The Death of Che Guevara

by Jay Cantor

  “I think,” I said, “the time is very auspicious now, here in Bolivia. The miners have learned that if they stay by their mines, in fixed positions, they will be bombed into submission. The government and the army are the same, and they rule for imperialism. Guerrilla war is clearly the only possibility for liberation.” I had forgotten, as I spoke, who I appeared to be. My hands reminded me that I was an old man. “I think,” I concluded, “one creates the right time: by beginning.” In my disguise my words had none of the authority my name would have given them; spit bubbles; lacking my presence, they were merely rhetorical.

  “You do?” Jorge said, looking away from the road, and smiling condescendingly at me. He thinks I’m an old man! And Jorge is a bit of a brat, in my opinion. (I wondered what his class background was. I must keep up my charade, I reminded myself, till I know him better, have sounded his commitment more.) “Well, we—the others from the Party and I—are waiting for Monje to declare the Party’s position. I think,” Jorge said, “I will go along with the Party. When I became a Party militant I committed myself to their discipline. And we all respect Monje. He’s a very clearheaded man.”

  “Is he?” This was the reverse of what Debray had reported to me. He called Monje “lacking in clarity, weak, and vacillating.” But Monje hadn’t known I’d be leading the undertaking. I wondered what difference that would make.

  “Yes,” Jorge continued, “very intelligent. And a warm good person too, very sincere. He’s the one who recruited me into the Party when I was at the university, and he made me editor of the Party newspaper. I feel very close to him.”

  I said—because I was momentarily jealous of Monje’s hold on the boy, and because I wished to test the potency of my name on the other Party members (and why had Tania allowed Jorge, someone of such weak commitment, to know so much of our plans? what if the Party backs off now?)—“Jorge, I’m not what I seem. My real name isn’t Adolfo Mena.”

  “It isn’t?” Jorge turned from the wheel again, to smile expectantly at me. He clearly liked secrets—perhaps that was what Tania played on to interest him in us. A good tactic with intellectuals: they like to be in the know.

  “No. It’s Ernesto Guevara.” And, I added, to heighten the effect, “I’m Che Guevara.”

  “What?” Jorge said, without surprise, still smiling expectantly. I had made my revelation in a quiet voice, to increase the drama. He hadn’t heard me over the rattling.

  So I shouted, bringing my mouth up to his ear, my gesture turned idiotic by repetition and volume, a silly joke carved in stone, “I AM CHE GUEVARA!”

  Jorge let go of the wheel to grab my shoulder, squeezing it hard to see if it was real. We sluiced towards a cliff edge. He slammed on the brakes, no hands on the wheel, and we parked halfway in the air, our snout stuck out into nothing. A convincing demonstration of the power of my name. We crawled out of the jeep through the back, over the wooden gun crates. We hid the crates in some shrubbery, covering them as best we could with dirt and branches, and walked the rest of the way to the farm. I stumbled often in the dark, but Mustache’s night vision was good. He was a strong walker.

  11/14/66: I’ve sent the men out in small groups, as explorers. From what I’ve seen, and what they report, it is hard to put together a coherent picture of the area. It is as if they were reporting to me on the individual landscape of their dreams. A semitropical area, but with little water. Areas of abundant vegetation, wide-leafed plants, jungle that opens inexplicably into fields of low grass, grass that turns to fields of stone, stones that end in tall cliffs that overlook the Nancahuazu River or one of its tributaries.

  The rivers flow from the mountains that surround this valley, running down the mountainsides only to disappear for miles, and then reappear suddenly, almost as torrents. We are in a canyon between the Serranias de las Pirirendas, to the east, and the Serranias Incahuasi, to the west. They meet to the south and become the Salta range in Argentina. The peaks of the mountains look like different planets, one bare of growth next to one covered with snow, and the next green all year. They incite my imagination, as if I could step from peak to peak, planet to planet, back to my native land, to Argentina. For once the guerrilla is established here that will be our next goal.

  The land is covered throughout with grayish trees and a ground cover of prickly plants. To the north of the farm the mountains are covered with hardwood forests, and at the edge of the northeast corner of our land lie the sometimes sandy, sometimes extremely rocky banks of the Nancahuazu River. The river is broad and turbulent in most places, dangerous to cross. (In other spots it narrows to a creek.) The river runs through rocky inclines, very steep ones. The men move along the beach; the beach narrows away to nothing, and to continue to walk the men must climb carefully—very carefully, Ponco says—along the cliff sides, or hack a path through one of the deep wide ravines that run from the river, long slashes in the mountainside, as if someone had poured acid all over it, ravines dense with vines, spiny crawlers with cactuslike leaves, sharply serrated. All of the men’s hands have lost a little flesh, grabbing the vines for support. And as we walk into a ravine our feet scare up swarms of mosquitoes, dark clouds of them.

  11/20/66: Days of construction, and exploration. We’ve spent the last week continuing our reconnaissance of the area, looking for places to build the permanent camps—places with access to water, cover of vegetation, raised areas for observation posts. We’ve mapped out several. The men enjoy the explorations, take pleasure in using their bodies. And so far the Bolivians and Cubans are getting along well together.

  The Bolivians, like Jorge, are openly uncertain of their commitment to the insurrection. My name sways them to the brink—!—but they still await Monje to announce the Party’s position; they’d rather not break Party discipline.

  For the moment we’re staying in the brush, not far from the Tin House, and usually we bring our supplies from there in the evening. It reminds me of when I’d play at camping as a child, in my parents’ back yard.

  Last night a heavy rain forced us out of the thickets, for we don’t yet have canvas tops for the hammocks. (The people in the city network always find it hard to appreciate how important a piece of canvas can be out here.) I spent the evening in the Tin House by the fire, getting sheep and cattle ticks, glutted with my blood, off my arms and legs. You stick the still-hot end of a match into them till they shrivel up: you must be sure to get the head or it burrows in deeper. (Possible metaphor for speech.) I reminded myself of my mother some nights in the kitchen, poking, or trying to poke, at the flies and mosquitoes with the lit end of her cigarette. “Psst!” she’d say. “My aim is uncanny! Pssst! Psst! Die now mosquito!” But she never got any.

  DECEMBER

  From Guevara’s Journal

  12/10/66: Three camps completed, each several miles from the farmhouse—though the nearest one, called Bear Camp, is on a hill overlooking it. Construction is finished on the defensive trenches and the brick bake-oven for bread. I’ve overseen the construction of showers made of muleskins (the skin, stretched taut on sticks, has holes punched in it; a partner pours water through), and Ricardo has taken charge of constructing an amphitheater of split logs, with a lectern—for speeches on tactics, daily lessons in Quechua. Also under way: operating tables for the doctor; and latrines. We have completed more than a dozen observation posts overlooking the camps, the Tin House, the trails, and the river. Lines have been laid for radio communication between the camps. Marcos has drilled the men in defensive maneuvers and in setting up ambushes.

  12/17/66: Tania came to the camp today, accompanied by the liaison to Peru. She can travel freely over the whole countryside, without, she assures me, arousing suspicion. (Though from now on I have ordered her to remain with the city network.) She’s gotten herself a job with the Ministry of Information, collecting native songs and stories, going to Indian villages, tape-recording their chants. She says she’s done a little of it already, interesting work, though all their song
s are mournful. (Ponco said, “Well, they don’t have much to rejoice about.”) I was impressed by this useful coup, this job with its built-in cover, but she said it was minor magic. She’s also arranged a job with a radio station in Camiri, her own show, broadcasting advice to the lovelorn once a week. This will be a perfect way for the urban people to remain in contact with us, through nonsensical coded love letters that she’ll read on the air. She had to convince the station manager that she knew about radio work.

  Once, I remember, several years ago, I was talking with her and Joaquin about such things, admiring her accomplishments. They had just returned from preparing the ground for Masetti. “It’s simple,” she said, “you play upon their idea of what a woman is, of who you are. You do it too,” she said to me, “in your way. You let them make you into an idol, then show them how they can placate you, win your approval, be like you.”

  Joaquin said, “Playing on people like that would make me feel dirty.” He pursed his lips as if sucking something sour. It looked funny on such a big man. His face is in broad slabs, a huge thing, but it used to be very expressive in its way.

  She didn’t act insulted; he had been working with her for a while; it was allowed between them. “It doesn’t bother me, Joaquin, you know that. I live far back in my skull.” She pointed to the middle of her head and grinned at us, crossing her eyes a little, and smiling. She had a pleasing, antic way of making faces, very appealing. She didn’t brood about what happened to her. Like cartoon figures, or Venus, she could go through any disaster and be restored, whole, in the next frame. Perhaps that, I thought, is what gave her face such an appealing vivacity, such lightness.

  The same quality, though, made you want to do something with her (and then, sometimes in anger, to her) that would matter to her, touch her, get a real response, leave a mark. I had first met her in East Germany; she had been my interpreter. Her parents had been Communists, refugees from the Nazis who had fled to Argentina. It was a bond between us; we shared childhood stories, and made mildly ironic remarks (initiated by her) about the Party bureaucrats I was meeting, for the most part men with sullen unpleasant faces. She made one feel intimate with her, and yet there was a line that was not being crossed, a distance between you. Of all the people I’ve known since the Cuban Revolution, I always felt that she was least impressed by my fame. That fascinated me. But perhaps that isn’t the way she is; perhaps that distance was something she devised to interest me, something she used. She had me arrange a scholarship for her to study in Cuba, and then offered to help me in the Masetti project.

  She continued, “I take it all in from far away, Joaquin. It doesn’t reach me. I laugh at them, the truth is. They think I’m this. They think I’m that. What do I care what they think! They think I’m a pin-up. An easy lay. A reckless woman, a helpless person. Whatever. What do I care what they think? I use their image of me for our work. There’s always something in it, a little point that I can ride in the direction I want to go. Do they want to help the helpless? Be strong to the weak? Do they want to fuck me—ignite the cold woman? Or act really dirty with the sensualist? Or do they want to cure the crazy—that one is more popular than you’d think!—calm down the hysteric? It remains their image, not mine. I’m far away from their hands, their eyes, their words. Taking it all in, getting what I want. I don’t care.” She smiled. She had her hair down that evening, and several buttons of her green blouse open. (I disapproved; I was attracted.)

  “Anyway, comrade,” she said, “it’s the same in any case. The truth is, I’ve learned, that others always decide who you are. You’re just playing a part that they need for their production, their play. And they’re doing it too, strangely enough, for each other, though they don’t know it. I wonder where the director has gone? I know that sounds adolescent. I know it’s an adolescent feeling. But it’s true too, and I can’t outgrow it. I can’t forget it, and I can’t outgrow it. It’s funny having the feeling that I should be so happy play-acting. But if there’s nothing real, then knowing you’re play-acting makes it better. I’m like a great actor who doesn’t care that his wife is having an affair.” She puffed her chest out, and curled her mustache ends. “He decides he wants her to do it, wants to be jealous, so he can play a great Othello. He knows that everyone’s wife is unfaithful, after all, his, yours”—she looked at me—“but he knows that he’s different from you, he can use it. At least this way I have my little joke on everyone. When I’m doing something in our cause, all I worry about is if I have enough script to get me through the scene.” She laughed. She was bringing an intensity to her speech (her bit of dialogue?) that suggested she was willfully making an embarrassing revelation. It was hard for me to see what was so awful about what she was saying. I guess it did seem a little adolescent. But it mattered to her: she looked as if she were doing something shameful. “You say to yourself: I know what I’m doing. And because it’s secret you feel that it is all yours, you have an inside, you are someone. You think to yourself: I know why I’m doing this, I know how it will bring about the world to come. And you don’t.” She looked at me, at Joaquin, and back again, and once more this way and that, this way and that. “I read somewhere,” she said, “in Fanon, I think, that when people are tortured it can drive them crazy. But the ones who are really harboring secrets, they never go mad. Even when they put electric currents through them. They bite down on their secret. They know why they’re there. The torture is really traumatic, he says, only if you don’t have information to hide. Then it’s all so unjust. Why are they doing this to you when you can never satisfy them! It’s good to have our secret project. Most people aren’t so lucky. They have nothing to hide, they have no real secrets.” She opened her arms rigidly to the two of us. Her face was willful, her features sharp. The attraction I had felt was transformed by now; she made me feel queasy, gave me a dry feeling as at a clinical demonstration. “Most people,” she said, “most people have no secrets. They’re spread open to the world.”

  This evening we were sitting near my hammock. She was wearing fatigues, her black hair in braids. She had a little green spiral notebook in front of her, but she never consulted it. I asked her how Monje had responded to our apparent change in plans, to my arrival here.

  “He goes this way and that,” she said. “He repeats what he told Fidel, that the Bolivian Revolution must be run by Bolivians. But he needs Cuban money. When I mentioned your name he promised twenty of his best men for the struggle in the mountains. That’s what he calls it always. Mention the word ‘guerrillas’ and he talks about mountains. He’s got mountains on the brain. He told Fidel that he’d follow you anywhere. But I got the feeling that if it were dangerous where you were leading, he’d want to follow from pretty far behind. Then, after making his promise, he talks vaguely about insurrection in the mines again. Or in the city. He says the rest of the Party is against beginning the armed struggle ‘in the mountains’ too soon. They’re afraid of the crackdown, afraid of being outlawed from the next election. They’re afraid of being thought of as bed-wetters. They’re afraid of a lot, frankly. I did as you said and arranged a meeting for here. Perhaps seeing you will clarify things for him. And anyway, we’ve recruited the most militant members of the Party. The two brothers, Coco and Inti, they’re the best of them. And Jorge is all right. But if the Party turns against you, it will be up to your personal magnetism to hold them.”

  “And the correctness of my position.”

  “Yes,” she said smiling. “That too. Absolutely. But be crafty when you talk with Monje. You can bring him round if you do it right. Be wily as a serpent, gentle as a dove. Don’t define him out of things. Let him think he’s a very big part of your plans. He’s got a sizable ego. He’s got to be flattered a lot, always, made to feel the important man, central to everything. And he’s pretty clever too. He’s been around awhile.”

  “And Moises Guevara?”

  “He holds down the Peking line among the miners. He’s split with the CP about their
foot-dragging. Very ardent for the armed struggle. Debray likes him. Moises is working-class. That counts big with Regis. Ricardo met him, though, and says he’s a silly troublemaking prick. If we have his support Monje won’t touch us. Debray hates Monje. Thinks he’s unclear and deceitful. But it’s the lack of clarity he hates most. He thinks everyone in the world but you is insufficiently clear.” She sat up straight and set her lips in a thin tight line. With one hand she smoothed down an imaginary Debray mustache. “No compromises for him.”

  I said, “You’d better close down the warehouse. It’s more dangerous than it’s worth now.”

  I met with El Chino, and talked of his plans for Peru. We talked standing, very close to each other, because of his difficulty seeing. He seemed overwhelmed by my presence, effusive as always, hopping back and forth, as if drunk. A small vital man, he squints constantly, despite thick glasses, giving his eyes a Chinese look. A problem with an optic nerve; progressive myopia. “I share your vision of a continental revolution,” he said, incongruously, for it was hard to imagine him seeing anything very clearly. He wants to send twenty men for training. “The best opportunity in the world, they’ll consider it an unparalleled opportunity.”

  He’d stay with us for a training march, then go to Cuba and talk the situation over with Fidel. I’d see that the Peruvians got twenty rifles. After we’re well established he could send five more men for my “unparalleled” training. We must not internationalize the struggle too quickly. He wanted a photo of me to show the boys in Peru and drive them crazy.

  He thinks de la Puente was infiltrated and betrayed. And he believes some of de la Puente’s guerrillas are still operating, but he’s not certain. I think this is like Jorge’s conjectures about Masetti—the need for the immortality of rebellion becomes a ghostly belief in the immortality of rebels.