Career in Cuba
After the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Granado was invited to Havana by Guevara, who for all intents and purposes had risen to become second-in-command under Fidel Castro. Thus in 1960, Granado visited Cuba for the first time on Guevara's invitation. A year later, he moved there with his family to take up a post as professor of biochemistry at the School of Medicine of the University of Havana. Later that year, he was one of the founders of the Institute for Basic and Pre-Clinical Sciences. In 1962, he founded the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Santiago with a group of colleagues, the second in Cuba. He would serve as a senior professor there until 1974. Granado was thus in part responsible for "one of the undeniable achievements of Castro's government, the training and provision for the population for the first time of large numbers of highly competent doctors."
Between 1975 and 1986, Granado obtained his doctorate in biological sciences and attended the World Congress on Genetics in Moscow. He also attended the Congress on Polymorphism in Leningrad and became centrally involved in the development of Holstein Tropical cattle breeds. In 1978, he published his account of his and Guevara's 1951–1952 tour of South America, named Con el Che por Sudamerica, in Spanish, Italian and French.
Between 1986 and 1990, he took part in the creation of the Cuban Genetics Society and was appointed its president.
Between 1991 and 1994, he devoted his time to validation and methodology of his previous research in universities in Venezuela and Spain before his retirement in 1994. In 1997, he joined the campaign for solidarity with Cuba and promotion of Guevara's ideas at home and abroad.
Between 2002 and 2003, he was an on-set advisor to Walter Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries, based upon Granado's Con el Che por Sudamerica and Guevara's own account, published posthumously in 1967. Granado made a cameo appearance as himself in the epilogue of the film. The first English-language edition of Granado's account was published in 2003, entitled Travelling with Che Guevara: The Making of a Revolutionary.
Read more about this topic: Alberto Granado
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