The Death of Che Guevara

by Jay Cantor

  More than a hundred people stood on the asphalt in the hot sun, and the light made parts of their bodies look to me as if they were under water. When Inti spoke they stared at the road, like kids in a classroom who didn’t want to be called on.

  Che spoke after Inti, still sitting on his mule. He had trouble forming his words, and sometimes wheezed for a minute at a time between his sentences. I was sure his body was shaking this time, and not my eyes.

  He spoke of the miners’ massacre. Bolivian soldiers had pulled the triggers. But they worked for the United States. The United States was like a ghost, a specter, living off of our labor. It sucked the blood of Bolivians, using our own soldiers like syringes. And it turned our blood into gold coins, like a magician.

  Barrientos and the other generals worked for the United States. The generals were weak-willed slaves who weren’t fit to lead. The Bolivian people themselves must rule. And the revolutionary struggle would form the Bolivian people into a nation of heroes, men of strong will, fit to govern themselves.

  They could see, Che said, that he himself was not a physically strong man. They could hear the trouble he had speaking, breathing, they could see that he could not even stand. And as a child he had been even weaker. Other children had mocked him, bullied him, tried to make him do their bidding, just as the United States bullies Bolivia. But the people of Samiapata could see, too, that even a physically weak man could rebel, and that if he did, if he fought for the nation, then he gained in power. Now Che was no longer afraid. Now he was a man who caused fear in others.

  Ricardo pushed the lieutenant, the sick stutterer, towards me, and I pushed him back with one hand, like a ball. I heard a sharp sudden intake of breath in the crowd when they saw this, as if they thought we might kill him for our sport. But I could tell, too, that they liked what we were doing. I thought again of the sudden upsurge of giddy pleasure I had felt when we took our guns out and surrounded the police. We were weak, but we caused fear in others.

  Bolivia, too, Che said, could become a nation of heroes, a nation without fear, an independent nation that caused fear in others. A nation was the body of one Giant Man. That Man was brought to life by our acts of sacrifice. When one of us suffered for the Revolution—and we were all ready even to die if that were necessary—it filled the veins of that Giant Man with life. When all of the people of Bolivia joined together in the many acts of war and sacrifice that were necessary for liberation, then the Man who was Bolivia would awaken.

  Awake again, he added.

  The battle was never-ending, the battle was always our constant work, now and in the future, providing through our repeated acts of sacrifice the blood that flowed in the body of the Giant. As long as we worked for each other, building socialism, the Giant lived, and watched over us, and protected us.

  Each Bolivian had a place in the life of the nation, in the body of that Giant Man.

  “They can live,” Ricardo said to me, “right up its asshole.” Then he realized he was talking to one of the “they,” and added, “Most of them.”

  But I was trying to understand what Che was saying so I ignored him.

  Each Bolivian had a place in the body of that One Man. And when the Giant awoke again and walked, we would have achieved our liberation, and we would be worthy to be part of his immortal life.

  The townspeople nodded along with Che. When he paused to take breath—or try to take breath—they stared at him, waited avidly for his next revelation. I saw them feel with Che in his difficulty, saw their belief in him in the curve of their bodies towards his offering. Maybe they realized that what he said must be true, for he suffered so much pain to tell it to them.

  Anyway, they were fascinated by Che’s speech in a way they hadn’t been by my brother’s.

  On the way out of town I marched with Jorge, behind the bus filled with our wonderful new supplies. I asked Jorge about Che’s ideas, for Jorge is the smartest and the best-educated of us.

  I said that I thought Che had described the community we had discovered in battle, that would be built by all of us in the fight against Imperialism.

  Jorge looked at me as if I were mad, shaking his head from side to side like a panicked animal. “Ghosts!” he said, sounding angry with me, like a spoiled child. “Giants!” he whimpered. “What kind of asshole are you?” I put my arm around him to comfort him as we walked. But he went on whimpering, and then sobbing. I wanted to hit him to make him stop.

  From My Journal

  8/15/67: A very bad day. When we reassembled by the sawmill Che went through the cardboard box of medicine, looking for his asthma medication. He went through the box twice, saying nothing. His hand formed a claw—for he suffers now from arthritis—as he pawed over the vials, packages, little metal tubes, plastic containers. Squatting on the ground he looked a desperate thing, tearing at meatless bones. Why would he let us see him like this? I have never before known him to lose control in front of the men. The noise of the saw grew in my ears, between my ears, terrifying me. I couldn’t take my eyes off Che’s maddened face as he discarded the medicines, throwing them into the dirt, and then picked them up and dropped them into the box, only to throw them aside again one by one. El Chino had gotten the painkillers we need for the wounds to come, but nothing for Che’s asthma. And medicine for Che was the reason we had come so far, risked so much, declared our presence in this zone, near a main highway. Soon the air will rain troops down on us.

  We left the highway and moved back into a region of thick growth, the upper edge of the damned jungle where he had us wander for a month. We are moving southeast, back to some of our old haunts. Che thinks Joaquin may have picked up our trail there.

  Jorge continues to cry, little sobs like bird sounds. He turns his face away whenever I look at him.

  From Guevara’s Journal

  8/18/67: Without our knowing it a company of soldiers came upon us from their side of the Florida River. We are just fortunate that they are so badly led, for instead of waiting until morning, when they could have launched a devastating attack, they began firing immediately.

  There was only a crescent moon; we could hardly make them out among the thick growth on the other side. We withdrew in the darkness, away from the bank, back into the forest, and the bullets scattered about as we went, covering a wide area. From the firing we could tell that there were many soldiers, but the forces were shadows to each other, and we both shot without direction.

  Eleven knapsacks were left behind in camp, medicine, binoculars, my copy of Debray’s book with the notes I use in our teaching sessions, and the tape recorder. Aniceto was shot in the chest, Raul in the neck, both fatally. We dragged them through the forest. Pacho was wounded in the leg. Ponco counted three thick shadows by the riverbank, army casualties to our meager returning fire.

  I marched the men along the trail we had left, despite the risk. When the sun came up Jorge was missing, having lost his way in our retreat. He will certainly catch up with us.

  At first light we buried Aniceto and Raul, both good men and old comrades. Surprised in camp—the sentries were criminal in their negligence. I will investigate to find out which are responsible and see that they are suitably punished.

  8/19/67: Julio continues to display amazing effectiveness as a forager—though I am not sure he always deals fairly with the peasants. He has found me a mare to ride. (Without the horse I would have to be carried.) The mare is a docile animal, of a pleasant gray color. I think we will be good companions. Of course I named her Rosinante.

  No sign of Jorge. It will soon be clear to him that we withdrew through the forest. Unless he was wounded he should join us by nightfall.

  Tomorrow I will make my decision on whether to send a group back to the Nancahuazu to get medicine from the supply caves. The risks are great, to the men I send and to the rest of us if they are lost, but as it is I cannot long continue.

  From My Journal

  8/19/67: Che is wrong—if I didn’t know him better I w
ould say he was deceiving himself. Jorge wasn’t wounded, he didn’t lose his way, and he won’t be catching up with us. I myself saw him scamper down the riverbank when the firing began. And Inti saw it, too, though he hasn’t said anything either, for fear of demoralizing the men. It’s a bad sign when a man as dedicated and ideologically formed as Jorge deserts.

  8/20/67: Rosinante the mare grew recalcitrant today and wouldn’t move despite Che’s sweet entreaties and stern reminders of the necessity of sacrifice. Che brought his whip down across the mare’s eye, opening a gash. Blood dripped down on the lid.

  Nothing was said, though everyone in the center group saw. I took Camba aside before he could speak.

  8/21/67: Another unhappy day. Che has sent three men—Julio, Antonio, and Arturo—back to the Nancahuazu camp to get medicine. His plan is to move east to Morroco, and then double back to rendezvous with them at Ispaca’s house.

  The risk is enormous, and all the men feel it. These are all good men (he could not send others, for they would certainly desert), and their loss would be a severe blow, one we would not likely recover from. —Yet Che must have medicine, we can all see that. His body trembles as he stands.

  So we walk a knife’s edge.

  From Guevara’s Journal

  8/21/67: Our move into Samiapata has brought its own trail of unfortunate consequences. The government has taken new measures: U.S. advisers are now spoker, of openly on the Bolivian radio. Martial law has been declared throughout the country. At another time this would be good news, rushing us towards an inevitable crisis. But now we do not have enough men to put in the field, and will not for the foreseeable future. The balance of forces is in their favor. Not a peep from Monje or the Communists.

  From My Journal

  8/22/67: On the way to Florida. Che brought everyone together tonight for a talk. Pacho, he said, is recovering well from his wound. But the men are familiar with the problems we face: lack of contact with the city network and the miners’ groups, lack of recruits from the peasantry. And Che himself is very ill; he is—he said—“no more than a human carcass.” And the episode of the mare proves that at some moments he has lost control. That, he promised, “would be modified.” But our situation is a difficult one. The problems must weigh squarely on all of us, and whoever does not feel capable of sustaining them should say so now.

  No one spoke.

  “This is a moment,” our leader said, “when great decisions are made. Guerrilla war gives us the opportunity to become revolutionaries, the highest level of the human species. And it allows us to graduate as men.”

  I had a thought then—that I knew what the diploma looked like. Rolando, Aniceto, Raul, Tuma, El Rubio—all recent graduates. I looked up at the forest ceiling, thick and green.

  “Those who cannot reach either of those two stages should say so now, and they will be permitted to leave the struggle.”

  No! I thought, even his craving for purity wouldn’t allow that! No one must leave—the risk was too great for the rest of us. I was sure he must be lying, and that possibility—a sea change in him if true—was itself unsettling.

  The sun was setting, filling in the blanks between the leaves with darkness. Che dragged his heel in the dirt. It was hard for him to press down with enough force to make a mark; his leg shook like a piece of paper.

  The men knew what this line meant. Inti crossed over to Che first, and then one by one the others crossed over, myself included, each saying that he wished to continue, country or death.

  On the other side of the line with Che, in the promised land of continual sacrifice, Eusebio said that he would go on, but that Moro hadn’t been carrying his own knapsack. Moro had put his knapsack on the mule that was meant to carry firewood. This wasn’t fair, Eusebio thought, since Moro’s arm had long since healed.

  “You’re a stinking little liar,” Moro said—and most of us are little in comparison with Moro. “Or worse. Maybe it’s another hallucination, like the ones you had in the jungle.” Moro made tiny swimming motions with his hands, the kind Eusebio had made in his sleep a few weeks ago, tearing away at the vines in his dreams.

  “You shouldn’t talk that way to a comrade,” Benigno instructed Moro. He has a thin delicate voice, like his hands. “And you do slack off in work sometimes. I’ve seen you. Maybe you think you’re too good for work now that you’re a doctor.” Benigno said there were other slackers, too. Pacho, for one, hadn’t carried his fair share, even before he was wounded.

  My stomach felt sour. A stink rose from the bodies of the other men. Something rotting.

  Pacho spat. His spittle landed right on the line Che had, with such difficulty, drawn for our edification. “You’re a liar, Benigno. Maybe you’re the one seeing things.”

  Che looked savage in the half-light. The shadows covered his face, like a ghost beard that grew in between his real beard. “Enough!” he said. His voice was a low harsh sound—like mine. Then he “modified” and regained control of himself.

  “There are two things being debated here,” he said. His voice was slow, his anger plain to all of us in the precision with which he marked each word. The men flinched from him. “Two things of very different categories. One is whether we have the will to continue the struggle. The other is a matter of little grudges, internal problems of the guerrilla. This kind of petty dispute wrests greatness from what should be a major decision.”

  I smiled, just raising my lips, not showing my teeth, as he does sometimes, as his father did before him. He was saying, I thought, that we didn’t have enough sense of history, for history requires ceremonies to mark—or make—its crucial junctures. This ceremony wasn’t working out. We were supposed to wed our fates, and it didn’t seem like we had formed a true marriage. We were already bickering.

  Camba, who can always be counted on to make matters worse, suggested again that we mingle blood.

  Che’s face was dark, but I could swear that he stroked his lip as if he were considering the loony’s suggestion. “No,” he said, finally. But we would slaughter the mare, Rosinante, for meat.

  Moro, doctor and butcher, led the mare away from us, into another part of the forest. When the horse screamed, everyone looked at Che, and went on staring at him as the terrible high whinnies became weaker and weaker. This was a real sacrifice for Che, since now he will have to walk—and he can barely stand up.

  We had a low fire and cooked the meat, some for now, the rest to be taken on the march. Che dished out tonight’s portion personally.

  But it was just horsemeat, I thought.

  And I didn’t see anyone writing a poem.

  8/22/67: Che’s asthma worsens. Whatever else we are doing on the march, gathering wood, talking together, we listen for the sound of his breathing. He has turned us into his parents!

  8/23/67: The radio announced a combat near Monteagudo. One dead, they say, Antonio Fernandez of Joaquin’s group, whom we called God’s Bread because he was of such sweet good temperament. (When you die you get your real name back.)

  And a report, too, of a guerrilla deserter captured by the army. A vigilant patrol came upon a man bathing in a stream, who claimed to be a peddler traveling to local religious festivals to sell his goods. The army patrol interrogated the bather from the banks of the Florida River and were about to go on, satisfied with his answers, when the man in the river raised his arm to brush away an insect, showing his forearm and the back of his right hand. His extremities were covered with deep scratches, and the observant major knew that the marks meant that the man had had to tear his way through thick brush with his bare hands. These marks are characteristic of the arms of the foreign bandits. When the deserter then tried to run away from arrest he was wounded.

  As we listened to the radio several of the men looked at the backs of their hands, as if maybe they, too, had been thinking about leaving. But the signs of their commitment were already scratched into their bodies. (Lenin was wrong. If you want to know what a man is thinking, don’t lis
ten to his words when you draw a line in the dirt. Watch his hands as he listens to the radio and dreams of deserting his comrades.)

  From Guevara’s Journal

  8/24/67: More news of dead from Joaquin’s group. But this time no names were given so it may be a lie. I am like an amputee who continues to feel pain in his missing limb.

  Jorge is lost, captured by the army. It is a dangerous loss, for Jorge knows the names of many of our city contacts. The men all thought of this. But I pointed out that Jorge was of strong ideological conviction. He will not cooperate with the army, and will certainly be killed (this last thought, particularly, seemed to cheer them up).

  8/25/67: The radio gave a report about the taking of our supply caves, with details so precise that it was impossible to doubt the truth—they described the location, the construction of the grating, and the contents. How could they have found them? Someone must have talked. But who? Jorge? One of the men sent to camp? Julio? Arturo? Whoever it is must be punished.

  From My Journal

  8/25/67: Now Che is doomed, sentenced to suffer his asthma for an indefinite time—for another foray into one of the larger towns is out of the question after our move on Samiapata; they are all closely guarded, surrounded by the army. Che said, without thinking, “It is the hardest blow they have given us.”

  I thought of our dead comrades. And others, too, had this vision. “Rolando,” Ricardo said to me. “Tuma. Aniceto. Raul. Those were hard blows.”

  But we were being sentimental. Che’s survival, his wholeness, matters more than any of our lives. He is the crucial one, for we have given our soul stuff into his keeping. He is our head. He must have medicine.

  From Guevara’s Journal