Oct, 2024.- It was during a February afternoon in 1963 when Hiram Rafael Pérez Perera, one of the founders of the Gonzalo Esteban Lugo Metallurgical Base Business Unit, in Nuevitas, saw Che Guevara for the first time. Although the brief encounter did not go beyond a greeting from the Comandante's jeep, his astonishment was great when, some time later, he had the opportunity to interact with him more closely.
"When I entered the Metallurgical Base Business Unit, in the assembly team, I began to work on getting the electrode workshop ready and we had a warehouse with all the materials; so Che arrived unexpectedly and entered the warehouse, there were some tons of clay that had been brought from Manatí.
The administrator at that time was told that it was a mineral to make electrodes. Guevara started to look, he took the clay with his hand and analyzed it for a while; he was a very well qualified man, he was a doctor, but he knew everything, so he turned to the administrator and asked him: 'What is this? And he answered that it was a very important mineral, limestone earth; then Che said to him: What a fool you are man!. That's yellow mud, you were fooled.
In July 1964, Che visited the factory again due to the inauguration of new machinery to increase production.
"When he arrived, he went to the electrode workshop and walked around it, I worked there and followed him at all times. He entered a room where there was a scale, he was smoking a tobacco that almost burned his lips and had a respirator in his pocket, one of those used by asthmatics, so he threw away the tobacco and automatically took the respirator to his mouth. He then took his weight and asked how much a kilogram was, he looked at me and I said 'it was 2.2 pounds', he denied and mentioned it was more like 2.16 and laughed."
On one occasion, the Commander's sudden arrival disturbed the workers' routine. Hiram, who was at his work station, did not notice his presence.
"That time it took me by surprise. I was in the workshop eating dulce de leche (Caramelized milk), and from time to time I would throw bits of it to a colleague who was close to me. He snuck up behind me and when I turned around, we looked at each other for a few seconds, I didn't say anything, he put his hand on my shoulder and laughed out loud, then he left."
Although the passage of time has damaged the Hiram’s memory, he remembers in detail everything related to Che.
"I admired him a lot," he says with a nostalgic smile, "I was very young when I first heard about him, what he had done. I was amazed by his determination to fight despite his severe asthma, because I was very sickly growing up.
He was something like my example to follow, I thought that if he could fight I could also fight; then, at the beginning of the second clean-up of the Escambray, I volunteered to fight the rebels. It was difficult to get used to the camp, there I realized how hard it must have been for the Commander to live in the Sierra Maestra, that's why my respect for him increased. I firmly believe that no other man like him has ever been born; no one like Che".
