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He was absolutely right, but his position could hardly ingratiate him with the other Latin American delegations. Guevara then compared the funds pledged by Dillon—20 billion dollars in the following decade, a substantial figure—with the amount proposed by Fidel Castro—30 billion dollars—in a speech in Buenos Aires two years earlier. He reflected that “with just a little more effort, [you] can reach thirty billion.”17 But, he noted, so far the U.S. Congress had approved only 500 million dollars to finance the Alliance for Progress. His message was not terribly diplomatic, but it made its point. The United States had realized that its options in Latin America were limited: either money or revolution. This could actually work in favor of submissive governments, if they did not allow themselves to be shortchanged by the “Yankees”—which would eventually happen anyway. Thus, in Che’s opinion, the Alliance was doomed to failure.
Guevara presented a second, prescient idea in his list of demands. It was practically the original formulation of what later became the Third World agenda, taken up by many other countries subsequently regardless of their ideological affiliation. This was the first time that a developing country presented an international economic agenda to the industrialized world as a whole, on behalf of the entire Third World. The list included stable prices for the raw materials exported by poor countries; access to rich-country markets, and a reduction in tariffs and nontariff barriers to trade; financing without political conditions; financial and technical cooperation, and so on. All these ideas had been presented earlier by organizations like the Economic Commission for Latin America; they were also similar to the demands of Third World countries in later years. But Guevara’s precision and eloquence gave them an exceptional prominence at Punta del Este. According to Dillon’s report to Kennedy:
Dear Mr. President: Guevara speech was a masterful presentation of the Communist point of view. He clearly identified Cuba as full-fledged member of bloc talking of our sister Socialist Republics. Since he attacked Alliance for Progress in its entirety and everything conference is trying to do, he made little substantive impression on delegates. However, he was aiming over their heads at people of Latin America, and we cannot from here estimate how successful he was in this effort.18
The core of Guevara’s speech lay in his comparative approach, as well as his impassioned and exorbitant predictions:
The growth rate cited as a great success for all America is 2.5%. … We are speaking of a development [rate for Cuba] of 10% without the slightest fear. … What are Cuba’s plans for 1980? Well, a per capita income of 3000 dollars, more than in the United States today. … They should leave us alone; let us develop, and in twenty years we’ll all come here again, and we’ll see whether the swan song was revolutionary Cuba’s, or their own.19
But, in fact, Che’s position, in general terms, was moderate and conciliatory. During the ten days of the conference, he repeatedly emphasized Cuba’s willingness to remain within the inter-American community, join the newly established Latin American Free Trade Association (LAFTA), refrain from sabotaging the Alliance, and try to reach an understanding with the United States. He even engaged in an outright falsehood to project a conciliatory, reasonable, and diplomatic image: “What we can give is a guarantee that not one rifle will leave Cuba, not a single weapon will leave Cuba [to be used] in any other American country.”20
Perhaps the promise applied only to the future, as the exact opposite had been happening in the immediate past—indeed, under Che’s direct supervision. But the pledge was not upheld in the following months or years either. In fact, preparations were already underway for several guerrilla expeditions to Venezuela. The Cubans could argue, as they did, that their promise depended on Washington’s keeping its commitments, and that U.S. violations justified theirs. But in Punta del Este there was an unusually large gap between Che’s rhetoric and his own awareness of the facts.
Over and beyond the self-persuading mechanisms that the Cuban revolutionaries have always used to justify their political shifts, Che’s mandate at the conference was to try and temper his government’s confrontation with Washington and the rest of Latin America—either in reality or in appearance. His speech was cautious with regard to the United States, especially in view of the huge expectations aroused by the international press. Observers had almost expected Guevara to mow down the delegates with his machine gun; they hoped he would call for a continental uprising, and curse the day the United States was born.*2
The head of the U.S. delegation seems to have concluded that Che’s moderation gained him significant support among the Latin Americans, and he attributed it to very specific reasons:
Guevara has had no success in upsetting conference but I do not believe this was his primary purpose. He has by maintaining relatively moderate position during working sessions of conference made it considerably more difficult for any early action. … I am convinced that his primary purpose here was to forestall such action. In this I am afraid he has had considerable success.21
Similar motives might have led Che to meet with Richard Goodwin, Kennedy’s young adviser and a junior member of the U.S. delegation at Punta del Este. Though the encounter was immediately taken up by the press, its content was not made public until 1968, when Goodwin published an article about it in The New Yorker. Over twenty years would pass, however, before Goodwin’s memorandum to Kennedy was declassified. The account that follows is based on it.
The meeting was promoted by the Cubans, according to both Goodwin’s report and several Brazilian and Argentine journalists and diplomats who were present as it got under way.*3 The episode began when an Argentine diplomat relayed a classic Che Guevara challenge to Goodwin: “Che said he sees that Goodwin likes cigars; he bets you wouldn’t dare smoke Cuban cigars.” Goodwin replied that he’d love to smoke Cuban cigars but that “he couldn’t get them.” That night two magnificent mahogany inlaid boxes of the finest Cuban cigars were delivered to his hotel room—one for him, the other for President Kennedy.†1 Along with them came a note with the best wishes of Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara. The next day, Goodwin received a message: Che wished to speak with him.22
A number of go-betweens attempted during the conference to bring Che and Goodwin together—with Che’s approval, if not at his request. A new meeting was scheduled for the last day of the conference, but Dillon canceled it. But the public animosity between the two countries, especially after Cuba refused to vote in favor of the final declaration, made any such casual encounter impossible. After the conference ended, another effort was made to bring them together, this time successfully, during a party at the Montevideo home of a Brazilian diplomat. There the two officials finally met, first in a group and then privately in a small sitting room. The exchange lasted three hours. Goodwin’s memo seems to corroborate that Che took the initiative for the meeting, as he led the course of the conversation. The American limited himself to listening, taking note of Che’s remarks for his report to Kennedy. Guevara, he says, expressed himself in a relaxed manner, without any polemics, propaganda, or insults—and often humorously. He “left no doubt that he felt completely free to speak on behalf of his government, and rarely made a distinction between his personal observations and the official position of the Cuban government. I had the impression that he had carefully prepared his comments; he organized them very well.”23
The United States should understand, said Che, that the Cuban process was irreversible and Socialist in nature; that it could not be defeated through internal divisions or breaks, or in any other way aside from direct military intervention. He spoke of the Revolution’s impact in Latin America, warning that Cuba would continue cultivating its links with the Eastern bloc based upon “the existing natural sympathy, and shared convictions about the appropriate structure of the social order.” He then acknowledged the problems facing the Revolution: counterrevolutionaries and sabotage; the hostility of the petite bourgeoisie; the Catholic church; the lack of spare parts due to Cuba’s conflict
with the United States; and the shortage of hard currency. He emphasized the deficit in Cuba’s foreign trade balance. The development process had been pushed too quickly, and hard-currency reserves were dangerously low. Cuba could no longer import the basic consumer goods required by its population.24
Predictably, Guevara stated that Cuba wished to seek a rapprochement with Washington, and was willing to take important steps toward that end. He proposed that Cuba pay for confiscated U.S. assets with tradeable goods; that it refrain from making military or political alliances with the Socialist bloc; and pledged to hold elections once the “single” party had been institutionalized. He even promised, laughingly, “not to attack Guantánamo.” So far, nothing new. The plot thickened when Che broached the matter of promoting revolution in the rest of Latin America. He never admitted that Cuba had armed, trained, and sponsored guerrilla groups in other countries—after all, Brazilian and Argentine diplomats were present. But, he insinuated, he realized that any arrangement with Washington would imply the suspension of such activities, and Cuba would approach the subject on that basis.
When Goodwin returned to Washington the next day, he met with Kennedy and, at the President’s request, drafted his memorandum. It circulated among the highest levels of the U.S. government; however, Goodwin recalls that Kennedy never responded to it in any formal or explicit way.25 The memorandum recommended that the United States follow a more moderate policy toward Cuba—less “obsessive”—but one based, nonetheless, on covert activities and “the sabotage of crucial points in the industrial plant like the refineries.” The government should “study the problem of an economic war against Cuba” through economic pressure, military maneuvers, disinformation, and propaganda campaigns.26 But the text also recommended that the U.S. maintain an “underground” dialogue with Cuba, arguing that if Che—the most Communist-oriented government official—wished to explore the possibility of talks with the United States, “there might be other Cuban leaders even more willing to reach an understanding with the United States.” This would perhaps reveal “divisions within the highest leadership.”
Cuba’s initiative did not prosper. It surfaced at an unpropitious time for Kennedy. The government of Rómulo Betancourt in Venezuela was under severe pressure from both the left and the military; a reconciliation with Cuba would have strengthened the left and led to a coup d’état. In addition, Castro had become too powerful, and any sign of détente would have been perceived as a victory for him. This in turn would “oblige the United States to resign ourselves to the existence of a Communist, anti-American government in Latin America, which would have made other movements elsewhere more attractive.”27
As long as the Cubans do not open their own archives—if they exist—and the last informed persons still living refuse to speak, there is no way of ascertaining exactly what Fidel Castro and Che Guevara intended in seeking a dialogue with Washington. Guevara certainly minimized the importance of the meeting when he returned to Cuba and reported on his mission:
We were invited by some Brazilian friends to an intimate gathering, and there was Mr. Goodwin. We had a meeting, … a social conversation between two guests at the house of their host, … neither one representing our respective governments at that moment. I was not authorized to have any sort of conversation with a United States official, nor was he. … In sum, it was a short, polite, indifferent exchange, as befits two officials from countries that are officially enemies, aren’t they, which had no importance until some journalist or someone, some official, … gave it all that publicity. That was all.28
It is especially strange that Che, who a few months before the Bay of Pigs had assured the Soviet ambassador in Havana that any reconciliation with the United States would harm the cause of revolution in Latin America, should suddenly have changed his mind. And it is hardly likely that Fidel Castro would believe Kennedy open to any compromise with Cuba, when he had rejected it upon taking office—and even less so, after the Bay of Pigs. The CIA’s explanation, and that of Douglas Dillon, for the shift in Cuban policy—though not for the encounter with Goodwin—was to speculate that Castro was trying to avoid being ostracized at an upcoming meeting of the OAS. They also pointed to the growing economic crisis in Cuba.29 Though the Cuban leadership might simply have been naive, its intention in speaking with Goodwin and sending a message to the White House may have lain elsewhere. It was perhaps an attempt to convince Brazil and Argentina (critical in the upcoming OAS condemnation of Cuba) of the regime’s good will toward the United States. Alternatively, it might have been intended as a message to the Soviet Union, which had possibly insisted that Cuba try to reach an agreement with the United States before it entered the Socialist bloc and took shelter under Moscow’s nuclear umbrella.
Khrushchev did not approve of Fidel’s announcement of the Revolution’s Socialist character in April. According to U.S. intelligence, Che asked him for missiles during his trip to Moscow at the end of 1960, but Khrushchev flatly refused.30 It is also known that Castro’s fervent adoption of Marxism-Leninism, barely hinted at on July 26, 1961, but fully explicit by December 1 of that year, was not well received by the Soviet leadership. The Kremlin harbored doubts about taking on a fragile Cuban economy. It is thus quite likely that Moscow jawboned the Cubans to exhaust all possibilities of dialogue with the United States, especially just two months after the unsuccessful Vienna summit between Kennedy and Khrushchev. In this hypothesis, Castro and Che obeyed Soviet instructions. They put forward their most anti-American leader, Che Guevara, to try and make contact with Washington, choosing a discreet but sufficiently public occasion to do so. Che presented quite reasonable proposals, in case the Americans themselves informed the Soviets about the conversation. When it became clear that, after so much effort, there would be no response from Washington, Khrushchev was left with no alternative but to help the Cubans.
Another possibility involves Che’s mission to Argentina during those days. He traveled secretly from Montevideo to Buenos Aires for a lightning visit with President Arturo Frondizi. If one believes the rumour that circulated before the Bay of Pigs, Frondizi had proposed to Kennedy that he mediate the conflict with Cuba, along with his Brazilian colleague President Janio Quadros. The initiative went nowhere, but the idea lingered. When Frondizi noted Che’s moderate stance, he probably thought the time was ripe to launch a new attempt at mediation. Their meeting, at the presidential residence of Los Olivos, lasted seventy minutes. Afterward, Che had a thick Argentine steak with Frondizi’s wife and daughter and visited his own aunt María Luisa, before returning to Montevideo. It was his first sojourn in his native land since 1953, and would be his last. The mission was kept secret, as agreed—but not for long. Twenty-four hours later it erupted into a public scandal, precipitating the resignation of Argentina’s foreign minister. Che Guevara’s brief stay in the city of his youth caused such an uproar that the coup d’état which toppled Arturo Frondizi less than a year later was attributed by many to his visit.
Frondizi confusedly explained in a 1992 interview that John Kennedy had asked him to meet with Che. The U.S. President wished to “repair relations with Cuba after the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy and [Brazilian President] Quadros and I believed that Guevara was a Communist who was a friend of the United States, while Fidel Castro was the USSR’s man.”31 The reasoning is both wayward and unlikely: there is no indication that Kennedy ever believed anything of the sort.
Quadros, who awarded Che the High Order of the Cruzeiro del Sur two days later in Brasilia, also suffered from the Guevara hex. He resigned the presidency of Brazil one week later, in a strangely impulsive gesture that has never been explained. A recently published book by his press secretary describes some of the political complexities involved, and Che’s behavior at the award ceremony:
Janio briskly greeted Cuba’s revolutionary hero in his traditional olive-drab uniform. Che was tired and sleepy—he had traveled all night—and seemed terribly uncomfortable during the ceremon
y. Quadros awkwardly put the ribbon around his neck and gave him a box containing the diploma and medal. After Guevara’s brief thanks, there was a strained silence. Janio invited Che to come into his office and, perceiving his discomfort, turned to his chief of protocol and instructed him, “Minister, take that ribbon off Guevara. …” The next day a rumor began to circulate that several military officers planned to return their decorations to the government, in protest over its tribute to Guevara. The rumors were true.32
In Havana, Che faced new and serious challenges. The most important was the economy, whose performance Che himself had called the yardstick of the Revolution in Punta del Este. It was in a nosedive. The other challenge was political: the time had arrived to institutionalize, the Revolution by creating a sole party with a vertical structure.
After the Bay of Pigs, Castro and the revolutionary leadership initiated the long and difficult process of building a political organization. In July 1961, Fidel announced the establishment of the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORIs). They represented the convergence of three currents: the 26th of July Movement, the Revolutionary Student Organization—or what was left of it—and the Popular Socialist Party. In his speech of July 26, commemorating the assault on Moncada, Fidel baptized the incipient party with a descriptive though not very exciting name: the United Party of the Socialist Revolution. Despite his announcements, time passed and the party failed to materialize. It was being organized by those few people available for the task—basically the Communists of the PSP, since those of the 26th of July and the student organization were busy with government and defense activities. And the Communists, led by Aníbal Escalante (the number two man since the 1940’s), immediately set about building a traditional, old-style Party. They gradually took over the entire process, setting the rules of the game and placing their own men in leadership positions. Castro began to praise them in public in a rather disconcerting way. Not very plausibly, he announced his definitive conversion to Marxism-Leninism in December 1961. When Cuba was suspended from the OAS at the end of January 1962, at another meeting in Punta del Este Fidel issued a Second Havana Declaration, reiterating even more forcefully the Socialist character of the Revolution.