Hunting Che

by Mitch Weiss

  La Cabaña was a gray stone prison. In January 1959, Che’s men captured it and used it as a revolutionary headquarters. During his five-month tenure there, Guevara oversaw the kangaroo courts and summary executions of hundreds of what he termed war criminals, traitors, informants, and former members of Batista’s secret police. It was a bloodbath, a purge of anyone who might have opposed the Cuban Revolution.

  For Rodríguez, this mission would be his best chance for payback.

  Rodríguez returned to the apartment. The planning began, and continued over the next several weeks. They had to work around several obstacles set up by the United States itself. Ambassador Henderson had banned Americans from operating in guerrilla areas, so the Green Berets were already in Bolivia training the Bolivian Ranger Battalion, but they could not accompany the Rangers into the combat zone. But Villoldo and Rodríguez were Cubans, not Americans. They could get around the directive. They would travel under cover as Cuban nationals—U.S. residents looking at business opportunities in Bolivia.

  “You’ll fly into La Paz,” Bill briefed them. “The Bolivians know who you are, but this cover should throw off the press and Cuban agents.”

  Once on the ground, Villoldo and Rodríguez would split up.

  “Gustavo will lead a training course on intelligence-gathering for ten Bolivian soldiers. You, Félix, will work in Santa Cruz at the Bolivian headquarters. You know the radios; you can keep everyone connected and informed,” Bill said.

  The CIA man handed Rodríguez dossiers on his Bolivian counterparts: Colonel Joaquin Zenteno Anaya and Major Arnaldo Saucedo.

  “Get to know these guys,” Bill said.

  Rodríguez knew that brutality was common in Bolivia. The officers treated their own troops harshly and prisoners worse. High on Rodríguez’s list was convincing Zenteno and Saucedo that treating prisoners well worked better than beating and threatening them.

  He also looked forward to getting a look at the documents captured at the abandoned guerrilla camps in the Rio Nancahuazu valley. He knew the papers often were the most valuable. Guerrillas were pack rats, and Rodríguez knew they had books, papers, diaries, and codebooks with them.

  For two weeks, Rodríguez and Villoldo studied Bolivia. The briefings, held in the rented apartment, covered the current military and political situation. They were brought up to date on the backgrounds and attitudes of all the key players. Rodríguez created a signal plan and a tapping code for the radios. Transmissions would be relayed through a station in La Paz, to overcome the high mountain obstacles.

  The pair took particular pains with the dossier of Debray, the captured French Marxist.

  They combed over Debray’s interrogation transcripts, hoping to find some scrap of useful information.

  Debray had fallen victim to Bolivian police tactics, which translated to being slowly beaten to death. CIA operative Gabriel Garcia had stepped in and saved Debray’s life. Garcia interrogated Debray for days after his arrest, and the Frenchman gave up everything he knew about the guerrilla’s operations.

  Rodríguez took particular note of a rebel named Castillo Chavez, known as Paco. Debray said the young Bolivian complained frequently about being lied to by the Communist Party. Paco was a thirty-year-old upholsterer who was recruited with promises of an education in Havana and Moscow. Instead, the Communists sent him to a guerrilla camp, where he was issued a gun and a heavy backpack and forced to march over the mountains. Rodríguez knew that if they could get to Paco, he’d be a valuable resource.

  Paco was his target.

  After weeks of study and discussion, Rodríguez was eager to leave for Bolivia and get to work. There was no doubt in Rodríguez’s mind that if Che was in Bolivia, they would find him. But before they left Washington, they had to sort out what to do when they caught Che.

  Bring him back alive, Bill told them.

  “If by any chance Che is captured alive, which is very doubtful, try to keep him alive,” Bill said. “Try and keep him alive at all costs, and we will make arrangements to fly him to Panama. Planes and choppers will be standing by if the situation presents itself.”

  PART TWO

  PREPARATION

  CHAPTER 9

  The Trainers

  The Rangers-to-be straggled into La Esperanza in early May in jeeps and troop trucks. Drawn from cities and villages throughout Bolivia, they were almost all illiterate and undernourished. Dirty beige fatigues hung off their bony frames.

  Shelton watched them unload and fought back an attack of despair. He had only four and a half months to make Rangers of them.

  The first six weeks would be hardest: basic individual training—boot camp. The Bolivians would learn to handle and fire weapons and endure tough physical training. Shoot, move, and communicate—the basic soldier skills. They had only one way to go: up. They had to improve.

  While Shelton spoke Spanish, he needed a liaison with the Bolivian men, an officer he could trust, someone with some experience. Shelton turned to Captain Margarito Cruz. “Let’s go talk to the Bolivian officers,” he said.

  Cruz followed Shelton from their operations center over to the sugar mill, where the Bolivians were gathering. Among the sad-sack soldiers stood a tall Bolivian officer in a crisp, freshly pressed uniform. Other officers gravitated around the man. He seemed well liked.

  “Hablas inglés?” Shelton asked the officer.

  “Yes, sir,” the man responded.

  Shelton shook his hand. “I’m Major Pappy Shelton, U.S. Special Forces.”

  “I’m Captain Gary Prado Salmon, Braun Eighth Cavalry Group, sir.”

  Shelton smiled. “Cavalry, huh?”

  They spoke in English for the next half hour, discussing tactics and counterinsurgency. Shelton said he was the commander of the Green Beret team. Prado told him about his training in Panama, and that his father was a Bolivian general. The more they talked, the more Shelton liked Prado.

  “Look around you,” Shelton said. “I have nineteen weeks to train this battalion. We don’t have time to dwell on any one skill. I need to know how the men are picking up the lessons. I need a Bolivian officer to report on their progress. Can you do that, Captain?”

  “With pleasure, sir,” Prado said. He felt himself blush red with excitement.

  They would meet every day in late afternoon, Shelton said. And he wanted an honest assessment. No bullshit.

  Prado smiled. “I will always speak my mind.”

  “Now, let’s see what we can cut from this training. I’m not going to waste time on things they’re not going to use. We don’t need marching or parade drills. It’s unnecessary. We have to train them to fight.”

  Shelton and Prado were to meet with the Bolivian commanders that night to look over the planned program and assign weekly goals. The entire Second Ranger Battalion—all 650 men—would be in La Esperanza by May 8, when training would begin in earnest. Prado would serve as Shelton’s advisor, to help tailor the regimen to the Bolivians’ needs and abilities.

  “You are going to be an important part of this training, Captain,” Shelton told the young officer.

  Prado was proud. He had just arrived and had just earned the trust of this important figure. “I liked him from the beginning,” Prado recalled later. “The other officers were more reserved, but Shelton was more open.”

  The commander’s next order of business was the villagers. Local rapport was vital to Special Forces missions because the neighbors saw and heard things that a foreigner might miss. The village “grapevine” was an intelligence network in itself, an early warning system. If the villagers knew anything, and they trusted the Americans, they might volunteer information about the guerrillas. They had to wonder what the hell the Americans were doing there. They deserved some answers, Shelton thought.

  So while the rest of the team was setting up communication wires and digging latrines, Shelto
n decided to do some public relations. He went back to his room, opened his guitar case, and pulled out his pawnshop Gibson. He asked Milliard to walk him into town.

  “You know the key players already,” Shelton said. “Let’s meet them.”

  They grabbed Captains Fricke and Cruz, and the men went door to door, meeting some of the shopkeepers and village elders. They talked to the mayor—Erwin Bravo—and other shopkeepers. They introduced themselves to Jorge, a teacher at the dilapidated schoolhouse.

  Shelton told them why the soldiers were there, how long they would stay, and the kind of training they would be conducting. The Rangers would stay until the end of September, and when that was done, they’d conduct more exercises with other Bolivian units. The trainers wanted to be home by Christmas, Shelton said. The village could return to normal with the New Year.

  Meantime, they intended to benefit La Esperanza however they could. Special Forces medics would provide free health care to villagers. If anyone had questions or problems, they could be brought directly to Shelton, who was in charge of the entire operation.

  Furthermore, the soldiers would need to hire locals to cook, do laundry, and run errands. The Americans had money. They would spend it there, in the village.

  The mayor told Shelton they’d been leery of the strangers and put off by the lack of information. Now that he had some facts, he would spread the word. The mayor then conducted a village tour, ending it up at the three-room schoolhouse on the edge of town. About 280 children from La Esperanza and surrounding villages came to classes there, but the building was falling apart. There were no public funds for maintaining the building, the mayor said with a shrug of his shoulders.

  Shelton shook his head in disbelief. He didn’t want to make any promises, but he felt compelled to do something. He would give the problem some thought, he said.

  The tour ended at Kiosko Hugo. The store was the village center, where everyone stopped for a cold drink and a chat. Shelton stepped onto the porch and began tuning his guitar. He was a self-taught guitarist. He wasn’t much good, but he wasn’t shy about playing in public. He loved all types of music: blues, rock and roll, country. Once he learned to play, he was never short of entertainment.

  So standing there outside the Bolivian general store, Shelton strummed the chords to one of his favorite songs: “Mr. Shorty,” a Marty Robbins country song about life and death in an old West bar.

  The Bolivian men smiled and gathered closer. They tapped their toes and hummed along. Shelton couldn’t sing a lick, but it didn’t matter. A couple of the villagers hurried home and returned with their own guitars, and after Shelton finished, they started in playing Bolivian folk tunes. Shelton tried to follow along. He missed a few chords here and there, but he kept going, bobbing his head and flashing his smile as he played. Shelton had a blast. With just a few chords, he’d started winning them over.

  * * *

  Sergeant Mario Salazar leapt from the back of the troop truck and dropped his duffel bag in the dirt. This was it. He had made it to La Esperanza. A warehouse by the sugar mill would be the barracks, and if he hurried he could grab a good bunk. But Salazar stood in place. He needed time to think.

  He’d been waiting for this moment since joining the army. When he heard about the ambushes, Salazar took his patriotic fury to the army recruiting office. When he heard about the new Ranger unit, he asked to join that, too. If he was going to risk his life, he wanted to be with the best. Now here he was, ready to take the first steps on that journey.

  I can do this, he thought.

  Salazar was a short, stout twenty-one-year-old with muscular arms. He wore his black hair short and parted to the side. His thick hands had deep scars from working in the fields. Salazar was a farmer, like his father had been before him. He never knew his father—he died before Salazar was born—but his mother, Angelina, filled him with stories of the old man’s hardworking honesty.

  Salazar was the man of the house. His mother had two more children after his father died, but it was Mario who raised fields of watermelon, peppers, corn, and beans to support them all.

  Salazar had actually thought about enlisting the year before, when a friend joined up, but there still were crops in the field. After the attacks, he couldn’t wait any longer.

  The day arrived for him to leave, and his mother cried. Salazar made her a cup of coffee and sat down with her at the kitchen table. He promised to be careful, promised to send her at least ten of the twenty-five bolivianos he’d be paid each month. Every young man in Bolivia was eventually drafted, he said. It was their duty to serve for a year.

  Yes, she responded between tears, but they didn’t face real combat. They just trained and marched and played soldier. They didn’t have to fight Che Guevara.

  People in the countryside were sure Che was out there. Some were spreading tales of robbery, kidnapping, murder of innocent civilians. The radio waves and newspapers were filled with so much talk about guerrillas that Salazar didn’t know what to believe. But he knew he couldn’t stay at home.

  He was going to be a Ranger—an elite soldier in a country with a poor military tradition. Salazar was proud to be part of a unit that could turn around Bolivia’s troubled army. That’s why he was here—to get ready for action. Like so many Bolivians, he wanted to avenge the deaths of his countrymen, to purge these Communist foreigners from the countryside.

  Salazar looked at the sugar mill in the waning light and whispered a prayer: “Jesus of great power, have mercy on me and make me strong.” It was a prayer he said in the fields at home when the sun drained away his energy, when he felt he couldn’t work anymore. He added a line of his own. He promised Jesus he would train hard—no matter what. That he would keep moving forward, no matter how tired.

  Salazar made the sign of the cross, picked up his kit, and headed into the barracks.

  CHAPTER 10

  179 Days

  General Ovando, commander of the Bolivian armed forces, decided it was time for decisive action. Ovando and Barrientos were longtime friends, close in age, but Ovando took a decidedly parental role. Where Barrientos had flamboyant charisma, Ovando had quiet gravitas—and the unwavering support of the Bolivian elite.

  Ovando commanded respect. He looked like a general, tall and thin with a receding hairline and a pencil-thin mustache. He was always impeccably dressed—his uniforms tailored and shirts freshly pressed.

  He was forty-nine years old, and his military career dated back to the Chaco War. When the guerrilla attacks sent the country and the president into a frenzy of fear, it was Ovando who urged calm, and kept foreign nations updated on the insurgency. While Barrientos boasted that he would crush the guerrillas, Ovando convinced Bolivia’s neighbors and friends that it was in their own interest to send them weapons. If Bolivia fell, they might, too.

  Ovando encouraged Barrientos to keep the United States in the loop. Barrientos called on Bolivia’s ambassador to Washington, Julio Sanjines-Goytia, a West Point graduate with Pentagon ties. Wealthy and charming, Sanjines-Goytia was friends with many senators and key U.S. military men who attended his fabulous Washington parties. Now it was time to call in some favors.

  Sanjines-Goytia appealed to U.S. secretary of state Dean Rusk, asking the United States do nothing about the insurgency for now but increase Bolivia’s financial aid. Barrientos wanted $6 million—including $4 million in direct military cash.

  Rusk liked the idea. There was little support for U.S. military intervention while the Vietnam War continued to escalate. Rusk brought up the plan during an April 9 meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the Che Guevara crisis.

  CIA director Richard Helms shot down the idea, saying the Bolivians could not be trusted with the money. He came prepared with bar graphs and charts. Helms showed how U.S. funds sent to keep civil service payrolls up to date had disappeared. Bolivian government employees, he said, hadn’t been paid f
or months.

  Bolivians had also squandered a fund to buy cross-country vehicles essential for counterinsurgency operations. Instead of buying rugged 4x4s, the Bolivians had invested in a fleet of Mini Mokes—light jeep-style military vehicles. The Mokes’ small wheels and low ground clearance made them impractical for off-road use. There was no way a Mini Moke could hope to get within shooting distance of Che’s hideout.

  Army chief of staff General Harold Johnson made another point: “One of the most important lessons we have learned in Vietnam is that guerrilla flare-ups must be smothered immediately, without a moment’s delay.” Johnson said the army was already planning to send some advisors, and maybe troops.

  Rusk interrupted Johnson, reminding him of the president’s position: No U.S. fighting units in South America. No U.S. soldiers on the ground. It was a policy being pushed by Ambassador Henderson, who had State Department support.

  “We urge that this hands-off policy be maintained,” Rusk told the generals sitting at the table. “I know that something must be done about this problem,” he said, but sending American troops into Bolivia, even as advisors “would mean the fat’s in the fire.”

  The Green Berets were the only American troops going to Bolivia, and only as trainers.

  When Barrientos heard about the push-back from Washington, he was incensed. He wanted military supplies and money—not Green Berets training campesinos. What good would that do?

  Ovando told Barrientos that he would ask other nations for military aid. He assured Barrientos that the Bolivian military would prevail. And when the guerrillas were wiped out and stability returned, the Bolivian Army would have new weapons and equipment.

  Ovando knew that was easier said than done. They still had no idea how many guerrillas they were facing. He was sure the Communists were using the unrest to recruit new soldiers.