Companero

by Jorge G. Castaneda

  Many of his other ideas in Guerrilla Warfare had already been expressed in speeches or in his accounts of the war. In the text they are reformulated in a more systematic way: the guerrilla fighter who distributes land as he crosses mountains or jungles is an “agrarian revolutionary”; “the guerrilla fighter is the Jesuit of warfare”; the guerrilla fighter must fight only when he is certain of winning; and the guerrilla army must be transformed gradually into a regular army; but these are all reflections of Che’s experience in 1957 and 1958.

  The text also includes a number of technical, somewhat eccentric tips about the most appropriate weapons for guerrilla warfare, the importance of proper footwear, and so on. It is replete with highly perceptive insights and reflections, and instructions so detailed that they can easily wreak confusion and havoc despite their great precision. A good example is Che’s indications regarding the ideal physical and psychological profile of the guerrilla fighter—down to the usefulness of smoking a pipe, “as it allows one to make full use of tobacco from cigarettes, at times of scarcity, or whatever is left of cigar stubs.”71 Che had no reason to suspect the impact all this would have on thousands of young university students in the ensuing thirty years, as they cheerfully marched off to be massacred, with or without pipes. No author should be held responsible for his readers’ sagacity—or lack thereof. Nor could Che have foreseen that one of his later disciples, the Mexican rebel Subcomandante Marcos, would take the precept of the pipe to levels of international media fame that Guevara would never have imagined.

  Che’s more substantive ideas include the following passage on the inverse correlation between a terrain’s suitability for guerrilla warfare and for human habitation; it illustrates his uncanny knack for applying the intelligent, knowledgeable, and cultivated layman’s insight to disciplines or areas generally reserved for the square-minded and otherwise ignorant specialist:

  All favorable environments, all facilities for human life tend to make man more sedentary. The opposite occurs in guerrilla warfare: the more facilities there are for man, the more nomadic and uncertain the life of the guerrilla fighter. In reality, they follow the same principle. … Everything that is favorable to human life with its accompanying communications, urban and semi-urban nuclei with large concentrations of people, terrain easily accessible to machinery, etc., places the guerrilla fighter at a disadvantage.72

  The book also includes important observations about the relationship between the people and the guerrilla warriors—a link that Che considered vital, as noted in previous chapters. Partisans and peasants educate and transform each other mutually; the latter instruct and influence the former, radicalizing them and teaching them the realities of their world.

  There are also many references—predictable, but by no means obsequious—to Fidel’s leadership:

  Fidel Castro embodies the highest attributes of the combatant and statesman; it is to his vision that we owe our voyage, our struggle, and our victory. We cannot say that without him the people would not have triumphed, but this victory would doubtless have cost more and been less complete.73

  Sadly, myriad Latin American enthusiasts would soon forget that not everyone can be Fidel Castro, and that the chances for success fade rapidly without a bold, visionary, and multifaceted leadership like his. Many would infer that anyone can become a Fidel Castro. Others, including Che, would conclude that the caudillo’s many talents could be replaced with other virtues—a fatal mistake for Guevara and countless others.

  Beyond these reflections (and others regarding the role of women, sanitation, indoctrination, and so on), Guerrilla Warfare must be judged in terms of its impact rather than its intent. It is, after all, a manual. Unavoidably brief and simplistic, it carries the risk of being read too quickly by enthusiastic and innocent students of revolution. Both insightful and accessible, it helped mobilize the youth of Latin America on behalf of just causes. It taught that in order to win, one must dare to try, and in order to dare, one must have faith. Che endowed two generations of young people with the tools of that faith, and the fervor of that conviction. But he must also be held responsible for the wasted blood and lives that decimated those generations. His all too costly errors included his emphasis on technical and military matters; the lessons he drew from watching only half of a very complex film; his belief that the enormous obstacles to social change can be overcome by sheer willpower; his neglect of social, economic, and political conditions in much of Latin America, beginning with his native Argentina and Brazil; and finally, his underestimation of his own impact, his uniqueness. His death allowed him to sidestep a question he could never have answered: why so many university students from the region’s emerging middle classes sallied forth so innocently to their slaughter. These are some of the debts that he owes to history.

  Che left the National Bank on the eve of the Cuban Revolution’s greatest victory: the Bay of Pigs, on April 22, 1961. His months at the Bank did not mark him physically, aside from a few pounds he put on because of trips and lack of exercise. The added weight might also have been a side effect of cortisone, then newly introduced as a treatment for asthma. Ricardo Rojo recalls that he found Che overweight in mid-1961; when he asked him why, Guevara replied that it was the fault of the cortisone.*15 Indeed, asthma specialists who have examined photos of him in those years detect the classic “moon face” and chubbiness of cortisone users.

  Overweight or not, Che’s charm endured, as can be seen in a beguiling anecdote. Despite a trace of bad humor and fatigue due to work and illness, as well as his characteristic slovenliness, his face was beautifully rendered by a Cuban photographer who had the talent and luck to snap his picture by accident on a day of glory and mourning in Havana. Not for the first time, fortune helped create an iconic image of Che Guevara. The picture, taken by pure chance, traveled around the world. Made into a poster, it haunted the social imagination of an entire era. It hung in college dormitories and was borne aloft in demonstrations by millions of students. It recorded the Christlike image of the living Che, eventually joining the equally Christlike photo of his corpse in Vallegrande.

  The picture became emblematic because it was both starkly iconographic and completely spontaneous. Che happened to cross Alberto Korda’s lens for a fleeting moment, on his way to someplace else. Korda describes the event:

  On the day after the explosion of the La Courbe, there was an improvised ceremony on the corner of 12th and 23rd. Fidel Castro presided, and gave a speech honoring the victims of the sabotage. The street was full of people, and flowers rained upon the caskets as they passed by. I was working as a news photographer for the daily Revolutión. … I was slightly below the level of the dais, with a 9-mm. Leica camera. I used my small telephoto lens and took all the people in the first row: Fidel, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. Che was not visible; he was standing behind the rostrum. But for a moment there was an empty space in the front row, and in the background the figure of Che appeared. He unexpectedly entered my viewfinder and I shot the photo horizontally. I immediately realized that the image of him was almost a portrait, with the clear sky behind him. I shifted the camera to a vertical [position] and shot a second photo. It all happened in less than ten or fifteen seconds. Che left and didn’t appear again. It was a coincidence.74

  It was cold that day in Havana. Guevara was wearing a zippered plastic jacket, lent him by a Mexican friend. It was not his usual attire, and made him look slimmer than he was. The newspaper neglected to publish Korda’s photograph; there were already enough pictures of the ceremony.

  Six years later, the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli stopped in Havana on his way from Bolivia to Milan; he looked up Korda, searching for some pictures of Che. According to Korda, the Italian was convinced that Che would never leave Bolivia alive. Without paying a cent, he chose the 1960 photo of the La Courbe ceremony. Weeks later, when Guevara died, Feltrinelli produced the most thumbtacked poster in history. It was immediately taken up by the mourning
students of Milan and brandished in angry demonstrations. It became the other half of an iconographic diptych. Freddy Alborta’s picture of Che’s corpse in the laundry room of Nuestra Señora de Malta robbed millions of young people of their idol. But Korda’s photo returned to them a living Che: gaze fixed upon a distant horizon, hair in the wind, face clear against an open sky.

  *1 In Carlos Franqui’s opinion, two factors were at work here: “Each time someone in Cuba fell from favor, he was sent abroad; it was a way of displacing them, and besides, maybe Che had a real interest in getting to know those countries.” Carlos Franqui, interview with the author, San Juan, August 20, 1996.

  †1 “In that country [Egypt] the mission was apparently successful.” Memorandum from the Deputy Director of Intelligence and Research to the Secretary of State, “Che Guevara’s Mission to Afro-Asian Countries,” August 19, 1959, quoted in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1958–1960, vol. 6, p. 590.

  *2 A photocopy of the original text, written on Air India stationery, was given to Chichina Ferreyra by José González Aguilar. Chichina lent the photocopy to the author. The letter is not dated, but according to the itinerary it must have been written on July 2 or 3, 1959.

  *3 And not only of its economy: on September 30 a reliable source informed the U.S. Embassy in Havana that Che had presided over two meetings of military leaders in which Raúl Castro had also been present. See AmEmbassy Havana to Secretary of State, dispatch 509, October 5, 1959 (Confidential), U.S. Department of State Files, vol. 9, 814–817, p. 2.

  †2 The attempt at concealment was futile. In a cable dated September 2, 1959 (one week before Che’s return), the new ambassador, Philip Bonsal, reported to Washington that Guevara “might have an important role in the industrialization programs.” Philip Bonsal to Roy Rubottom, September 2, 1959 (Confidential), in FRUS, 1958–1960, p. 594.

  *4 According to one of his Argentine aides, Néstor Lavergne, “Che took an economics seminar largely dedicated to studying [Marx’s] Capital. It was conducted by Anastacio Mancilla, a Spanish-Soviet doctor, a refugee who was really a brilliant expert in Marxist economics.” Néstor Lavergne, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, February 16,1995.

  *5 According to several sources, Alexeiev had been working for the Soviet intelligence services since the Second World War. This account was corroborated by Karen A. Khachaturov, former director of the Soviet news agency Novosti, who has been similarly described by others. Interview with the author, Moscow, November 1, 1995.

  †3 This account comes from Alexeiev, “Cuba depués,” pp. 63, 65. Antonio Núñez Jiménez attributes the whole idea to Camilo Cienfuegos. See Nuñez, En marcha con Fidel (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1982), p. 318. According to Georgie Anne Geyer, the idea for the exhibit came from Fidel, while Mikoyan’s visit was suggested by Alexeiev. See Georgie Anne Geyer, Guerrilla Prince (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991), p. 250.

  *6 “There was definitely no talk of weaponry. We discussed advisers, advisers of all sorts, both civil and in other types of construction … and that was the third item we discussed. And that was all because Che, if I recall, had to return to Havana. The conversation left everybody quite pleased.” Nikolai Leonov, interview with the author, Moscow, October 28, 1995.

  *7 Philip Bonsai to Roy Rubottom, June 6, 1960 (Secret, Eyes Only), FRUS, 1958–1960. That the companies were used to promote a U.S. confrontation with the revolutionary regime is confirmed by another report, written by the Royal Dutch Shell representative after a meeting at the Foreign Office in London: “Mr. Stephens explained that he hoped H.M.G. might be able to join the American, Dutch and Canadian Governments if joint diplomatic action were taken. He considered that as the State Department had definitely promoted the action of the American Companies as a powerful economic contribution towards Castro’s downfall it was for them to act first, even before the Cubans took specific action against the companies.” Foreign Office 371/148295, Record of Meeting, June 20 in Sir Paul Gore-Booth’s Room (Confidential), item 8, June 21, 1960, Public Record Office, London.

  *8 Che even believed that the United States would not be able to cancel its sugar quota: “It is impossible for them to cancel it, for Cuba is the United States’ largest, most efficient, and cheapest supplier of sugar. … It is Impossible for them to eliminate the sugar quota.” Ernesto Che Guevara, La guerra de guerrillas, in Ernesto Che Guevara, Escritos y discursos, vol. 1 (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1977), p. 182.

  *9 Ernesto Che Guevara, Actas del Ministerio de Industrias, Bi-Monthly Meeting of January 20, 1962, in Ernesto Che Guevara, Obras completas, vol. 7 (Havana: Ministerio del Azúcar, 1968), p. 166. The minutes of meetings at the Ministry of Industries were drafted for four years by Juan Valdés Gravalosa, the ministry’s technical secretary. They made up the final volume in a first edition of Che’s complete works in seven volumes, edited by Orlando Borrego, a close aide of Che’s and minister of sugar after 1964. The edition’s run consisted of 120 copies, which were distributed only to high officials. It remains unavailable to the general public. The texts in volume 7 were omitted from subsequent editions of Che’s complete works. They made up a virtual diary of over 700 pages, which reflects the evolution of Che’s thinking at the ministry. The author expresses his gratitude to the Cuban (who must remain anonymous) who lent him a copy of the document in its entirety, and to José Valdés Gravalosa for verifying its authenticity in Havana on August 25, 1995. The document will be referred to hereafter as the Ministry of Industries Minutes (Minutes).

  *10 Carlos Franqui, Retrato de familia con Fidel (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1981), pp. 186–187. Maybe Che was a bit less naive than Franqui suggests. Raúl Maldonado recalls how Alberto Mora, one of Guevara’s young aides at the time, was accosted, or perhaps even sexually harassed, by a charming young Moscovite during their stay. He proudly informed his boss how he had resisted her perverse and repeated advances, only to be pistol-whipped by Che’s lacerating Argentine irony: “What kind of a fairy are you?” Raúl Maldonado, interview with Paco Ignacio Taibo II, made available to the author by Taibo, Mexico, March 16, 1996.

  *11 According to Che, the countries that signed the Multilateral Payments Accord were “all the socialist countries of Europe and the People’s Republic of Mongolia.” Ernesto Che Guevara, “Comparecencia televisada de la firma de acuerdos con los países socialistas,” January 6, 1961, in Guevara, Escritos y discursos, vol. 5, p. 8.

  *12 Nikolai Leonov, interview with the author, Moscow, Oct. 28, 1995. As Anatoly Dobrynin recalled years later: “Guevara was impossible, he wanted a little steel mill, an automobile factory. We told him Cuba wasn’t big enough to support an industrial economy. They needed hard currency, and the only way to earn it was to do what they did best—grow sugar.” Richard Goodwin, Remembering America (New York: Harper and Row, 1989), p. 172.

  *13 According to Saverio Tutino, the Unitá correspondent in Havana, Tania was invited to Havana shortly afterward by Armando Hart, at Fidel Castro’s initiative, to “keep Che happy.” Saverio Tutino, Guevara al tempo di Guevara (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1996), p. 31.

  *14 Ernesto Che Guevara, “Comparecenpia televisada,” p. 14. Che’s comment on his visit to North Korea is even more illuminating: “Of all the Socialist countries we visited in person, Korea is one of the most extraordinary. It is perhaps the one that impressed us the most of all.” Ibid., p. 19.

  *15 “It’s not laziness, no, there’s no time for that here.” Ricardo Rojo, Mi amigo el Che (Buenos Aires: Legasa, 1994; first edition, 1968), p. 102.

  Chapter 7

  “Socialism Must Live,

  It Isn’t Worth Dying Beautifully.”

  Che Guevara was not born to be a banker. On February 21, 1961, he was named minister of industries, which essentially meant taking over the entire Cuban economy. He would remain in the job until his departure from the island in early 1965. There he won his first great ideological-economic battles; and there he suffered the defeats that eventually led him to se
ek other paths toward power and glory. Perhaps he knew that his time at the ministry was limited. The secretary who had worked with him since his time at La Cabaña, Manuel Manresa, recalled his words when he took the ministerial post: “We are going to spend five years here, and then we will go. When we’re five years older, we’ll still be able to do guerrilla warfare.”1 During his three years at the ministry, he accumulated a series of victories. He put his seal on almost every aspect of the Cuban Revolution. His children were born, his books were written, and the seeds of his myth were gradually sown.

  His shift away from the National Bank more or less coincided with the most important and joyous moment of the Revolution. The Bay of Pigs—or Playa Girón, as it is known in Cuba and Latin America—consecrated Cuba’s victory against the Kennedy administration and the Miami conspirators. It also proved Guevara right. Between April 17 and 21, 1961, a small army and a large militia, rapidly armed by the USSR and masterfully directed by Fidel Castro and his lieutenants, put down a bold but absurd attempt, plotted by the White House and CIA, to overthrow the revolutionary regime. The expedition was defeated thanks to the regime’s popularity and leadership, the exiles’ mistakes, and the indecision of John F. Kennedy—but also, in Che’s view, thanks to Cuba’s international alliances.

  Before the invasion, Che had again linked the island’s defense to the Soviet nuclear umbrella: “[The imperialists] know they cannot attack directly, that there are rockets with atomic warheads which can be deployed anywhere.”2 Just before the expedition, the veterans of the Sierra Maestra made a sharp ideological turn to the left. On April 16—the day before the attack—Fidel Castro made a fiery speech before a tense and angry crowd in Havana, proclaiming the Socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution. The imminent invasion did not cause this shift; it merely hastened it. Since the previous October, the government had nationalized practically all the companies owned by the Cuban business community and U.S. interests, in two broad sweeps: 376 Cuban companies on October 13, and 166 U.S. properties on October 24. Che revealed the full intent and definitive nature of the process in a conversation with Julio Lobo, the richest and most powerful sugar producer in Cuba. Guevara summoned Lobo to the Bank and said to him, “We are Communists, and we cannot allow you to go on as you are, representing as you do the very essence of capitalism in Cuba.”3 He told Lobo that he could either leave, or else join the Revolution—in which case Che would make him director-general of the country’s sugar industry. He would also lose his plantations, but retain the usufruct of his favorite mill. Lobo replied that he would think it over, and took the next flight to Miami.