October 2024.- On October 12, 1967, Octavio de la Concepción de la Pedraja, a Cuban doctor, guerrilla and military man who fought against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and in the guerrilla led by Che Guevara in that South American nation, was nicknamed by his fellow soldiers as Moro, Morogorom or Muganga, fell in combat on Bolivian soil.
In 1958 he reestablished communication with Machado Ventura and decided to join the liberation troops; in la Sierra Maestra he joined the Rebel Military Health Department, in the Second Eastern Front Frank País, where he participated in war actions such as those of Río Frío, Santa Ana and the capture of Sagua de Tánamo. He was discharged with the rank of first lieutenant.
After the victory in January 1959, he was named Chief of Military Health in Guantanamo, one of the poorest and most backward regions of the country. He resumed his medical studies and did an internship at Baracoa hospital, where he asked to do his medical-social-rural service.
In 1965 he joined the select group that accompanied Ernesto Che Guevara to the Congo and distinguished himself as a doctor and soldier; with that same mission he was selected to join the Bolivian guerrilla until at the confluence of the Mizque and the Rio Grande, where they arrived in search of water, he engaged in an unequal battle in which, totally defenseless, he was massacred along with the guerrillas Jaime Arana, Lucio Galvan and Francisco Huanca.
Octavio de la Concepción left two sons: Tavito, who was six years old and is today a surgeon, specializing in Urology; and Oscarito, barely two years old, later graduated as a Mechanical Engineer in the former Soviet Union.
Three decades after what happened in Bolivia, his remains were found and placed in the Mausoleum that was built in Santa Clara to honor Commander Ernesto Che Guevara and his fellow fighters.
