Che Wants to See You

by Ciro Bustos

  We looked at our finances and decided to maintain what had been allocated for the trial, transport costs and keeping me in clandestinity, and if possible, help for families and comrades in exile. The meeting could not go on indefinitely so we said goodbye, our mutual trust and solidarity confirmed, and went out. That is, I went out, into the fresh air. Your sensory understanding of the world and of life changes diametrically when you lose your freedom, although your awareness is heightened and your intellect is sharpened.

  Roca and Lonatti went back that same afternoon to continue the legal work, but when we met later that night they said a problem had arisen between the prisoners. It risked destroying what we had achieved and creating a climate of conflict. Alberto Castellanos, Che’s former bodyguard in Cuba, in prison under the name of Raúl Dávila, had been hysterical, and then depressed, because he had not been allowed to see or speak to me. Alberto was one of the first guerrillas to be captured by the border police patrol when they stumbled on our supply camp. Since then, although he had saved his life by protecting his real identity, he had suffered from the ‘Cuban captured without a fight’ complex and was terrified of what his former victorious compañeros in the Sierra Maestra would think. And, especially, of what his boss, Che, would think. Both lawyers and friends thought that, to avoid any greater risk, I should do something for Alberto that they could not do.

  The following morning, I put the wig on again and went back to the prison. I ran the gauntlet of iron railings and gates, again accompanied by Gustavo, who asked the guards if we could see Alberto. We waited in the interview room, and he came in looking really miserable, very much the victim. After listening to his laments and protestations of loyalty, I told him as truthfully as I could that in Cuba I had heard nothing but expressions of concern, appreciation and friendship. In actual fact, I had had more news from the previous trip to Cuba than from this recent one. Then I had met his friends and compañeros who had asked for news of him. This made Alberto feel much better; he regained his confidence and even his rather ribald sense of humour. He was very emotional when he saw me and swore he would never forget that I went back to the prison just for him. We watched him leave the interview room almost a happy man. Alberto Castellanos regained his freedom less than a year later, in December 1967, but lost all memory of what I had done. A couple of months earlier, our positions were reversed. The military tribunal in Camiri had sentenced me to thirty years in prison.

  In Córdoba, we lived a quiet family life, connected to the world through Armando Coria and Oscar del Barco, the only people who knew where we lived. My periodic, but irregular, sorties corresponded to the rhythm of a door-to-door book seller. Our immediate neighbours were Irene and Elías, former university friends of Ana María’s, who had found the house for us. One day, at lunchtime, Oscar arrived in his mother’s car, and we went for a walk under the trees, in search of a fresh breeze. ‘Peladito’, said Oscar, ‘someone is here looking for you.’ We agreed that he would go to the first afternoon rendezvous and fix another meeting for later on, after we had discussed the matter. The city was like a sauna, and we met in a beer garden in the centre. Oscar told me of his meeting with a woman who ‘looked like a commissar from the Soviet Politburo’. Her password was in order, but I did not know it, as it was not even in the canons of the Cuban secret services. Oscar thought she was from the KGB. I designed a counter checking operation. She was asked to meet me at ten the following morning at a place on one side of the city and, at eleven, if there was no contact within fifteen minutes, at another emergency meeting place, to which she would have to walk since it was only five or six blocks away. Finally, to be absolutely sure, she had to go to the other side of the city, to the park, three hours later.

  The route between one point of the morning rendezvous and the other crossed a square, but there was also a short-cut with three successive observation points. If anyone contacted her or was following her, we would be bound to see it. At two in the afternoon, in front of the park, I finally met her. My impression was worse than Oscar’s. She looked like a ‘kapo’ in a concentration camp. Dressed in old-fashioned clothes, all that was missing was a stiff uniform collar and whistle on a chain. She spoke from irrefutable positions, like an executive delegate from Vulcan in Star Trek. I invited her to a nearby ice-cream stand with tables in the shade, to lower the temperature a bit. After the obligatory passwords, she said without more ado, ‘Che wants to see you’.

  She spoke in an Argentine accent learned outside the country, which she quickly substituted for her Cuban accent, also learned. She was neither Cuban, nor Argentine. She was Tania, born in East Germany. She said I should get ready to leave. I would need a passport, because I was going to La Paz, Bolivia, by plane. She suggested I take my time, because if I didn’t go within the week, it would be better to go in March. Getting and altering a passport cannot be done in a rush. She also indicated I would need clothes and shoes for the mountains. She herself would be my contact in La Paz and I would find her in more or less the same way she had found me: a particular photography shop with a password we would memorize now. ‘Except I won’t have to check you out’, she said ironically. She gave me to understand that she had to return to Buenos Aires because she had not yet found someone else she was looking for.

  This message from Che called for a meeting of our group, restricted for security reasons to Pancho Aricó, Oscar del Barco, Armando Coria and Petiso Zárate from Buenos Aires, in place of Cholo who was away. You did not have to be a clairvoyant to imagine what Che was planning, although we did not rule out the possibility that it was just a meeting to discuss future plans – possible but improbable. If they had told me in Cuba that Che ‘was in the mountains’, it was because he was there already, or should be soon. And if I had to go and see him in Bolivia, he must have already left Cuba. And it would not be a return ticket.

  There was unanimity on the kind of report I should make to him. While the political base was fast taking a radical turn in a revolutionary direction, it was nonetheless still wishful thinking to embark on armed struggle, given the ideological diversity that tended to divide rather than unite us. We thought this was at the very heart of what Che was proposing: unity through action. The only thing that could untie the Gordian knot would be if the impetus came from the working class, that is, on the back of their struggle, rather than being peripheral to it. To us, insisting on a guerrilla foco was unrealistic. Our position was absolutely clear. We did not want to sacrifice lives before we had created cadres of young people to raise awareness among the masses. And even less did we want to sacrifice Che’s own mythical figure as potential overall leader. The political conditions would have to be right objectively, practically and contextually, to justify embarking on revolutionary armed struggle now.

  Oscar del Barco, as a member of the editorial board of Pasado y Presente and the EGP national leadership, had put forward an idea in which a sum of money had been invested. Héctor Schmucler was still in Paris and knew Julio Cortázar, so it was suggested to the famous author that he be recorded reading some of his own work, chosen by him, and we would turn it into an LP. Cortázar was enthusiastic about the idea. Héctor arranged the recording, sent us the tapes and Oscar did the editing, with the help of publishers La Flor and La Rosa Blindada, using professional recording studios and commercial distribution networks. Oscar asked me to design the sleeve. I cut a full face photo of Cortázar horizontally below the eyes, and moved the halves a few millimetres to the side without separating them. The title, Cortázar reads Cortázar, was printed in red and black. Oscar thought it a perfect synthesis of the author. When I passed through Buenos Aires on my way to Bolivia, I took the corrected proofs to Mangieri, publisher of La Rosa Blindada, and he gave me back the original photo of Cortázar. I put it in my suitcase on top of my clothes with a copy of his latest book, All Fires the Fire, which I wanted to take to Che.

  Punctuality is the basic ground rule of the militant. I was to meet someone in a Buenos Aires ba
r at five in the afternoon on the dot. I got off the underground at Congreso and walked slowly since I was a few minutes early. I went into to an L-shaped shopping gallery with exits on two streets, window shopping my way to the other side. I found the iron grill already closed, however, and retraced my steps. As I turned the corner on my way out, I saw a bloke pull up short in surprise and turn to study a shop window full of women’s underwear, putting his hands up like blinkers, his face stuck to the glass. I remained calm. It was time for my appointment and I could not confront the impromptu transvestite who was still bent on staring at ladies’ knickers. I passed beside him, walking normally, as if I had not seen him, and went out into the street. It was Miguel, our man condemned to death in Algiers, a picture of health. Only years later did I discover that he was now working for Barbaroja Pineiro, the Cuban spy chief.

  One of our group, Manuel, was charged with finding an impeccable passport. That is, one recently obtained from an acquaintance without a police record, who was willing to lose it and wait for a few months to report its loss. He secured one from among his personal friends, a civil engineer, a little older than myself, but with similar physical features, called Carlos Alberto Frutos. Lodging in a family home Manuel had found for me, I worked on replacing the photograph so that the passport did not lose its virgin document smell. The dry stamp over my photo, the little dots of the number running vertically along its right side and the corresponding part of the page, were all perfect. The dots were a certificate of credibility, applied to the new photo after it had been stuck, like a surgical operation, using the finest dentist’s drill passing painlessly over the perforations of the page.

  My flight to Bolivia went direct to La Paz from Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires. From sea level in Buenos Aires to the 4,000 metres of El Alto airport in La Paz, the only thing the plane can do is climb. In the morning, I went to the first rendezvous in La Paz. Nothing. I had lunch there in a market then walked to the next rendezvous. Again, nothing. At the third, Tania appeared. Walking together downhill for about a hundred metres, she gave me another rendezvous for two days later on the corner where buses left for Sucre, formerly Chuquisaca, capital of Upper Peru. Tania had changed her appearance to that of an archaeologist setting off for the ruins at Tiahuanacu, in a military-style jacket and trousers. She looked much the better for it. I never understood why she had disguised herself as a Puritan jailer to go to an Argentine city. To avoid complications, she gave me the money for the fare to Sucre. We would be travelling on the same bus without appearing to know each other. She got into a taxi and disappeared.

  From a security point of view, things had not started well. Three days wandering around a small city like La Paz, seemingly without any good purpose, was dangerous. I devoted myself to history tourism, climbing slopes and steps. I don’t think I left a single site unvisited, although tourism wasn’t very organized in those days. However, like a good tourist, I bought two Oruru devil masks which I put in my suitcase, like guardians. At sundown, I went to the Café de la Paix, almost in front of my hotel in the Avenida Camacho, an obligatory ritual for all types of local conspiracies.

  The bus for Sucre would be leaving after midday. The bus company was in a leafy street with a wide pavement near the corner of Avenida Montes. Its office was the size of a billiard table, just a ticket booth and luggage store two steps up from the street. The pavement outside under the trees served as a waiting room. Passengers were already lining up against the wall, sitting on the ground or on their boxes and bundles. I don’t remember the exact time the bus left, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s say it was three o’clock. Once I had bought my ticket, there was nothing for it but to wander around waiting for Tania. Soon I noticed another stranger, doing much the same as I was, passing the time by strolling from one end of the piles of luggage and passengers to the other. He looked out of place, idling aimlessly about. Tall, thin, and wearing an elegant bottle green padded windcheater, of a kind not available in Latin America in those days, he would have looked foreign not only in Bolivia, but in any of the neighbouring countries. I could see he had noticed me, just as I had noticed him. We were, then, in the same boat, and this could indicate some common cause. My brain started putting two and two together. He did not look North American; having neither the physique nor the clothes of the Yanks. I imagined he was European, but he had none of the characteristics of an Italian, Spaniard or German. Ah, but that discreet gentlemanly air, that polite way of letting unruly children pass, that savoir-faire, smacked without a doubt of a Frenchman. A young Parisian literary figure, a disciple of Althusser, came to mind. He had got himself noticed about two years earlier with a thesis on the Cuban Revolution, and his distinctly pro-Cuban book on revolution had just been published. If I was not mistaken, it was Régis Debray, author in the first instance of Castroism: The Long March of Latin America, a European view of the influence that the guerrilla struggle initiated by the Cuban Revolution was having on the new generation of Latin American militants, and also of a theoretical manual of foquismo, Revolution in the Revolution? which had also just been published.

  With fifteen, ten, five minutes to departure time, Tania had still not appeared. Both the Frenchman and I were glancing furtively at the clock. The bus company staff had finished loading the luggage bundles onto the roof and tying them to the roof-rack. That done, and after an argument about whether the chickens belonging to a woman passenger had the right to travel with her in the bus or on the roof, the staff locked the doors to the office, handed the keys to a third person, and got on the bus in their new roles as driver and ticket collector. Loud shouts and a peeping horn urged the dejected passengers saying goodbye to their loved ones to get on board fast. With one last glance at the clock, I decided to get on the bus. After all, the real story was waiting in Sucre, not in La Paz. The Frenchman followed me down the crowded aisle, as if this last-minute manoeuvre had been planned.

  Standing in the middle of the bus, among a ruckus of restless passengers suddenly discovering an urgent need to move from one seat to another, passing packages and belongings to and fro, we looked at each other in silence. The roar of the engine merged with the passenger hubbub and we set off. The bus carried on down the avenue, weaving in and out of the traffic, the standing passengers hanging on to the backs of the seats for dear life. Friendly Collas, old men and women, informed us ‘you’ll only have to stand as far as El Alto’, because a lot of people got off there. The driver kept his finger on the horn and all manner of carts and wagons gave way before his strident hooting. Another horn was in competition behind us, however, like a cortege of newlyweds. It turned out to be a taxi which managed to overtake our bus and brake slowly in front of us, a handkerchief waving out of the window as if an injured person were being taken to hospital A&E. Our driver was forced to stop. The taxi door opened, a hysterical passenger got out, still clasping the handkerchief, lugging a bag, camera dangling from her neck. She got on the bus with no attempt to disguise the fact she was looking for us. It was Tania.

  25

  The Camp with an Absent Comandante: March 1967

  On that journey, Tania did the exact opposite of what the tremendous responsibility she had been given demanded of her. She was a ‘mole’, and a mole should only operate structurally, keeping strictly to her role, not mixing with foot soldiers or hangers on. I don’t want to sit in judgement after the fact. I only want to highlight the succession of minimal but indispensable security norms that were not observed during that mission, for which she was responsible.

  Tania’s triumphant entrance onto the bus was missed by nobody, not even the chickens. Nor was the fact that she was following us pale-faces; already part of the passengers’ collective consciousness. The absence of greetings or reproaches, our silent acceptance of a sudden group symbiosis, united us in the eyes of the jostling audience. It was indeed true that there were seats to be had once we reached El Alto and, freezing and tired, we sat down to face a night’s drive across the Altiplano, br
inging back unforgettable memories for me of our previous time in Bolivia. I imagined we were retracing our steps, that we would end up at the finca in Emborozú which had not been sold after all, and that I would find Masetti there, like a uniformed Moses showing me the Promised Land, undefeated, peeling a grapefruit.

  It was getting dark when we got to Sucre. The sight of the narrow winding cobbled streets of the old town was like taking a step back into the colonial period. The Colla population crept along the walls like shadows, the women with their multiple petticoats, bowler hats, sandals and children, their babies’ vicuña bonnets peeking out of the colourful woven cloth tied across their chests. Crawling through the melée of carts and pack mules, the bus finally stopped in a small triangular square, blocking the road. We got out.

  Tania motioned us to wait and disappeared round a corner, only to reappear a few minutes later with the news that she had found a hotel room not far from there. Each carrying our own bag, we advanced through the crowd of peddlers, onlookers and passers-by to the hotel, or rather more of a boarding house. The manager said he had a room with eight beds free. Alternatively we could share three- or four-bed rooms with other guests. Tania preferred the first option. The window-less space looked like a junk room or, to be generous, a war or catastrophe emergency zone: a bunker. While we went out to eat, they put sheets on the first three beds, separated from each other by a mere fifteen centimetres. The Frenchman chose the furthest from the door, got into it, turned his back to us and lay there immobile. I was in the middle, my bed pushed next to his. Tania, who came back from the WC smiling, was assigned the first one, next to the wall. The space between our beds was so narrow that she had to take off her boots on the bed, where she then preceded to get undressed slowly, in an unexpected bout of striptease. With a smile she alerted me to the possibility of vinchuca bugs, then flexing her powerful legs in the air she slipped her body, not beautiful but well endowed, between the dubious sheets. As she stretched out her hand to switch off the light on the wall beside her, she wished me an amiable goodnight before we were both plunged into darkness. We were not to know that it was the last time she would sleep in a bed in the long and painful last six months of her life.