By Zoraida Diaz
SANTA CLARA, Cuba (Reuters) - Thousands of Cubans stood in silent tribute Tuesday to welcome the remains of Ernesto "Che'' Guevara to Santa Clara, the city where the legendary leftist guerrilla will finally be laid to rest.
The remains of Guevara, and those of six of his former comrades-in-arms who died with him trying to spark a revolution in Bolivia 30 years ago, were brought from Havana in a slow military cortege.
Santa Clara residents, some carrying flowers, crammed the streets to see the procession.
They packed the park near the Jose Marti library as, in total silence, the cortege came to a halt.
The wooden caskets containing the remains were taken inside the library where they will be displayed to the public for two days before Friday's funeral ceremony.
Santa Clara, 220 miles southeast of Havana, was welcoming home its hero.
The capture of the city by Guevara's Eighth Column on Jan. 1, 1959, following a fierce battle, was decisive for Fidel Castro's rebel victory against former dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Taking pride of place among the crowd Tuesday were many veterans of Cuba's rebel struggle, their chests adorned with medals, their elderly hands clutching flowers.
The seven small wooden caskets containing the remains of Guevara and his comrades were carried from Havana in glass cases atop trailers towed by polished army jeeps, flanked by a police and army escort.
President Castro's communist government is giving Guevara the funeral honors of a national hero.
Guevara's remains will be buried in a mausoleum that has been specially built under a large monument to him -- in an open square that has also been named after him, at the entrance to the city.
All along the 220-mile route through lush, palm-dotted countryside from Havana's Revolution Square -- where the remains were displayed for three days from Saturday -- Cubans paid silent tribute.
Whole towns turned out to pay their respects. Local authorities chartered buses to take thousands of people to stand on the road in more isolated spots.
Villages decorated bridges and walls with flags and with Guevara's portrait.
Where the road was not silent, music played from loudspeakers, and almost always it was Carlos Puebla's mournful ballad to the guerrilla.
Castro's government has presented Guevara's image as more relevant than ever as it struggles amid the isolation of the post-Soviet era to preserve the one-party socialist system he helped create.
Workplaces, schools and local neighborhood committees had urged Cubans to take their places along the route.
While some may have gone out of a sense of duty, others, especially older people, were clearly personally moved.
Mercedes Aday, 71, struggled to explain her feelings about Che as she waited Tuesday morning for the cortege to pass through the town of Cuatro Caminos, just outside Havana.
"I've been feeling his absence for 30 years,'' said Aday, bursting into tears.
In the same town, retired mechanic Luis Gil Quintero recalled the day when he watched Guevara pass through in the opposite direction, a handsome, bearded guerrilla riding in triumph to Havana after his victory in Santa Clara.
"There was a tremendous joy,'' said Gil, 68. "Everyone was saying, the rebels are coming, the rebels are coming.''
"It's terribly sad to see him for the last time.''
Guevara's idealistic crusade and his early death turned him into an icon for a generation of leftists.
The Argentine-born doctor left Cuba in 1965 to try to spark revolution abroad, at first in Africa then Latin America.
Leading an abortive uprising in Bolivia, he was captured by Bolivian troops Oct 8. 1967 and executed at La Higuera the following day, and his body was slung into a mass grave near the town of Vallegrande.
22:30 10-14-97