BY GALE SHANGOLD
LOS ANGELES - Harry Villegas, known as Pombo, has been invited to speak at several campus events here in late October. These include a class on "Revolutionary Art" taught by University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) professor David Kunzle and a class on "Revolution in Central America" sponsored by the Latin American Studies Program and History Department at California State University in Los Angeles. Kunzle and the UCLA Latin American Center initiated the invitations to Villegas.

Today, Villegas is a brigadier general in the Cuban army and fought with Che Guevara for over 10 years in Cuba, the Congo, and Bolivia. For much of the 1980s, he was part of leading the Cuban volunteers who fought against the apartheid South African army in Angola.

The Latin American Center and UCLA Department of Art History are sponsoring a two-day symposium October 24-25 on the cultural legacy of Ernesto Che Guevara, to which Villegas has been invited as one of the main speakers. The symposium is entitled "Thirty Years Later: A Retrospective on Che Guevara, 20th-Century Utopias and Dystopias." Other speakers at it include UCLA professors Kunzle, Fabián Wagmister, Maurice Zeitlin, and José Moya, as well as Jorge Castañeda, a Mexican author and journalist who opposes the Cuban revolution.

A number of student groups and other organizations have also invited Villegas as the featured presenter at a UCLA presentation entitled "Ernesto Che Guevara and Cuba: Past, Present, and Future" on October 22 at 6:30 p.m.

Also speaking there and at the other events will be Félix Wilson and Emilio Pérez from the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C. The meeting is sponsored by a range of organizations at UCLA, including the African Student Union, La Gente de Aztlán, Latin American Students Association, MEChA, NOMMO, Proyecto de Inmigrantes y Refugiados Latino americanos, USAC Academic Affairs Commission, and the USAC President's office, as well as by the Young Socialists and the Coalition in Solidarity with Cuba.

Villegas has also been invited as the main speaker at an event at the University of Houston October 28. The panel discussion on "Che Guevara, Internationalism, and His Legacy Today" will also include Thomas O'Brien, chairman of the university's History Department; Kairn Klieman, associate director of the African American Studies Center; and professors Robert Buzzanco and John Hart of the History Department.  
 
 
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