Companero

by Jorge G. Castaneda

  Another possibility was Peru. The 1963 guerrilla campaigns of Luis de la Puente and Hugo Blanco had held out some promise. But Blanco’s semi-Trotskyist movement in Valle de la Conventión came to an abrupt end when he was arrested on May 29, 1963. Weeks later, another revolutionary group, headed by the young poet Javier Heraud, was liquidated as it entered Peru from Bolivia, at Puerto Maldonado. There was also a more typical Castrostyle foco, led by De la Puente, which launched a somewhat successful offensive in June 1965, but its ranks were decimated between September 1965 and early 1966, when its leader was killed in combat. One final attempt, a new front headed by Héctor Bejar, failed in December 1965. Moreover, Peru’s Communist Party had systematically opposed all of these efforts, arguing that conditions were not ripe and the armed struggle was not the best way. The Cubans, despite their original intentions, informed the Peruvians of their government’s decision “to begin the struggle first in Bolivia, and later in Peru.”*7 The circumstances were not appropriate; they invited the Peruvians to continue working jointly with them, sending men to Bolivia to set up a foco there and extending it later back home.

  There were few places left. The traditional animosity between Fidelistas and Communists in Latin America posed real problems, both in the field and in winning Che over. Worse still, the entire operation had to be presented to him as temporary—as a mere stopover on the way to his native country. This led to the idea of creating a mother guerrilla force, which would give birth to various offshoots—mainly, of course, in Argentina. These reasons, and the resources available to the Cubans in Bolivia, made it the best choice.†3 All that remained was to convince the Bolivians and Che himself.

  Bolivia offered a number of advantages for the creation of a guerrilla foco. There was already, within the Communist Party (PCB), a nucleus of cadres linked with Cuba. Similarly, a small group of Bolivian students had received training in Cuba in 1965. Some of them would die with Che; others would remain in Havana during his Bolivian epic. In the view of Mario Monje, Secretary-General of the Communist Party at the time, a peculiar relationship had developed between the PCB and Havana since 1962. In 1962, the Peruvian Communists sent a group of students to visit Cuba, where they received military training without the Peruvian Party’s knowledge or consent, as often happened. Once armed and ready for combat, they returned to their country via Bolivia, the best clandestine route. When the Cubans asked Monje to help them out, he replied that they should address themselves to the Peruvian Communist Party. The Cubans retorted, “The Peruvian Party sent these people to Cuba, and now refuses to take responsibility for them.”13

  The plot thickened. Monje traveled to Havana, meeting several times with Manuel Piñeiro and finally with Fidel Castro. For the Bolivian Party to sidestep that of Peru, and help a Cuban-trained group of guerrillas to start fighting without the consent of its Peruvian counterpart, broke all the rules governing relations among “sister parties.” Fidel did all he could to convince Monje:

  Look, we have had our experience. We’re not going to prevent these young people from having theirs. If I ask you, independently of your views, to help these boys travel through your country, giving them the opportunity that we had, why shouldn’t they have the same opportunity? They are young, as we were. Why don’t you help them get through on behalf of proletarian internationalism?14

  This led to the creation of a special clandestine military apparatus within the PCB, exposing it to very real risks in its relations with other Latin American parties. The Cubans soon started over, asking Monje to help mount the Salta expedition of Jorge Masetti. One of Che’s aides visited Monje and declared without further ado, “This is a request from Che, I am here on his behalf. And I want you to help send people to Argentina.”15 Monje replied that he could not undertake such a commitment alone; he would have to inform the rest of the leadership, especially Jorge Kolle, the Party’s Number Two man, who would replace Monje as secretary-general in 1968. When Kolle learned of the request, he objected: “There you go again, first in one place and now in another. We have to tell the Argentine Communists that the Cubans are meddling in their country.” Monje agreed, but asked, “If they send people, what can we do? Che is behind this, and they’ve asked me to take on the logistics.”16

  It is worth recalling that the Communist Party of Argentina was strongly opposed to the Castro line in Latin America; its leader, Victor Codovilla, had taken a vehement stand against Guevara and his theories. This mattered little to Fidel, however; he personally reiterated the request, emphasizing that it was Che’s operation. And as early as mid-1963 he offered the following analysis of Bolivia:

  I am very sorry for you and for Bolivia, because it is very difficult to conduct guerrilla warfare over there. You are a landlocked country, you’ve already had a land reform, so your fate is to help revolutionary movements in other countries. One of the last countries to achieve liberation will be Bolivia. Guerrilla warfare is not possible in Bolivia.17

  Che had maintained the same position, to Monje’s surprise, during a conversation with him in Havana in 1964:

  I’ve been in Bolivia, I know Bolivia and it is very difficult to have a guerrilla struggle in Bolivia. There has already been a land reform, and I don’t think the Indians would join a guerrilla struggle. That is why you must help operations in other countries.18

  As stated, Che’s aide, José María Martínez Tamayo (Papi), arrived in Bolivia March 1966. He immediately began preparations for Che’s new expedition, based upon all these precedents and his old friendship—dating back to the Masetti affair—with several Bolivian Communists, including the Peredo brothers (Inti and Coco), Jorge Vázquez Viaña (el Loro), Rodolfo Saldaña, Luis Tellería Murillo, Orlando “Camba” Jiménez, and Julio “el Nato” Méndez. Despite Fidel’s and Che’s misgivings, many factors pointed to a successful operation in Bolivia. There was already a unit of young guerrillas with Cuban links within the country. The PCB’s leadership recognized that Havana (despite some contacts with pro-China dissidents) had never interfered in the Party’s affairs or tried to mount a guerrilla foco in Bolivia—as it had in Peru, Argentina, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Colombia. The Bolivian Communists were at least formally receptive to the arrangement.

  But this did not imply that Monje, Kolle, or the other national leaders (in contrast to the Party’s youth movement) supported the armed struggle, or that they enjoyed a broad margin of freedom vis-à-vis Moscow, allowing them to align themselves with Havana. Indeed, the secret archives of the Soviet Union include the minutes of a 1966 Politburo meeting of the Party’s Central Committee, approving a payment of $30,000 to the PCB in 1966, and of $20,000 to the Bolivian Party’s electoral arm, the National Front.19 This was a considerable sum, given the Party’s tiny dimensions—enough to cover many of its expenses, and thus a powerful form of persuasion.

  Still, Monje and the rest of the leadership were less reluctant than other Latin American groups to embark on the military road to power. In fact, Monje received guerrilla training in Cuba during the first half of 1966. He placed the PCB’s small secret-operations unit at the disposal of the Cubans, and several of its members (including the Peredo brothers) spent weeks or months training on the island. Bolivia seemed a natural alternative to Che’s Argentine project. It had historical ties with the Cubans and a favorable geography which included five borders, valleys and mountains, tropical and snow-covered regions. The presence—or absence—of the political conditions needed to trigger a revolutionary process never figured as a central issue. The main point was to find a project for Che, and to have the requisite resources at hand.

  During his stay in Prague, Che continued to negotiate with Cuba, even as he pushed forward with preparations for South America. The more he insisted on going to Argentina, either directly or after a short stay in Bolivia, the more Havana tried to persuade him to return to Cuba, and proceed to Bolivia only when everything was ready. Guevara described his dilemma in a dialogue with Monje on December 31, 1966:


  CHE: You know that I left Cuba in an elegant and dignified way. Fidel insisted several times that I return, but I was cooped up in an apartment in Czechoslovakia, trying to find a way out. I couldn’t go back to Cuba, I couldn’t show my face there again. That option was closed for me.

  MONJE: And why did you find the solution here? You’ve fallen into a trap here.20

  Perhaps one of the greatest misunderstandings—or deceptions—in Che’s Bolivian saga was the confusion between traveling through Bolivia and actually creating a foco there. According to Castro, Mario Monje was responsible for the betrayal that led to Che’s death. The Bolivian agreed to support Guevara’s quest for revolution, and then reneged on his promise. Monje, however, claims that he acceded to a very different request. When he saw Castro in May 1966 on a flight from Santiago to Havana, Fidel said to him:

  Listen Monje, I am grateful for the help you’ve given us, you’ve always fulfilled everything we have asked for. Now there is a mutual friend of ours who wants to return to his country, and I ask you personally to choose the people who will protect this man. No one can doubt his rank as a revolutionary. He wants to return to his country. This has nothing to do with Bolivia.21

  Monje immediately agreed. This time he was not dealing with Peruvians or Argentines, but with a leader of the Cuban Revolution whose destination was Argentina. He did not hesitate to commit himself; he knew that the man in question was Che Guevara. The rest of the PCB leadership was not aware of this, but was nonetheless well disposed toward the Cuban request,*8 as Jorge Kolle confirms:

  We thought it was a repeat of Masetti’s expedition. Though we did not have a script, we were involved in a series of events that gave us a certain perception of what was happening and where things were headed. Ñancahuazú is in an area close to Argentina, it’s closer to Argentina or Paraguay than to La Paz. There is no population to feed a guerrilla campaign, in a province which is almost as big as Cuba: 82,000 square kilometers and 40,000 inhabitants. We thought the idea was to set up a base to send a group to Argentina.22

  The PCB lent the Cubans the four cadres who had previously worked with them: Roberto “Coco” Peredo, Jorge “el Loro” Vázquez Viaña, Rodolfo Saldaña, and Julio “el Ñato” Méndez, and also, marginally, Luis Tellería. The first three were dispatched to Havana almost immediately to receive further military training; they returned in July via Prague, where they probably met with Che. Back in Bolivia, they recruited a group from the Communist Youth and sent them to train in Cuba, along with Coco’s brother Inti Peredo. The operation had already extended far beyond its original scope of expediting Che’s getting to Argentina; the goal was now to establish a mother guerrilla movement in Bolivia. The “Upper Peruvian,” as Monje was known for his inscrutable nature, now believes that Fidel deliberately deceived him—as he very likely did.

  There is, however, another hypothesis. When Castro made the deal with Monje, he might well have believed that Che would indeed merely pass through Bolivia on his way home. After all, he had perhaps not yet convinced him to stay in Bolivia. It is not evident that Fidel initially misled Monje. Similarly, the Bolivian Communists never directly expressed to the Cubans their opposition to the armed struggle. When Pombo and Tuma landed in La Paz toward the end of July and held their first meeting with members of the Party, they were assured that Monje would join the armed struggle—and if he did not, the rest of the Party would.23 At the same meeting, Monje himself promised Che’s representatives at least twenty guerrilla fighters. When the Cubans tried to ascertain what would happen if Che joined the operation, he responded, “If that were the case, I would fight by his side no matter what.”24

  None of them put their cards on the table. On the contrary, everyone indulged in a game of deception, as Kolle confessed later:

  I am proud of having misled them completely. One day I was pro-guerrilla; the next day they perceived me as anti-guerrilla. In other words, I misled the Cubans.25

  Che remained in Prague until July, if we are to believe William Gálvez, author of an as-yet unpublished official Cuban biography of Che.*9 Regardless of the dates, the indisputable fact is that he finally decided to return to Cuba. He was received by Raúl Castro, who appeared at the old Rancho Boyeros airport on a mission of peace and reconciliation. Che immediately traveled to a rest home at San Andrés de Taiguanabo, at the foot of the Cordillera de los Organos. There he spent several weeks recovering from his Congo ordeal. He also launched preparations for the new expedition, hoping to avoid the errors which had doomed his mission in Africa. But as a friend lamented years later, his obsessive attempt to do things differently this time led him to commit countless other mistakes. What he did in Bolivia he should have done in the Congo, and vice versa.

  On this occasion, Che handpicked his team. With help from René Tomassevich, Piñeiro’s staff, and Raúl Castro, he selected his men from a carefully prepared list. Many who wished to be included were not—Ulises Estrada, Emilio Aragonés, Alberto Mora, and Haydé Santamaría, among others. Che began contacting revolutionaries in Bolivia, deciding where, when, and with whom he would start operations. Several questions arose immediately. Should the campaign center on the Alto Beni in the northwest of Bolivia, and especially in a small semitropical area called Los Yungas, or in the southwest, in the basin of the Rio Grande, near the oil center of Camiri? Should he rely upon the Bolivian Communist Party which, according to Fidel Castro and Manuel Piñeiro, was now fully devoted to the armed struggle? Or was it better to seek an alliance with the Maoists, including a group headed by Oscar Zamora, whom Che had met in Havana in 1964 before Zamora was expelled from the PCB for his pro-China leanings? Was it preferable to cast his lot with the Cuban establishment, especially the staff of Piñeiro and Raúl, which had so seriously let him down in the Congo with its irresponsibility and incompetence? Or should he mount his own network for communications, support, logistics, and intelligence? He struggled with these choices from July to November, when he finally left Cuba for good. But he never reached any explicit conclusions, aside from the location of the foco. And even here, his decision was more the result of circumstance than of conscious deliberation.

  The process of selection was soon complete. The team included many of the cadres linked with Che since the “invasion” from the Sierra Maestra in 1958, several who had accompanied him to the Congo, and others from the Ministry of Industries. They were secluded in a training camp in the province of Occidente, then transferred to Che’s villa in San Andrés. There, in September, René Tomassevich led the guerrillas to the terrace, where they met a bald, elderly man of medium height, clean-shaven and wearing glasses, who promptly started screaming at them, calling them incompetent “shit-eaters” unfit for guerrilla warfare; several of them grew increasingly irritated. Finally, Jesús Suárez Gayol (el Rubio), deputy minister of industries and a companion of Che’s since the battle of Santa Clara, saw through the disguise and hugged his old boss.26 The twenty or so recruits were filled with pride and joy: the honor of being chosen for the mission outweighed any doubts or fears they might have harbored. They did not know that most of them would die in the wilderness of Bolivia.

  Their training went into high gear after Fidel Castro’s birthday on August 13. Che began by laying down the law: the men would have to forget about their officers’ rank, for in Bolivia they would be mere foot soldiers. Shooting practice started at six in the morning, one hour after reveille. There was one hour’s rest at eleven, and then a forced march of twelve kilometers in the nearby hills with a twenty-kilo rucksack. The men were entitled to another hour’s rest at six in the afternoon, followed by courses in general culture: languages, history, mathematics. Finally, at nine there were two hours of Quechua, the indigenous language of Bolivia. Che’s reasoning was obvious: in order to avoid a repeat of the Congo, he needed guerrilla fighters well versed in political and military affairs, who understood their mission and were ready to die for it: a battalion of Che Guevaras.

  Visitors dropped in every
weekend: either high officials or Fidel Castro, who came several times. Castro explained to the guerrillas the purpose and logic of their mandate, which was to distract the United States. As Castro put it, Cuba’s obligations as a sugar producer were taking up too much of the population’s time and energy. This was undermining efforts in education and economic diversification. Each combatant cost Cuba ten thousand dollars; “imperialism” should be made to pay a hundred thousand dollars for each fallen warrior. The struggle in Bolivia would be to the death, and would last from five to ten years. Its real goal was to reduce the pressure on Cuba.

  Fidel’s reasoning, though not absurd, was actually an ad hoc justification for a decision based on other factors. True, there was an important (if recent) precedent: Cuba’s support for revolutionary movements in the rest of Latin America. But there was a slight difference in the case of Bolivia. Unlike Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, or even Colombia, it had no rebel movement of its own. The Cubans would serve as a revolutionary spearhead, not as reinforcement. The PCB’s apparent willingness to engage in the armed struggle did not mean there was a foco already in existence. Che and the Cubans did not sweep down upon Bolivia to join a process already underway but to initiate, single-handedly, a guerrilla movement. This was an extreme interpretation of Guevara’s view that pre-existing conditions were not necessary; they could be created from outside. For the first time since the invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1959—which had witnessed the massacre of the entire expeditionary force—a large number of Cubans were being sent to fight in Latin America despite the total absence of a local movement.