by Ciro Bustos
When we reached the hills and found an appropriate place to camp for a few days, Masetti ordered me off on another trip to the cities. I was to travel through the central provinces, developing established contacts and making new ones; buy a van and set up a permanent supply route from Córdoba, run by Gringo Canello who had a driving license. In Buenos Aires, I was to contact an electronics engineer suggested by Bellomo and discuss the price and construction of a generator-powered portable radio rig; begin to stock up on medical supplies, clothes, boots and, where possible, get equipment like hammocks and rucksacks made. I was also to resume relations in Buenos Aires, including this time with the local ‘Vasco’ Bengoechea group; and above all, send more recruits.
From then on, my trips to the cities became monthly. Sometimes I would arrive back at camp, and Masetti would send me off again a week later.
15
Bringing More Recruits to the Jungle Camp: November 1963
I was now travelling the length and breadth of Argentina, marvelling at its geographic and demographic diversity. It was gratifying to return to the cities where I already had contacts and see how rapidly the EGP was growing and organizing. I made new contacts in La Plata, Rosario and Santa Fe, and I interviewed some of the many hopefuls. We bought an IKA pickup truck and left it with Canello in Córdoba. We created systems of packaging food, clothes, shoes, and all kinds of equipment that guerrillas need, stockpiling it by weight and type, then taking it up in the very overloaded pick-up.
In Buenos Aires, I asked for a girl to accompany me. It fulfilled two important roles. One, to pretend to be my girlfriend (which she did in fact become) so I would not have to travel on my own all the time – this was not normal and could get me noticed. And two, to be an aide-mémoire, an unwritten record of appointments and places of contact. Ana María was chosen for this task. She and her friend Susana, both anthropology students, did a lot of the non-clandestine work but adopted the names Paula and Andrea for secret assignments. Another key worker was Bellomo’s assistant Rafael who was studying economics. He was an amazing organizer and set up workshops to make hammocks and turn work clothes into uniforms. We rented an apartment where a couple of recruits lived, but all the appointments and contacts were made by rotating meeting places without ever using real names or addresses.
I talked to the radio technician: sworn to secrecy, he agreed to build a transmitter. I gave him a large sum of money to buy materials and we left it that when the time came, he would assemble it wherever we chose. The sociology students, under Daniel Hopen, said they would find out what had happened to Correntino. They organized a market-research project for a type of washing powder, and some compañeras from Santa Fe did surveys in a couple of areas, including the part of Corrientes that Correntino’s family was from. He was back living at home.
In Mendoza, Cholo had recruited a section of the Vineyard Worker’s Union. As agricultural day labourers, they were the most exploited sector of the wine industry, and one of the poorest in the province. The political work he did with them could have been an important platform in the long term, but it was counter-productive in the short term because agricultural workers cannot be uprooted just like that, least of all from production in one geographical area to a completely different kind hundreds of kilometres away. The growth of a guerrilla army depends on local people, who support them in return for protection. Forming advance cadres, the stage we were then at, was something quite different.
Back in the camp, I discovered that Furry was due to arrive on a set date in Buenos Aires via Montevideo; he had been researching alternative ways of bringing in the weapons he had stored there, an operation to be called ‘Operation Trampoline’. I had to fetch him and bring him back to the camp. My group accompanied me down one of the trails. I left them my M3 and my uniform, put on my usual creased civilian clothes, and set off on a surreal solitary walk, strolling out of the jungle as if I was leaving a cinema.
In Buenos Aires, when the overnight ferry from Montevideo arrived, Furry and I met casually as tourists might do, and we set off on the 1,400 kilometre bus journey back to our jungle base, stopping in Córdoba and Salta. This gave him an overall view, not only of the huge size of the country, but of how fast our network was growing, and how it worked. At the same time, we authorized four young Buenos Aires recruits to take the train to Salta: Diego, César and Marcos, classmates of Ana María’s in anthropology, and another student, Ariel Maudet. Furry was to travel separately from the recruits to avoid making unecessary contact until we reached more favourable terrain. He and I sat in different seats on the bus, occasionally exchanging words as strangers would, sharing a table for a meal, or having coffee on adjoining stools at a bar. The important thing was not to lose sight of each other.
In Córdoba, we arranged to rendezvous with Gringo Canello’s pick-up truck at the edge of the jungle where the loggers’ track crossed the small river. We reached Salta the previous afternoon and decided to sleep in proper beds. We found a pension, went out for a walk, had a meal, and what better way to pass the time than seeing a film? Half a block from the cinema, facing a hotel, we were standing on the edge of the pavement to let the traffic pass when Furry suddenly clutched my arm. I looked at him. His index finger was raised like a speaker on the barricades, he was stammering, his eyes were rolling and mouth was sagging, as if he was jokingly trying to imitate a moron. I said ‘Stop fooling around, let’s cross the street’, but he kept pointing his finger as his knees buckled under him. His head hit the road hard. He was foaming at the mouth.
All my emergency training clicked into action. While passers-by gathered, I picked him up and carried him across the street to the hotel. With my last ounce of strength, I dumped him in a chair in the lobby where he sat in convulsions, hands and head hanging. The concierge offered to call a doctor. With total calm, I wiped his mouth, pulled his tongue out, put a pencil between his teeth, and said, ‘Thank you, there’s no need. It’s epilepsy, he needs a couple of hours sleep, that’s all. He has his medicine.’
The hotel manager wanted Furry out of the lobby, so he got the keys to a room, and helped me carry him to the bed. I offered to pay for the room for a day, although I assured him I would take him to the car when he woke up in about three hours time. I explained that the fit only lasted a few minutes, and now he was asleep. I took the pencil out of his mouth and, sure enough, Furry was sleeping like an angel. I sat in a chair by the bed wondering what to do. No one had mentioned the obligatory registration of hotel guests, but I did not want to risk it with the documents we had. We already had a contact in Salta, a friend of the Philosophy Faculty group in Buenos Aires, and I decided to go and find him, leaving Furry asleep. I told the concierge I was going to get the car. I found Salvador Del Carril and arranged to take Furry straight over there, even though he had no idea who he was. The taxi I took back to the hotel waited while I paid the bill and carried out a drowsy Furry to be taken to the safety of a family home. Promising to be back in time for breakfast, I went to sleep at our pension.
We continued our bus journey first thing in the morning but a tropical storm prevented our getting off the bus at the appropriate place. We could see neither the road nor the jungle through the downpour, so we carried on to Orán to wait for it to subside. In the afternoon, the thunderous crackle of the electric storm receded like a miltary band and, as often happens in the tropics, a parade of black convoluted clouds followed the noisy procession, while light fluffy reddish formations appeared on the horizon, generally a sign of good weather. We took a taxi back to the point of entry into the jungle, pretending to be going to a real finca that had a sign on the road (farmers usually hung a flag or piece of white cloth to show passengers where to get off). A long impossible trek awaited us: covering the trail was a mixture of mud, a blanket of leaves and recently fallen branches, as if the jungle had had a haircut. The peaceful stream had become a raging torrent, with tree trunks and drowned animals dragged along issuing dire warnings, their stiff leg
s pointing to the sky like sailing boats down the gutter. The full force of nature had been unleashed.
We approached our usual fording place with caution, as we had heard shouting from a long way off. The ford had disappeared, but on one side of the now tumultuous waters was our pick-up truck. The river raged between two groups of men shouting to each other as they tried to erect a pully from trees on both banks. A hopeless task: when the water level rose like that, the only thing to do was to wait for it to subside. Furry and I introduced ourselves as if we just happened to be passing by, and took charge. A few hours later, the water level fell as quickly as it had risen and our pick-up crossed the stream.
Furry drove the pick-up while the rest of us pushed, knee-deep in mud. It was already night when we reached the rendezvous with our rearguard. The trail died in Las Piedras river, thundering down in honour of its name, dragging stones and boulders with it. We camped this side of the river, in a clearing hidden from the path, and got food organized. I asked who was responsible for that racket at the ford. Three Buenos Aires recruits owned up and I said they would do guard duty that night as punishment for risking our group’s safety with their shouting. It seemed opportune to remind them of the importance of discipline, emphasizing what was at stake here, they were not on holiday.
Next morning, we made contact with the recruits from Córdoba who, lead by Héctor and made up of Henry, Jorgito and Enrique, were crossing the river from the other side. They brought extra empty backpacks inside their own, which meant we could spread the load between a dozen men. After a goodbye coffee for Canello and his assistant, we set off walking again, facing an even harder river crossing: one that descended ever more torrentially, its brown waters frothing and foaming. The experienced men crossed first and the rest followed in single file.
The main camp had one of its best days with the arrival of so many new and enthusiastic recruits. Euphoric under a thick black beard which made him look an embattled crusader, his olive green képi balanced with great difficulty on his mass of unruly hair, Masetti held a series of meetings, starting with Furry. The scene was similar to another I witnessed later when I brought along our bedside Marxist Pancho Aricó, but with an important psychological difference. With Pancho, Masetti was the leader of an important operation; with Furry, a young comandante, a graduate of Che’s victorious forces in the Sierra Maestra, he was in charge of their mutual boss’s project. The dichotomy was between the done and the still to be done, or more precisely, between reality and dreams. Furry stayed for a few days. I had to make another city trip, so we left together.
However, between our crossing into Argentina and my arrival by pick-up at the target zone, the morale of one of the Buenos Aires recruits, Pupi Rotblat, had deteriorated and become an intolerable burden for all of us. At first, we tried to help him during the treks, lighten his load, encourage him, make him believe he could overcome his lack of ability, careful not to let him lag behind (he was in my rearguard group), cajole him, yell at him, and especially protect him from a Masetti who was becoming increasingly strict and demanding. It was a tricky one. On the one hand, the excess weight, exhaustion and hunger affected all of us, yet we still had to put up with Pupi’s constant laments, caprices, sit-downs and generally negative attitude. On the other, Masetti was planning to impose extra guard duties or unpleasant jobs as punishment on the less able when, to be frank, I thought a bit of paternal care might have been more apt.
‘It’s your responsibility’, snapped Masetti if I mentioned signs of despondency in the ranks. It was true that, in some way, I represented the human side of a harsh, sometimes inhumane, reality. Although I never hid how gruelling a test it would be, once recruits got to know and trust me, they felt they could talk to me and discuss political matters, because after all it was a political project. Gradually, more because of my natural predisposition for friendship than my official ‘duties’, they saw me as the accessible face of the original leadership, to whom everyone went if there was a problem. My visits to the camp were as appreciated as the supplies I brought, and they always had a list of demands and complaints to bring up with Masetti. Letters from family, news from outside, and reminders of home, made me a focal point for them, but above all, it was the ability to communicate outside disciplinary and hierarchical norms. ‘Pelado, why don’t you make the bread?’ they would ask. Hermes had taught us all the technique of baking bread in hot ashes, but mine apparently was tastier, more homely.
I talked to each of them at night during guard duty, and the conversation always turned to the bitter subject of Masetti’s arbitrary behaviour towards the ‘pan blanco’, a name he had invented in the Havana house for lads of a more gentle disposition, not out and out warriors, and by extension all new recruits. I tried to combat the idea they had of preferential justice, explaining that Masetti’s pedagogical methods came from his strict military formation, inclined to efficiency, will power, etc. In short, a certain machismo. But that behind the facade was an astute politician, a writer of great clarity, and a fantastic guy with total commitment to a common cause. They had to try to gain his respect and overcome the hardships until Che finally arrived, when a new era would begin.
But these arguments did not work with Pupi. His descent into the abyss was of a different kind. He had no pride to cling to, he didn’t seem to want to climb back out. He used every possible form of irritating behaviour to hinder our common effort, in which one person’s sloppy attitute affected a group already at the end of its tether. He sat down when we took a break and made a fuss when we set off again. He lagged behind and we had to go back for him. He learned nothing, not even how to make a fire, let alone food.
But one thing was clear: we could not abandon him to his fate on a jungle trail nor allow him to be captured. The latter would jeopardize not only the column, but also the support network in Bolivia and the Argentine cities, indeed, the entire project. The idea of getting him out of the region, and if need be, the country, was mooted, but Masetti was having none of it, wouldn’t even discuss it. I was unable to argue the toss with him or persuade the others, maybe because I didn’t really believe it myself.
In the end, Masetti decreed he be shot. But in the pale reflection of itself our revolutionary dream had become, the sentence was not even carried out properly, and looked more like murder than ‘military justice’. A new contingent of recruits had arrived that day, and the scene that greeted them at dusk was dyed a bright red, matching the sunset between the lianas. Masetti separated us into two groups: the new arrivals in one, at a distance from the camp where Pupi lay isolated in his condemned man’s hammock; and the original leaders and the earlier intake of recruits in the other.
Masetti explained his reason for the sentence to the new recruits: the need to put an end to a traumatic situation that was undermining group morale. Nobody questioned the legitimacy of the decision, not even those who like myself were against it. Someone had to carry out the sentence. Masetti chose Pirincho, one of his favourites. He admired the way his ‘class’, his calmness, his ease with people, did not prevent him being an effective trainee guerrilla. He wanted to put him to the test.
The silence expressing the anxiety enveloping us all was broken by Pirincho’s hoarse ‘Me?’ and Masetti’s cold reply ‘Yes, you’. Pirincho went off, and a few minutes later we heard the shot. He came back even whiter than the rest of us, murmering: ‘He won’t die, he doesn’t want to die!’ Masetti sent me to see what had happened. The victim of a tragic personal experience and a seriously distorted collective mindset was lying in his hammock, a bullet in his forehead, shuddering in his death throes, but technically dead. I did what I had to do to finish this macabre spectacle, and the bang has resonated in my head ever since.
Upriver from our camp, where a path climbed from the river bank to a small plateau on which patches of land had been clawed back by the jungle, we came across a group of dilapidated shacks. The chicken coop and goat pens were barely distinguishable from the adobe house w
ith its straw and pole roof, and a front yard which set it back from the slope we had just climbed. The owner came out timorously, surrounded by almost naked children and ragged women, some young, some older, but all of indefinable age. All were barefoot. It was a pitiful sight. I made some attempt to find out who they were and how many people lived there, if there were other houses in the vicinity, if they could sell us an animal and if they would let us camp, but the man’s replies were limited to ‘Yes, señor, no, señor’. Masetti took over the ‘conversation’ and despite his frightening appearance, began breaking down the fear caused by our uniforms, weapons and beards. There were only a few of us in his yard, but he had already seen the others waiting on the path and pointed to them anxiously. Leaving sentries on all points of entry, Masetti signalled to the others to come up, take off their backpacks and put down their weapons.
Relations thawed. Our doctors examined the children for various visible infections, in their ears and eyes. We cooked a chicken stew, made bread, and shared our rations with the family, who ate crouched against the walls of the house like frightened animals. Their story was tragically familiar. They were sharecroppers evicted from their plots time and time again, forced into the jungle, away from their landlords but also from any hypothetical state protection, no school, no doctor, reduced to a state of idiocy by hunger and solitude. We spent the night there, our hammocks hung between the house and the corral, invaded by fleas and mosquitoes.
Masetti made a deal with the man, named Pedro, that when he went to the nearest town, he would buy us provisions, and we would give him money. For now, it was just to find out how good a messenger he was. ‘Don’t show the money’, recommended Masetti. ‘No, sir, they’ll take it straight off me.’ He said there was a ‘bloody horrible landlord’, who owned most of the land between the valley and the mountains, the route we had climbed. He had a very nasty gang of men and an even worse foreman, who appeared at sowing and harvest time, giving orders and requisitioning, so they couldn’t sow what they wanted, and could barely make a cent. Masetti encouraged him to refuse to hand over his crops, but this frightened him even more. ‘What?’ he said, ‘They’d just come back with the army and burn everything.’