by Ciro Bustos
There was much work to be done in Argentina. But just then something happened that, if we had been Greeks consulting the oracle, would have augured disaster. Manresa, Che’s secretary, came into the room with a piece of paper. He gave it to Che who read it, and re-read it. Then with a gesture of dismay, but without a word, he passed the paper to me to read. An explosion in an apartment in the centre of Buenos Aires earlier that evening had caused a five-storey building to collapse, killing several people who had been using explosives. Among the dead was the leader of a Trotskyist revolutionary group, Ángel Bengoechea, aka ‘Vasco’, who had been planning to merge his group with the EGP since Loro Vázquez Viaña and Federico had first met him in the Chaco. His death meant that I was now the main contact.
19
Beginning All Over Again: August 1964
A Cuban intelligence services photographer came to teach me microphotography, which I needed to know in order to send encrypted messages, documents, pages from newspapers or books, all to be photographed and reduced to a ten millimetre negative. Armed with a Minox camera, equipped with a flash, tripod, developing tank and appropriate chemicals, we spent hours practising taking photos very quickly, in bad light, with improvised scenarios, interiors and exteriors.
He taught me how to take apart objects made of leather or synthetic material (key rings, shaver cases, watch straps, purses, wallets, briefcases, or slippers) and then how to reconstruct them using the original holes and stitching, after stuffing them with tiny negatives, dollars, parts of firearms, etc., so they could be sent, or taken, from one country to another. I became sufficiently skilled in these arts to later receive praise from my Cuban instructors, who, according to Papi, said I had done ‘some of the best concealment work they had ever seen’.
Then, suddenly, seats were reserved for us on a flight to Prague and I was to be ‘on call’ at any time. Meanwhile, I was taken to see the immediate boss of the Latin American intelligence teams, an old acquaintance, Comandante Barbaroja Piñeiro. He asked me how our prisoners were being treated, the possible outcome of the trial, and if the lawyers needed anything. He gave me a sum of money for them – I don’t remember exactly how much, between three and five thousand dollars – and on Che’s request, the secret encryption book, appropriately concealed in a tube of toothpaste. It is worth pointing out that I met Che alone on more than one occasion but he took no part in these economic transactions, leaving that in the hands of the Revolution.
Shortly before our departure, earlier than usual, around ten in the evening, Papi took me to the MININT building again. It was not a long visit. Just after midnight, Che and I went to fetch Pancho and have a few goodbye beers with Papi. The conversation was more relaxed. I remember Che showing a nostalgic interest in details, and being more disposed to hear the whys and wherefores of views that might even contradict his own. As in those far-off nights in the Country Club, my humble opinion centred on the fact that we were operating in the utmost isolation, not only from the political masses, but also from our own immediate environment. Our nearest source of support, or potential support, was Furry, a foreigner, on the other side of the frontier. This meant we failed to respect the most elemental rule of constant mobility and awareness of our surroundings that would have enabled us to survive in an uninhabited zone and develop the project, with which all of us, including the new recruits, were obsessed.
The Salta Chaco was not the Sierra Maestra, an area of peasant farmers, where crops may have been meagre but where fruit grew wild on every hill. The Chaco was a solitary wasteland full of insects and bands of howling (and thieving) monkeys. The territory we operated in was larger than the Sierra Maestra and the whole of Oriente province put together. The province of Salta is 40,000 square kilometres, larger than the whole island of Cuba. In six months, we only met one family – not poor peasants but best described as complete human wrecks. In that jungle solitude, there was no political work to be done, and someone from Buenos Aires was totally out of place.
At one stage, Che asked ‘And what kind of work is there to do?’ As far as we in Argentina were concerned, we had to carry on preparing for his eventual arrival. It is hard for me to accurately reproduce what I said then without inflating or diminishing it. I only remember the ideas, not how they were expressed. The main points were: evaluate previous experience; justify the struggle; choose the most appropriate region for an armed vanguard, given the variety of the population and their political maturity; make strategic alliances with like-minded groups, or better still, transfer trained cadres into the zone, so they could integrate socially and economically and set up food supply routes, with transport companies operating normally, and medical services, etc. Beyond that, there was a need to develop the clandestine political infrastructure to provide a network of intelligence, safe houses, depositories and security.
Obviously, a project of this kind also has to have military actions, but they have to be strategic and linked to training and ideological education. Establishing another guerrilla base in the same area was unthinkable, given the enormity of the disaster suffered and the proven inappropriateness of the location. Also to be considered was the potential of young people in the cities, students and workers, who were conscious of the inequalities of capitalism, and open to the ideas and examples of struggle, and masters of their destiny. Che thought that while young people might be receptive to the idea of armed struggle, we had actually tried to run before we could walk. We should not have taken extreme military measures, like executions, without military actions that could possibly justify them. He himself had not been able to come, although he had told us to expect him, and he did not want to sit in judgement on what had happened.
‘You have to begin all over again’, said Che. There was no point talking deadlines, we had to develop our own strategies and act on the outcome. ‘Put your plan into operation.’ He told me to continue my contacts with disaffected Communist Party cadres without ruling out other groups, but I should not make organic political commitments to any party in particular. He urged prudence: I should remain in clandestinity, not take on any public role, and lead a quiet normal independent life. He wanted better means of communication, clearer and more stable, and assured me I would receive news from him directly when the time came.
The time he had available was up, and we said goodbye until the next time.
20
Encounter in Uruguay with Raúl Sendic: September 1964
A few days after we had passed through Rome the first time, in June 1963, Pope John XXIII had died. He was pejoratively called the Red Pope by the scribes of the system who did not approve of his attempt to drag the decrepit ideological structure of the Catholic Church into the twentieth century. The second time I passed through Rome, with Pancho Aricó a year later, another Pope had just died, this time a truly communist one: Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the strongest and most independent Communist Party in the non-socialist world. Posters bearing his photo still adorned the walls and red banners hung over the balconies of practically the whole city, except of course in the historic ruins, reminders of times when powerful Caesars became no less powerful Popes. To paraphrase Clausewitz: the Church is the continuation of power by other means.
Pancho Aricó’s head was full of ideas from Einaudi, the Italian publishing house that published a great deal of current Marxist thinking, from which he used to translate articles for Pasado y Presente, but we had no time for browsing. Our stay in the beautiful city lasted only long enough to go to the Minox camera shop where we bought an entire semi-professional spy kit with plenty of instructions, packed in a box as small as a shoe box. The Alitalia flight left us in Montevideo, where Pancho retrieved his Córdoban identity. I stayed for a few days tending our small colony of exiles.
Petiso Bellomo had rented a bachelor pad so we could avoid hotels. It was in Yi Street, half a block from the central police station. Being well educated and of an inquiring mind, Bellomo had already made friends in journalistic circles and
at the Café Sorocabana in the Plaza Cagancha. It was a wonderful Madrid-style café, with soft armchairs under wide windows, where you could sit and read the newspaper, write, or have business meetings.
Among Bellomo’s friends was a young journalist called Eduardo Galeano. A member of the editorial board of the left-wing magazine Marcha, he was a sure-fire contact with the most radical pro-Cuban left. Galeano introduced him to other socialists, like Andrés Cultelli and Javier Furidi, a former director of the Communist Party newspaper El Sol. He suggested introducing Bellomo to the leader of the cane-cutters’ union, a young lawyer called Raúl Sendic. He was already known internationally for organizing marches of agricultural workers from the northern provinces of Artigas and Paysandú, demanding agrarian reform under the slogan ‘For land and with Sendic’. According to Furidi, Sendic was interested in meeting Lieutenant Laureano, the only survivor of the Salta guerrilla group not in jail and proof that the armed group was still organizing in Argentina.
We studied the proposal and I finally agreed to meet Sendic alone. It was a Sunday, after lunch, on the deserted beach at Cerro, a poor industrial area of Montevideo. The simple operation involved a series of people out strolling, normal behaviour for a Sunday afternoon. Bellomo walked in one direction and received instructions as to Sendic’s whereabouts from someone coming towards him in the other, which he then passed on to me when we crossed paths at the end of the beach. Omar (aka the now exiled Emilio Jouvé) arrived to sunbathe about fifty metres from some rocks half in the river where a solitary fisherman was standing. I strolled along the edge of the beach looking for flat stones to skim on the water. I passed Omar without looking at him, until I reached the place where a poorly dressed man, in a crumpled shirt and decrepit black felt hat, appeared to be fishing on the rocks with an improvised rod. ‘Caught anything?’ I said, in my limited language of the sport, and he answered ‘It’s very windy, but if you like, we can chat and have some maté.’
Sendic had a very strong personality. After a few short minutes, I sensed I was in the presence of an important man. Years later, I understood that I had indeed been talking to an extraordinary individual. He propped up the rod between some stones and prepared maté which we passed between us until the water in the thermos ran out. In an open and friendly tone, he asked about the abortive experience in Salta. His questions were ordered and systematic, leaving out ‘secret’ details, although the origin and imminent leadership of the project naturally floated between us like the smell of the river.
The hours idled by placidly. The conversation lasted several hours. A little way away, young fishermen, his people, alternated fishing with playing football. For his part, Omar remained motionless, behind me. Sendic’s questions centred on the errors committed, to which I answered ‘the fundamental error of isolation’. We were the fish out of water; the negation of the Maoist motto. I don’t remember everything that was said, but I know we talked about the importance of organizational growth in the city and the implicit receptivity towards the armed struggle in an environment very far from where we had directed our efforts. We needed workers and students, rather than monkeys. He intimated that they were currently developing a worker-peasant alliance, which students and professionals would also join, in a broad front determined to initiate the armed struggle, although without as yet a clear idea of what the nature of it would be. It was clear that the poverty in the Uruguayan countryside made revolution a more favoured option, perhaps because the peasants had less to lose: the cows lived better than they did.
We offered each other assistance, and he immediately asked for weapons and basic security and intelligence training for one of his most trusted men. This meant I would have to come back to Montevideo, since I had only stayed on in the city to lay low while Pancho went back to Argentina. I was carrying dollars and secret equipment so I had to plan my own return a little later. But I told Sendic we had weapons in Montevideo that we had not yet managed to bring into Argentina and that they would be better off in his hands. Transferring the weapons and picking the trainees could be done while I was away.
The EGP’s national leadership met whenever and wherever it could. For me, it meant travelling from Buenos Aires to cities in the provinces. Ana María and I had set up house in Buenos Aires where we remained until, among other things, Bellomo was arrested. We were advised to go and breathe the fresh air of Córdoba.
Cholo moved to Buenos Aires at the wheel of the contraband pick-up truck we had purchased. In terms of parking and petrol consumption, it was clearly inappropriate for clandestine living, and it was soon exchanged for a manageable low-cost runabout, easy to park and cheap to run. We decided to invest the remaining money in an electronic communications shop, a business coming into vogue in those days. It would help stretch our money and give us cover. Through an old friend now working in the Mendoza Police Department, Cholo obtained my personal police file. It showed no links of any description to any guerrilla group, so he was able to get me a range of completely legitimate documents – including identity card and driving licence. This meant I could travel openly and participate more or less fully in our organization’s meetings. Our leadership had broadened to include David Tiefemberg and an oil workers’ leader, Petiso Zárate, who brought with them further grass-roots political and union contacts.
I went back to Montevideo with Ana María to keep the promise I had made to Sendic and we installed ourselves in the Yi Street apartment while Bellomo moved to the house of a friend. He arranged for me to meet the man whom Sendic had chosen to do the intelligence and security course, a prior requisite to delivery of the weapons.
I worked with my trainee alone in the apartment for a couple of weeks while Ana María went for walks, to lunch, cafés or the cinema. We also carried out various tactical manoeuvres in the street: simulating being followed, checks and counter-checks, drop-offs, signals for contacts, individual and collective security. If I had learned anything, it was that extreme compartmentalization, reinforced by rigorous individual safety measures, assured one’s own survival, as well as that of the group. Every militant thinks he knows someone he can trust with his life, but that person also knows someone he can trust, who in turn totally trusts some family member, who has a best friend, etc., until they reach some rarefied place where their safety lies with third parties they don’t know. The undeclared armed struggle is a conspiracy that develops outside the law and societal norms and, as such, society will respond with all the repressive means at its disposal, legal or otherwise, exercising its monopoly on violence and lack of ethical considerations as it always does. Spontaneity and too much trust lead to disaster.
The trainee was very serious, capable and responsible. A methodical economics student, he understood immediately that the training was worse than useless without intense rigorous practical sessions. His name was Jorge Notaro. Twenty years later he told me they had been very useful, at least to him.
Omar (Emilio Jouvé) set himself up in a kiosk selling magazines, cigarettes and sweets. Our contact in the Cuban Embassy had delivered us a cache of weapons months before he returned to Cuba, when Cuban-Uruguayan diplomatic relations were broken off. The Organization of American States (OAS) had pressured Uruguay to act quickly, so we did not have time to carry out our plan properly and the weapons ended up in a sort of semi-cellar Omar had discovered under the kiosk; unsuspecting antecedent of what the Tupumaros called hidey-holes. There was no time to lose. Omar could not stand on top of such a volcano day after day, no matter how much worn carpet was covering the hideaway. Omar closed the kiosk for 24 hours for refurbishment and we went to paint it. I divided up the arms cache at the same time. There were half a dozen P38 revolvers, two or three Uzi machine guns, and a large amount of ammunition and equipment. There were also an appreciable number of incendiary bombs which Cuban counter-intelligence forces had collected after the daily aerial drops the CIA made by light aircraft from bases in Miami for counter-revolutionaries on the island. The ‘Revolution in the
Americas’ Department had then redistributed them throughout the continent. It was only fair; the Yankees fomented counter-revolution and the Cubans fomented revolution. I kept half the pistols and the incendiary bombs for future use.
We did the handover on a corner quite a long way from the kiosk. Bellomo arrived with the weapons on the back seat of a taxi. He invited Sendic’s emissary to get in and took him to another part of town where he got out taking the bag of weapons with him. All went well. Ana María and Rafael left for Buenos Aires to arrange to bring in our share, and eventually a happy group of young couples crossed the River Plate by ferry with a cargo of bombs, a sort of diabolical cigarette of inflammable grey plastic gelatine. They only needed a hard squeeze in the middle to break a glass receptacle that released some sulphuric acid, which, after corroding another compartment for a controlled number of hours, combusted into a huge blaze, similar to a small flame-thrower. A single one could burn a set of thick wood shelves in a shop or warehouse. We never used them, but years later they were passed on to a group that, in time, would become an armed organization called the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), whose first operation made spectacular headlines in 1974 when, shortly after closing time, they destroyed the first chain of Minimax supermarkets, owned by the US magnate Nelson Rockefeller. There were no casualties.
Meanwhile, the survivors of Masetti’s group were on trial in Salta. The plaintiff in the case was the National Gendarmerie, that is, the border police. The defence was jointly in the hands of two Córdoba lawyers, Antonio Horacio Lonatti and Gustavo Roca. Roca was Che’s childhood friend from Córdoba; they had studied together and spent their holidays in the Córdoba hills. Gustavo was the son of Deodoro Roca, who had led the fight in 1918 for radical reform of the Argentine university system. He succeeded in getting independence and autonomy for university courses, syllabus decisions put in the hands of teaching staff, students and alumni, and territorial immunity for the major universities.