Companero

by Jorge G. Castaneda

  20. Ernesto Che Guevara, letter to Lorenzo Alujas Piñeiro, August 9, 1959, quoted in Bohemia (Havana), October 16, 1970, p. 28.

  21. Ernesto Betancourt, interview with the author, Washington, D.C., July 12, 1995.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Raúl Maldonado, interview with Paco Ignacio Taibo II, made available to the author by Taibo, Mexico City, March 16, 1996.

  25. Ernesto Che Guevara, quoted in Jean Cormier, Che Guevara (Paris: Editions du Rocher, 1995), p. 279.

  26. Director of Central Intelligence, Special National Intelligence Estimate, “Communist Influence in Cuba,” no. 85-60, March 22, 1960 (Secret), Declassified Documents Catalog, Research Publication (Woodbridge, Conn.) vol. 18, no. 1, Jan/Feb. 1992, file series no. 0003, pp. 1–2.

  27. Aleksandr Alexeiev, interview with the author, Moscow, October 28, 1995.

  28. Aleksandr Alexeiev, “Che,” Novoe Vremia (Moscow), no. 24, June 10, 1988, p. 16.

  29. Aleksandr Alexeiev, “Cuba después del triunfo de la revolución,” Revista de América Latina (Moscow), no. 10, October 1984, p. 57.

  30. Nikolai Leonov, interview with the author, Moscow, October 28, 1995.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Ibid.

  33. Alexeiev, “Che,” p. 17.

  34. Alexeiev, interview.

  35. Telegram no. 205, Fordham to Foreign Office, June 21, 1960 (Confidential), Foreign Office Archive FO371/148295, Public Record Office, London.

  36. Alexeiev, interview.

  37. André Fontaine, Histoire de la guerre froide, vol. 2 (Paris: Fayard, 1967), p. 388.

  38. K. S. Karol, Les guérilleros au pouvoir (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1970), pp. 206–207.

  39. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Discurso a estudiantes y profesores de la Escuela Técnica Industrial,” July 1, 1960, in Guevara, Escritos y discursos, vol. 4, p. 171.

  40. Che Guevara, quoted in “Memorandum of Discussion at the 451st Meeting of the National Security Council,” July 15, 1960 (Top Secret), FRUS, 1958–1960, p. 1014.

  41. Carlos Franqui, interview with the author, San Juan, August 20, 1996.

  42. Philip Bonsai to Roy Rubottom, July 13, 1960 (Secret, Eyes Only), FRUS, 1958–1960.

  43. Time magazine, August 8, 1960, p. 36. Laura Berquist used the same idea in Look four months later, entitling her piece “The Brain of the Regime.” Look magazine, November 8, 1960, p. 38.

  44. Time.

  45. MID-12051-28-X-60, Sergei Kudriavtsev, “Memorandum of Conversation of the Ambassador of the USSR with the Director of the National Bank of Cuba, Ernesto Che Guevara,” Havana, September 1, 1960 (Secret), Archives of the Foreign Ministry, Moscow.

  46. MID-11113-27-IX-60, Sergei Kudriavtsev, “Memorandum of Conversation of the Ambassador of the USSR and the Director of the National Bank of Cuba, Ernesto Che Guevara,” Havana, September 27, 1960 (Secret), Archives of the Foreign Ministry, Moscow.

  47. MID-12999-29-XI-60, Sergei Kudriavtsev. The agenda and discussion of topics appears in “Memorandum of a Conversation of Kudriavtsev with Ernesto Che Guevara of September 30, 1960, sent to Anatoly Dobrynin, Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs” (Top Secret), Archives of the Foreign Ministry, Moscow.

  48. MID-4719-21-XI-60. See “Program for the Stay in the Soviet Union of the State Economic Mission from the Republic of Cuba,” Draft for Undersecretary Dobrynin (no classification), Archives of the Foreign Ministry, Moscow.

  49. Leonov, interview.

  50. Ibid.

  51. MID-4607-10XI-60, Ernesto Guevara to Faure Chomón, October 26, 1960 (no classification), Archives of the Foreign Ministry, Moscow.

  52. MID-1648, Anatoly Dobrynin to Pushkin, October 29, 1960 (no classification), Archives of the Foreign Ministry, Moscow.

  53. Leonov, interview.

  54. Statements quoted in Department of State, “The Castro Regime in Cuba,” August 1961, p. 4.

  55. Karol, Les guérilleros, p. 209.

  56. Cormier, Che, p. 296.

  57. Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Intelligence Report no. 8430, “Cuban Economic Mission to the Sino-Soviet Bloc” (Secret), March 23, 1961, pp. 2, 3.

  58. Memorandum of Discussion at the 472nd Meeting of the National Security Council (Top Secret), December 29, 1960, quoted in FRUS, 1958–1960, p. 1187.

  59. Sir F. Roberts (Moscow) to Foreign Office, Soviet-Cuba Relations, November 28, 1960 (Confidential), Foreign Office Archive F0371/48211, Public Record Office, London.

  60. Leonov, interview.

  61. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Comparencia televisada de la firma de acuerdos con los países socialistas,” in Guevara, Escritos y discursos, vol. 5, p. 17.

  62. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Iniciando el trabajo voluntario,” Bohemia (Havana), October 18, 1985, p. 76.

  63. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Una actitud nueva frente al trabajo,” speech delivered on August 15, 1964, Casa de las Américas, vol. 2, p. 165, quoted in Michael Lowy, El pensamiento del Che Guevara (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1971), p. 79.

  64. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Discurso pronunciado en la entrega de Certificados de Trabajo Comunista,” quoted in Carlos Tablada Pérez, El pensamiento económico de Ernesto Che Guevara (Havana: Casa de las Américas, 1987), p. 125.

  65. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Sobre el trabajo voluntario,” quoted in Ernesto Che Guevara, El libro verde olivo (Mexico City: Editorial Diógenes, 1970), p. 102.

  66. MID-11113-27-IX-60, Sergei Kudriavtsev.

  67. MID-12051-28-X-60, Sergei Kudriavtsev.

  68. Franqui, interview.

  69. Ernesto Che Guevara, La guerra de guerrillas, in Guevara, Escritos y discursos, vol. 1, p. 33.

  70. Ibid., pp. 34, 35.

  71. Ibid., p. 85.

  72. Ibid., p. 64.

  73. Ibid., p. 113.

  74. Alberto Korda, interview with the author, Havana, August 23, 1995.

  Chapter 7:

  “Socialism Must Live, It Isn’t Worth Dying Beautifully.”

  1. Manuel Manresa, conversation with Paco Ignacio Taibo II, provided to the author by Taibo, Havana, February 1995.

  2. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Discurso a las Milicias en Pinar del Río,” April 15, 1961, quoted in Ernesto Che Guevara, Escritos y discursos, vol. 5 (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1977), p. 73.

  3. Quoted in Hugh Thomas, Cuba: La lucha por la libertad, 1959–1970, vol. 3 (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1974), pp. 1661–1662.

  4. See Peter Wyeth, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), p. 101.

  5. Ibid., p. 102.

  6. Ibid., p. 179. Tad Szulc corroborates this in Fidel: A Critical Portrait (New York: Avon, 1987; first edition, 1986), p. 601.

  7. Richard Goodwin, “Annals of Politics, A Footnote,” The New Yorker, May 25, 1968, p. 98.

  8. British Embassy, Havana, to the Earl of Home (Foreign Office), January 11, 1962 (Confidential), Foreign Office Archive FO371/62308, Ref. 9843, p. 5, Public Record Office, London.

  9. MID-2089-24-VI-61, Sergei Kudriavtsev, “Memorandum of Conversation of June 3, 1961, with the Minister of Industry Ernesto Guevara,” July 12, 1961 (Secret), Archives of the Foreign Ministry, Moscow.

  10. British Embassy to Earl of Home, January 11, 1962, p. 4.

  11. MID-2526-9-IX-61, Sergei Kudriavtsev, “Memorandum of Conversation of July 26, 1961, with the Minister of Industry Ernesto Guevara,” August 15, 1961 (Secret), Archives of the Foreign Ministry, Moscow.

  12. MID-11113-27-IX-60, Sergei Kudriavtsev.

  13. “Summary Guidelines Paper, United States Policy Toward Latin America,” July 3, 1961 (Secret), quoted in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1961–1963, Department of State Central File, vol. 12, 1996, p. 35.

  14. Miriam Urrutía, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, February 15, 1995.

  15. Richard Goodwin, Memorandum for the President, August 22, 1961 (Secret), JFK Library, Cambridge, Mass.

  16. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Discurso en Punta del Este del 8 de agosto de 1961,�
�� in Ernesto Che Guevara, Obra revolucionaria (Mexico City: Ediciones ERA, 1969), p. 415.

  17. Ibid.

  18. “Douglas Dillon to John F. Kennedy,” Montevideo, August 9, 1961 (Secret), quoted in FRUS 1961–1963, p. 50.

  19. Guevara, “Discurso en Punta del Este.”

  20. Ibid.

  21. Douglas Dillon to John F. Kennedy, Montevideo, August 16, 1961 (Secret, Eyes Only), quoted in FRUS 1961–1963, p. 60.

  22. This account springs from the most recent reminiscence of Richard Goodwin, published in Cigar Aficionado (New York), October 1996, p. 86.

  23. Goodwin, “Memorandum.” Unless otherwise indicated, all the quotations from and paraphrases of what was said at this encounter in the text are from this memorandum.

  24. Goodwin, “Annals,” p. 104.

  25. Richard Goodwin, interview with the author, Concord, Mass., May 5, 1995.

  26. In the initial declassified version of the memorandum, these paragraphs were “sanitized”; the version made public in 1995 includes them verbatim.

  27. Goodwin, “Annals,” p. 110.

  28. Adys Cupull and Froilán González, Che: Entre la multitud (Havana, Editorial Capitán San Luis, 1995), pp. 69–70.

  29. Central Intelligence Agency, “Current Intelligence Weekly Summary,” August 24, 1961 (Secret), p. 12, Weekly Review.

  30. Department of State, Cuban Economic Mission to the Sino-Soviet Bloc, Intelligence Report No. 8430, March 23, 1961 (Secret), p. 3.

  31. Arturo Frondizi, interview in Página 12 (Buenos Aires), October 8, 1992, p. 11.

  32. Carlos Castello Branco, A renúncia de Janio (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Revan, 1996), p. 61.

  33. Luis Bruschtein and Carlos María Gutiérrez, “Che Guevara, Los Hombres de la historia,” Página 12 (Buenos Aires), p. 5.

  34. Ernesto Che Guevara, interview in Al-Tal-’ah (Cairo), April 1965, published in Rolando E. Bonachea and Nelson R Valdés, eds., Che: Selected Works of Ernesto Guevara (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969), p. 408.

  35. Régis Debray, Loués soient nos seigneurs (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), p. 179.

  36. Ernesto Che Guevara, interview by Juan Carlos Portantiero, in Che (Argentina), July 27, 1961, quoted in Hugo Gambini, El Che Guevara (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1968), pp. 342–343.

  37. Executive Committee of the Central Planning Board, Decision No. 11, April 1961, quoted in Ernesto Che Guevara, Ministry of Industries Minutes, p. 731. Originally the final volume in Guevara’s Obras Completas, the Minutes had a limited special distribution and is (as stated previously) not available to the general public.

  38. Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy, Socialism in Cuba (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), p. 24.

  39. Ibid., p. 49.

  40. British Embassy to Earl of Home, January 11, 1962, p. 8.

  41. MID-1265-16-IV-61, Sergei Kudriavtsev, “Memorandum of Conversation of April 14, 1961, with the Minister of Industry Ernesto Guevara,” April 26, 1961 (Secret), Archives of the Foreign Ministry, Moscow.

  42. Dudley Seers, Richard Jolly, Andrés Bianchi, and Max Nolff, Cuba: The Economic and Social Revolution (Raleigh: University of North Carolina Press, 1963), quoted in Gambini, El Che, p. 381.

  43. Theodore Draper, Castroism, Theory and Practice (New York: Praeger, 1965), p. 152.

  44. “Ernesto Guevara to Anastas Mikoyan,” June 30, 1961 (no classification), Archives of the Foreign Ministry, Moscow.

  45. Thomas, Cuba, p. 1706.

  46. “Ernesto Che Guevara, intervención televisada,” March 1962, quoted in Robert E. Quirk, Fidel Castro (New York: Norton, 1993), p. 402.

  47. MID-366, Sergei Kudriavtsev, “Notes on Conversation of December 8, 1961, with the Minister of Industry Ernesto Guevara,” December 18, 1961 (Secret), Archives of the Foreign Ministry, Moscow.

  48. Thomas, Cuba, p. 1705.

  49. Gustavo Arcos-Bergnés, interview with the author, Havana, August 25, 1995.

  50. Alfredo Guevara, conversation with the author, Havana, January 23, 1996.

  51. Ibid.

  52. Executive Committee of the Central Planning Board, Decision No. 11.

  53. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Contra el burocratismo,” in Guevara, Obra revolucionaria, p. 545.

  54. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Sobre el sistema presupuestario de financiamiento,” in Guevara, Obra revolucionaria, p. 599.

  55. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Discurso en la primera reunión nacional de producción,” August 27, 1961, in Guevara, Escritos y discursos, vol. 5, pp. 211, 212, 213, 221.

  56. Charles Bettelheim, interview with the author, Paris, February 5, 1996.

  57. Guevara, Minutes, p. 177.

  58. Ibid., p. 216.

  59. MID-010171-20-VI-62, Ernesto Che Guevara, quoted in Sergei Kudriavtsev, “Memorandum of Conversation of May 8, 1962, with the Minister of Industries Ernesto Guevara,” May 21, 1962 (Top Secret), Archives of the Foreign Ministry, Moscow.

  60. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Discurso en el seminario sobre planificación en Argelia,” in Ernesto Che Guevara, Temas económicos (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1988), p. 210.

  61. Ibid., p. 211.

  62. Ibid., p. 213.

  63. Ibid.

  64. Cf., for example, “Memorandum of Conversation Between President Kennedy and President López Mateos,” Mexico City, June 29, 1962 (Secret), FRUS 1961–1963, p. 312.

  65. Sergo Mikoyan, quoted in James G. Blight and David A. Welch, On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991), p. 249.

  66. Aleksandr Alexeiev, interview with the author, Moscow, October 28, 1995.

  67. Ibid.

  68. Fidel Castro, “Transcripción de sus palabras en la conferencia sobre la Crisis del Caribe,” Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Havana, January 11, 1992, quoted in The National Security Archive, Lawrence Chang and Peter Kornbluh, eds., The Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: The New Press, 1992), p. 332.

  69. Theodore Sorensen, quoted in Blight and Welch, On the Brink, p. 28.

  70. McGeorge Bundy, quoted in Blight and Welch, On the Brink, p. 249.

  71. Robert McNamara, quoted in Blight and Welch, On the Brink, p. 249.

  72. Sergo Mikoyan, quoted in Blight and Welch, On the Brink, p. 239.

  73. Robert McNamara, Foreword, in Chang and Kornbluh, eds., Missile Crisis, p. xii.

  74. Sergo Mikoyan, quoted in Blight and Welch, On the Brink, p. 239.

  75. Oleg Daroussenkov, interview with the author, San Diego, Calif., February 8, 1996.

  76. Castro, “Transcripción de sus palabras,” p. 333.

  77. Emilio Aragonés, interview with the author, Havana, January 23, 1996.

  78. Ibid.

  79. Alexeiev, interview.

  80. Ibid.

  81. Fidel Castro, quoted in Blight and Welch, On the Brink, p. 85.

  82. Aragonés, interview.

  83. Emilio Aragonés, quoted in Blight and Welch, On the Brink, p. 351.

  84. Castro, “Transcripción de sus palabras,” p. 337.

  85. McNamara, Foreword, pp. xii–xiii.

  86. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “Four Days with Castro, A Havana Diary,” in the New York Review of Books, March 16, 1992.

  87. U.S. estimates are quoted in Blight and Welch, On the Brink, p. 382, note 26. McNamara gives the same figure, in Foreword, pp. xii, xiii.

  88. W. W. Rostow to the President, September 3, 1962 (Top Secret and Sensitive), quoted in Chang and Kornbluh, eds., Missile Crisis, p. 67.

  89. Fidel Castro, quoted in Chang and Kornbluh, eds., Missile Crisis, p. 380.

  90. Ibid.

  91. Quoted in K. S. Karol, Les Guérilleros au Pouvoir (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1970), p. 260.

  92. Nikita Khrushchev, letter to Fidel Castro, January 31, 1963, published in Chang and Kornbluh, eds., Missile Crisis, pp. 319–329.

  93. Rafael del Pino, interview with the author, Washington, D.C., September 30, 1995.

  94. Ibid.

  95. Ibid.

  96
. Ricardo Rojo, Mi amigo el Che (Buenos Aires: Editorial Legasa, 1985; first edition, 1968), p. 150.

  97. Daroussenkov, interview.

  98. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Táctica y estrategia de la revolutión latinoamericana,” Verde Olivo (Havana), October 6, 1968, p. 16.

  99. Aleksandr Alexeiev, interview.

  Chapter 8:

  With Fidel, Neither Marriage Nor Divorce

  1. Canek Sánchez Guevara, interview with the author, Havana, January 26, 1996.

  2. Ricardo Rojo, Mi amigo el Che (Buenos Aires: Editorial Legasa, pp. 160–161.

  3. Ernesto Che Guevara, “Cuba ¿Exceptión histórica o vanguardia en la lucha anticolonialista?”, in Ernesto Che Guevara, Obra revolucionaria (Mexico City: Ediciones ERA, 1969), p. 525. All the quotes from this essay are taken from this edition.

  4. Ernesto Goldar, “John William Cooke: de Perón al Che Guevara,” in Todo es historia (Buenos Aires), vol. 25, no. 288, p. 26.

  5. Adys Cupull and Froilán González, Un hombre bravo (Havana: Editorial San Luis, 1994), p. 219.

  6. Amalio Rey, interview with the author, Cordoba, November 25, 1994.

  7. Letter from some Argentine friends to Alcira de la Peña, Center for the Storage of Contemporary Documents, Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, file 89, list 28, document 16, Moscow.

  8. This was recounted by a leader of Cuban women, Carolina Aguilar, quoted in Marta Rojas and Mirta Rodriguez, Tania: La guerrillera inolvidable (Havana: Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1970), p. 110.

  9. Amalio Rey, interview.

  10. K. S. Karol, Les Guérilleros au Pouvoir (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1970), p. 323.

  11. Dolores Moyano Martín, “From El Cid to El Che: The Hero and the Mystique of Liberation in Latin America, The World and I, February 1998, p. 571.

  12. Ahmed Ben Bella, interview with the author, Geneva, November 4, 1995.

  13. Piero Gleijeses, “Cuba’s First Venture in Africa: Algeria, 1961–1965,” Journal of Latin American Studies (London University), no. 28, Spring 1996.

  14. Jorge Serguera, interview with the author, Havana, January 23, 1996.

  15. Juan E. Benemelis, Castro subversion y terrorismo en Africa (Madrid: San Martin, 1988), p. 46.

  16. Gleijeses, “Cuba’s First Venture,” pp. 187–188.