©Shawna Scherbarth 2001-05. All rights reserved.
Ministerio del Interior
Havana, Cuba
December 7, 2003
Directly across the Plaza de la Revolución from the José Martí Memorial stands the Ministerio del Interior building, instantly recognizable by the enormous bronze wire sculpture of Che Guevara on the façade. This sculpture was based on the famous photograph of Che taken by Alberto Korda. The words which appear below Che’s image, “Hasta la Victoria Siempre” mean “Ever Onward to Victory” and were the signature in Che’s final letter to Fidel Castro before he was killed in Bolivia.
This was our introduction to the near deification of Che in Cuba. Everywhere you went you saw images of him, every shop featured t-shirts and post cards with his face on them. Although you might occasionally see “Viva Fidel” scrawled on a local shop’s walls, Che, with his handsome face, lofty ideals and early martyrdom has achieved near Christ-like prominence in the religion that is the Revolution.
