Che Wants to See You

by Ciro Bustos

  Diego, with my M3, was in charge of the group and very friendly to the new arrivals. When they stopped to rest, the pedicurist, who had agreed with his mate to escape before they went any further into unknown territory, showed an interest in Diego’s gun and managed to wrest it from him. DIPA assault units use PAM submachine guns, a smaller calibre version of the M3, so, being familiar with the weapon, he slid the bolt without hesitation, shot Diego in the thigh, and to everyone’s astonishment took charge. An exchange of insults and threats followed, in which Diego assured them they would be surrounded when the rest of his compañeros heard the shot (the silencer had been taken off). The pedicurist responded by hastily tying them all up, and beating a quick retreat.

  The border police patrol that had gone that same day to investigate sightings (of smugglers) had not seen Canello’s pick-up. They must have taken another route, following animal tracks running parallel to the stream, checking places where activity had been reported. They found nothing until they bumped into a couple of uniformed men with beards. Not quick enough with their guns, Grillo Frontini and Marqués del Hoyo were arrested. With some information about Camp No. 1, the patrol advanced and surrounded another dirty uniformed man with matted hair, who looked surprised to see them. It was Alberto Castellanos, Che’s former bodyguard. They made him shout to someone they could hear chopping down a tree somewhere but could not see. Alberto did so, but the axe man made a detour round the hill carrying his Thompson only to stumble upon another policeman who was hiding. Caught off guard, he handed over his weapon. It was Henry Lerner.

  The group of five new recruits led by Diego had left Camp No. 1 at dawn for the main camp, a day’s march away. When the pedicurist and his colleague, the two police infiltrators, had escaped, they were soon lost, having opted to scramble down the mountainside willy-nilly for fear of either being caught or ending up back at the camp they had left. Their dilemma was resolved at dusk, when they accidentally bumped into the border police patrol combing the zone after having occupied the camp. The border police, now on a war footing, took them prisoner and gave them a good hiding for pretending to be policemen. Detained and beaten, they were taken to Orán with the other prisoners.

  The anti-guerrilla operations, begun in this almost accidental way, were continued until there were no guerrillas left. In practice, manoeuvres were limited to detaining small groups or isolated individuals moving about the area looking for stocks of provisions, or the few peasant contacts who had sold them food. Being taken prisoner saved their lives.

  Survivors’ accounts indicate that Masetti had no plan for armed resistance, only for abandoning the area with enough provisions to enable them to move further south. To do this, Masetti had sent out a series of exploratory missions that were physically and morally debilitating. They not only achieved nothing but meant that, on the verge of exhaustion, his men were either killed or taken prisoner in ambushes set by the police. That was what happened in the only combat incident. Hermes and Jorge had reached a finca where they were ambushed together with the foreman. Hermes returned fire, killing a policeman before he himself was shot dead. The guerrilla army was so totally dependent on outside supplies that previously vigorous young men were soon so starved and weak they could barely move.

  Two anthropology students from the original Buenos Aires group, fellow students of Ana María, died of hunger: César Augusto Carnevalli, twenty years old; and Marcos Szlachter, born in Viña del Mar, Chile, twenty-five years old. Others who died were Diego Miguel Magliano, twenty-one years old, who despite being wounded in the thigh reached the main camp to warn Masetti; Antonio Paul, an oil industry worker, who died falling over a precipice, when he and Héctor went to help Masetti and Atilio who were stuck on some cliffs, according to Héctor; Jorge Guille, Jorgito, twenty-four years old, a medical student, who died fighting alongside Captain Hermes Peña, the twenty-one-year-old Cuban guajiro who Che had sort of adopted in the Sierra Maestra and who became head of Che’s bodyguard when he was in government.

  Then there were the two recruits who had been executed earlier: Adolfo Pupi Rotblat, a twenty-five-year-old student; and César Bernardo Nardo Groswald, a nineteen-year-old bank employee. To them have to be added the unknown deaths of Oscar Atilio Altamirano, a twenty-three-year-old employee, and Jorge Ricardo Masetti, Comandante Segundo, a thirty-four-year-old journalist, both lost in the jungle. Also Pascual Bailón Vásquez, fifty-one, finca foreman, and Juan Adolfo Romero, a border policeman.

  Twelve poor dead men, with no tributes or fuss made.

  Thirteen guerrillas were taken prisoner and put on trial in Salta: Federico Méndez, lieutenant, car mechanic, aged twenty-five; Juan Héctor Jouvé, lieutenant, medical student, twenty-four; Henry Lerner, combatant, medical student, twenty-six; Jorge Bellomo, initially evacuated to Uruguay, medical student, EGP organizer in Buenos Aires, twenty years old; Erique Bollini Roca, combatant, architectural student, aged twenty, in charge of the Salta base; Alberto Castellanos, Cuban, combatant, one of Che’s escorts, aged thirty-one, in charge of Camp No. 1; Miguel Colina, employee, aged thirty, would-be guerrilla; Federico Fronti, student, eighteen years old, would-be guerrilla; Oscar del Hoyo, bricklayer, twenty-four, aspiring cook; Alberto Moisés Korn, bank employee, thirty-one, would-be guerrilla; Wenceslao Jorge Paul, Antonio’s brother, mechanic, twenty-one, would-be guerrilla; Carlos Bandoni, florist, eighteen years old, would-be guerrilla; Fernando Gallego Álvarez, twenty, would-be guerrilla.

  Others went into exile in Montevideo: Emilio Jouvé, in charge of supplies, Héctor’s brother; his wife; Porota, Héctor’s wife; Agustín Gringo Canello, doctor, in charge of transport and contacts. Jorge Bellomo went with them initially, but disobeying orders, went back to Buenos Aires after a couple of months to see his family and was arrested at his home. He was taken to Salta to stand trial, together with José Luis Correntino Stachioti, whose name had come up during questioning.

  People’s desire to write things down, which is impossible to control altogether, meant that Kichi Kiczkowsky was arrested, although only temporarily since he was the family doctor of the owner of the address book in which his telephone number appeared. Others arrested were the Francos, a married couple from Córdoba; in Salta, the notary Carlos H. Sánchez; Delfor Rey, as well as the owner of the pension where the latter lived. Salvador María del Carril and Ariel Maudet, both of the Buenos Aires university group, had different experiences. Salvador was detained for a short time in Salta where he was the main EGP contact, but Ariel managed to escape through the Chaco province. Our peasant farmer friend and provisioner from upriver in the forest, Pedro Guari Apaza, was also detained. The last three were all released during the trial.

  The bulk of the organization in the rest of Argentina, despite its importance in both political and human terms, did not suffer any repressive measures. I continued moving about and being given a bed in various cities, while we appraised the political reality evolving around us, without our security having being affected or my name having been mentioned. Laureano became Mauricio. Looking back over this whole episode, the only saving grace was the humanity and dignity of the recruits who joined our project, ready to give their lives for a revolutionary ideal that was more difficult to implement than to simply support. Without men of this quality, it is hard to explain the capacity for sacrifice and, paradoxically, their acceptance of extreme hardships, and the negative options that they faced. This includes those who left the group early but who never betrayed it.

  Part Three

  China

  18

  A Post-mortem with Che in Havana: May–July 1964

  Argentina as a whole heard almost nothing of these events. A few small articles appeared in the press but the news moved gradually towards the back pages until it fell off them altogether. At the national level, the superficial response was the publication of various derogatory comments, although the head of the border police, General Julio Alsogaray, warned that it was the beginning of the continental revolutionary war a
nd suggested it be taken seriously. Among grass-roots student movements, and union and political groups, however, the news provoked loosely organized solidarity and a burgeoning spirit of struggle. Apart from the obvious need to regroup and reassess, our provincial leadership increased its efforts to establish contacts and to create a political organism to respond to the demand.

  I renewed my contacts with Havana, via the embassy in Montevideo. In May, a message came from Che, asking me to go to Cuba and to bring an appropriate member of our organization with me. I was to let him know which one. The provisional leadership in clandestinity was composed of Cholo, Armando, Oscar and Mauricio – my new persona – and we met in Córdoba. We decided that Pancho Aricó would fill the role, so that he could give Che an analysis of what had happened and the political repercussions. We obtained two passports which I had to modify, adding our photos, stamp and perforations. The fakes turned out perfect. We left Montevideo on an Air France flight to Paris, at the end of May or June, I don’t remember which exactly.

  In those days, travelling to Cuba was a complicated business. There were only two or three options available. On this occasion, we went Paris – Prague – Havana. Pancho had a briefcase full of books with him and, after take off, he spread them out and scheduled our work, discussion and rest hours, as if we were at a conference. His methodical intellectual passion proved a great boon: I was the lone student taking an accelerated course on the economic interpretation of capitalism as an inexorable way of constructing communism, according to Marx and Pancho; a theory which, he added, was being adversely affected by the wishful thinking and pre-emptive expressions of victory from the writers of Marxist ‘manuals’.

  A friend was waiting for us at Havana airport. It was Papi Martínez Tamayo. He helped us through the official red tape down a special channel away from public view and, joking and asking questions, took us to a government guest house in Miramar. We would have two free days, unless otherwise informed, but at night we had to be on call. Papi would be looking after us all the time. We were still sifting through the pile of newspapers, magazines, speeches and interviews to bring us up to date with Cuban politics, a hot potato as usual with Cuba’s revolutionary prestige facing the American continent and the world, when Papi came at midnight to fetch me for a meeting I was to have alone with Che, prior to the one Pancho and I would have the following night when Che would have more time. ‘Tell our guest not to be upset’, Che had told Papi. But Pancho had no intention of being upset, thrilled instead that Che even remembered him, thereby recognizing his existence.

  The car sped away to the bowels of the Ministry of the Interior, and I went from the underground car park to the little kitchen beside his office where I had to wait for a few minutes. The meeting itself only lasted an hour. Che had made time between other important commitments because he wanted answers to two or three questions. We would look at everything else afterwards. He had already had reports from Furry and Papi, but he needed to understand even more. He was very relaxed, as if we had seen each other the previous week; and made a somewhat jokey reference to the fact that I was still alive. He came out from behind his desk as if to stretch his legs and we sat in front of a little table in the corner of the room. Papi went to get some soft drinks.

  He had three main questions. How could people possibly die of hunger in a forest full of wild animals? Why had we stayed in the same spot for three months? And what had Hermes thought of it all? I did not have any definitive answers, except to the first, maybe, from my own personal experience. Once the border police were in pursuit, hunting became impossible. Even under normal circumstances we could only do it intermittently: wild turkeys would suddenly appear between the legs of our vanguard group or of lone explorers, then take flight and disappear before we could shoulder our guns. Hunting meant becoming hunters, merging with the undergrowth, laying in wait for prey and having the appropriate rifles. Our weapons were useless in retreat (hunting rifles were the first to be discarded). On one occasion we killed a tapir but its meat made us all ill. Apparently, it had to be cooked for a very long time to counteract the acid effects. The absence of anyone living in the vicinity was a fatal handicap. Hermes moved around better than anyone, but this was not the Sierra Maestra with its abundance of fruit. In the Argentine jungle he was as lost as the next man, although he learned much more quickly. In the end, it became clear there were insufficient reserves of food in the forest, or we could not get to them; the exit route – never fully explored – was impossible to cross and the attempt exhausted everybody. And Masetti’s back pain became so bad he could barely walk and had to disperse his men.

  As for having stayed too long in the same area, I understood the dilemma. We needed to fully exploit being near the frontier so we could bring in the equipment being stored in the Bolivian finca – something we had already done in part – and consolidate the Argentine bases before being left with no strategic exit. We all admired Hermes for his efficiency, but he never disagreed with any of Masetti’s decisions, on the contrary he always argued for them. His advice was only taken on practical things like terrain, marches, camping, exploration and discipline, which boiled down to banalities like obeying orders about making too much noise, looking after equipment and doing guard duty. But, in reality, Masetti’s was the only opinion that counted. I tried to explain how I failed to convince Masetti of my concerns, like the constant to and fro of the lorry, but he cut me short with ‘forget about what you did or didn’t do’. I wasn’t sure if it was because it was not relevant or because he had already made up his mind about certain things.

  We did not discuss the executions, but we did talk about the recruits and their virtues, and he seemed to have a clear picture of Héctor – Cordobés – who he said ‘confirmed the law of fifty in five hundred; five in fifty; one in five’. We brought no news of Masetti’s fate, except Héctor’s ultra-pessimistic opinions, transmitted via our lawyers. He had been the last person to see Masetti and Atilio, and said Masetti could neither go up nor down because of the physical pain he was in. Héctor thought they must have died of hunger, since none of the details sent out with food were able to find them. Without Héctor, it was like finding a needle in a haystack even supposing they could get to the haystack. Che then postponed the conversation until the following night, when he hoped to have more time.

  The next day, Furry arrived at our house on a police Harley Davidson. He did not have much time either. He had taken a short break from an army course to come and see us. I had no idea what he had gone through after we had said goodbye in Córdoba, but he told me he had managed to remove all trace of us from the finca before putting it up for sale in La Paz. We would meet again at the weekend, near the beach, in a small house belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces. Papi took us there after we had spent the morning practising shooting at a range near the Ministry of the Interior. Papi and I shot in tandem with powerful FAL rifles at an iron sign 200 metres away. He made it spin to one side and I to the other. Pancho too was remarkably good at this new (to him) sport. At the house, the wives of the officers present prepared a simple meal of congri (beans and rice), with yucca and tomato salad, and we spent the afternoon trying to keep out of the sun, baking despite the sea breeze.

  Papi told me Che had asked him to go over codes, keys and concealment techniques with me again. They were going to give me, appropriately hidden, a book of Soviet encryption keys with which to communicate directly with their security team. The short week we spent in Havana brought back memories of October 1962, when the world seemed about to split into two.

  That night, Papi took us both to see Che, in his same MININT office. I remember the sensations more than the words, because added to my own feelings were Pancho’s, so anxious to meet the myth, so legendary yet at the same time so familiarly Argentine. Pancho knew some of Che’s friends and family from his Córdoba days. One of them was our lawyer Gustavo Roca who had joined our prisoners’ defence team without a second thought, on the basis of hi
s long-standing friendship with Che. But Pancho also took a critical view of the Salta experience. Because of its geography and isolation, he thought it was like making the fire in one place and putting the stockpot in another. An analysis of the situation on the basis of this critique, face to face with the leader promoting the armed struggle, promised a very illuminating debate. But the magic of Che’s presence produced an altogether different result.

  The meeting lasted over three hours – during the night, of course – and Pancho forgot what he had meant to say. They talked about a bit of everything: Argentina, the world, real, unreal and desired socialism, China and the Stalinist, anti-Trotskyist, ideological paradox, the interpretative currents, the founders and forgers, Gramsci and Rosa Luxembourg, transparent socialism. Che spoke practically the whole time, not imposing criteria but – as if confirming historical rather than theoretical conclusions – relegating Pancho to the role of technical witness. Yet Pancho seemed increasingly enthusiastic and in total agreement. We did not study future plans or projects that night: everything was clear and when things are clear, you just get on with the job in hand. ‘When you finish your training,’ he said, ‘we’ll talk some more. Meanwhile, tie up all the loose ends here with Papi.’