Sierra Maestra saw growing as commander of the rebel army, the young man who, suffering a severe asthma, conquered Cuba and the world with its indomitable energy, as model of the leader that never separates from the crowd.

Stars illuminating the Great Homeland

With the same force that Maceo and Che did, in distant times, the battle today is for a more just and equitable world, without hegemonism, looting of wealth and financial speculation.

In the life and the thought of both heroes, there are the most sacred values, which we fight for today.

Maceo and Che were patriots whose ideas transcend to this day, two giants who showed us the way to fight together against injustice. They were warriors, with a military expertise acquired in practice, but also of a clear, radical, honest, intransigent thought.

On the anniversary of their births, the best homage to Maceo and Che will be, as they conceived them, to claim for unity clinging to the defense of the homeland, the great Latin American homeland.