by Ciro Bustos
Che added that he could not go much further in the Cuban process. He had given his life to the Revolution but a revolutionary life was not to be wasted behind a desk. He sincerely believed, without false modesty, that he still had a role to play, and by playing it in Argentina he would serve the Revolution in South America as a whole. For this initial stage, he needed our help. We had to learn as much as we could in these classes, and remember how much they were costing the Revolution in increasingly difficult times. It was a bitter pill to swallow, knowing the resources being put at his disposal when every single man, every single dollar, taken from the Cuban budget was a sacrifice. We could not prolong the training more than strictly necessary. We needed to take responsibility for the project – under his leadership – as soon as possible, but Cuba would cover a minimum of the essential organizational support. Our task, as a group, was to keep ourselves safe, establish the camp in Argentina, familiarize ourselves with the region, increase our numbers, and avoid combat until he arrived.
He would visit us as often as he could while we were in Cuba, hopefully once a week, but he could not be sure. The climate of aggression against Cuba was a sign that new attacks were on the way, and we had to be ready by then. But we shouldn’t feel we had to sit there in silence: that is, if we had any doubts or things we did not agree with, we should say so, not keep it to ourselves, because soon it would be impossible to withdraw.
He gave us the floor, but as often happens at conferences with a non-professional audience, no one had anything to say. Masetti, on the extreme right of the table, looked at us as if he had asked a question. Fabián played with a pencil, as if he was taking the minutes. Me, in the centre, looked at the others, while Basilio and Miguel, to my left, looked at the floor. Overcome by embarrassment and a sense of the ridiculous, but mostly because I thought saying nothing showed a lack of respect, I spoke. It is impossible to reconstruct my ‘discourse’, more or less a series of wobbly questions. The overpowering impact of Che’s presence drowned out every sound that did not come from him.
I think I asked if we would be supported by any kind of organization once we got there. The reply: none at all, creating them is part of the task. I think I showed a certain incredulity at the disproportionate odds – half a dozen men versus millions. I remember his reply: in Cuba they were only a handful and they won. I think I insisted that, in Cuba, they had been a handful – many more when they had disembarked – but that the 26th of July Movement had been waiting in the wings. It was not the same, he retorted, to go in on a war footing after an event like the Moncada, as it was to go in clandestinely with an exploratory project: the 26th of July Movement came out of a previous isolated experience. I think I evoked the somewhat indigestible image of an ant on the edge of a three million square kilometre cake, and behind the ant image I suggested that our cause would have to prosper from the periphery towards the interior, not the other way round. I also brought up Argentina’s unresolved internal political conflict, Peronism. His reply was that Argentina’s problem is the dependence and poverty of its people while its wealth is in foreign hands. Peronism is only a symptom; for the struggle, the sickness is what counts.
I think that was how I explained my most immediate doubts, and they were not dismissed. On the contrary, they were adopted as subjects for further discussion. The meeting ended at dawn. Hermes mobilized the bodyguards and Che said goodbye with a mixture of exhaustion and satisfaction.
Classes resumed with renewed gusto. The team of instructors was joined by experts in radio-communications, telegraphy, self-defence, use of telescopic sights for light artillery, bazookas, mortars and recoil-less rifles – all weapons which can be easily captured from the enemy but are no use at all if you don’t know how they work. Our instructors put a huge effort into teaching us the most exquisite details of warfare technology. Weapons exert a fascination, they mean danger. Despite their amazing technology, all weapons are horrible. Yet some have the fascination of horror.
We were choosing the best automatic weapons, weighing up size, weight and the most universal calibres. We left out some supposedly superior Soviet ones for the obvious reason that there were none in Argentina. The US infantry had developed a practically indestructible machine gun, the M3: a .45 calibre made completely of steel, with an enormous covered bolt the size of a piston – like a ghetto blaster. It had a hugely destructive capacity, but was very heavy. My preference for it was unfortunate, because I had trouble carrying it later on. The arms manufacturer, Fabricaciones Militares, had acquired the rights to make it in Argentina, although it was reproduced in .22 calibre, much lighter but just as effective.
Our apprenticeship continued, both theoretical and practical, and a constant stream of experts fought for the best and largest number of class hours. Well into the course, a special guest appeared, his visit cloaked in secrecy. He was a general and hero twice over, Spanish and Soviet. Masetti introduced him as Angelito. Over sixty, in a uniform without insignia, he was certainly angelic looking, not very tall, a bit chubby and balding, but a picture of health. He was quietly mannered and spoke excellent Spanish. Angelito said he would be lending a critical eye to some of our training sessions. He began there and then. During our stops for rest and food, he talked animatedly, picking our brains no doubt to see if we had any residue of intelligence.
Angelito was an admirer of Che’s guerrilla tactics in the Sierra Maestra, and especially in the Escambray, a combination of guerrilla warfare and permanent German blitzkrieg which was now studied in Soviet military academies. Angelito had known defeat as well as victory, bitterness and glory. After the final Republican defeat in the Spanish Civil War, he had gone into exile in the Soviet Union with the Communist Party’s combat contingent. There he had joined the Red Army and taken part in the victorious offensive right up to the fall of Berlin. Now also a Soviet general, the Soviet Communist Party’s central committee had sent him to Cuba to advise on the creation of a new-style professional army. Despite his age, he proved he was in magnificent physical shape by doing back flips from a standing position, like a gymnast. He considered fitness of paramount importance. His name was Francisco Ciutat, a Catalan.
‘Russian’ weapons had begun appearing in Cuba. First to arrive were rifles (Czech actually) and the cylindrical barrelled ‘Pepechá’ machine gun, famed for its role in the fall of Berlin. Next to come were the ‘four mouth’ anti-aircraft guns which fired from four barrels simultaneously. They were being placed in strategic positions round the city, and were also seen being driven round on the backs of new Soviet lorries. The comandantes were now sporting the Macarov, a .45 calibre pistol with a quick-fire burst option that left any target like a colander. And finally, the ‘best rifle in the world’, the AK47, plus heavy artillery, tanks, etc. But they were just small beer. The big fish did not get much press, although rumours reached even our chaste ears.
The Soviets were building sites for intercontinental missiles. Nuclear perhaps? Between his first visit to our bunker and his second, Che had been to the USSR, talked to Khrushchev and signed military cooperation agreements that included bases and installations on Cuban soil for defensive purposes: radar, ground to ground missiles, ground to air missiles, etc. And why not strategic? Che did not talk to us about this level of military secrets, naturally, but after his trip he appeared less pessimistic. He seemed to be expecting large-scale confrontations and seemed almost to be welcoming them. He urged us to finish our training as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, each member of our group began to specialize, almost by natural selection, following an army unit’s classic division of labour into operations, logistics, intelligence and communications. Masetti decided Basilio would be best at operations, Fabián at communications (as well as health), Miguel at logistics, and me at security and intelligence. We began having our classes separately, except for shooting practice and fitness. We also had medical and dental check-ups and I asked them to take an urgent look at my bronchitis, already turning to ast
hma. I wanted to follow Che’s example, but not to that extent!
The training took a new turn, more romantic and scientific. I got very attracted to secrecy. Everything I was taught was secret, for my exclusive use. My self-defence instructor argued, realistically, that learning enough karate to fight even a beginner would take me a couple of years, so he concentrated on techniques to help me escape attacks from behind, or the pincer movements police used, adding a couple of ‘lethal’ blows for when I needed them. Fortunately, I never had occasion to use them.
October 1962 was a war of nerves, and of words. Accusations flew back and forth between the US administration and the Cuban Revolution. No one appeared to want to give way or try to relax the tension. On the contrary, diplomatic events added fuel to the fire. Ben Bella, having recently taken power in Algeria, arrived in Cuba in the middle of September, evidence of previous anti-imperialist collaboration. Anatole Gromyko, the Soviet foreign minister on a visit to the US, said the weapons delivered to Cuba were purely defensive. But on 22 October, Kennedy appeared on television, the U2 photos in his hand, to denounce the USSR for installing long-range strategic missiles in Cuba. In retaliation, he announced a naval blockade. Cuba declared a state of emergency, put its combat troops on the alert, and called for general mobilization. Che was made Commander of Western Forces – from Havana to the western tip of the island – presumably the first combat zone in the case of an invasion. If the Americans landed, they would not repeat the mistakes they made at the Bay of Pigs. They would try to secure one end of the island, with easy air and sea access, and a single military front.
9
Prague, Paris and Algiers: November–December 1962
The streets of Havana had lost their usual ebullience. Military trucks went by loaded with troops and militias. Sand bags were piled up at the entrances to buildings, and anti-aircraft guns set up in the city’s squares. The people, usually so laid-back, became hurried and frantic. An electrifying collective anxiety seemed to have possessed those still trying to get onto overcrowded buses and trucks. Manolito dropped me off at the Revolutionary Armed Forces’ hospital in the centre of Havana. It was assumed I would be treated for my bronchial infection and taken straight back to the house; Che wanted our group transferred to Pinar del Río, where his Western Command headquarters was. But the doctor who saw me was a comandante as well as head of the Pulmonary Infections Department and, although he understood the urgency, he was the one setting the timetable. After a series of tests, including a basal metabolism, he ordered a massive attack of antibiotics and ten injections of ten cubic centimetres of aminophylline to be applied twice a day. Five days of jabs, all told. ‘You’ll leave here good as new, chico, straight to the front’, he said, as if stopping the Yankee marine corps single-handed depended on me. So I was hospitalized, and the support team came to tell me my compañeros had left for Pinar del Río.
The hospital was a modern, well-equipped building several storeys high. I was put in a three- or four-bed room on the tenth floor with a panoramic view. Being a military hospital, it was like a first-rate barracks. The leisure room TV worked but only on one channel: the missile crisis. The chairs were occupied by patients with differing degrees of illness but all predicted certain defeat for the imperialist invaders. Recently operated-upon patients and even those on their death beds demanded their clothes and weapons so they could join up again. Only notices on the walls and a finger on the lips of a beautiful nurse reminded us there should be silence. Doctors appeared, dripping scalpels in hands, at the slightest sign of news or a speech by Fidel. It was war-time euphoria given the military nature of the place, but was nonetheless typical of what the country was going through. The Cubans were ready to be incinerated rather than let arrogant imperialists ride roughshod over them.
The climate of confrontation got worse by the day. The island was blockaded to prevent the passage of Soviet cargo ships, their decks lined with more missiles, as the U2 photographs on US television showed. Looking out to sea, you could see US gunboats anchored at the limits of international waters. US planes violated Cuban airspace every day. On 25 October, a missile from one of the Soviet launch pads brought down one of the notorious spy planes. A rumour went round, Masetti told us later, that Fidel was visiting a Soviet missile site, and Russian officers were showing him the sophisticated control panels, with radar monitors giving precise positions. At that very moment, a high altitude U2 entered Cuban airspace. Putting theory and practice together, the Russian officer demonstrated step by step the sequence of maximum combat alert (deactivation of the security shield, activation of firing mechanisms) as the screen showed the U2 reaching the centre of the island.
‘And now what?’ asked the Commander in Chief. ‘If we get an order to attack, we press this button, the radar guides the missiles, and the plane is destroyed’, the Russian officer replied. To everyone’s amazement, Fidel stretched out his long arm and pressed the button, murmuring ‘Let’s see if it’s true, coño!’ That the U2 was destroyed was certainly true. Two hundred thousand marines hurriedly boarded their transport planes, the Flying Fortresses filled their holds with bombs, Cuban soldiers said goodbye to their families, and whoever could do so downed a large shot of rum, in case it was his last.
With bruised arms, perforated by needles, I went off to join my comrades at the front. My journey was in vain, however, because a few hours after rejoining my group, Khrushchev agreed unilaterally to withdraw the missiles from Cuba in exchange for the US taking their missiles out of Turkey, and a commitment of non-aggression towards the island.
Che ordered our immediate return to training, intensified to cut short the timetable. On his second visit after we returned to the house in Havana, despite his exhaustion and sombre mood, he told us of the tension surrounding the crisis. The group had not seen him in Pinar del Río despite being near his headquarters in a cave in Los Portales, so we were all waiting expectantly. I remember him saying how he had been in a meeting with Fidel when there was a phone call from Carlos Franqui, editor of the newspaper Revolución. Fidel had thrown the phone onto the map table and, swivelling on his heels, had aimed a violent kick at a wall mirror, shattering it. No one had expected the Russians to take that decision.
Che was very pessimistic about the way the crisis had ended. He was sure that, left to its own devices, the US wanted to attack the Revolution and destroy it. Any other result would not be consistent with imperial intentions. They will never forgive Cuba for existing, and providing an example of a sovereign nation living in dignity and freedom. ‘You’, he said, ‘must pull out all the stops and finish the most important parts of your preparation. The mountains will take care of the physical stuff, but other parts you can’t do alone. I want you out of Cuba before November 15th.’
The classes increased and changed, especially mine. A jeep collected me every morning and brought me back at night. I spent hours working on keys and codes, encrypted and unencrypted, counter-intelligence techniques, methods of disinformation, interrogation and counter-interrogation, which in the end, was the only knowledge I ever used in critical situations. A lot of emphasis was put on the moral cost of such activities. Of what you must be prepared to sacrifice in order to be effective: family, pride, reputation, privileges, and life itself as a last resort. My instructors, who had been trained by the Soviets, probably the best espionage school in the world, had a lot of practical experience. I heard detailed accounts of unsung heroes who had given up everything, left their loved ones in that moral maze of ignorance, assumed another respectable (at the same time horrendous) identity, gone undercover to infiltrate Cuban counter-revolutionary groups in Miami, and stayed there indefinitely working for Cuban intelligence. As I learned all this, I felt as though it was a living death.
Yet intelligence did actually work in Cuba. The long lists of thwarted attempts by the US intelligence services to kill Prime Minister Castro and other leaders make the counter-intelligence team justifiably proud. But in the end, it is do
wn to the undercover agents who pay with their honour. They will never be vindicated. We had to wait for the writer Norberto Fuentes to leave the country to discover that one of the ‘President’s men in the notorious Watergate case was a Cuban agent. The aim of the training was an almost perfect apprenticeship, but “if you screw up, chico, you screw up, we don’t know you”.’
At the same time, we worked on the details for our departure. In those days, Cuba had two ways out to the West for its ‘commercial’ flights (a euphemism because, one way or another, all the passengers were government officials): through Mexico or Prague. Our group would leave via Czechoslovakia, where we would wait for the infrastructure on the ground near the Bolivian–Argentine border to be put in place. The training programme had originally included a month’s combat experience of the ‘anti-bandit struggle’ in the Escambray mountains, but this was not going to be possible. Otherwise, our general preparation was good.