Companero
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A lightning trip to Algeria—officially to attend the first Congress of the National Liberation Front—allowed him to review events in Africa with Ben Bella. By now, the African struggle for liberation had become a leitmotif in Guevara’s speeches: in Geneva, he evoked Congolese independence martyr Patrice Lumumba several times. Renewed combat in the Congo and the growing weakness of the central government were the issues of the day. He met in Algiers with some of the Congolese exile leaders, and became convinced that the 1961 rebellion, crushed since the assassination of Lumumba, was about to erupt again.*19
Che’s interest was not merely academic. In January he had Pablo Ribalta, a close aide of African-Cuban origins from his Sierra Maestra days, appointed the Cuban ambassador to Tanzania. The newly formed republic included the island of Zanzibar, where Cuba had had relations with the Nationalist Party; it had been training combatants and militants from the island.66
On his way back to Cuba, Che stopped in Paris, where he had lunch with Charles Bettelheim on the Boulevard Saint-Michel. He finally admitted that he had been wrong in his appraisal of the Soviet Union and in trusting its promises on aid and development. He returned to Havana at the end of April—back to the economic controversy and his administrative duties at the Ministry. Though he continued to discharge them diligently, he seemed bored and listless. His interest in economic matters was fading, and he had less influence in government deliberations. In the meantime, the team of Soviet advisers at the National Bank was gaining the upper hand. According to a British Embassy cable,
Some observers see the recent strengthening of the Soviet team of advisers at the Cuban National Bank and other evidence of assumption by the Russians of more detailed responsibility for getting the Cuban economy to work, as a sign that both the Soviet and Cuban Governments have committed themselves reluctantly to a greater degree of Russian control.†7
Ernesto Guevara Lynch and his son, the future Che, c. 1930.
With his caddy friends, Altagracia, 1938.
The Guevara family, 1938 (with the young Ernesto at far left).
With his girlfriend Chichina Ferreyra, Malagueño, 1951.
Che, far right, and Raúl Castro, center, Veracruz, Mexico, 1955.
At his family’s apartment, 1951.
Climbing Popocatepetl, Mexico, 1955. Che turns to face the camera.
Perhaps the first picture of Che (right) with Fidel Castro, at the Miguel Schultz Immigration Detention Center, Mexico City, summer 1956.
With Camilo Cienfuegos, Havana, 1959.
With his mother, Celia, a month after victory, Havana, 1959.
Playing golf at the Havana Country Club, 1960.
Playing baseball, Havana, 1960.
With his first wife, Hilda, and their daughter, Hildita, just after the couple’s separation, Havana, 1959.
With his second wife, Aleida, Havana, 1959.
With Fidel, both putting on weight.
With Fidel and Raúl Castro on the eve of the Bay of Pigs.
With Mao Zedong (right), Beijing, 1960.
With Ahmed Ben Bella, Algiers, 1963.
At the Ministry of Industries, Havana, 1963. (Photo courtesy of Magnum Photos Inc., © 1963 René Burri)
With Aleida and three of his children, at home in Havana, 1964.
With Aleida and Cuban president Osvaldo Dorticós at the Havana airport on Che’s return from Africa, March 15, 1965: one of the last public photographs of Che in Cuba.
Reporting on his trip to Africa at the Ministry of Industries, Havana Marrch 1965.
The last-known photograph of Che with his family, April 1965.
Top: In the Congo, summer 1965. (Photo courtesy of Archive Photos)
Bottom: Disguised as a bureaucrat before leaving for Bolivia; Havana, 1966.
The last photograph of Fidel and Che together, on the eve of his departure for Bolivia, October 1966.
In disguise in La Paz, Bolivia, November 1966. (Photo courtesy of Der Spiegel)
In Bolivia.
CIA Bolivia Station Chief John Tilton (right) and Bolivian President René Barrientos, 1967.
After execution, October 9, 1967. (Photo by Freddy Alborta Trigo)
By November, Che was ready to ship off again, now as Cuba’s representative to the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The visit was particularly important as Khrushchev had just been ousted, and replaced by the troika of Leonid Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin, and Nikolai Podgorny. Though there had been no love lost between Khrushchev and the Cubans since the missile crisis, the new Moscow leaders were completely unknown to them. Che’s trip was a success in terms of protocol, but devoid of substance. Several witnesses remember him on the flight from Murmansk to Havana: he was euphoric, tipsy, and unusually chatty about his private life. It was during this trip that he confessed to Oleg Daroussenkov that he had agreed to marry Hilda Gadea after a few too many drinks.67 It was also then, while sitting between the secretary-general of the Mexican Communist Party, Arnoldo Martínez Verdugo, and that of the Bolivian Party, Mario Monje, that he made his marvelous comment to Salvador Cayetano Carpio, leader of El Salvador’s Communist Party: “Here you have me, Carpio, sitting between a monk [monje] and an executioner [verdugo]”68
On his return to Havana, Che convened one of his last official meetings with aides at the Ministry. After recounting with brutal frankness his impressions of the Socialist countries, he explained why he was against the so-called “economic reforms” underway in Eastern Europe and the USSR. His comments are worth quoting, both because they have not been published and because they reflect the dilemmas Guevara faced on the eve of his new odyssey:
In Moscow I had a meeting with all the [Cuban] students who wanted to talk. So I invited them to the Embassy. I found myself face to face with about 50 of them. I was prepared to wage a huge battle against the self-management system. Well, I have never, during a mission of this sort, had a public as attentive, concerned, and able to understand me. Do you know why? Because they lived there, and many of the things I have told you, and tell you here in theoretical terms because I don’t know any better, they know very well. They know because they are there, they go to the doctor, they go to the restaurant or to stores to buy something, and incredible things happen in the Soviet Union today. … Paul Sweezy says in an article that Yugoslavia is a country headed toward capitalism. Why? Because in Yugoslavia the Law of Value reigns supreme, and more so every day. Khrushchev said that [what was happening in Yugoslavia] was interesting, he even sent people to study there. … Well, what he saw in Yugoslavia that seemed so interesting to him is far more developed in the United States because it is a capitalist [country]. … In Yugoslavia they have the Law of Value; in Yugoslavia they close factories because they aren’t profitable; in Yugoslavia there are delegates from Switzerland and Holland looking for unemployed workers so they can take them back to their own countries … as foreign labor in an imperialist country. … This is what is happening in Yugoslavia. Poland is now following the Yugoslav path, of course, collectivization is being reversed, they are going back to private land ownership, establishing a whole series of special exchange systems, cultivating relations with the United States. … In Czechoslovakia and Germany they are also beginning to study the Yugoslav system in order to apply it. So we have a whole series of countries changing course, in the face of what? In the face of a reality which we can no longer ignore—which is, though nobody says it, that the Western bloc is advancing faster than the people’s democracies. Why? That is where, instead of getting to the bottom of it, which would solve the problem, a superficial answer has been sought, which is to reinforce the market, introduce the Law of Value, reinforce material incentives.69
By this time, Che had an uninhibited and definitive opinion of the Socialist countries. They were losing the race with the West not because they had followed the axioms of Marxism-Leninism, but because they had betrayed them. As they realized they were falling behind in the battle with capitalism, they shifted to a diametrically differe
nt course—mistakenly, in Che’s view. His position, especially when viewed against the backdrop of the simmering Sino-Soviet conflict, was coming dangerously close to the edge. The Communists he met on the plane from Moscow and Murmansk had just sojourned in Beijing. They had joined Carlos Rafael Rodríguez on a Latin American mission to China hoping to mediate between the two Socialist powers, following a proposal by Martínez Verdugo at the meeting of Latin American Communist parties in Havana. The Cubans were pivotal in the Latin American Communists’ decision to go to China and mediate: they organized the trip and may even have instigated the Mexican proposal, while ensuring that Rodríguez would figure as spokesman. According to Martínez Verdugo, Mao received them hospitably but exclaimed, “You are here because the revisionists sent you; we do not agree with you, but we welcome you all the same,”70 The effort at mediation floundered, as would that undertaken by Che two months later.
One of the reasons for these attempts was that Che, Cuba, and the Socialist powers were about to be sucked into the African maelstrom. In the summer of 1964, Pierre Mulele, Lumumba’s minister of education and his spiritual and political heir, had rekindled the Congolese rebellion in the central-western region of Kwilu. A National Liberation Committee had accomplished the same in the east and north, near Stanleyville. They all rose up in arms against the regime imposed three years earlier by the United Nations, Belgium, and the CIA. The Congolese government was on the verge of collapse, and Washington and Brussels stood ready to help it. When the rebels captured Stanleyville in August, Belgium and the United States became seriously alarmed. Two months later, they flew in several battalions of paratroopers to crush the uprising, retake the city, and regain control over the eastern part of the country. Another ostensible goal was to prevent a repeat of the bloodbath that had occurred when the rebels entered Stanleyville, taking hostage the U.S. consul, dozens of U.S. missionaries, and three hundred Belgian citizens and, according to some reports, executing 20,000 Congolese from the urban middle class.71
This new rebellion in the Congo, which will be examined in further detail in Chapter 9, had a twofold effect on Che and the Cubans. First, it persuaded them that Lumumba’s anticolonialist struggle had finally revived. Second, the intervention of Washington and the colonial powers seemed to confirm the anti-imperialist nature of the reborn rebellion in Africa. Thus Guevara’s wholehearted commitment to the Congolese cause; he immediately stepped into the breach to uphold what he saw as a just and ongoing struggle for freedom.
Che’s African campaign began in New York, where the travel arrangements were made. It would continue in Africa at the end of 1964 and throughout all of 1965. On December 9, just three weeks after his return from the USSR, he packed his bags again, this time on his way to the United Nations. His designation as head of the Cuban delegation to the Nineteenth General Assembly, at its very end, made no great impression in Havana. Along with his UNCTAD mission several months earlier, it was seen by some as a sign of his fading authority:
Che Guevara’s appointment to lead the Cuban delegation at the United Nations seems less important. Guevara similarly represented Cuba at the UNCTAD conference at Geneva; and in any case his political advice seems to carry less weight than ever.72
As he embarked upon the path that would lead him to glory elsewhere, Che also entered his twilight phase in Cuba.
Guevara’s eight days in the United States—the first since visiting Miami fifteen years earlier—afforded him little respite. His activities were varied and somewhat eccentric. An old friend, Laura Berquist of Look magazine, organized a meeting with New York intellectuals and journalists. Berquist was a childhood friend of Bobo Rockefeller, the widow of Winthrop, former governor of Arkansas; she owned a splendid townhouse across the street from the Cuban mission to the UN. The location was ideal for a security detail overwhelmed by anti-Castro demonstrations, and for a gathering of New York leftists eager to meet with Che. His interpreter was Magda Moyano, the sister of Dolores, Guevara’s neighbor in Córdoba and a cousin of Chichina Ferreyra. She and Che shared memories of their now faraway youth.
He also appeared on the Sunday television program Face the Nation. His performance was so skillful and convincing that several Latin American governments protested to the White House over the CBS invitation.*20 Guevara met secretly with Democratic senator Eugene McCarthy, and talked at length with Arab and African delegates in the UN corridors and delegates’ lounge. He was already preparing for his next trip which, beginning on December 18, would take him to nine countries in three months and impel him to leave Cuba forever.
Che’s UN speech was fiery in both its tone and its content. He reiterated Cuba’s traditional stance toward the United States—including the five points of October 1962—and Cuba’s denunciation of the OAS and its Latin American “puppets.” The new element, however, was his emphasis on Africa. Like his Geneva address, it would be recalled as a sign of his drift away from the USSR and Socialist countries. But this time he was more explicit. Though still somewhat elliptical, he skipped the euphemisms of his Geneva speech:
We must also clarify that concepts of peaceful coexistence must be well-defined, and not only in relations involving sovereign States. As Marxists, we have maintained that peaceful coexistence among nations does not include coexistence between exploiters and the exploited, between oppressors and the oppressed.73
But Che’s most forceful passages were those about the Congo, and especially the airlift operation of Stanleyville:
Perhaps the children of Belgian patriots who died defending their country’s freedom are the same ones who freely murdered millions of Congolese on behalf of the White race, just as they suffered under the German boot because their Aryan blood count was not high enough. … Our free eyes now look toward new horizons, and are able to see what our condition as colonial slaves kept us from seeing only yesterday: that “Western civilization” conceals under its lovely facade a gang of hyenas and jackals. That is the only possible name for those who have gone on a “humanitarian” mission to the Congo. Carnivorous animals, feeding on defenseless peoples: that is what imperialism does to man, that is what distinguishes the imperial “white.” … All the free men in the world must stand ready to avenge the crime of the Congo.74
In his conversations with Americans, he staunchly defended the Cuban Revolution and refused to acknowledge any split with Fidel Castro. On television, he refrained from taking sides in the conflict between China and the USSR, highlighting instead the need for unity. He let slip some of his reservations regarding the Soviets, but with such discretion that observers were forced to read between the lines.*21 Tad Szulc, who participated in the Face the Nation program and then chatted with Guevara at length, noted “Che’s gradual withdrawal from economic policy-making, and his growing concentration on contacts with the Third World, evidently in concurrence with Castro. Guevara seemed to enjoy this mission.”75
There was a curious element in Che’s conversation with Eugene McCarthy, the liberal senator from Minnesota who three years later would become the principal opponent of the Vietnam War in the United States, forcing Lyndon Johnson to renounce any attempt at reelection in 1968. They met at the insistence of Lisa Howard, the journalist who had previously interviewed Che and Fidel in Havana and had undertaken to mediate between Cuba and the United States. She had attempted to persuade her contacts in the Johnson administration to meet with Che during his trip to the United Nations, while doubtless making the same proposal to him. Washington was less than receptive to her ploy:
The Che Guevara matter has gone up to George Ball. The idea for now is to use a British delegate at the United Nations to make the contact. (Ball and everybody else agree that we should stay away from Lisa Howard.) The Englishman would say to Che tomorrow: “An American colleague informs me that a press source has told him that you have something to say to an American official. My American colleague is not at all sure of the accuracy of this report. Is it true?” If Che answers “yes,” the Briti
sh contact would say something like, “I got the distinct impression that my American colleague is willing to listen to what you say, but I would have to check back with him to make sure.” Ball and others in State agree fully that we should not appear to be taking the initiative. In this regard, if the modalities of setting up this operation can be done only by indicating eagerness, the talk isn’t worth it. … I doubt whether Che has anything to say that we do not already know, but a chance to listen to him might be worthwhile.76
As the encounter with Washington officials did not materialize, Che agreed to Howard’s plea for him to meet briefly with McCarthy at the journalist’s apartment. According to the senator’s report to George Ball the next day, the Cuban comandante was bursting with self-confidence. He assured McCarthy that the Alliance for Progress would fail, and that Central America and Venezuela were on the brink of revolution. He then reviewed the most sensitive items on the bilateral agenda—U.S. overflights, the sale of medicines, Guantánamo, the CIA’s involvement in Cuba, and so on. The most striking thing about the memorandum of this conversation, declassified just recently—indeed, the identity of Che’s interlocutor was revealed only in 199477—is the candor, if not impudence, with which Che boasted of Cuban support for revolution in Latin America. According to McCarthy’s notes,