Che soon found himself forsaking these Marxist polemics and testamentary preoccupations, as well as the intrigues of Havana and his economic failures. Once again, he was on the road, lured by the enrapturing mystery of Africa and the excitement of combat. After minor incidents and rising impatience, in the last days of April he finally arrived at the freedom fighters’ camp in Kibamba, where he and his companions were received with military honors. There, on the western shores of Lake Tanganyika, the Cubans introduced themselves: Dreke, or “Moja” (number one in Swahili); Martínez Tamayo, or “M’Bili” (number two); and Che, or “Tatu” (number three), registered as interpreter and physician. They would spend seven months in the area, waiting for a war that never came.
From the outset, they faced a disconcerting dilemma: whether or not to divulge to the Congolese and Tanzanian leaders the true identity of “Tatu.” Laurent Kabila, head of the rebels in the zone, preferred Che’s presence to remain secret. Accordingly, Cuba’s ambassador in Dar-es-Salaam, Pablo Ribalta, did not reveal it to President Nyerere until after Che’s departure in November. But the envoy was pulled in opposite directions. On the one hand, Che had entered Tanzania without the consent of local authorities, and he wanted the ambassador to inform the central government as soon as possible. On the other, Havana repeatedly instructed him not to reveal Tatu’s identity. Ribalta was in despair over these contradictory demands.58
The reasons for this indecision were obvious. The news that over one hundred Cuban advisers had arrived could in itself internationalize the conflict. The fact that they were led by Che Guevara would, in addition, attract countless South African mercenaries, as well as U.S. and Belgian reprisals—which would quickly neutralize any conceivable advantages ensuing from Cuban solidarity. Since Kabila was still in Cairo with his lieutenants, where a conference supporting the Congo rebellion had established a Supreme Council of the Revolution presided over by Gaston Sumialot, Che had, by default, an excellent justification for entering the Congo without telling anybody:
To be frank, I was afraid that my offer of support might cause extreme reactions, and that some of the Congolese or the friendly government [of Tanzania] might ask me to stay away.59
He soon realized that he was spending most of his time waiting for a shoe to drop: the arrival of Kabila or his aides; the refurbishing of a deserted camp; the authorization to move onto another hill; the landing of visitors or supplies from Havana. He worked as a doctor and helped train the Congolese troops. As he complained in his journal, “we had to do something in order to avoid complete idleness. … Our morale was still high, but some comrades began to grumble as they saw the days pass in vain.”60 In early May the rest of the Cubans arrived; so did Kabila’s deputy, who reiterated his chief’s orders to keep Che’s identity secret; Che was learning patience and humility the hard way.
In the meantime, he was initiated into the mysteries of the dawa: the magical belief of Congolese fighters in a potion which mugangas (sorcerers) rubbed over them, and which had the supernatural power to protect them from enemy bullets—but only if they believed in it. Guevara reflected that while dawa might boost courage in combat, it could also work against the Cubans if there were many casualties and the Cubans were held responsible because of their lack of faith.
He discovered the political and personal consequences of his bizarre situation almost immediately. First he was felled by an acute tropical fever which caused in him an “extraordinary fatigue, so I didn’t even want to eat”: his health, always fragile, was no match for the natural hardships of the terrain. Then Kabila’s deputy, who was nominally serving as the struggle’s temporary leader in the field, decided to proceed with an absurd project: to attack Albertville, a large mining town about 200 kilometers south of the main guerrilla camp. The conditions for doing so were sadly missing, as was the chain of command needed to rescind his order. Neither Kabila nor his deputies were in any position to lead: not only were they absent most of the time, they lacked the capacity. And there was nothing Che could do: he was not the leader. Predictably, he suffered constant asthma attacks, losing one-fourth of his body weight. He was in the kingdom of ambivalence, as it was aptly described by Oscar Fernández Mell, his comrade-in-arms from Santa Clara, who was sent by Fidel to watch over him: “He was not there as leader, or anything; his role was one that he especially hated: to send people, without going himself.”61
At the end of May an envoy from Havana arrived, bringing the news of Celia’s imminent death in Buenos Aires. Che’s state of mind may be surmised from his journal’s May summary:
The main defect in the Congolese is that they don’t know how to shoot. … Discipline here is very poor, but it seems that things are changing on the front. … Today we can say that the apparently greater discipline on the fronts was false. … The main feature of the People’s Liberation Army is that it was a parasite army which didn’t work, didn’t train, didn’t fight, and demanded supplies and labor from the population, sometimes by force. It is clear that an army of this sort can be justified only if it occasionally fights, like its enemy counterpart. … But it didn’t even do that. … The Congolese Revolution was irreparably doomed to failure owing to its internal weaknesses.62
According to Che’s journal, this state of affairs prevailed throughout the region, not just at the camp in Kibamba. The findings of the reconnaissance missions sent by Che to other localities—Baraka, Lulimba, Katenga—were discouraging. They unearthed drunkenness, dissipation, and laziness, and absolutely no disposition to fight or even resist. At the same time, the camps teemed with weapons: shipments from the USSR and China (via Tanzania) were flowing in. In June, Zhou Enlai visited Nyerere in Dar-es-Salaam, promising greater support for the Congo rebellion and providing Kabila, once again, with a pretext to remain far from the combat zone. Time was passing, without any prospect of action: two months already, “and we had still done nothing.” The only plausible military target was still Albertville, far beyond the reach of the Congo revolutionaries and their Cuban advisers. In truth, Che was cornered. When the troops of South African mercenary leader Mike Hoare and his small air force concluded operations along the border with Sudan and Uganda and headed south, there would be no way to repel them.
In part simply to do something, and also to forestall a possible defeat, Che and Kabila agreed in an exchange of letters quoted in Che’s journal to attack the village of Front de Force or Bendera, about forty kilometers south, near a dam not too far from Albertville. Che would have preferred to restrict hostilities to the town of Katenga, smaller and more accessible. But Kabila insisted on Bendera, despite the risk of alerting Tshombe’s forces to the Cuban presence. Che was anxious to participate directly in the attack, but had to restrain himself, lacking Kabila’s express authorization. Instead, Dreke was given command of the fewer than 40 Cubans and 160 Rwandan soldiers assigned to capture Front de Force.
The attack in the last days of June was a military disaster; even worse, it disclosed the Cubans’ involvement. Four of their soldiers died; the bodies were recovered by the mercenaries. The Cuban combatants had failed to follow Che’s strict orders to strip themselves of all personal belongings and documents before engaging the enemy. When the South Africans examined the bodies and supplies, they discovered their nationality and sent a report to U.S. advisers in the Congo.*19 Lawrence Devlin, the CIA station chief, confirmed his suspicions: the rebels near Albertville were receiving Cuban support.†6 The news spread rapidly: it was published by the press in Dar-es-Salaam a couple of weeks later, and the mission’s cover was effectively blown. In his journal summary for June, Che wrote: “This is the worst state of affairs so far.”63 Laurent Kabila persisted in his passivity; but each time Che suggested that he inform the Tanzanian government of his presence, Kabila refused.
The defeat at Front de Force further undermined the Cubans’ morale. Bitterly resentful, they now realized that the Congo rebels would not fight: they either dropped their rifles and fled, or else shot into
the air. Several members of the expedition expressed their desire to return to Cuba. Most painful for Che was the case of “Sitaini” (“the Chinaman”), an aide from the time of the Sierra Maestra, who argued that he had not been told how long the war would last (in Che’s view, three to five years). Because Sitaini was a member of his personal escort, Guevara could not allow him to leave; yet forcing him to stay against his will proved counterproductive. For the first time, Che was confronted—in the flesh, and under combat conditions—with the effects of his own intransigence. The others could not5 or would not, keep pace with him; they lacked the determination, the vision and mystique, to bear the adverse conditions of the Congo.
Che finally met with Kabila at Kigoma on July 11. The African stayed only a few days, as he had to return to Dar-es-Salaam in order, he said, to confront Sumialot, who was passing through the Tanzanian capital.64 Kabila’s new departure was the last straw for the Cuban troops; their morale was now completely crushed. Quite justifiably, they were unable to comprehend why their leaders never even appeared in the area of operations, much less participated in or commanded them. Tensions within the Cuban camp were growing apace: two physicians and several members of the Communist Party threatened to leave, and Che reacted violently (though less so, he thought, than on previous occasions). He decided to leave for the front, only to meet with the veto of the African leaders for the obvious reason, in his view, that they would lose face when their troops perceived that the man from Cuba was willing to go to the front and they were not.65
The situation improved slightly at the end of July, when an ambush mounted by twenty-five Cuban and twenty-five Rwandan troops met with success. Yet several Cubans still wanted to return home. Che described his own position with ironic sadness: “I’m still here on a scholarship.”66 By August 16 he no longer cared about Kabila’s authorization, but simply left for the front. That same night he arrived in Bendera, exhausted and feeling like a “delinquent.” There he uncovered vast supplies of weapons, but the rebel forces were completely dispersed along the Albertville highway. At least he felt closer to events, participating in an ambush and a shoot-out near Front de Force. The adrenaline was flowing again. His August summary was the most optimistic so far:
My scholarship days are over, which is a step forward. In general this month has been very positive: besides the Front de Force operation, there has been a qualitative change in the people. My next steps will be to visit Lambo in Lulimba and visit Kabambare, then convince them of the need to take Lulimba, and keep going along that path. But for all this it is necessary that this ambush and subsequent operations be successful.67
Che’s debacle in the Congo did not go unnoticed in Havana, though reports were fragmentary, and distorted by their bearers’ illusions. After the first defeat at Front de Force, Che sent a letter to Fidel through Antonio Machado Ventura, the Cuban physician and high official who had arrived in May bringing the news of Celia’s illness. When he received the letter in Havana, Castro summoned Emilio Aragonés and General Aldo Margolles to a meeting with Osmany Cienfuegos and Manuel Piñeiro. The latter had not yet intervened in Che’s African adventure in any way; indeed, months earlier, Piñeiro had sought out Aragonés at his Party offices with a Mexican journalist from Siempre magazine, asking about Che’s whereabouts; Guevara had already been in the Congo for a month.
When Aragonés arrived, Fidel said to him, “Read this.” Che’s terrible predicament was brutally expressed in the letter. He described the disaster of Front de Force, where the Africans had fled and Che had lost several officers. During the retreat, a group of deserters had assaulted a soft-drinks truck. Fidel interpreted the letter accurately—far from being a cry of despair or regret, it was a lucid and professional analysis. Others, like Piñeiro, considered it unduly pessimistic; his reaction, according to Aragonés, was: “Shit, he’s gone crazy.” Fidel thought it over, and decided to order Aragonés and Fernández Mell to Africa. He did not send them to rescue Guevara but to help him. And if there was nothing to be done, they should bring him back to Cuba.68
Fernández Mell retains a slightly different version of events. When Manuel Piñeiro went looking for him at the beach where he was enjoying his summer holiday, he felt he was being given a chance to join his friend and former commander in combat. Indeed, Piñeiro’s description of events in the Congo was not particularly negative:
I talked with Piñeiro and Piñeiro told me the exact opposite: that [the expedition] was a phenomenal success, that the Force Bendera operation had been a success and that everything was going well. That’s what I was told, and I left with that impression because Aragonés did not tell me anything either, or tell me anything about Che’s letter. I didn’t even know the letter existed.69
Between the end of August and November 21, when the Cubans were expelled from the Congo, Aragonés and Fernández Mell never left Che’s side. Guevara did not welcome them with any great pleasure, construing their arrival as a bad omen for his mission.*20 They were both surprised to find that “Che was practically a prisoner in his own base, they didn’t let him move even after he had asked for permission 200 times.”70 Che was gradually losing his self-control: his outbursts were becoming more frequent, against both the Congolese and those Cubans who had “given up,” demanding of them and himself rising levels of effort and sacrifice. He often applied to them the most terrible punishment of all, leaving them without food for one, two, or three days. This, he argued, was the most effective sanction in guerrilla warfare.
The two emissaries were astonished when Fernández Mell, as the expedition’s chief of staff, asked Che to order boots for his troops from Kigoma and received from him the laconic reply, “The blacks go barefoot, the Cubans must do the same.” When the chief of staff asked for vitamins and salts, Che’s response was, “Do underdeveloped peoples have access to vitamins?” Fernández Mell tried to argue, but met only with sarcastic comments and criticism. He did observe, however, that the troops were losing respect for their leader and were ready to do almost anything to escape. One night by the campfire, a combatant handed a note to Aragonés. It read: “Comrade, you are a member of the Party Secretariat just like Che. Che is blinded; you must get him out of here.”71 Such insubordination was unacceptable in guerrilla warfare, but Che’s brooding isolation was even more damaging.
The Cuban envoys also confirmed that the military situation, precarious to begin with, was rapidly deteriorating. The slight improvement in August had led only to a more forceful response by the government and the South Africans. According to Major Bem Hardenne, the Belgian chief of staff of OPS/SUD (Belgium’s military mission in Albertville), careful intelligence work with the prisoners suggested that the rebels were stronger than originally estimated: “The certainty that there are numerous Cubans on Congolese soil aggravates the rebel threat against the cities of Albertville and Kongolo.”*21 The Belgians resolved then to retake the initiative and launch an offensive as soon as possible, preferably before the end of September. Led by Mike Hoare’s Fifth Battalion of South African commandos—a total of 350 men—within two months they surrounded the rebels at their Kibamba base. The mercenaries were confronting their most severe challenge thus far in the Congo; the rebels, especially the Rwandan soldiers, were defending themselves more energetically. Moreover, as Major Hardenne also noted, the Congolese government troops demonstrated the same limitations as their enemy counterparts: at the first shot they simply threw down their arms; they never aimed, took to their heels at the earliest opportunity, and spread the myth that the rebels were invincible. Despite all this, the two battalions—the South African mercenary unit and the Congolese troops commanded by Belgians—advanced relentlessly toward the lake. Unable to destroy or capture the rebels, they would soon drive them across the border and back into Tanzania.
Just as Guevara had feared, news of the Cuban presence soon reached the Congolese authorities and the CIA. According to Major Hardenne,
The South Africans report that the reb
el units display discipline and aggressiveness, and that they move in the field like well-trained troops. They have not detected any Cubans, but are certain of their presence because several messages in Spanish were intercepted by the Fifth Commandos’ portable radios.72
At the battle of Baraka in late October, where the rebels suffered hundreds of casualties, the South Africans detected several white Cubans leading the opposing forces, but were unable to capture any. For its part, the local CIA station was by now positive that Tatu was none other than Che Guevara, but it was never able to convince the top brass in the United States. Lawrence Devlin, the station chief who years later would be accused of masterminding the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in early 1961, had suspected it even earlier. He showed photos of Che to twelve prisoners, who stated that they had talked with Tatu in Kibamba and later in Bendera; in the pictures he alternately wore a mustache or a beard, or was clean-shaven. Eleven of the twelve soldiers recognized Tatu, making his identity virtually certain.73 Shortly afterward, Devlin confirmed Che’s presence thanks to war diaries seized from fallen rebels. But CIA headquarters never listened.74 Fernández Mell surmises that the Americans did not care whether Che was in the Congo.*22 Che was worried that they would find out,75 but perhaps he was wrong; had his presence been made public,
Che might have developed into the guerrilla leader that he really was, instead of always fearing that Kabila shitface and the Tanzanian government. Perhaps that … prevented Che from becoming in Africa the great guerrilla fighter and political figure that I knew.76
Gustavo Villoldo, a Cuban exile who fought at the Bay of Pigs and was sent to the Congo by the CIA to help the Tshombe government, recalls that he knew Che was in the Congo, and became infuriated on learning later that the Cubans had escaped. He confronted his recruiter, declaring that he hadn’t come all the way to the Congo to fight the Castro regime, only to see the Cubans return home safe and sound.77 The most fervent desire of the anti-Castro Cubans (who were all white, according to Devlin) was to simply exterminate the Castroists (who were all black, except for Che, Papi, Benigno, Fernández Mell, and Aragonés). For their part, most of the latter had only one wish at the end: to escape. Aside from a few machine-gun exchanges involving aircraft and troops along the Albertville highway, the two bands of Cubans never came face to face.78
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