«With deep sorrow, we learned minutes ago of the death of Dr Jorge González Pérez, our beloved Popi, a paradigm of Medicine and Science in Cuba,» said the Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, via social media. On behalf of the health workers, we send our embrace to his family, friends and colleagues». González Pérez was a prominent forensic expert and Doctor in Legal Medicine, as well as a founding member of the Cuban Society of Legal Medicine. In 1995, he was assigned the mission of travelling to Bolivia as a representative of the relatives of Che Guevara and the other Cuban fighters who died alongside him in the 1967 Guerrilla and Internationalist Gesta of 1967 in that Latin American country. He directed the search for his remains for more than five years, at the head of a group of Cuban scientists and experts, committed to this work of investigation and research, which culminated in the identification of Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara and his comrades who had fallen in this Andean region.

He was a member of the National Assembly in Cuba from 1998 to 2003, being re-elected for the period 2003-2008, during which he was President of the Health and Sports Commission of the Parliament, as well as President of the Parliamentary Friendship Group with Bolivia on both occasions. He was ratified as a deputy on 18 April 2018 at the constitutive session of the 9th Legislature, held at the Havana Convention Palace. He was also rector of the University of Medical Sciences of Havana.

«Popi», or Jorge González Pérez: Between forensic medicine and love for Cuba

If we talk about the search for and discovery of Che’s remains, about Operation Tribute, about soothing pain…, we must think of Dr. Jorge González Pérez, a paradigm of forensic medicine in Cuba, president of the Cuban society of this speciality from 1990 to 2017, professor, and Cuban to the core.