Rosa Luxemburg Prize 2026: For Aleida. For Cuba.

Aleida Guevara in 2023 -- image via junge Welt

By Nick Brauns, junge Welt, 24 January 2026. Translation by Helmut-Harry Loewen.

At the 31st International Rosa Luxemburg Conference on January 10 in Berlin, it was announced to enthusiastic applause that this year's Rosa Luxemburg Prize will be awarded to Cuban physician and internationalist Aleida Guevara.

Aleida Guevara has been an important international voice for socialist Cuba for many decades. In her practical work — not least as a physician — she is a defender of the values of the Cuban Revolution. The daughter of revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara is a passionate internationalist who is just as determined to defend the Palestinians' right to self-determination as she is to take a stand against imperialist wars.

With the Rosa Luxemburg Prize, the daily newspaper junge Welt and the cultural magazine Melodie & Rhythmus honour progressive artists, scientists, activists, and politicians for their internationalist, class-conscious, anti-militarist, and enlightened commitment. Last year's first recipient was actor, trade unionist, and communist Rolf Becker, who passed away last month in Hamburg at the age of 90. “This prize belongs to all of you,” Becker said in April 2025 as he accepted the award — a Rosa Luxemburg statuette created by sculptor Rolf Biebl [1].  “For it is not individuals who can trigger movements, but rather the masses who move the individual who attempts to formulate and convey this.”

This also applies to Aleida Guevara, who will accept the award on behalf of the defiant Cuban people, who have resisted the US blockade for six decades, firmly committed to their socialist path.

Cuba is probably more endangered today than it has been since the 1961 US invasion of Cuban exile mercenaries in the Bay of Pigs, which was repelled under the leadership of Fidel Castro. The US government is working specifically toward the overthrow of the socialist government — before the end of this year, as the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The blockade of Cuba has been further tightened by US President Donald Trump and Cuban exile Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. By seizing tankers and Venezuela's oil in connection with the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, the US is cutting Cuba off from its most important energy supplier. Anti-imperialist solidarity with Cuba is now more necessary than ever.

The Rosa Luxemburg Prize will be awarded on Saturday, April 11, at the Babylon Cinema on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. A conference on solidarity with Cuba and the peoples of Latin America will be held there starting at 1 p.m. Speakers and panelists will include Cuban journalist Liz Oliva Fernández, Enrique Ubieta Gómez, director of the Cuban Ministry of Culture's magazine Revolución y Cultura, and Franco Cavalli from the Swiss medical solidarity association Medicuba. Singer-songwriter Nicolás Miquea will also perform.

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Fidel, Aleida & Che

Backgrounder by Kurt Terstegen:  “My father is the person who taught me to live with dignity.”

She is a pediatrician, politician, and communist — but above all, an internationalist. Aleida Guevara, daughter of revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, is every bit as committed to international solidarity as her famous father. She is also the heir to a political legacy. Che Guevara was a man who not only spoke of revolution — he carried it in his heart, ready to die for it, as he once said. In 1967, at the age of just seven, Aleida Guevara lost her father, who was murdered in guerrilla warfare in Bolivia. In a farewell letter to his children, he wrote the oft-quoted lines: “Above all, always be able to detect injustice, no matter who it is against, no matter where in the world. That is the best thing a revolutionary can do.” This sentence is a guiding principle in Aleida Guevara's life and work.

One year after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Aleida Guevara was born to two revolutionaries. Her mother, Aleida March, had met Che Guevara during the guerrilla war in Cuba. After the victory of the revolution, Che took on central roles in the new state, including president of the Cuban National Bank and minister of industry. Aleida therefore grew up mainly with her mother. In interviews, she recalls the days she spent with her father, especially the volunteer work that Che himself regularly participated in. While he spent his Sundays harvesting sugar cane, Aleida sat by his side. After her father's early death, she emphasizes that it was mainly thanks to her mother that she too became a revolutionary and made her own contribution to the Cuban Revolution. Aleida March always insisted that her daughter grow up like any other Cuban child, without the privileges that came with her father's fame.

Aleida Guevara is the eldest of Che Guevara and Aleida March's four children. She also has a half-sister from Che's first marriage to Peruvian Hilda Gadea. In her foreword to her father's collection of letters, published in 2021, she writes that Che placed his revolutionary hopes primarily on his youngest son, Ernesto Guevara March. As a child, this hurt her, but today she has forgiven him. She emphasizes that her father always carried her in his heart.

Today, it is Aleida Guevara who is resolutely carrying on the revolutionary legacy. She is not only active in Cuba as a voice of civil society, but also fights internationally for justice and liberation, not only with words, but through concrete action. When asked by Breakthrough News why she chose to become a medical doctor, she replied simply: “I do it because I am Cuban.” She is convinced that hardly any other profession requires a stronger commitment to embodying the core values of the revolution: solidarity and love.

In an interview with the British Cuba Solidarity Campaign, she expressed her pride in the internationalist medical brigade “Henry Reeve.” She herself has participated in numerous missions abroad as a doctor, including in Angola, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.

In an interview with Cubasí.cu, Aleida Guevara described her father's shock at the expulsion of the Palestinians: "My father went to Palestine in 1959. When he arrived, the Palestinian leaders explained the situation. Many people are mistaken to think that this is a new problem. In fact, the Palestinians had already been expelled from their land. They were forced to emigrate from their territories. Most of the Gaza Strip was full of people. Papa didn't want to see this suffering. ... Today, the Palestinian people are fighting for the right to have their own land and their own culture."

Aleida Guevara is a prominent voice in the Cuban movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people. She serves as an ambassador for the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. In March 2024, at a forum at the Academia de Humanismo Cristiano University in Chile, she joined Nelson Mandela's grandson in drawing attention to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

In view of the ongoing US aggression in Latin America, concerns about further escalation are also growing in Cuba. In the anti-imperialist struggle, communists around the world still refer to the great revolutionary Che Guevara. But the present also calls for personalities who not only invoke the values of the Cuban Revolution, but also live them. One of them is Aleida Guevara. In times of increasing imperialist conflicts, she is combative: “Do I have hope for humanity? None of us has a crystal ball, but if we want a different world, we have to work to achieve it. We cannot wait for it to fall from the sky. We have a duty to shape this future ourselves.”

Note:

[1] Sculptor Rolf Biebl fashioned the statuette which is awarded as part of the Rosa Luxemburg Prize. His sculpture of Rosa Luxemburg stands in front of the Neues Deutschland newspaper building,  Franz-Mehring-Platz, Straße der Pariser Kommune,  Friedrichshain-Berlin.

Original article: “Rosa-Luxemburg-Preis 2026. Für Aleida, für Kuba.” By Nick Brauns, junge Welt, 24.01.2026, p. 9.