Che spent the months of September and October exploring the area. He visited Fizi, Baraka, Lilamba, and other towns, whose local bosses and troops unfailingly asked for Cuban funds and soldiers. While traveling on foot from town to town, Che found himself under fire from the mercenary and anti-Castro air force several times, though he was never in any real danger. He constantly debated whether to disperse his small unit—as he noted, he never deployed more than forty men fit for combat, owing to illness and disciplinary problems—so as to restructure the Congolese combatants, or else concentrate his troops in order to develop an effective fighting force. By the end of September, however, this was a moot question; the rebel group was disintegrating anyway. Che bitterly reproached himself for his own blindness: “Our situation was getting more and more difficult and the notion of building an army was slipping through our fingers, with all its arsenal of weapons, men, and munitions. Still imbued with a sort of blind optimism, I was incapable of seeing it.”79 One of the reasons for his misguided confidence was that no one dared tell him the truth: “Nobody ever confronted him.”80 Even senior officers feared that any doubts or questions they raised would be diagnosed as signs of cowardice. For his part, Che always thought in terms of his experience in the Sierra Maestra: he expected the Congolese to react similarly, and they never did.*23
Fidel’s envoy, Health Minister Machado Ventura, returned at the beginning of October, bringing news of a much-trumpeted visit by Gaston Sumaliot to Havana in September and a message from Fidel. According to Che, Castro advised him “not to despair, he asked me to remember the first period of the struggle and recalled that these problems happen, emphasizing that men are good.”81 The fact that Che had never fully revealed the hardships he faced had evidently reinforced the impression in Havana that he was behaving with undue pessimism. On October 5 he wrote a long letter to Fidel, whose main paragraphs are worth quoting at length:
I received a letter from you which aroused contradictory feelings in me, as on behalf of proletarian internationalism we make mistakes that can be very costly. Besides, I am personally worried because, either due to my lack of seriousness in writing or because you did not fully understand me, it might appear that I suffer from the terrible disease of pessimism without cause. When your Greek present [Aragonés] arrived, he told me one of my letters had given the impression of a condemned gladiator, and the Minister [Antonio Machado], when he gave me your optimistic message, confirmed your opinion to me. You will be able to talk at length with the bearer of this, and he will give you his impressions firsthand. … I will say only that here, according to those close to me, I have lost my reputation for objectivity because I am unduly optimistic in the face of the existing, real situation. I can assure you that if it weren’t for me this lovely dream would have disintegrated entirely amid a general catastrophe. In my previous letters I had asked you not to send lots of people, but cadres. I said we are not short of weapons, aside from a few special ones; on the contrary, we have too many and not enough soldiers. I especially warned you not to give out funds except in very small amounts and only after many requests. None of these things have been taken into account, and extravagant plans have been made which risk discrediting us internationally and putting me into a very difficult situation. … Forget about sending more men to ghost units; prepare me up to one hundred cadres, who should not all be black … treat the issue of the boats very tactfully (do not forget that Tanzania is an independent country and we have to play it clean there). Send, as soon as possible, some mechanics and a man who can navigate to get us across the lake at night in relative safety. … Don’t repeat the mistake of giving out money. … Have some trust in my judgment and do not judge by appearances. Shake down those in charge of transmitting accurate information, who are not capable of untangling these knots and present Utopian images that have nothing to do with reality. I have tried to be explicit and objective, concise and truthful. Do you believe me?82
Che refers, at the end of this letter, to a problem which would pursue him until the end of his life at Quebrada del Yuro, a couple of years later. Since the middle of 1965, the person in charge of follow-up, support, communications, and logistics for him was Manuel Piñeiro, undersecretary of the interior and chief of his own so-called “Liberation Section.” Aragonés’s departure from Cuba deprived the Party of this responsibility; and Osmany Cienfuegos traveled too often to accomplish the task. In early August, two of Piñeiro’s aides arrived in Dar-es-Salaam. One was Ulises Estrada, in charge of African affairs; of African origin, in the mid-seventies he would become Cuba’s ambassador to Jamaica, from which he would be expelled for mischief-making and interference. The other was a minor official called Rafael Padilla. It is to them that Che referred when he warned Castro to beware of reports from Tanzania. Those familiar with Piñeiro’s team (which would later become the Americas Department of the Communist Party) over several decades, know that it had, among many qualities, two enormous defects.
Anybody whose responsibility it is to export the revolution must believe in it. And those who request a constant flow of money, arms, morale, and diplomatic support from the government for their revolutionary efforts abroad cannot be bearers of bad tidings or pessimists. Piñeiro and his team were always strong supporters of the struggle in Africa and Latin America; their faith and enthusiasm never flagged. But the other side of the coin lay in their inevitably deluded, ingenuous, or frankly falsified assessments about the real situation abroad. The work of the “Ministry of the Revolution” was always hampered by exaggeration, an underestimation of obstacles, and an incapacity to gauge the real balance of power. Che suffered the consequences of these illusions, so dear to the revolutionary establishment. They were not fatal in Africa; in Bolivia, they would be.
The second defect of the Cuban services assigned the role of promoting insurrection all over the Third World was their lack of experience. This was unavoidable in a young revolution willing to undertake anything but lacking the cadres to do so. The officer in Havana trying to follow events in the Congo, Bolivia, El Salvador, or Nicaragua relied upon his agents in the field; Piñeiro depended upon both, and Fidel on Piñeiro. But in 1965, Ulises Estrada had never set foot in Africa, and neither had his superior in Cuba. The information from the front was a disaster, and the conclusions drawn from it by Piñeiro, Raúl Castro, and Fidel Castro were completely groundless. That is why Che asked Castro in the letter quoted above not to believe reports from Dar-es-Salaam; that is why Che landed in Bolivia a year later under adverse conditions which precluded any possibility of success.
Aside from the internal divisions in the Cuban camp and the interminable string of defeats, Che’s state of mind was also affected by his health, which was deteriorating day by day. He was plagued by chronic diarrhea, probably dysentery. His determination and resistance were fading quickly, and his decline was reflected in his treatment of both Congolese and Cubans—even those closest to him:
His state of mind was not even at half capacity. I think that is why he was even more susceptible to asthma; he had a diarrhea which lasted almost two months, plus the asthma which afflicted him constantly. He was fading day by day and was always in a bad mood. I don’t mean to say that he treated us badly, no, but we always saw him alone with his book, reading, and we no longer saw in him that earlier disposition; he stopped meeting with us as he had at the beginning. We realized this was not the Che we knew. We asked ourselves, “What’s wrong with Che?” … one of us went to ask him and was scolded for his trouble.83
The last straw was the news Che received sometime between the 6th and 10th of October: in Havana, Fidel Castro had made public Che’s letter of farewell. This was the famous declaration in which he took his leave of Cuba and Castro, resigning from all his posts and titles and his Cuban citizenship; in which he renounced all power and began his public pilgrimage toward crucifixion, after giving up all his worldly possessions. In the letter, Guevara recapitulated his years on the island and assumed full responsib
ility for his future actions, whatever they might be. The logic behind Fidel’s reading of the text was impeccable: he was then announcing the composition of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and no one would have understood Che’s exclusion from it without some sort of explanation. Furthermore, the international campaign of rumors about him was out of control; the pressure was becoming untenable.*24 Over and beyond the beauty of Guevara’s text—it is probably his most austere and deeply felt piece of writing—its publication triggered a chain reaction around the world, especially among the small circle of sick Cubans on the run in the Congo.
Aragonés and Fernandez Mell have differing accounts of how Che learned about Fidel’s publication of his letter.84 The former swears that he found out through a report on Radio Beijing. The latter asserts that Dreke told him, after receiving a packet of letters and magazines from Havana. The two senior Cubans recall Che’s bewilderment and resignation on hearing the news. In the personal reflections which conclude his journal, Che suggests that the letter had a devastating effect on his troops. It made “the comrades see me as a foreigner among Cubans, as when I started out in the Sierra many years before; at that time, I had just arrived, and now I was leaving. Many things that had been shared were now lost. … This separated me from the troops.”85
But the most serious consequence of the publication was not Che’s estrangement from the Cuban soldiers. A greater dilemma was that his bridges were now effectively burned. Given his temperament, there was now no way he could return to Cuba, even temporarily. The idea of a public deception was unacceptable to him: once he had said he was leaving, he could not go back. A direct eyewitness, Benigno, recounts a far more dramatic scene than the previous comments suggest:
When Dreke arrived and said that there had been a public event in Cuba where Fidel had read the letter, Che was sitting on a log … he had fever, aside from his asthma and diarrhea. He leapt up and said, “Say that again, say that again. How was that?” Dreke was taken aback and said, “No, Tatu, look, it was like this and this is what I was told.” Then he began to explain it to him, and Che started pacing back and forth muttering things that we couldn’t make out: “Shit-eaters,” he said, “they are imbeciles, idiots.” We started to move away, because when he was upset we used to leave him alone like a lion, we didn’t want to cast a shadow. Nobody wanted to be around because we had already had the experience of seeing him angry.86
Che’s problems were multiplying, and seemed to have no solution. Even an event which might have filled him with joy and nostalgia—his first and only combat in the Congo—was a disaster. The camp, with its deposit of gunpowder and equipment (mortars, radios, and so on), was attacked on October 24. Guevara hesitated between withdrawal and resistance, finally choosing the latter. But the Congolese took to their heels as usual, and Che himself had to sound the retreat, after holding out on a hill for several hours. The gunpowder, equipment, and position were lost; the Congolese had once again proved unfit for combat. As Che concluded in his journal: “Personally, I felt terribly depressed; I felt responsible for the disaster due to my lack of foresight and weakness.”87 Perhaps by then Che had reached the same conclusion as the Africa specialist at the U.S. National Security Council, who reported on October 29, 1965, that “the war in the Congo is probably over.”88
From that time, Che’s relations with his Cuban troops went into a tailspin. None of them believed in victory anymore, and most (about half, in Che’s estimate) would have returned to Cuba if given the choice. There were complaints on all sides: some wondered why, if revolutions could not be exported and the Congolese refused to fight, they were there in the first place. Aragonés reminded Che that he had been a Cuban much longer than Che had, and strongly suspected that the troops’ grumbling was increasingly directed against their leaders. As Aragonés recalls, Che’s instructions approached the absurd: he demanded that the rebels requisition food from the enemy, but the enemy had no food, and, in fact, there was no enemy: “so we all ate yucca with no salt.” The Cubans were outraged when the Congolese refused to continue carrying supplies, screaming that they were not trucks to run around loaded with equipment. Toward the end of his stay, as Che was reading one of his many books at a camp outside the Kibamba base, the telltale sound of an approaching bombardment led him to instruct Fernández Mell: “Make sure they put a Cuban at the door of each hut so the Congolese won’t escape.” He returned to his book and a few minutes later the government forces attacked. The Cubans could not tell by which route the South Africans advanced and the Congolese fled; so Che could not decide in which direction to retreat. When the firing and shelling made it impossible to stay in place, Che ordered, “Let’s leave by that path down there, and hope they’ll come the other way.”89 There was nothing left by now but such “hopes.”
Beginning in October, three factors contributed to the Cubans’ final departure from the Congo. Their situation was deteriorating daily. Che no longer attempted to deny its seriousness, especially as the mercenaries and the Congolese army continued their advance toward the lake, retaking villages once under rebel control. In his October summary, his last in the Congo, Che admitted frankly, “A month of disasters without any extenuating circumstances. To the disgraceful fall of Baraka, Fizi, and Lubonja … we must add … total discouragement among the Congolese. … The Cubans are not much better, from Tembo and Siki [Aragonés and Fernández Mell] to the soldiers.”90 So, regardless of any external considerations, Guevara’s adventure in the Congo was drawing to an end: Che either would flee, would be captured, or would die on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. The Cubans were surrounded by mercenaries to the north and south; on the west was a mountain, and to the east the lake.
But two additional factors also shattered Che Guevara’s African dreams. Thanks to Che’s letters and his envoys’ reports, Fidel Castro was forced to conclude that the African expedition was foundering. He promptly shipped communications equipment to Tanzania and sailors with suitable boats to prepare for an eventual retreat. And he dispatched Osmany Cienfuegos to persuade Che to recognize defeat, abandon the expedition, and save himself.91 Finally, Fidel wrote a letter which Che received on November 4:
We must do everything, except for the absurd. If in Tatu’s view our presence becomes unjustifiable and futile, we must think of retreating. We must act in accordance with the objective situation and our men’s frame of mind. If they believe we should stay, we will try to send whatever human and material resources they consider necessary. We are worried that you will make the mistake of fearing that your attitude will be considered defeatist or pessimistic. If you decide to leave Tatu can stay the same, either returning here or staying somewhere else. We will support any decision. Avoid annihilation.92
The letter expressed Fidel’s unmistakable hope that Che would leave, and offered him a way out: either returning to Cuba or undertaking a new mission somewhere else. Castro could imagine that Che would not come back after his farewell letter, but he did not want Che to leave immediately for Argentina. In fact, Fidel was already devising an alternative for his uncomfortable companion.
Further events in October dealt a final blow to Che’s heroic and absurd attempt to lead a revolution in the heart of Africa. On October 13, 1965, just before an OAU summit meeting scheduled in Accra, President Kasavubu dismissed Prime Minister Tshombe. One month after Che’s departure, Kasavubu would in turn be overthrown by Mobutu.*25 But for now, having disposed of Tshombe, the Congolese leader adopted a more conciliatory stance toward his neighbors: he had fulfilled their central condition for peace with the organization. For its part, the group of radical states had lost any reason to continue supporting the rebels; indeed, several leaders had already ceased to do so. Ben Bella was deposed by Houari Boumedienne in June; Obote of Uganda had already suspended his assistance; and Nkrumah of Ghana would fall a few months later. Julius Nyerere, the rebels’ foremost supporter, found himself practically alone, without any real rationale for continuing to support a strugg
le which was disintegrating anyway.
Nyerere even proposed to Kasavubu that he meet with the rebel leadership immediately after the Accra summit. The Congolese president opened talks with Congo-Brazzaville as well, aimed at reducing its aid to Pierre Mulele’s rebellion in Kwilu. By the end of October the situation in the region had changed radically: the front of progressive countries was crumbling in tandem with the front by the lake. The missing link was for Nyerere to ask the Cubans to depart, along with the South African mercenaries, in accordance with the Accra resolutions on nonintervention. He did so at the beginning of November. Mike Hoare left the Congo that month, though his men lingered on through the following year. On November 1, the Cubans received a message from Dar-es-Salaam: Nyerere formally requested that Cuban assistance be discontinued. This effectively cut off all aid to the Congo rebellion—or what was left of it. As Che noted, “it was a death blow to a dying revolution.”93
But the exhausted and undernourished Argentine was not yet ready to capitulate. As long as the South African mercenaries were still operating in the Congo, he felt it would be unfair to leave unless the Congolese rebels themselves asked him to. The only leader to be found in the area was Masengo, Kabila’s lieutenant; he and Che met in mid-November, as the mercenaries closed in around them. Che presented the alternatives: “Resistance and death, or retreat.” Masengo objected, “No, I don’t agree. If we are not capable of contributing a Congolese fighter, a single one, beside each Cuban in order to die together, we cannot ask the Cubans to do so.” Che’s response was, “Fine, but the decision has to come from you and has to be perfectly unambiguous. Whatever you decide we should do, we will do it, but the decision is clearly yours.”94
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