Fidel Castro

by Volker Skierka

It later leaked out that Castro had been angry for several reasons. On the very day of Guevara’s speech in Algiers, Raúl Castro had been in Moscow meeting the new Brezhnev leadership, and they had immediately confronted him with accusations against Guevara. But Fidel was especially upset that Guevara should have raised such serious points in a faraway place like Algiers. Raúl suspected Guevara of Trotskyism, because of his attachment to the concept of world revolution – a charge to which Che replied by calling the defense minister an “idiot.” In a confidential report to East Berlin, the correspondent of the GDR news agency ADN wrote that, according to “quite well-informed sources,” Fidel Castro accused Guevara of “causing considerable damage to Cuba.” “Guevara, for his part, is said to have complained that he had traveled all over the world for Castro and not even been given any recognition for it. He also reproached Castro with having ‘pro-Soviet tendencies.’”30 Guevara accepted responsibility for what had happened, but he refused to make a public selfcriticism or to offer an apology to the Soviets. Eventually, “at the height of the altercation” – that is, after nearly two whole days and nights – Guevara apparently “lost control and slammed the door.” Foreign diplomats – again according to the ADN report – supported the view that “Fidel Castro and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara had behaved like little children rather than politicians, although the burden of responsibility for the whole country rested on their shoulders.”31

  Just under ten years after their first meeting in Mexico, the friendship between the two men seemed to be over. On March 22, 1965, Guevara convened a final meeting at the ministry for industry, and was not seen again in public. Hurt and angry, suffering from a bad attack of asthma, he withdrew to a sanatorium for a few days and made up his mind to decamp from Cuba; his new revolutionary destination was to be the Congo. At dawn on April 2, without saying farewell to Fidel Castro (although he apparently left a letter for him), Guevara set off with two companions incognito on a roundabout route to Black Africa, his head closely shaven and his mouth newly fitted with false teeth. Officially a rumor was spread that he had left for the sugarcane cutting in eastern Cuba – a plausible story, since he was known to do that from time to time. Castro tried to dispel other speculations circulating among foreign correspondents: “All I can tell you,” he said, “is that Comandante Guevara will always be where he can most serve the Revolution.”32

  It may be that the clash among the three top revolutionaries was about more than just Che’s speech in Algiers. The background was that he and his friends in the state and Party apparatus had long been preparing a trial of strength over the future political direction of the Cuban Revolution. In fact, the quarrel itself coincided with the publication of a long letter from Che to the editor of the Uruguayan weekly Marcha, under the title “Socialism and the New Man in Cuba,” which had the character of a manifesto and, with hindsight, his political testament. Despite the lack of success of his idea of forming a new man motivated only by moral duty to the revolution, Guevara once again summarized the theoretical bases of his thinking, in a way that caused quite a stir within the Latin American left, as well as in Moscow and Havana. Claiming for Cuba the vanguard political role in Latin America of which he still dreamed, he critically took up the subordination of the fraternal socialist countries to the dogma of Soviet policy.

  Guevara had long been outside the country, without this being public knowledge, when his essay appeared in Verde Olivo, the central organ of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), on April 11, and in Carlos Franqui’s Revolución on April 13. The fact that this was not prevented shows that Guevara still commanded a degree of respect and support that made him “untouchable,” but perhaps it also reveals “that Fidel was personally very attached to Guevara and shared his lack of clarity on some important issues,” as the GDR ambassador of the day wrote back to Berlin.33 The uproar Che had caused behind the scenes is even more evident from an analysis written by the GDR embassy in Havana in late October 1965, immediately after the official foundation of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC). Judging by this text, it is quite possible that Guevara had wanted to use his essay to make a decisive impact on the programmatic debate: that is, to ensure that the PCC evolved in a direction other than the one prescribed in Moscow doctrine.

  The GDR embassy paper asserts that “the whole conception behind this work of Guevara’s has its origins in petty-bourgeois radicalism;” it is strongly reminiscent of “the ideas disseminated by the Chinese leadership.” “It should not be forgotten that here in Cuba Guevara was for some time described as ‘Chino’ (Chinese).” The “dangerous character of Guevara’s conception” lay not only in the moment he chose to express it, but in the fact that “demonstrably” his platform had already been “fully worked out before his speech in Algiers.” It was thus “clear that Guevara’s speech in Algiers was not some isolated error of judgment, … but the conscious result of an entire way of thinking.” Furthermore:

  One especially dangerous aspect … derives from the fact that it took place before the Party’s founding congress, or, to be precise, with an eye on preparations for the congress. The platform singles out for praise a number of ideas that are still today unclear in Fidel Castro himself; it actually pulls him backward on other issues (e.g., the issue of individual material incentives in production) and attempts to tie Fidel Castro and his inner circle down once and for all.34

  The embassy suspected that Guevara had tried “to set himself up as one of the leading minds (if not the leading mind) on the ideological/political and theoretical questions facing the PURS (Cuba’s CP) and the whole of Cuba’s socialist development. The role of the strongly emotional, more or less correctly acting pragmatist and people’s tribune was apparently still intended for Fidel Castro.” Guevara was indirectly accused of having wanted to stage a kind of palace revolt. According to information reaching the GDR embassy, the affair was made considerably worse “by Guevara’s attempt to use his ‘legendary’ reputation to win over some high commanders of the FAR to the platform, thereby forcing Raúl Castro to endorse this line or at least to tolerate it.” Even Hoy, the house organ of the Communists in Cuba, had dealt with Guevara’s essay in July, “without polemicizing against the shoddy effort by name.” Still, defense minister Raúl Castro had “severely reprimanded” the FAR’s political leader responsible for its publication in Verde Olivo, and “other commanders” were even said to have been “dismissed or transferred to other functions.”

  The speech in Algiers had certainly played a role, but it was his essay which had brought to a head the “friction between the top leadership and Guevara.” Instead of a further clash, however, the leadership apparently tried to allow the affair “gradually to sink into oblivion,” so that Guevara could be “retained simply as a monument of a noble-minded liberation fighter (rather like Camilo Cienfuegos).” Fidel Castro himself, in his speech to the founding congress of the PCC, had been prepared to make only “a few critical observations.” It had already been noted in a different context that the prevailing method in Cuba was “to send ‘troublesome’ people on ‘holiday’ or abroad for a longer or shorter time.”35

  Only Che’s parents learned, from a farewell letter, that he was setting off for Africa’s “heart of darkness:” “Once again I feel under my heels the ribs of Rocinante,” he wrote sarcastically, appearing to sense that what lay ahead was a purely quixotic venture.36 On the shores of Lake Tanganyika he rendezvoused with a force of just under 130 Cubans who had been sent on ahead by Castro. Using the cover name “Tatu,” he joined the people around guerrilla leader Laurent Kabila (a shady despot, who in the late nineties finally managed to win power).

  Che’s mission was a failure and ended in disaster; the Africans had no fighting morale, Che fell ill with asthma and dysentery. He corresponded with Castro, who gave him protective support and later sent out emissaries, eventually Guevara’s wife Aleida, to persuade him to return. On November 4, Castro wrote him a positive letter urgently pressing him to call off the
expedition, a move that seems to have been dictated by concern for his seemingly desperate friend.

  We must do everything, except for the absurd. If in Tatu’s view our presence becomes unjustifiable and futile, we must think of retreating.… We are worried that you will make the mistake of fearing that your attitude will be considered defeatist and pessimistic. If you decide to leave Tatu can remain the same, either returning here or staying somewhere else. We will support any decision. Avoid annihilation!37

  It was all over by the end of the year. The enterprise, as it were, dissolved itself – first, because the general political situation in the region changed and the war ground to a halt; second, because Guevara’s authority over the troops evaporated when it leaked out that he no longer counted for much back home.

  On October 3, 1965, his friend Fidel had made public Che’s letter of farewell, in the run-up to the long-delayed congress winding up the Unified Party of the Socialist Revolution (PURS) and turning it into the PCC. Castro must have felt forced into this decision, because otherwise it would have been inexplicable why Che Guevara of all people should not have been made a member of the new Party leadership. Fidel Castro himself became first secretary of the Party.38 Where Che was, however, remained a state secret after the congress. In the farewell letter, he had renounced all positions in the Party leadership and government, his title as Comandante of the Revolution, and his Cuban citizenship. “I have lived through some wonderful days, and I feel – by your side – proud to belong to this people precisely in the great, if sad, days of the crisis. If my last hour finds me elsewhere, may my last thought be of this people and especially of you.”39

  Guevara’s letter has no date: Castro said only that he had received it on April 1, and this immediately aroused all manner of speculation about its authenticity. Its homage to Castro has never ceased to puzzle: “My only mistake was that I did not trust you even more right from the first moments in the Sierra Maestra, and did not understand soon enough your qualities as a leader and a revolutionary.… I am grateful for what you taught me, for your example, and I shall try to remain faithful in the final consequences of my action.”40 Some skeptics in Guevara’s milieu have cast doubt on the obsequious personal references to Castro. But the homage might also be seen as bitter irony; Guevara knew well how to express this, especially when he felt deeply offended, and it would have been quite appropriate in his situation at the time. His future path was already mapped out in another sentence: “Other peoples of the world are asking for my modest efforts. I am able to do what is denied you, because you bear responsibility as leader of the revolution in Cuba. And so, the time has come when we must part.”

  After the collapse of the Congo adventure, Guevara hid himself away for several months in the Cuban embassy in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. At first he refused to consider going back to Cuba. In late February/early March he traveled to Prague and received a visit from Cuban friends and people sent by Castro. Already the plan seems to have been ripening in his mind to go to Bolivia, and to work from there to inspire revolution in Latin America. In July 1966, however, he showed up once more in Cuba and was welcomed by the Castro brothers. Again he withdrew to a sanatorium and did not appear in public; rumors later circulated that he had a complete mental and physical breakdown, which would have been quite easy to understand. But his resolve to go to South America was unshakeable. Over the following months, a guerrilla force of some 20 men was put together to accompany him to Bolivia. Castañeda, in his biography, reports that Castro gave every support for Guevara’s project, but that right up to the end he tried to get him to call it off, not least because he did not trust the Bolivian Communists, who had close links with Moscow and were no friends of Guevara’s. Castañeda describes what was evidently Castro’s last attempt to change his friend’s mind, a final embrace, an expression of despair on Castro’s face and obstinacy on Guevara’s.

  In November 1966 Guevara finally arrived via Europe and Brazil in the Bolivian capital La Paz, disguised as a Uruguayan businessman. On November 7 he reached the country estate near Santa Cruz that he had selected as a base; his comrades were already waiting there, to launch the jungle adventure that would be his final act of quixotry. In February of the following year, their radio broke down and Guevara no longer had any contact with Havana. Yet he managed to send out a last “message to the peoples of the world,” which on April 16, 1967, appeared in the Cuban magazine Tricontinental on the occasion of the tricontinental conference in Havana. It contained the famous image of creating “two, three, many Vietnams.”41

  By summer, the government in La Paz, the CIA, and Moscow knew that Che Guevara was roaming the country in Bolivia. On July 26, 1967, Soviet premier Kosygin stopped off in Havana on his way from Washington, where President Johnson issued him with a reproach for Guevara’s campaign. Kosygin passed this on to Castro, because Moscow had not been informed of Guevara’s expedition. Apparently Kosygin threatened to cut Soviet aid to Cuba if Havana was unable to give up exporting revolution.

  A few months later, on October 15, 1967, Fidel reported the death of Che Guevara and ordered a period of official mourning. On October 7 soldiers had surprised Guevara and his small band of guerrillas; he was wounded in the ensuing gun battle, jailed along with the other survivors, and taken to the village of Higuera, where he was interrogated by Bolivian officers belonging to a US-trained Ranger unit and by CIA agent Félix Rodríguez (who was also involved in the Watergate break-in in 1972). Then, on October 8, 1967, Guevara was murdered on the orders of Bolivian President Barrientos, in the little school at Higuera. His corpse was exhibited, photographed, and finally buried just beneath the surface of the airfield runway at Villegrande. Those in charge of the operation cut off his hands and preserved them in formaldehyde; they later turned up in Havana and are now kept under lock and key in the Museum of the Revolution. In 1997 his remains were dug up in Bolivia and taken to Cuba, where on the thirtieth anniversary of his death he was given a state funeral at Santa Clara, the site of his greatest victory during the civil war.

  Many have tried to work out why Guevara had to die a hero’s death in Bolivia, for that is how it soon came to be represented. Why, for example, did Castro not send an elite unit to get him out? One suggestion is that he sacrificed his comrade under pressure from Moscow; there was all manner of speculation about treachery by the KGB and the Bolivian Communists. The French leftist Régis Debray, who was arrested on his way to meet Che Guevara in Bolivia, claimed to Agence France Presse that, according to “various sources” (mainly three deserters), the military had already received information in March 1967 about Guevara’s area of operations. Also at that time, in Camiri, a cross-country vehicle belonging to Guevara’s German friend, Tamara “Tania” Bunke, fell into the hands of the police, containing notebooks with names, addresses, and telephone numbers of people involved in the conspiracy. When Che learned of this, he was horrified that the fruit of two years’ work had been lost. He had first met the attractive Tania in East Berlin in late 1960, where she was working as an interpreter, and soon afterwards she traveled to Cuba. Guevara’s biographer Daniel James has written that she was in fact an agent of the Stasi, the East German state security police. According to her controlling officer, Stasi lieutenant Günther Männel, who defected to the West in 1961: “I myself assigned Tamara Bunke to Guevara as an agent.”42

  But was Che not just simply responsible for his fate? Was he not the victim of inexplicable dilettantism, personal vanity and an overestimation of his abilities, or of a kind of death wish that many thought they could detect in him? Castañeda writes in his biography: “Fidel did not send Che to his death in Bolivia; nor did he betray or sacrifice him. He simply allowed history to run its course, fully aware of its inevitable outcome. Fidel did not shape the event; he let it happen.”43 Besides, what could Castro and Cuba have done with a revolutionary in early retirement, especially as he had consciously turned his back on the country? In death he eventually found h
is true destiny. His mystique as a latter-day martyr began then, the photographer Korda having intuitively supplied the picture which transfigured “El Che” as the most famous icon of the twentieth century.

  Castro had every reason in the mid-sixties to condemn Che Guevara out of hand, seeing that his combination of ideological rigidity and superficial economic knowledge almost robbed the revolution of the victory it had achieved with so much difficulty. Yet Castro stood by him, because the two had become joined together and had a brotherly affection for each other. Perhaps the most accurate description of the relationship between them is the one given by Castañeda:

  During that long year of 1964, when he lost both friends and battles, undertaking endless struggles over topics crucial to the fate of the Revolution, Che discovered two indisputable facts about his role in Cuba. One was that Castro held him very dear indeed; he would back him in all his projects for Argentina, Algeria, Venezuela, and now Africa. Fidel never disputed the place Guevara had carved out for himself, or reproached him for his errors or outbursts. Che could nurture no grudges on that account. But Guevara also understood that Fidel, consummate politician that he was, did not really commit himself to Che’s stances. He had to wage his own battles, and suffer his own defeats. Without ever disputing his sporadic victories, Castro never extended Che Guevara his full consent. At times, he even sided with his opponents, either because révolution oblige, or because he simply did not agree with Che’s ideas. Moment by moment, battle by battle, Che gradually realized he was alone: neither with nor against Fidel. But Castro was everywhere; lacking his support, Che had nothing, no ground to stand on. His situation was untenable: the slogan of neither marriage nor divorce with Fidel became unsustainable for Che. Nothing could have affected Che more than this tangle of ambiguities and contradictions – the half tones of his twilight in Cuba.44