Companero
Page 20
For Che, who had been acting on his own initiative only since mid-October in Las Villas, land distribution and rent cancellation were of central importance. They also strongly influenced his approach to various matters, including relations with the Communists and other forces. The reform in question was a limited, rather timid endeavor. It did not contemplate cooperatives or any communal or collective forms of tenancy. Che pushed for a more radical project—though not precisely an incendiary one, eíther. In his words, the legislation finally approved was “incomplete.”6 But for now Castro sided with the more moderate wing of the 26th of July, led in this domain by Humberto Sorí Marín, a somewhat conservative lawyer who would become minister of agriculture in the new regime and was executed a couple of years later for conspiring against the government.
Though some commentators have suggested that the Communists adopted a moderate position regarding agrarian reform, in fact they identified with Guevara’s views and sought a more frontal attack on latifundia ownership. Che in turn empathized with their isolation in July 1958, and he opposed the expulsion of Communist leader Carlos Rafael Rodríguez from the La Plata camp where Fidel was staying. Rodríguez, who was sent to negotiate his party’s support for the guerrillas, held a position on the agrarian reform that was similar to Che’s. The 26th of July leaders Faustino Pérez, Manuel Ray, and Carlos Franqui demanded the ouster of Rodríguez; Guevara, Raúl Castro, and Camilo Cienfuegos defended him. Che declared that “in the Sierra the only people who should be expelled are U.S. journalists. If we persecute the Communists, we will be doing up here what Batista is doing down there.”7
Ray was the first economist called in by Castro to draft the agrarian reform decree, together with Sorí Marín. As Guevara would later describe the process:
Our first action [in Las Villas] was to issue a revolutionary decree establishing the Land Reform, which stipulated … that the owners of small plots of land would stop paying rent until the Revolution examined each case. In fact, we were advancing with the Land Reform as a spearhead of the Rebel Army.8
The process naturally generated friction with other opposition groups in the area, less enthusiastic than Che over unilateral reforms and reluctant to establish such precedents. The debate on land distribution was finally settled in May 1959 by the First Law for Agrarian Reform, and then again in 1964 by the Second Law, largely along Che’s lines. From the beginning, he insisted on two essential components: destroying the latifundia and eliminating prior cash payment of compensation to landowners.
In 1958, however, the discussion was superseded by the need to unite the forces opposing Batista. Che’s mandate was unequivocal: he was to bring everybody together in Las Villas. The task was difficult, but not impossible. His way of achieving this unity reflected developments in his own action and thinking that would become decisive in the following months. During the march from the Sierra Maestra to the Escambray, Che held two meetings with PSP militants that illustrated his growing ties to the Communists. In a note to Fidel dated October 3—ten days before completing the dreadful expedition across the plains—Guevara complained bitterly about the 26th of July:
We were unable to make contact with the 26th of July organization, as a couple of so-called members of theirs rejected my request for help and I received it only … from members of the PSP, who told me they had asked for help from the Movement’s organizations, and had received the following reply. … If Che sends over a request in writing, we’ll help him; if not, that’s too bad for Che.*2
Che probably believed that Castro, having signed a unity pact with all the anti-Batista forces except for the Communists in Caracas on July 20, needed to be coaxed into an alliance with them. The long weeks Carlos Rafael Rodríguez spent in the Sierra helped accomplish this, and helped forge a strong but ultimately unsustainable friendship between the Argentine and the Cuban Communist. They exchanged books, including Mao’s On Guerrilla Warfare, and discussed the land reform bill at length. Carlos Rafael Rodríguez expressed his admiration for Che Guevara that July: “He is the most intelligent and able of all the rebel chiefs.”9 While probably true, the praise also reflected a growing political closeness. The association acquired a more personal touch in September, when a Communist cadre from Santa Clara, Armando Acosta, joined the column as Che’s virtual right-hand assistant.*3 Aside from Pablo Ribalta (whose incorporation was described in the previous chapter), the PSP had also sent Guevara another cadre in February of 1958. Sergio Rodríguez was assigned to the column to “supply pencils, ink and paper to print the newspaper El Cubano Libre.”10 The political overtones of the company Che increasingly kept were quite obvious. As Enrique Oltuski, a Jewish engineer of Polish origin who was the clandestine leader of the 26th of July in Las Villas, recalls:
I knew Acosta, who was the PSP delegate in Las Villas; suddenly I see him as part of Che’s column. We knew Che’s inclinations and I was not surprised. Che was playing along with all this.11
The enlistment in October 1958 of Ovidio Díaz Rodríguez, secretary of the Popular Socialist Youth in Las Villas, strengthened Che’s growing links to the Communists. He recalls that Che preferred to keep his relations with the PSP as discreet as possible. One day a Party member arrived bearing a small present for Che (a little can of Argentine mate) and loudly proclaimed, “Look, Comandante, here is a gift from the Party leadership.” He accepted it without a word, but later instructed Ovidio to tell the Party not to send such indiscreet comrades.12
By November, Che was more explicit than ever in his opinions about the various groups opposing Batista. In a bitter reproach to Faure Chomón, head of the Revolutionary Student Directorate in Las Villas, he pointedly informed him that “in official conversations with members of the Popular Socialist Party, the latter have taken an openly supportive stance and placed their organization in the plains at our disposal.”13 Che’s evaluation of the groups rested, understandably, upon a clear-cut value judgment. The Communists had accepted Che’s leadership without reservation when he arrived in Las Villas. Other sectors had been slower, more reluctant, or frankly opposed to him. But the PSP joined forces with Che as promptly as it did with Raúl Castro and his Second Front, unconditionally accepting him and his lieutenants as leaders.
Guevara’s ties to the Popular Socialist Party are among this period’s thorniest subjects. A few of the condottiere’s biographers prefer to emphasize his distance vis-à-vis the Communists, citing a couple of derogatory statements. The best-known is, “The Communists are able to train cadres who will let themselves be ripped to shreds in a dark dungeon without a word, but not cadres who will take a machine-gun nest by assault.”14 Che’s other famous statement (also from this period) expresses a similar criticism: “the PSP had not seen clearly enough the role of guerrilla warfare, or the personal role of Fidel in our revolutionary struggle.”15 Several scholars—including Fidel’s latest biographer—have even gone so far as to insist that the Argentine was not a Communist at the time.*4 However, according to a combatant in the Sierra who joined Che’s column in August 1957,16 Che himself told her of his ideological leanings shortly after they met:
I cannot forget the first night he talked with me. … He spoke of my religious ideas and that made me ask him if he was religious. No, he answered, I cannot be religious because I am a Communist.17
This tangled set of assertions deserves further analysis. Che’s differences with the Communists derived from tactical, and at times personal, considerations: they do not know how to fight, and they do not train their people to do so. Consequently, they do not recognize the importance of the armed struggle, or the role played by Castro and his Rebel Army in the fight against Batista. *5 But Guevara’s objections are neither strategic nor ideological. He considers himself a communist with a small c, in the truest sense of the word at that time: a soldier in the international struggle for socialism led by the Soviet Union. He does not perceive himself as a Communist with a capital C—as a member of the Cuban Party—mainly because of his
views on guerrilla warfare. But once this dispute was resolved by victory in January 1959 and the subsequent unanimous endorsement of the armed struggle, Che and the Communists emerged as natural allies. Nothing separated them any longer. Only later would the vicissitudes of revolutionary government, geopolitics, and Latin American revolution lead to renewed confrontation.
Perhaps the most interesting debate Che had between his arrival at the Escambray and the battle of Santa Clara was reflected in his exchange with Enrique Oltuski. Oltuski’s fate would take many a turn. The youngest minister of the revolutionary government at age twenty-eight, he would soon be fired and jailed, only to reappear later at the Ministry of Industry under Che Guevara. In the early nineties he was still working with the Cuban government in the area of natural resources.
The give-and-take was both substantive and impassioned, Che’s letters revealing as always his state of mind and political development. The correspondence centered on the two men’s dissension over agrarian reform. Oltuski favored a gradual distribution of land, while Guevara pressed for an immediate confiscation and allocation of plots. Among his many objections to the expropriation of large landholdings, Oltuski argued that such a radical step would lead to confrontation with the United States. The dialogue between them is worth quoting:
OLTUSKI; All the idle land should be given to the guajiros [peasants] while heavily taxing the latifundistas in order to buy their lands with their own money. Then the land would be sold to the guajiros at cost, with payment facilities and loans for production.
CHE: What a reactionary idea! How can we charge people for the land they work? You are the same as all those other people from the plains.
OLTUSKI: For crying out loud, what do you want to do? Give it to them? So they can let it go to seed, as they did in Mexico? Men must feel that it takes an effort to get what they have.
CHE (shouting as the veins in his neck stand out): You’re full of it!
OLTUSKI: Anyway, we must disguise things. Don’t believe for a moment that the Americans are going to sit idly by and watch us do things so openly. We have to play it smart.18
CHE (scathingly): So you are one of those who believe we can make a revolution behind the backs of the Americans. What a shitface you are! We must make the revolution within a struggle to the death against imperialism, from the very outset. A true revolution cannot be disguised.19
The dialogue included a topic that later became a source of minor but undeniable friction between Che and Fidel Castro. Only a couple of months earlier, the future caudillo had strongly rebuked Raúl Castro for kidnapping several U.S. citizens—engineers from the Moa and Nicaro mining complexes, and a few Marines. Fidel considered the U.S. embargo on arms sales to Batista vital to the revolution. The time was not yet ripe for a showdown with Cuba’s neighbor to the north. Castro scolded his younger brother, who immediately released the prisoners. The arms embargo was maintained, but the Cubans were unaware that the kidnappings had kindled a heated debate over the embargo in Washington. The following passage from a classified State Department document reflects the tenor of that debate:
Our Embassy at Havana has recommended that the policy on arms shipments to Cuba be reviewed in the light of the kidnappings. … [They] believe that we should permit the Cuban Government to purchase arms in the United States to enable that Government to take military action to crush the Castro revolt or as an inducement to Batista to hold acceptable elections. … The principal reasons favoring such a change in policy are that the refusal to sell arms weakens the constituted Government of Cuba and that reports from our consuls who negotiated the release of the Americans in Oriente Province indicate possible communist influence in the forces of Raul Castro. The reasons against permitting sales of arms to Cuba include the considerations that arms shipped to the Batista Government in the past have not permitted the Government to deal effectively with forces weaker than those the 26th of July group can now muster, the bulk of the Cuban people are disaffected from the present regime and Batista is scheduled to leave the office of President next February unless he retains power by force, and open support to the present Government as evidenced by sales of arms would likely harm the United States position in most of the other American republics. On balance, ARA [the State Department’s American Republícs section], believes that the reasons against resuming arms shipments outweigh those favoring such a course of action.20
What distinguished Fidel Castro from Che and Raúl was his spectacular sense of timing. His lieutenants tended to discount the importance of opportunity and tactics; for him they were decisive.
Che had another discussion with Oltuski, equally charged with passion and indignation, about confiscating funds from the wealthy denizens of Las Villas. Guevara ordered Oltuski to rob the bank of a town called Sancti Spíritus, but the local leader refused outright, arguing that such an act was simply crazy, and would turn many people who currently supported the rebels against them. Besides, it was unnecessary; they had access to bountiful funds, which Oltuski offered to share with Che. Oltuski was also certain that Fidel would not approve of the operation.21 Che replied with one of his fearsome tirades: “[If] the people’s leaders threaten to resign … let them. Furthermore, I demand it right now, as we cannot allow the deliberate boycott of a step so beneficial to … the Revolution.” He then pulled rank on Oltuski: “I see myself in the sad necessity of reminding you that I have been named commander-in-chief. …” Guevara concludes by establishing a connection between land distribution, bank robbery, and the class content of the revolution:
Why is it that not a single guajiro has found fault with our idea that the land is for those who till it, and the landowners have? And isn’t this related to the fact that the struggling masses agree to robbing the banks, because none of them has a penny in them? Haven’t you wondered about the economic roots for that respect toward the most arbitrary of all financial institutions?22
Che perceived the struggle from a perspective all his own. In a “true revolution,” he often said, alienating the bankers, landowners, or Americans was of no importance. It could even prove useful, triggering reprisals that would help radicalize the revolutionary process. This in turn would clean the ranks of the anti-Batista forces, more neatly defining the course of those who stayed.
Guevara was able to indulge in these verbal and conceptual luxuries first of all because he was not the commander-in-chief. Real responsibility resided in Fidel Castro, for whom Che was a sort of left flank or critical conscience. Secondly, his being a foreigner made it much easier for him to adopt extreme positions, since he was not exposed to recriminations from childhood friends, aging aunts, or former classmates—factors that undoubtedly influenced the Cuban leaders. Finally, in contrast to them, Guevara had an unclouded strategic vision as well as precise long-term goals. He fought for socialism, he wanted Cuba to join the Soviet bloc, and he considered confrontation with the United States indispensable. The decisions made by Che in Las Villas were both lucid and consistent with this perspective. But they clashed violently with the aspirations and tactics of the reformist Cuban leaders from the plains.
Che’s time in Las Villas was not devoted entirely to polemics. He displayed brilliant political skills in the mission entrusted him by Fidel Castro. Slowly but surely, he reached agreement with the different opposition groups: the 26th of July Movement in Las Villas, the student organization, the Communists, and even the Second National Front of the Escambray, led by Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo and Jesús Carrera. He had a dangerous dispute with Carrera, however. The small splinter group from the 26th of July Movement operated within a certain zone. When Che’s troops tried to enter it, they were asked for a password, which they did not have. Guevara himself was challenged by Carrera. Fortunately, he was able to reach an understanding with Gutiérrez Menoyo before things got out of hand.*6 In a letter to the student leadership dated November 7, Guevara rejected any alliance with Gutiérrez Menoyo. In the latter’s view, however, the incident had no f
urther consequences:
Che may have had some resentment against the officers I sent, the ones who stopped him, and especially Comandante Jesús Carrera. He sent me a letter, complaining about Jesús Carrera. When I met with Guevara I told him that he had no right to complain because Comandante Jesús Carrera was following orders from me. In other words, when anybody enters our zone there must be an agreement on passwords, in order to avoid confrontation. This is territory liberated by us, where our guerrillas operate. In consequence, if in the evening or at night you ask troops for the password and they can’t give it, then they are enemy troops. This is an elementary thing, which he later understood perfectly.23
Che’s accords with the different groups, including that of Gutiérrez Menoyo, were partly expressed in the Pact of El Pedrero, which was signed in early December at a village near Guevara’s general headquarters. Though the pact involved only Che and the Student Directorate, represented by Rolando Cubela, it symbolized a wider agreement with the other opposition forces. Members of the PSP, led by Felix Torres, joined the unit commanded by Camilo Cienfuegos, and Gutiérrez Menoyo himself reached an “operational pact” with Guevara. Weeks later, Castro would strongly rebuke his subordinate for the accord, accusing him of having revived a corpse.24 On December 26, just before the final victory, Castro warned Che:
At this time the situation in Las Villas is my major worry. I do not understand why we are making precisely the same mistake that made us send you and Camilo to the province in the first place. Now it turns out that, far from having solved it definitively, we have made it worse.25