When the cave was found, Che’s medicines were lost; Benigno’s effort had been in vain. The government also recovered photos of many of the guerrillas, including Che. They were taken to the OAS as proof that Comandante Guevara was indeed in Bolivia. Che, in contrast, never brandished his identity; he never resorted to his increasingly mythic image to appeal for local or international support. At a conference of the Latin American Solidarity Organization (OLAS) held in Havana on August 15, neither Osvaldo Dorticós nor Fidel Castro revealed Che’s whereabouts, much less his desperate plight. They made no effort to launch a campaign to help or save him. Either the deluded optimism of Piñeiro’s team was still in place, despite the countless and ominous warning signs emanating from Bolivia, or else the Cubans had resigned themselves to a tragic outcome. It was not far off.
After three months of blindly and stubbornly following Che’s orders to the letter, and tarrying in the area where they had separated, Joaquín’s rearguard finally headed north, five members short of its original strength. Tensions had sprung up within the group since the beginning. Tania got on terribly with the others. She was struck or insulted on several occasions by the Cubans, who accused her of having provoked the separation. On August 30, the rearguard attempted to ford the Rio Grande with the guidance of a peasant named Honorato Rojas, who had helped the guerrillas once early in the year. Inexplicably, Joaquín asked him for advice on how to cross the river—though he had already forded it, without assistance, many times. A signaling system was set up: that afternoon, Rojas would display a white apron at an appropriate crossing point if the coast was clear. Just after leaving Joaquín, however, Rojas came upon a military patrol commanded by Mario Vargas Salinas, the Eighth Division’s head of intelligence, and promptly informed him of the guerrillas’ intentions. Vargas Salinas mounted an ambush across the river, at the ford indicated by Rojas, and simply waited. On the afternoon of August 31, just before the sunset which would have protected them, the guerrillas started wading across the river at Vado del Yeso. With water up to their chests and their rifles held high, they were mowed down instantaneously. Ten died, including Joaquín, Tania, Moisés Guevara, and Braulio. Several bodies were swept downstream, and only recovered days later, swollen and disfigured.
Two Bolivian guerrillas were captured; one died of his wounds, the other yielded a detailed description of the rearguard’s long pilgrimage. Codenamed Paco, he later spread the rumor that Tania had cancer in her reproductive organs, which delayed her periods and accounted for the bloodstains on the sanitary napkins she used.*37 Paco also made public the constant squabbles within Joaquín’s group, especially as a result of Tania’s emotional crises. As Lyndon Johnson’s National Security Adviser informed him four days later, “After a series of defeats at the hands of the guerrillas, the Bolivian armed forces on August 30 finally scored their first victory—and it seems to have been a big one.”95
With the liquidation of the rearguard, Che’s time finally ran out. Vado del Yeso was the end of the road not only for those who died in the river but also for the entire guerrilla expedition in Bolivia. Isolated, decimated by casualties, illness, and desertions, their leader wracked by asthma and depression, surrounded by an increasingly energetic and professional army, they had no escape. Only five weeks remained before the fully predictable conclusion. Before narrating Che’s death, though, and the Christlike aura that derived from it, it is important to attempt to convey an understanding of what happened, and why.
After we dismiss the prevailing fantasies—that Che is still alive; that Che had died earlier; that Che never went to Bolivia—there are two possible explanations for the tragedy.*38 One rests upon the hypothesis that the Cuban government initially helped Che to a limited degree, only to forsake him later for geopolitical reasons. The other assumes that Havana always maintained good intentions, and that the outcome was simply the result of monumental incompetence and inexperience. It is worth summarizing both theories, leaving the final judgment to readers and to history.
This much we know: Fidel sold the Bolivian undertaking to Che in order to avoid his being killed in the broad avenues of Buenos Aires or the jungles of rural Argentina. It is also well established that Che’s original idea of a continent-wide movement spreading from Bolivia was soon reduced to the small area of the Rio Grande’s basin in the country’s southeastern region. There is equally no doubt that the resources at Che’s disposal were pathetically inadequate: neither the men, the weapons and communications, nor the expedition’s allies fulfilled his expectations, much less the needs of the expedition. At the outset, these deficiencies may possibly have been unknown both to Che and to the Havana leadership, including Fidel Castro. But any hypothetical misjudgments or confusion became implausible after March 1967. By then, the Cubans were fully aware that Monje and the PCB had refused to make any concessions; that combat had begun prematurely; that communications had broken down; that the urban network had never functioned; and that the United States had joined the fray. Even if they were ignorant of the guerrillas’ separation into two groups and the isolation of Joaquín’s rearguard, it was obvious to anyone familiar with these circumstances—which were either public knowledge or easily deduced from published reports—that Che’s campaign was doomed.
Based on these premises, there were two possible courses of action open to the Cuban leadership: either to make a greater support effort, or else to launch a rescue operation. The human and material resources required were available in both cases. Thanks to Lino, Benigno, and the coded communiqués of Ariel (Juan Carretero), it is known that between twenty and sixty Bolivians trained in Cuba were prepared to return to their country and open a second front, or reinforce their comrades in the southeast.*39 They included Jorge Ruiz Paz, El Negro, and Omar. Opposition to Monje and Kolle’s policy of passivity within Bolivia’s Communist Party raised the possibility of greater cooperation in the future, and publicizing Che’s presence would have aroused enormous sympathy and solidarity throughout the country, the hemisphere, and the world. Such an effort would have sought to endow Che with the means he really needed for his project, once it became obvious that those originally planned were insufficient.†19 The cost would have been high, but worth it.
However, raising the stakes in Bolivia would have bestowed upon Cuba a far higher profile in Latin America than was compatible with its evolving ties to Moscow and its economic quandary. It was one thing to send a few more men to Venezuela—and be caught red-handed once again; it was quite another to declare war on a sister republic, in order to reinforce a guerrilla expedition led by a former Cuban Minister of State. Regardless of the outcome, Cuba could simply not afford such a luxury—even if its leaders and people had been willing. And in any case, Moscow was not willing, and it was now calling the shots.
From several sources, beginning with a secret note from Walt Rostow to President Lyndon Johnson, we know today that a vicious conflict had surfaced since the beginning of the year between Cuba and the Soviet Union over the island’s Latin American policy. Dated October 18, ten days after Che’s death, the memo reads in part:
Herewith a fascinating report on a sharp exchange of letters between Castro and Brezhnev over Castro’s sending Guevara to Bolivia without consulting the Soviets. The exchange was one of the reasons for Kosygin going to Havana after Glassboro.96
Indeed, had the Cubans contemplated the possibility of upping the ante in Bolivia, the stormy visit of Alexei Kosygin to Havana on July 26, 1967, surely dissuaded them from any further Andean fantasies. Moscow and Havana had been arguing over Che Guevara since the early part of the year. How did the Soviets uncover one of the world’s best-kept secrets (again)? One can barely fathom the Byzantine complexity of the deceptions and conspiracies that still surround the final months of Guevara’s life. Mario Monje has always maintained that during his return trip from Bulgaria in November 1966, he stopped nowhere except in Havana, where he met with Castro. But Benigno claims in his memoirs, published in Paris in 19
96, that in fact Monje spent several days in Moscow at the time, informing the U.S.S.R. of Che’s intentions and obtaining the Kremlin’s tacit permission to leave Che to his own devices. In a letter to this author dated October 1996, Monje confirms that he did stop in the Soviet capital for financial reasons: the Bulgarians were paying for his plane ticket, and his pre-established itinerary included Moscow. In a subsequent phone conversation, Monje revealed that he made two stopovers in the Russian capital: one on his way to Bulgaria, and one on his way back. Benigno adds that a Spanish-Soviet colonel of the KGB nicknamed Angelito, who was in charge of expediting the discreet arrival of Cubans and Latin Americans at Moscow’s Sheremetevo airport, informed him that Monje was received by a Central Committee official who whisked him off to the capital by car. The Bolivian, he says, stayed in Moscow for a week.*40
Monje’s layovers in the Soviet capital confirm Benigno’s statement and also establish a context for Monje’s meeting with Che.†20 Though he denies it adamantly to this day, it seems inconceivable that Monje would not have informed the Latin America specialists of the Soviet Party’s Central Committee, or of the KGB, about the Cuban expedition in his country.‡7 As noted previously, Monje received large sums of money from the Soviet Union at that time; he has also resided in Moscow since 1968 and has always manifested greater loyalty to the fatherland of socialism than to Cuba. What is more, Monje likely consulted Moscow about his response to the Cubans’ request for assistance. Perhaps the Soviets did not pressure him to deny support to Che’s endeavor*41; one may suppose, however, that they backed his decision to keep any such assistance to a bare minimum. And even if Monje did not mention Che to his hosts, it is highly probable that during a visit by Dorticós and Raúl Castro to Moscow between October 7 and 22, Fidel’s brother revealed Guevara’s decision to fight in Bolivia either to Defense Minister Grechko or to the KGB. It seems difficult to imagine Raúl Castro’s hiding a secret of this magnitude from his Russian colleagues.†21 Hence the following hypothetical but plausible version of events.
In January, after Monje’s visit, the Cuban ambassador to the U.S.S.R., Olivares, is summoned to the Kremlin, where he is severely rebuked and treated for the first time as the envoy of a satellite country; he is advised that Havana should stop provoking the United States; indeed, the diplomat surmises that perhaps the Soviets fear an American strike, and are washing their hands of the affair. The ambassador immediately flies home to report on the situation, giving rise to a series of efforts to deceive the Soviets, as well as a furious speech by Fidel Castro on March 13, directed mainly against the Venezuelan Communist Party, but also at the Soviet Union: “This revolution is following its own guidelines. It will never be anybody’s satellite. It will never ask permission to uphold its own positions.” But tensions rise as soon as the Soviets discover that Che is indeed in Bolivia and that the Americans have decided to oppose him.
In a high-level exchange of letters between Moscow and Havana leading up to the Kosygin visit, the U.S.S.R. accuses Cuba of having violated previous agreements: those reached at the Conference of Latin American Communist Parties in November 1964, as well as a series of bilateral accords. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union particularly regrets that Cuba has proceeded without consulting Moscow; it states that in consequence Cuba should not hold the U.S.S.R. responsible if the United States were to carry out reprisals against the island for its mischief in Latin America.‡8 Cuba replies that the U.S.S.R. is weakening the cause of revolution in the hemisphere by cutting deals, extending credits, and establishing diplomatic relations with “bourgeois governments” in Latin America that were murdering and torturing revolutionary activists.*42 Moreover, Moscow is sabotaging the Bolivian expedition by pressuring Monje not to cooperate. Che, the Cubans explain, left of his own volition; they could hardly not help him, though his mission was not government-sponsored.
When Kosygin traveled to the United States in July to address the United Nations and to meet with Lyndon Johnson in Glassboro, New Jersey, both the Cubans and Soviets concluded that a visit to Havana on his way back home of Moscow’s Number Two man would be fruitful—all the more so since Brezhnev had “expressed his disappointment at Castro’s failure to give the Soviet Union advance notice concerning the dispatch of Guevara, and in strong terms criticized the decision of Castro to undertake guerrilla activities in Bolivia. … He inquired what right Castro had to foment revolution in Latin America without appropriate coordination with other socialist countries.”97
Further, Kosygin learned that Lyndon Johnson was closely monitoring Che’s movements in Bolivia. Although the summit was mainly devoted to the Middle East, Vietnam, and disarmament, the U.S. President registered a firm protest over Cuba’s interventionism:
Finally, I pressed Kosyguin [sic] hard to use Soviet influence in Havana to deflect Castro from his direct and active encouragement of guerrilla operations. I told him that we had evidence that the Cubans were operating in seven Latin American countries. I cited in particular the case of Venezuela and told him that it was most dangerous to the peace of the Hemisphere and the world for Castro to conduct this illegal activity.98
The U.S.S.R. therefore felt obliged to pressure Castro, once again, to renounce his continental aspirations, even as it sought a reconciliation.99 Kosygin was given an icy reception; Castro did not meet him at the airport, and refused to see him initially, relenting only after enormous pressure from the Soviet Embassy. They met on three occasions: on July 26 in the company of the entire Cuban Politburo and Osmany Cienfuegos, and on July 27 and 28 with President Dorticós and Raúl Castro. During the July 27 conversation, in response to the Soviet Premier’s none-too-delicate complaint that Cuba’s shenanigans in the region were “playing into the hands of the imperalists and weakening and diverting the efforts of the socialist world to liberate Latin America,”100 Fidel brought up the painful issue of Che. According to the notes taken by Oleg Daroussenkov, the only translator present at the meeting, Castro stated:
I wish to emphasize that the revolution is an objective factor, that it cannot be stopped. Comrade Guevara is in Bolivia now. But we did not participate directly in this struggle, simply we do not have the means to do so; we are supporting the local party, through public statements.101
Kosygin retorted that he harbored serious doubts as to whether Guevara’s actions in Bolivia were correct. In the first place: “One cannot pretend that the sending of a dozen men to a country will lead to a revolution. One cannot act as if the Communist Party did not exist until Comrade Guevara landed there and started the struggle.”102 He criticized the very notion of the export of revolution, and protested the terms used by Castro to denounce the Latin American Communist Parties.103 On the other hand, the Soviet did try to persuade Castro that the report remitted by his ambassador in Moscow of an imminent U.S. attack on Cuba was false, and that in any case the U.S.S.R. was certainly not washing its hands of the Cuban affair. Still, the meeting was tense and unpleasant; the reconciliation failed; relations between the two countries remained extremely fractious for over a year, reaching their lowest point in early 1968.
In the meantime, however, an operation to boost the Bolivian foco became unthinkable. The only option left was to rescue Guevara, or to abandon him to his fate—with enormous grief, but also resignation. But even the rescue had to be discarded as a result of Kosygin’s trip to Havana. Almost ten years later, Juan Carretero, Ariel, then Cuba’s ambassador to Iraq, revealed to Benigno the details of one of the most dramatic moments of the Cuban Revolution. After a few drinks, overwhelmed by resentment against Manuel Piñeiro and guilt toward the only survivor of Bolivia, Ariel narrated the following account. When Kosygin visited Havana in July, Carretero participated in the first meeting with the Soviet delegation. Carretero was invited because Piñeiro was away; normally Barbaroja would have attended without any deputies. According to Carretero, the Soviets tacitly delivered a virtual ultimatum: either Havana stopped helping the guerrillas
in Latin America or else Moscow would cease aiding the Cubans. At that point, Carretero was asked to leave and locate Piñeiro wherever he was; he was not summoned again.
As already noted, Carretero and Armando Campos had previously formed a group of Cubans to assist or save Guevara if it ever became necessary. They had done so on their own, without orders from Castro, but suspecting that Fidel might one day instruct them to do so, they wanted to be ready. A couple of days after the Kosygin meeting, though, Piñeiro gave Carretero the following instructions: “Hey, those people we’ve prepared— take whatever measures are necessary and send them home.”104
In 1987, during an interview with a journalist who was sympathetic to his cause, Fidel Castro disdainfully discarded the possibility of a rescue. The chances of sending a group into Bolivia were nil, said Castro. Che’s isolation, the military encirclement, and the lack of communications rendered any commando operation virtually impossible. As always with Fidel, this apparent truism is relative: it all depends. Several persons have expressed contrary views as to the possibility of a rescue, and even about Cuban preparations for such a contingency. When Benigno, one of three survivors, returned from Bolivia in 1968, he had the following dialogue in Havana with Campos and Carretero:
“You knew that the only means of communication were yourselves. What did you do?” Carretero and Armando Campos, as if trying to justify themselves, said, “We are not responsible in any way because as soon as we found out about Tania and heard about the deserters talking, we immediately began to prepare a group here in Cuba, in case the high leadership ordered an operation to get you out. We prepared the group, we informed Piñeiro, and Piñeiro says he informed Fidel, but we never received any order to carry out the operation.” And they said to me, “That was as far as our responsibility went. We did what we had to do, but we never received any orders.”*43
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