Che Wants to See You

by Ciro Bustos

  We made camp in the late afternoon, by order of Hermes, who being the expert exercised his authority quite naturally. Although dazzled by the magnitude around us, Hermes began to move around as if he had been born here. We were pretty well lost because our military map bore no resemblance to our surroundings, so although it was almost dark, Masetti ordered a search party to establish where we were.

  Leonardo was losing his sunny personality. There was nothing glorious about the harsh reality. There was no room for dreams, and rations were diminishing. Hard work, on the other hand, was ongoing. Daily chores demanded a certain predisposition, even taking a certain pleasure in things like cooking or making bread, and he had neither of them. Hermes, who bossed us about as if the campsite were his house in Cuba, was always having a go at him. Believe me, washing pots in a river or fighting with the fire when everyone else is sleeping is not very stimulating. Once, on his way to the river at dusk, Leonardo came over to where I was on guard duty, and complained bitterly. Curiously, it was not Hermes or the daily grind that upset him. It was Masetti’s authoritarianism, the harshness of his military regime, his personal treatment of us which showed none of the camaraderie we had spent months cultivating. The apparent arbitrary nature of Hermes’s actions were, according to Leonardo, only expressions of Masetti’s tendency to want to subjugate us, to turn us into mere puppets in a campaign for which he would take the credit. I agreed about the harshness of the treatment, although I had not given it much thought, but I knew we could not expect it to be otherwise. Masetti was responsible for a vital part of Che’s project: he couldn’t indulge in the normal niceties.

  After more than a week of exhausting marches, our provisions and energy were depleted, but we still had not left our zone or ventured south. We were moving like a pencil round the fingers of a hand, going up one ravine and down the next, unable to find a pass over the mountains. The end of the ravines met sheer cliffs, impossible to climb, at least in our condition and carrying such excessive weight. Hermes and Federico went exploring every day without success, and we ended up near the River Bermejo again, as if we had been moving in an impassable circle.

  That night in the quiet of the camp, Masetti made plans for the following day. We would walk to within a couple of kilometres of the river border and camp before midday in a safe place. From there I would go on and, if possible, go back across the border making visual notes and drawings of the mountain that was blocking our way.

  We were very near the chosen site. Around eleven, I left my backpack and guns and changed into creased civilian clothes. I set off with Hermes, walking along the almost dry bed of a tributary that flowed into the Bermejo. Hermes chose a strategic observation point which allowed him to see both where the rivers met and the road on the Bolivian side. He hid there. I crossed the river by an excellent ford, so shallow it covered no more than my boots. You could jump from stone to stepping stone that formed a dam before the two rivers met. There was not a soul in sight. I began walking south on the stony Bolivian road zigzagging between the hillside and the river, in the noisy canyon which this side of the ford regained its voice of stones being dragged along by the force of the water. It was sunny and the birds were singing. But I was detached from the landscape, like a Zulu on a trip to the Arctic. I could see that the mountain peaks on the Argentine side were enormous, and covered by dense jungle, like an impregnable fortress. After walking for an hour, it was obvious to me that only mountain climbers could pass there. I had walked about four kilometres when, rounding a bend, I came across one of those lay-bys beside the road where lorries can pull over. And there, thanks to the other Hermes, the Greek god of commerce, was a kiosk, servicing vehicles and, until that moment non-existent, passers-by. The little hut of corrugated iron had a counter selling fruit, bread and wine, juice, chorizo, mortadela, cheeses, flour, rice, charqui, potatoes, chillies, onions and tins of condensed milk, meat, fish and tomatoes. It was the emporium of a Colla who brought contraband goods from Argentina on the backs of his fellow Indians. Like a mirage, it was hard to believe despite seeing it, so I had to prove it by ordering a glass of red wine and a greasy chorizo. The man was not very talkative, but filled me in on the unusual whereabouts of his business, and by extension, of ours.

  We were some fifteen kilometres from the town of Bermejo, and the last police and customs checkpoint in Bolivia before the international bridge over the River Bermejo. On the other side was the Argentine border police post with more rigorous customs control, and a relatively short distance away, the nearest Argentine town, Aguas Blancas. The area is an easily controlled bottleneck because this was the only road, the only possible pass, down the river canyon. Family contraband was endemic. The cholas pass several times a day stacking the merchandise on this side, while their husbands bundle it up and wait for lorries to take them into the interior of Bolivia. Some, however, move some kilometres away from the road, to find more famished travellers to negotiate with. According to the Colla, the border police patrol the river banks behind their post, because some people prefer not to pay the droit du seigneur or abusive bribes in which the customs officers take a sadistic delight. I explained my presence by pretending my car had broken down a few kilometres up the road and that my whole family was waiting there with no food. A passing driver had promised to bring a spare part and had told me about this kiosk. I asked him for a jute sack and we began filling it with food, including coffee and sugar, cigarettes, all the chorizo he had, tins, charqui, cheese, bread, and the crowning glory, a two and-a-half-litre demijohn of that Mendoza wine with two glass handles, very popular in the north.

  By mid-afternoon, I was retracing my steps, my feet burning, disheartened, and the uncomfortable weight of the bag on my kidneys. I carried it over my shoulder, clutching it with my two hands; the demijohn slung across my chest by string tied to its handles. I might not arrive with the whole sack, but I was certainly going to bring the wine! The kilometres seemed endless. The landmarks I remembered most clearly seemed to have disappeared. Finally I reached the ford, hid behind a crag and waited until I was sure no one was around. Just before dark, with the sack bobbing on my back, I crossed the stepping stones. The river level seemed to have risen, but it was a relief to get in the water to finish passing the ford. I climbed the slope above the stream more calmly now in the last light of the day. Suddenly Hermes jumped out at me, with a radiant smile. I don’t know if he was pleased to see me or the load I was carrying. I gave him a chorizo as if I were offering him a Partagas cigar. He devoured it, and carrying the sack, set off up the hill. He had seen me arrive and wait patiently, deciding when to cross. He approved.

  Our arrival at the camp, with its three occupants dug in on a war footing, and Masetti displaying his best ill humour because we were late, turned into a gastronomic celebration. Nobody commented adversely on the wine, downing it with complete normality, despite it being on the prohibited list. Masetti listened to my report, returning again and again to the nature of the ford and the height of the mountains. I said the mountains were impassable and the ford was just as good, or better, than the first one we had crossed, although it was hard to judge since I had seen this one in daytime and the other one only at night. I could only go by the depth of the water and that, of course, could vary from one day to the next. According to Federico, the ford we had first chosen was the only possible one. ‘In that case it’s the same one,’ I argued, ‘we’ve gone round in a complete circle.’ Masetti considered this possibility. If, as I said, we had gone round in a circle up there, it could be the same ford. I preferred to leave the matter in their hands because I was not sure.

  By next morning, Masetti had a change of plan. The altitude indications on the military map showed that the peaks of the mountain chain coming from the Puna de Iruya were considerably less sharp about twenty kilometres before the town of Bermejo. So, to avoid the highest peaks, we had to go along the road and cross the mountains further down, halfway between where we were now and the international br
idge. He would go back to the finca and return with Furry in the jeep to get our stuff back across the ford. We would hide opposite the ford, as Hermes had done, and wait for them between two and three in the morning, thirty-six hours from now.

  More or less in civvies, with the beard and small backpack of a tropical drifter, Masetti set off on what was to be a long walk. He had to walk up to the base of the triangle and down the track to the finca; some twenty-five kilometres or so. With Hermes in charge, and having erased all trace of our presence, we stayed hidden on a slope of dense undergrowth, near a crystalline waterfall. The hours passed slowly.

  On the second night, we took up our position facing the ford. At the appointed time, a vehicle passed going south, but its lights blinded us. A few minutes later, another – the same one – came slowly back and stopped, blinking its headlights. We replied with the torch and started down to the river. Federico crossed first without a backpack to verify the identity of the contact. The rest followed. Masetti did not wait until we were on the bank, even before knowing who we were; he tore a strip off me in the middle of the river, because it was not the same ford, but ten kilometres further on, and he had had to walk twice the distance. As if it was my fault, as if any of us had been sure, as if I should recognize a place I had only passed once at night, a place the explorers among us had also thought was the same ford! So, if not the same, this one was better, and we would have saved ourselves days of useless, gruelling trekking if we had crossed lower down in the first place. Masetti was showing signs of his subsequent intolerance and his tendency to transfer responsibility for mistakes. In any case, he had decided we would all go back to the Bolivian finca while we looked for a way through further to the south.

  We loaded the jeep – and with it our bad mood, disappointment at our failure, and general humiliation – and drove in silence to the finca.

  13

  Making Contacts in the Cities: July–August 1963

  Meanwhile, the old political game continued to be played out on the Argentine stage. In March 1962, the coup against Frondizi’s developmentalist policies had put the agro-export model back in power, power that had long been undermined by multinational companies wanting to turn Argentina into their own factory farm; a springboard for an expansionist policy that was a precursor to globalization. The fundamental struggle, however, was for the control of power, not for power itself. Trade unionism was one power base. The military was another. The union bureaucracies (right-wing Peronists) would go with the highest bidder. The Armed Forces High Command favoured US hegemony. This was the scenario prior to the general elections on 7 July 1963. But with Peronism proscribed, half the country’s voters had no candidate, so they spoilt their ballots. The result was that the winner got the lowest vote ever cast in free elections in Argentine history.

  The election result came while we were away exploring on the border. It left our fledgling People’s Guerrilla Army (EGP) disconcerted. There had been evidence of pre-electoral fraud and we had naturally expected the ‘legal’ reinstatement of the military, previously ousted by Frondizi’s pact with Perón. Instead, the surprise winner was Dr Arturo Illia, the candidate of the Radical Party. This elderly doctor from Córdoba was seen by many as the symbol of professional and political integrity. The military publicly accepted the election results and Argentina prepared to return to civilian rule. A climate of euphoria and good will dominated the news. It left the infant EGP disconcerted, and necessitated a revision of our immediate plans.

  With little discussion or analysis, Masetti decided simply to abandon our planned entry into Argentina. This meant earlier decisions had to be rescinded. Loro Vázquez Viaña was on his way from La Paz to Resistencia, capital of Argentina’s Chaco province, to reinforce the contacts Alberto Granado had made with the Trotskyite splinter group willing to work under Che. Masetti now sent Federico, travelling on his Argentine documents, to stop him. Furry would drive to La Paz to send a message to Che that the operation was to be suspended. They set off together so Furry could drop Federico on the road to Bermejo. We were down to four men.

  The following night, Masetti changed his mind. He dragged me into the small bedroom where he had a portable typewriter, a radio, some books on farming and other papers scattered on a table, and said words to the effect that: ‘What fools we are, Pelao. The elections are a sham, a trap. Nothing has changed, our project must go on. Stop Federico, then carry on to Buenos Aires and the rest of Argentina, and use your contacts to build a support network for us.’

  One of Masetti’s occupational hazards was his ability to do lots of things simultaneously. He took this monumental decision while listening to his old station Radio El Mundo’s nightly news programme and frantically writing a political manifesto at the same time. Speaking in the first person plural, he reminded me of the episode at the ford. We could not accept failure or weakness; we had to be strong, ruthless when need be; or they would destroy us as they had always destroyed the good, the decent, the honest. We could not afford mistakes, and decency is a mistake. This old man, for instance (referring to Illia), cannot admit the scam being perpetrated on the people on the pretext of pacifying the country. Illia is a man of peace, but they will use him to dash hopes and destroy protest.

  Masetti finished writing, pulled the sheet of paper out of the typewriter, and gave it to me to read. ‘Letter from the Rebels to President-Elect Illia’ was a manifesto, calling upon a man of dignity to respect his past, hold firm to principles of honesty and civic courage, not pay ‘the price of dishonour’ to blackmailers of power, and to ally himself with all Argentines who wanted to be free. It was a superbly written text, with a formidable power of synthesis. It said the EGP had gone into the mountains, explained what had driven us there, and invited Illia to condemn fraud and add his support to the legitimate cause of the people and recover the purity of his youthful illusions. I said I agreed 100 per cent. Masetti, exultant, told me to take the letter to Buenos Aires and get it published. We had a mutual friend there who he was sure would support us.

  When I had first arrived in Buenos Aires, aged barely twenty, I had been helped by a well-known artist called Alfredo Bettanín. He ran the art section of El Hogar magazine, and had asked me to illustrate the poems or short stories printed in the centre pages. As our friendship grew and work became steadier, he put me in touch with other publications like the cultural supplement of La Prensa, one of Argentina’s big national newspapers. Its director, a poet called César Tiempo, had also commissioned some illustrations. Bettanín had been Masetti’s best friend. He was a draughtsman, not a journalist, but was nonetheless a prominent member of the journalists’ union, and well connected to the world of culture and politics. I was to go and see him, and not mince my words, because Masetti trusted him like a brother.

  There was just one small snag: I had no documents. Luckily, Federico had taken his passport and identity card but left his army recruitment card: an Argentine’s most important personal document. I had a surplus of passport photos left over from Algeria, and I practised the forgery skills I had learned in Cuba. The technique worked and I became Señor Federico Méndez, a man endowed with the miraculous power of passing through the same customs checkpoint twice in two days, with two different faces.

  I crossed Bolivian border control, the bridge over the Bermejo, and Argentine customs and border police, and I walked to Agua Blancas. I felt immediately at home on the pavements of a peaceful and orderly village. Unfortunately, there was nothing for me to do there, so I dragged myself away on a bus to Orán, a few kilometres further on, the communications centre for the northernmost tip of the country. Aerolíneas Argentinas, the railway and the bus companies all converged there.

  Seated at the back of the bus, I looked out of the window. I was entranced, as I had been ten years earlier, by the crops and the beautiful outline of the jungle (now more aware of how dense it was). The scent of Argentina filled my lungs, I felt as though I had been holding my breath the whole time I had be
en away. A police van overtook us, signalling the bus to pull over. Two border police got on, acting as if they owned the vehicle. One of them talked to the driver and kept glancing down the aisle to the back. My bucolic complacency disappeared and I focused on how to get off the bus as casually as possible.

  As we came into Orán, some passengers asked the driver to stop, and the rear door, right next to me, opened wide. I was off in a flash. I was still quite a way out of town, but the short walk would be healthy and I could use it to go over my instructions in my mind. I went into the first barber shop I saw and got the full treatment. The barber was shocked at the state of my neck and scalp, covered in bites, some of them infected. He carefully applied creams and ointment, gave me a shave, cut my hair, and left me good as new, smelling like a rose. Next stop was a clothes shop, from where I emerged dressed like a sports-car salesman. At the Aerolíneas office, I learned the flight to Formosa and the Chaco had left the previous day and there were only two a week. The same story with the train, not to mention the bus. I would have to do a 100 kilometre detour via Santa Fe.

  The girl at Aerolíneas suggested that I went to the airport and find a private flight. I took a taxi driven by another of the Greek gods involved in this story, and we reached the airfield just as a man with a suitcase was walking away from the runway to find a taxi. He had just arrived from Formosa in a Piper. Its pilot was refuelling, then going straight back. With my bag over my shoulder and my best businessman look, I walked into the hangar. The pilot was delighted to take me, ‘Let’s have a quick coffee and be off.’

  Flying in a light aircraft is really flying. Below me I could see the devastation done to the Chaco as we followed the course of the River Bermejo, like a bleeding wound. In Resistencia, the capital of the Chaco, I found a cheap hotel, because I didn’t fancy showing my identification card. At a better one, this would have been mandatory. I was shown a large room, with a wide bed covered by a mosquito net, and a ceiling fan. The walls were dark, almost black, or black mottled with ochre. ‘Don’t you have a brighter room?’ I asked in disgust. ‘No, señor’, said the man, and waved his arm towards the wall. A cloud of mosquitoes rose, exposing bare, ochre-coloured paint. ‘I’ll be back with the Flit’, he said. I needed survival equipment, so I went out into the long deserted avenue and bought some mosquito coils, newspapers, black tobacco. Well supplied, I went to a restaurant for a huge steak, washed down with a bottle of wine, and read the news. Everything seemed normal.