Che gets rubber lessons on estate in Lanka

By Leel Pathirana

It was on August 7, 1959: a busy morning for the Immigration and Emigration officers at the Colombo Airport. A special chartered flight from the Revolutionary Government of Cuba had landed in Colombo en route to India.

On this flight was none other than the legendary revolutionary leader Ernesto Che Guevara and his entourage during his Asian tour. He was interested in learning about the rubber industry and how rubber was produced. The next day Che and his entourage were taken to a rubber estate at Yahala Kele, Horana.

This large estate of 1,600 acres belonged to J.C.D. Peries. The caretaker and cook of the estate bungalow, W.A. Dingiri Mahattaya recounts how he had received a phone call from his boss the previous night telling him there were foreign VVIPs coming to the bungalow and to prepare tea and some snacks for them.

Che in his Ministry Office in Havana, Cuba

On the 8th early morning they arrived. Among them was a handsome, bearded, long haired man, smoking a cigar and wearing a military type of suit. He was escorted by revolutionary guards and the Sri Lankan Police. Dingiri Mahattaya says he was later told that this was Che Guevara. He served them refreshments, bananas and tea. Che seemed to like Lankan bananas.

Then he went down to the plantation and spent many hours walking around and talking to the labourers through an interpreter about the process of production. He watched the entire process with great enthusiasm.

To commemorate his visit, he planted a Mahogany tree and standing before it, chanted something (in Spanish). Before they left he promised that he would return one day to Sri Lanka. Che Guevara Mahattaya gave me a box of cigars as a gift, Dingiri Mahattaya added.

Years later, Dingiri Mahattaya was shocked to hear that Che Guevara had been murdered somewhere in the mountains of Bolivia. “I was very upset then and whenever I see this giant Mahogany tree, I remember the day he spent with us,” he said.

Still taking care of the estate bungalow as well as the giant Mahogany tree, Dingiri Mahattaya is one among a handful of people in Sri Lanka to have met the Cuban revolutionary leader. Officials from the Cuban embassy visit the estate and a few years ago they held a small ceremony at the estate to commemorate Che Guevara’s historic visit, he said.

Che was killed when his band of guerillas slipped into Bolivia in 1966 to start a social revolution against the corrupt regime of General Rene Barientos. However, he was betrayed and, after being wounded in a gun battle, was captured and held prisoner in the schoolhouse at La Higuera.On October 9, 1967 he was executed by the Bolivian army backed by the CIA and his body taken to a laundry room of a hospital near Vallegrande, where his corpse was paraded before the international media.

His burial site remained a mystery for 30 years, until a search by the Bolivian government with the help of forensic experts from Argentina, uncovered it under an abandoned landing strip near Vallegrande.

I still remember that day with happiness and sadness

The Mahogany tree planted by Che When The Sunday Times met W.A. Dingiri Mahattaya, (76) at the “Yahala Kele” bungalow, he remembered Che’s visit vividly. “The visit took place when the Governor General told an acquaintance of his, J.C.B. Peries, to take Che Guevara to see a rubber estate. So he brought him to the Yahala Kele rubber estate. Before he was brought, refreshments were arranged. We also arranged for him to plant a Mahogany tree,” he said. W.A. Dingiri Mahattaya According to Dingiri Mahattaya, Che was probably in his late thirties or early forties at the time. “On that day, Che, Mr. Peries, an army official, about four people from his entourage and a translator came to the bungalow. They had egg hoppers, lunu sambol and bananas for breakfast and then Che Guevara planted the Mahogany tree and they all went for a walk in the rubber estate,” he said. Mr. Peries had passed away about five years ago.