Cuba Pays National Tribute to 'Tania the Guerrilla'

Cubans are paying tribute to Tamara Bunke, better known as 'Tania the Guerrilla' — the only woman to fight alongside guerrillas under Che Guevara during the Bolivian insurgency — in the run-up to the 80th anniversary of her birth.

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In the city of Santa Clara, where Bunke's remains were interred in December 1998, the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) launched the event honoring Bunke’s legacy on Thursday.

A conference entitled "Today We Remember You Guerilla" was held on Friday. On Saturday, members of the FMC are due to place flowers at Bunke’s tomb in the Ernesto Guevara Sculpture Complex, where Che's remains are interred alongside those of other combatants from the Bolivian war. The events will culminate November 19, marking 80 years since Bunke was born.

Born Haydee Tamara Bunke in East Germany, and later nicknamed 'Ita' by her family, the revolutionary went on to fight under the nom de guerre 'Laura Gutierrez Bauer.' However, she became best known as 'Tania The Guerrilla.'

A spy whose communist family had fled to Argentina during the rise of the Nazis, she was killed in battle by the CIA-backed Bolivian Army Rangers on August 31, 1967. Her life is the subject of a new documentary which premiered earlier this year in Bolivia, entitled "La Histoire de Ita" (The Story of Ita).

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"They accused her of being Che's lover, of following him because she was in love," says Cuban historian Froilan Gonzalez, who co-wrote the documentary, of rumors she was Che's romantic partner. "It is one thing to follow someone for ideas and another for love.

"Her life was very rich and intense, because when she traveled as a youth to Germany she became politically involved, which formed her ideological base.

"When she arrived to Cuba she became active in political activities… from there the Argentine-German was selected to join the guerrilla group that would form in Bolivia under the command of Che Guevara."