Companero
Page 61
The beginning of the end came on September 26. After entering the tiny hamlet of Alto Seco, just south of La Higuera, Che himself addressed the minuscule crowd, pulled some teeth, and chatted with the inhabitants, realizing, as he had already ruefully jotted down in his diary, that the faces of the Bolivian peasants were impenetrable; he was simply not communicating. His health, according to the impressions registered by the townspeople with the Bolivian press, had deteriorated terribly: “Guevara appeared sick and exhausted; he rode a mule and appeared unable to walk without support.”*3 Worse still, at the first opportunity, the natives dashed off to inform the army of the revolutionaries’ presence. A vanguard of three rebels was assigned to explore the path north to Jaguey; from the heights above the road, an army patrol spotted them and opened fire. Miguel and Julio were gunned down instantly; Coco Peredo was fatally wounded. Benigno managed to carry him off, but could not escape with the Bolivian on his shoulders. Peredo was either killed by a new round of gunfire or else shot himself, hoping at least to save his comrades and knowing that he had but hours to live. With the death of one of the two leading Bolivian combatants, morale plummeted; there was nowhere left to go. In the confusion, two Bolivians deserted: Camba, or Orlando Jiménez Bazán, one of the older, original cadres from the Communist Party, and León, or Antonio Rodríguez Flores.
On September 30, Rodríguez Flores was questioned by the Eighth Division. His interrogators extracted precious information about Che’s plans, strength, and disposition. The Bolivian military quickly concluded that Guevara hoped to push toward Vallegrande through the ravines just outside La Higuera, leading toward the larger town of Pucará. They immediately deployed their men along the ranges looking down upon the ravines, seeking either to force Che’s men to higher ground, where the vegetation was sparse and visibility in daylight was virtually total, or to pin them down in the gorges. Conversely, Che’s intentions during those last few days remained mysterious and confused. Pombo has recalled that the idea of entering and “taking” Vallegrande, as harebrained as it might seem, made some sense. The group would attempt this desperate act in order to leave its wounded—Chino, the Peruvian, as well as the doctor, Morogoro, both in awful shape—with some putative sympathizers, obtain the medication Che required, make known their existence to the outside world, and break through the army encirclement to the northeast, in the direction of Cochabamba and the Chapare region.7
Benigno has stressed the more irrational aspects of the stratagem. In his view, Che simply wanted to engage in one last, glorious firelight in which he and his men would perish in flames and embrace immortality. If all he wished was to requisition medicines, Benigno today wonders why he did not just send him and one of the other strong Cubans into Vallegrande to hold up a pharmacy. Or even if Che hoped to strike a spectacular blow by taking Vallegrande, it made little sense to have all his men carrying seventy-pound knapsacks and dragging the wounded around with them.8
In the next-to-last entry in his diary, on October 6, Che wrote that the rebels came upon an old woman with a dwarf daughter; the guerrillas bribed her to remain quiet about their presence, without great expectations regarding her silence. They speculated that by marching at night and hiding and resting in the depth of the ravines during the day, perhaps they would eventually be able to penetrate the noose the army was fastening around them. The old woman acted as anticipated; she promptly notified the closest military outpost of the guerrillas’ whereabouts. The circle tightened. After a day of “bucolic rest,” as Che put it in the final note in his journal, on the night of October 7 the seventeen men broke out along the bottom of the Yuro or Churo gorge, in the thicker and tougher, but still unprotecting, vegetation. A potato farmer across the stream distinguished their figures in the moonlight: a band of bearded, emaciated ghosts carrying guns and rucksacks and doubled over under their weight. He had no doubt; it had to be the guerrillas. He quickly dispatched his son to the military command post of Captain Gary Prado Salmón, just a few miles away. This soldier’s soldier needed no further notice; he immediately set up a textbook ambush, with men stationed at the entrance and exit of the ravine, and his command post on the high ground.*4 Che’s last battle was about to begin.
Guevara had also issued his combat instructions, though he was not absolutely certain that the army had discovered the presence of his group.†2 He split up his platoon into several small squads, each ordered to explore the narrow creeks ahead of them, to determine if there was a way out of the ravine. As the sun rose, Benigno and Pacho realized that there were already dozens of soldiers on the high ground above them. Che had two choices: withdraw toward the back of the ravine and hope the soldiers had not bottled it up, or remain quiet until nightfall, trusting that the army would not detect his detachment. He chose the latter option and placed his men in a defensive perimeter, in case the troops did discover them. Around 1:30 on October 8, the vanguard position, at the mouth of the ravine, was hit by army fire; the different rebel positions were isolated from each other. Soon, two jets and a helicopter overflew the area, but did not bomb or strafe the hills. Che’s squad, made up of seven guerrillas, attempted to withdraw into the ravine; it would not be able to sustain the army’s fire for long. Guevara divided his group in two: first the wounded and weak, then he himself with two men remaining behind to cover them.
Minutes later, his M-1 jammed or was hit by gunfire; either way, it was rendered useless; soon he was hit in the calf, a flesh wound that nonetheless made it difficult for him to walk. Willi, or Simón Cuba, one of Moisés Guevara’s mine-union activists, dragged him along a small ridge, his machine gun in one hand, the other propping up his comandante as best he could; Aniceto Reynaga, another Bolivian, was right behind. Three soldiers from Prado’s platoon saw them approaching, waited for them to climb a tiny cliff, and when they showed themselves, shouted out: “Drop your weapons and raise your hands.” Che could not shoot back; his pistol had no clip and his carbine was disabled; Willi held his fire, either because he could not shoot with one hand or because prudence indicated that as the wisest course. According to some accounts, Che then spoke up: “Don’t shoot, I am Che Guevara and I am worth more to you alive than dead”; other versions, tainted by Bolivian military spin, attribute a different statement to the defeated Argentine: “I am Che Guevara and I have failed.”*5 Another, more plausible story is that it was Willi who threw down his rifle and raised his voice when the two soldiers, nervous and exhausted, took aim and seemed indecisive about what to do: “Shit, this is Commander Guevara and he deserves respect.”†3
Captain Gary Prado was immediately advised of Che’s capture and scrambled down the ravine as the shooting continued below. He made two or three quick checks of Guevara’s identity, requisitioned his knapsack, and promptly and excitedly radioed Eighth Division headquarters: Che had been taken. A long procession formed, as Prado marched him off to La Higuera, two kilometers away. Behind them followed the other prisoners, mules carrying the bodies of the fallen rebels, the wounded soldiers, and soon, hundreds of onlookers. Guevara was thrown into a mud-floored room in the local schoolhouse; Willi was locked up next door.
Through the night the troops celebrated their success, while the Bolivian High Command in La Paz deliberated about what to do with its legendary and intensely discomfiting captive. Che was in minor pain, and obviously depressed, but from available accounts, did not seem ready to die, though he must have contemplated this prospect. If he did exclaim, “I am worth more to you alive than dead,” in the ravine or somewhat later, he probably thought so. He may have concluded that the Bolivian government would prefer to try him and brandish his capture as a symbol of victory against foreign aggression, rather than execute him. But things did not turn out that way.
At night and in the early dawn, Gary Prado and Andres Selich, the first with politeness and dignity, the second arrogantly, attempted fruitlessly to interrogate Guevara and establish some form of communication with him. Next morning, around 6:30, a helicopter
flew in from Vallegrande with three passengers: Major Niño de Guzmán, the pilot; Colonel Joaquín Zenteno, the head of the Eighth Division; and Felix Rodríguez, the CIA’s Cuban-American radio man, sent along both out of deference for U.S. support—as Rodríguez explains it—and to ensure proper identification of Che. Rodríguez also was instructed to question Che and photograph his notebooks and the other seized documents.
The army had a monumental problem on its hands. There was no death penalty in Bolivia, and virtually no high-security prison where Guevara could serve a long sentence. The very thought of a trial sent shudders down the spines of President Barrientos, General Ovando, and the Armed Forces Chief of Staff, Juan José Torres. If the country and the government had been subjected to unending international pressure and condemnation for judging Régis Debray, what kind of outcry and campaign would not erupt in favor of Che Guevara, the famous and heroic guerrilla commander? Che in jail, anywhere in Bolivia, would represent an enormous temptation for commandos from Cuba either to seek to free him or to force an exchange for hostages taken elsewhere. It was a nightmare scenario for the three military men who held his fate in their hands. Similarly, handing Che over to the Americans, and having them fly him out to Panama for debriefing, was equally unacceptable—the nationalist tradition of the military would not allow it; moreover, the government would thereby confirm everything the Cubans and others had been claiming: the counterinsurgency effort was nothing more than a disguised form of Yankee interventionism. Every available testimony and account suggests that deliberately, consciously, and unanimously, the Bolivian authorities decided that Che Guevara should be put to death as soon as possible, before pressure from abroad and/or from the Americans became intolerable.
The order went out from La Paz at midmorning; it was received in La Higuera, where Felix Rodríguez relayed it to Zenteno, who commissioned a squad of soldiers to carry it out.9 After a picture-taking session, where far more photographs were snapped than have been made public until today, the soldiers drew lots and it fell to Lieutenant Mario Terán to finish off the disheveled, limp, depressed, but still defiant man lying on the floor of the school at La Higuera. The designated executioner hesitated; after several false starts, a few hard swigs of scotch, and Che’s invocation to carry on, Terán fired half a dozen shots into Guevara’s torso; one of them pierced his heart and killed him instantly. His last words, according to Colonel Arnaldo Saucedo Parada, head of intelligence of the Eighth Division and the man responsible for delivering the official report on Che’s final moments, were: “I knew you were going to shoot me; I should never have been taken alive. Tell Fidel that this failure does not mean the end of the revolution, that it will triumph elsewhere. Tell Aleida to forget this, remarry and be happy, and keep the children studying. Ask the soldiers to aim well.”10 His body was lashed onto the landing skids of Zenteno’s helicopter and flown off to Vallegrande; there, after being washed and cleaned, it was put on display in the laundry room of the hospital of Our Lady of Malta, where this story began.
Although the Bolivians attempted to obscure the cold-blooded assassination of the revolutionary by saying he died in combat, their story quickly crumbled. The doctors who performed the postmortem medical examination hurriedly declared that Guevara had been dead less than five hours when they inspected his corpse that afternoon in Vallegrande. But if Che was alive on October 9 at midday, and the skirmish during which he was captured had taken place on October 8, how could he have died in combat? Hundreds had witnessed the dismal cortege trudging from the Yuro Gorge to La Higuera. It soon became evident to all the journalists clustered around the hospital in Vallegrande that Ernesto Guevara de la Serna had been executed. The next day, Che’s body disappeared. Although General Ovando initially ordered his hands and head severed for identification purposes, and the rest of his body cremated to discourage the eventual construction of a shrine, history took another course. Various Bolivian officers and Gustavo Villoldo, the senior Cuban CIA man, opposed the decapitation; only his hands were amputated. They were conserved in formaldehyde for more than a year in Bolivia, until they were surreptitiously removed from the country, only to surface later in Cuba. Legend has it that Fidel Castro wished to place them in a sort of mausoleum in Havana, but that Che’s family objected; they are stored somewhere in the Palace of the Revolution, where various visiting dignitaries say they have been allowed to see them.
The three remaining enigmas of Che’s life and death do not concern the details and circumstances of his murder. They involve different issues: What role did the United States play in his execution? Did Che expect, wish, or just courageously and resignedly accept his unavoidable end? Was his body incinerated, the ashes spread out in the hills around Vallegrande, as was always claimed by the Bolivian authorities, or was he buried somewhere in the town?
The semiofficial Cuban version of Che’s death claims that President Barrientos, when informed of Guevara’s apprehension, promptly visited the U.S. ambassador at his residence that evening and was ordered to eliminate the guerrilla warrior.11 Ambassador Douglas Henderson, both in his oral-history accounts at the JFK and LBJ presidential libraries12 and in two written communications to the author, vehemently denies the Cuban story.*6 According to Henderson, he not only did not receive a visit from Barrientos at his residence that night, but was not even consulted by the Bolivians as to how they should proceed. He argues that there was good reason for them not to solicit his advice: he had strongly opposed the execution of Régis Debray months before, and the Bolivians could guess that he would be as adamantly opposed to Guevara’s slaying.†4
Other surviving witnesses all tend to confirm this interpretation, though they possess an undeniable vested interest in this version of the story. Felix Rodríguez, in his memoirs, asserts categorically that he received the order from the Bolivian authorities in La Paz to have Che shot. He considered complying, instead, with his own instructions from Langley:
The first thing they told us in Washington was that the Bolivians had a tendency to finish off their prisoners and were Guevara to be taken alive we should use all means to keep him alive and have him taken to Panama.*7
In the opinion of other CIA people on the ground or who knew him subsequently, Rodríguez probably exaggerated his own role in the entire affair—he was just a radio man, at the time—but essentially told the truth. John Tilton, the CIA station chief in La Paz, absent from the country during those days, has confirmed this version to the author in a series of phone conversations; but, again, he would hardly say the contrary.13 Gustavo Villoldo, the head of the CIA country team, was a bit more forthright about his own sentiments. He has narrated how upon his arrival in Bolivia, he was driven to Barrientos’s home to meet him. In no uncertain terms he told Barrientos: if Che were captured, he personally would do everything in his power to have him executed. Then he asked, If we take Che alive, what will you do with him? The president replied: “If he is alive, he will be summarily judged and condemned to death. You have the word of the President of the Republic.”14
Gary Prado, the only surviving Bolivian army officer directly involved in Che’s capture and in the deliberations over his execution—the others have all died in the following years, through a sort of Che hex that seems to have pursued them all over the world—stressed that the choice to kill Che was strictly a Bolivian one. Though he regretted it, since he admired Che’s valor and commitment to his convictions, Prado nonetheless today considers the decision a wise one from the point of view of the Bolivian military and state interests.
Prado has provided perhaps the most reliable testimony of Che’s state of mind and reflections in the last few hours of his life. He took notes of his conversation with the prisoner, and published them as an appendix to his book in 1987. Guevara acknowledged that the selection of Bolivia may not have been a judicious one, but that on the other hand it was not exclusively his; the most enthusiastic advocates of the Andean nation were the Bolivians themselves. He also revealed his expect
ations regarding his own destiny; when he inquired of Prado what would happen to him, he noted that on the radio he had heard that if captured by the Eighth Division, he would be tried in Santa Cruz, instead of in Camiri, where he would have been sent had he been taken prisoner by the Fourth Division. Moreover, Prado emphasizes that the way in which Che was captured—that is, moving up the hill and out of the ravine—shows that he wanted to live, not die:
If he had wanted to die he could have stayed further down and kept fighting. But no, he was trying to get out. Once captured, after the initial depression, when he saw we were treating him correctly and speaking with him, he began to feel better, his mood improved.*8
Rodríguez also recalled how Che seemed to think he would be tried and sentenced, but not shot; he remembered how the prisoner blanched when he received the news that his fate was sealed.15
Lastly, there is the testimony of the townspeople of La Higuera who had access to him for one reason or another (to feed him, for example) and spoke with him during that night and the next morning; they also suggested a man who retained his will to live, and who did not seem at all persuaded that he had only a few hours left before dying. Julia Cortés, a schoolteacher, recalled how after thanking her for some food she brought him and chatting about education and La Higuera, Che asked her to find out what his captors were up to: “‘I don’t know, maybe they will shoot me or take me out alive, but I think it is more in their interest to keep me alive, because I am worth a great deal.’ He seemed to think he would make it alive; he told me he would not forget me.”16 The other Bolivian officers who exchanged bits of conversation with Che that night—mainly Zenteno and Selich—died before age and wisdom could ensure the accuracy and sincerity of their testimony. Most likely, Ernesto Guevara faced death with the enormous courage that his entire life had cultivated, but also with the fear and despair that anyone who loved life as much as he did must feel when he is about to lose it.