SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia. – Cuban first Vice-President Miguel Diaz-Canel, concluded this Monday an official visit to Bolivia, where he met with President Evo Morales and other senior officials and paid homage to guerrilla Ernesto Che Guevara.

The Minister of Defense of Bolivia Reymi Ferreira, the Bolivian Ambassador in Cuba Juan Ramon Quintana, his Cuban counterpart Benigno Perez, and the Consul General in Santa Cruz, Raul Sanchez, came at El Trompillo Airport to see Diaz-Canel off.

The first Vice-President of the Councils of State and Ministers arrive in La Paz on Thursday, coming from Ecuador, where he took part in the Lenin Moreno´s inauguration.

Diaz-Canel was received at the government Palace by President Evo Morales, who ratified Cuba’s support to the process of change in Bolivia.

Morales gave the visitor a bust of indigenous leader Tupac Katari and a copy of the Book of the Sea, which contains the arguments to claim Chile a sovereign exit to the Pacific.

Diaz-Canel also met with Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera, and together they analyzed the possibility of expanding the economic and commercial linkages between the two countries. Besides, they talk on regional aspects, such as the efforts to maintain the proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace.

On Saturday, the Cuban first Vice-President traveled to of Santa Cruz department with the aim of paying homage to guerrilla commander Ernesto Che Guevara, in the fiftieth anniversary of his fall in combat.

There he visited the Señor de Malta Hospital´s laundry, where Che’s body was exposed on October 9 and 10 after his murder in the school of La Higuera by orders of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States.

During the tour, Dr. Miguel Angel de La Torre, founder of the Cuban Medical Brigade in Vallegrande, offered the visitors a comprehensive explanation on Che’s guerrilla that fought in the Bolivian jungle between 1966 and 1967. He also gave details on the process for finding the combatants´ remains.

The Cuban delegation reached the Guerrillas’ Pit, where the remains of Tamara Bunke (Tania) and another group of combatants were found.

They also visited the Ernesto Guevara Memorial, raised in the site where Che and several of his fellow fighters were buried for three decades.

For all revolutionaries, the visit to Vallegrande is of particular importance, Diaz-Canel told to Prensa Latina Agency, and stated that being in that place is like an encounter with history.

Taken from Prensa Latina Agency