"Hasta Siempre, Comandante, or simply "Hasta Siempre", is a 1965 Spanish song by Cuban composer Carlos Puebla. The song's lyrics are a reply to revolutionary Che Guevara's farewell letter when he left Cuba, in order to foster revolution in the Congo and later Bolivia, where he would be captured and murdered.
The lyrics recount key moments of the Cuban Revolution, describing Che Guevara and his role as a revolutionary commander. The song became iconic after Guevara's death, and many left-leaning artists did their own cover versions of the song afterwards. The title is a part of Guevara's well known saying "¡Hasta la victoria siempre!" ("Until the eternal victory!").
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Like many of the songs of the author and in line with the tradition of the Cuban and Caribbean music, the song consists of a refrain plus a series of five verses (quatrain), rhyming ABBA, with each line written in octosyllabic verse.
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"Che Guevara is the purest part of the Cuban Revolution. He is the symbol of the ideal of the revolution; he is the symbol of innovation. We all need change, and we need hope. He is the symbol of hope. He had Irish roots, traveled around Mexico and learned to be alone, he challenged solitude. He is the brave part of the revolution."
— Nathalie Cardone, sang modern version of Hasta Siempre, which sold 80,000 copies alone in France [1]
There are more than 200 versions of this song.[2] The song has also been covered by Los Calchakis, Compay Segundo, Soledad Bravo,[3][4] Óscar Chávez,[5] Nathalie Cardone,[6] Robert Wyatt, Inés Rivero, Silvio Rodríguez, Ángel Parra, Celso Piña, Walter Cesar, Xesco Boix, Wayna taki, Veronica Rapella, Rolando Alarcón, Los Olimareños, Julio Cesar Barbosa, Los Machucambos, Ciganos D'Ouro, Maria Farantouri, Jan Garbarek, Wolf Biermann, Boikot, The Buena Vista Social Club, George Dalaras, Giovanni Mirabassi and Al Di Meola, Ahmet Koç, Mohsen Namjoo among others.
In some versions, such as one version by the Buena Vista Social Club in 2003, the last verses were changed from "y con Fidel te decimos : «¡Hasta siempre, Comandante!»" to "y con Cuba te decimos : «¡Hasta siempre, Comandante!»".