Che Guevara’s passion for public health contributed to a legacy of social medicine in Latin America, and this book explores and reveals his thoughts on the role of a doctor.
Features an introduction by Aleida Guevara March, MD, a Cuban physician who is the eldest daughter of four children born to Ernesto “Che” Guevara and his second wife, Aleida March
Before Ernesto Che Guevara became “Che,” before he traveled Latin America, before he joined Fidel in Cuba, he was a medical student. In 1956 he wrote to his mother before leaving to go and join the guerilla expedition to Cuba: “My path seems to be slowly but surely diverging from that of clinical medicine, but not so far that I have lost my nostalgia for hospitals. What I told you about the professorship in physiology was a lie, but not a big one. It was a lie because I never planned to accept it, but the offer was real and there was a strong possibility that they were going to give it to me, as I had an interview and everything. Anyway, that’s all history. Saint Carlos [Karl Marx] has made a new recruit.”
He had started a book on the role of the doctor in Latin America, a work he fully intended to continue writing. It remained incomplete at the time of his death in Bolivia at the age of thirty-nine, just eleven years later.
Antes de que Ernesto Che Guevara se convirtiera en el “Che”, antes de viajar por América Latina, antes de unirse a Fidel en Cuba, era estudiante de medicina. Antes de partir para unirse a la expedición guerrillera a Cuba en 1956, Che escribió a su madre: “Mi camino parece desviarse lentamente pero seguramente de la medicina clínica, pero no tanto como para perder la nostalgia de los hospitales. Lo que te dije de la cátedra de fisiología era mentira, pero no muy grande … En fin, eso ya es historia. San Carlos [Karl Marx] ha hecho un nuevo fichaje.”
Había empezado a trabajar en una obra sobre el papel del médico en América Latina, un libro que seguía sin completar en el momento de su muerte en Bolivia a la edad de treinta y nueve años, sólo once años después.
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