by Ciro Bustos
‘OK, fine’, said Inti. We said goodbye in the half-light. The moon was disappearing behind the hills surrounding the valley. The only thing left visible now was the road to Muyupampa. So there we were, the three of us, the Englishman, the Frenchman, and me. We began the crazy moonlit walk, each carrying a small bag – the Englishman’s camera, our few crumpled clothes. Following Che’s instructions, I proposed getting as close as possible to the village before leaving the track and going into the forest, because the first shock of being on our own was that we had not the foggiest idea where we were, nor where we were headed, nor where the track we were on (which a map of the region would call a road) was located. When Che met with his commanders they poured over maps, but we didn’t see a map the whole time we were in the camp. The absurdity of it is that for thirty years I thought we had walked westwards from the camp, until I read in books published on the thirtieth anniversary of Che’s death, that Muyupampa was to the south, almost on the same latitude as Camiri, further down than the Casa de Calamina or Lagunillas, on the other side from Gutiérrez but further south. If I did not know then where I was, now I know we were totally disorientated.
There was immediate opposition to the ‘rearguard guerrilla action’ that Che had outlined, and I put forward. Roth said a categorical no, because he had a safe-conduct signed by the Army High Command in La Paz to travel in the war zone and it was crazy not to use it. I argued that that should be our trump card, but if we did not need it, so much the better. Falling into the army’s hands was always going to be bad for us. The Englishman replied that he had promised to help us legitimize our status as journalists and get us out of the area; not to leave one lot of guerrillas and form a mini group of our own. He had a point. That was what he had promised Debray, but he had not been given the full picture, like my false papers and the dubious nature of Debray’s claim to be an innocent French journalist. It was better to tell the truth and I proposed we say that we had come to the area before anyone knew anything about guerrillas and before military requirements for safe-conducts and special passes were in force. This was undeniably true, and the situation was just as dangerous for him, being taken prisoner with us. Like it or not, our fates were interlinked, and it was best to minimize the risk. The further we got without having to use his documents, I argued, the better it would be for all of us. Moreover, by this stage in the discussion, we were in complete darkness.
The moon disappeared and the track turned into a black tunnel in which we could see nothing. I stopped and insisted, in a whisper, on the need to avoid the village, but objective conditions were against me, and so was Debray. His argument was that the army would shoot us like birds if we moved about at night in a military zone we were not familiar with. He insisted his idea of taking advantage of Roth’s legitimate status was still valid: it was the only bona fide thing we had. And he was right. I had to admit that if we came across a soldier on guard duty, we were dead men; but the same was true on the track in total darkness because we could not see if there was a bend, a stream, a house; nothing. So I proposed, and they agreed, we climb the hill above the track, and look for lights that would indicate where the village was. But in the pitch black, finding a way through the undergrowth up a steep hillside we were not familiar with was impossible. Our dejection was manifest. I tried to think of some logical way out. We would have to wait for daylight, carry on up the hill, locate the village, skirt round it, and find a road out the other side. The situation obliged the two reluctant parties to accept the plan, but not necessarily go through with it in the morning. Roth refused, and Debray agreed with him.
Meanwhile, the temperature started to drop and the Englishman shivered in his light summer suit. Humour found a chink in our misery and we joked at the way our teeth chattered, like tap dancers. I only had the jacket Che had given me. If I gave it to Roth, I would be worse off than him, in a white dress shirt, an addition to my leaving outfit from one of the Cubans, so I passed him a stick to bite on. But Debray had a jumper under his padded jacket and lent it to him. Huddled together like old women at a funeral, we spent the rest of the night sitting in the undergrowth, leaning against a low fork in a tree to stop ourselves sliding down the steep slope into the dark. Soon afterwards we heard the sound of angry voices, getting louder as they approached. A group of men were walking rapidly down the track we had left to climb the hill, shining torches and talking at the top of their voices, either because they wanted to be noticed, or to ward off evil spirits. We began to make out words and realized it was the locals the guerrillas had captured, and whom they were supposedly going to detain for some hours.
The Frenchman and I were just about to lament their release so soon after we set off, when the Englishman tore himself away, leapt up and rolled down the bank before we could grab him. He went crashing through the undergrowth, making a terrific rumpus, hurtling down the hill like an avalanche, and landed up on the track, in the path of the chattering locals who, stunned into silence, commended themselves resignedly to God. Roth got to his feet, brushing his clothes, and said in a loud voice that we could hear perfectly from where we were still hugging the trees: ‘Good evening, señores! Could you please tell me how many kilometres to the village, and if I can find a taxi there?’ as if he were coming out of a bar in Santiago or Buenos Aires. The petrified locals, fearful of shapes and shadows that wander around at ungodly hours, stammered in an incoherent chorus, as they shuffled around him, and fled in terror: ‘Good evening to you too, señor! Just over there, about a league … No, señor, no taxi. At this hour! Maybe tomorrow, señor …’ and disappeared into the night.
Debray and I climbed down and, sitting by the track, we may have chided Roth for not asking if there was a bar as well. The darkness gradually morphed into fraying wisps of mist clinging to the forest, and the rising sun silhouetted the solitary track we had to follow, or not, according to the prevailing opinion. My arguments were even stronger now, I thought, given that the inconvenient witnesses to our connivance with the guerrillas were now in the village, instead of behind us. But, strangely enough, this fact reinforced the others’ idea of normality. They imagined that emerging from the middle of the jungle, like honest journalists with nothing to hide looking for a taxi, proved we were bona fide. Their underestimation of the Third World, and crass ignorance about the susceptibility and intelligence of its peoples, with long experience of having to defend themselves against everything and everybody, told us a lot about how untouchable the white man from educated and opulent societies feels: even failing to recognize the signals the locals sent out by coming to look for guerrilla forces ten kilometres from their village, as if they had been sent a telegram with the day, time and route chosen.
Roth walked down the middle of the track, followed by the Frenchman, who made a declaration of independence by throwing in his lot with the Englishman, and I brought up the rear, pissed off and pensive. In all revolutionary organizations, armed or not, you never challenge the leader responsible for an operation whatever the circumstances. You do not have to have a machine gun to impose a decision. In this case, I was leading only myself. In our farewell talk, Che had told me to take command, but we were alone and I think that was the intention: ‘Take command and go over the hills. Mount a rearguard guerrilla action.’ If he had meant to include Debray, he would have said it in front of him. Che, like poets, had a great ability to predict things: ‘I think you’ll be arrested, but you have to take your chances.’ The problem was that I did not know (but did not like to say) where I was, where I was headed, the time it would take to get out of the area across the mountains if need be, how I would survive, without even a penknife to cut branches, dig, or skin an animal. ‘I thought of giving you a gun, but it might make things worse.’ I could not, then, dictate any plan to the Englishman, nor to Debray.
The landscape began to show signs of human activity: cleared land, plots of maize, some distant shacks. The track widened and turned right, circumventing adobe houses with tiled ro
ofs emerging out of the mist. Before the bend, I stopped one last time, asking Debray to reconsider, saying that I was going over the hills. He said exactly what I had been mulling over in my mind: we would have no chance of surviving in the jungle; we would need to go to villages to buy food and the filthier we got, the more suspicious we would look. The logic was irrefutable. Only someone with suicidal tendencies would deny it, and I certainly did not. At that moment, I had to choose between the ‘perhaps’ and the ‘nothing’. I chose the remote possibility we would get out of this.
The widened track was an avenue leading into the village, lined with typical low colonial adobe houses, their small windows hidden behind blinds or wooden shutters, a stone step at the door and a narrow flagged pavement along the front. The avenue ended some 200 metres further on at a house that made a right-angled turn, closing the block and creating a long rectangular space, in which the shadows of the night still clung to the corners, while the first rays of the sun sought out the cornices of the roofs. When we entered, walking down the middle of the road from the south, soldiers appeared from the north with a curious symmetry and, on seeing us in the distance, stopped short and fell over each other. They obviously had orders to split into two columns and began spreading down both sides of the street, sticking to the walls like limpets, or rather like the shadows projected by their silhouettes, as they advanced towards us, their rifles cocked and taking aim.
We continued walking gingerly, in a line, avoiding brusque movements so as not to shatter the nerves of frightened recruits fingering the jealous triggers of old Mausers. No one said a word. The only sound was soldiers panting and weapons clattering. After the first soldiers had passed us, to our left and right, they closed ranks behind us in a pincer movement. Only then did a rather hysterical or martial voice order us to halt, announcing we were under arrest. The Englishman became the group’s spokesman and declared we were journalists but, as was to be expected, the officer did not believe in press freedom. He shouted ‘Shut up’, and ordered us to empty our bags on the ground, which we did. The man was not stupid; he did not want to run any risks. He then told us to undress and pile our clothes in front of us. We undressed to our underwear. ‘Everything!’ he shouted impatiently. It was the first time I had practised the art of public striptease without music, before a platoon of stone soldiers and an impassive officer. ‘Socks as well!’ he exclaimed. He ordered a soldier to collect the documents and Roth’s camera, summarily inspected everything, then allowed us to get dressed again and put our things back on.
Then, surrounded by soldiers, we were taken to the town hall, where the army platoon was stationed. It was an old building with a verandah, a few paces from the corner of the small square. Suddenly our ruse seemed about to work: the prefect (or mayor), roused from his bed, arrived at his office with his staff to represent the civilian administration. He took charge of the documents and, with the military commander, set up an emergency tribunal to clarify the reasons for our presence in the area. The Englishman mounted his legal case, referring to the permits signed by the Army High Command in La Paz, and by General Torres himself, as more than legitimate and valid, while Debray began to assume the same natural level of importance, requesting a telephone – there were none – to call his embassy in the capital. I said nothing, trying to pass unnoticed.
The prefect asked the women in the crowd to prepare some breakfast, since we would not get a taxi before nine in the morning, and in any case, the officer had to wait for instructions from Fourth Division headquarters before anything could be decided. The whole thing looked more and more like a hectic work meeting. The Bolivian-style breakfast arrived in the prefect’s modest office, and like castaways we devoured the mincemeat with fried eggs and freshly baked bread and coffee. Sitting on a bench in the corridor, Debray used the apparent normality of our situation to ask me to help invent a contact in La Paz that we could both use. Standing in front of him, as if we were discussing lost cows, I said off the top of my head: ‘Thin, tall, high cheekbones, big eyes, black hair, slightly Indian-looking, name of Andrés’.
But the bonanza was short-lived. In the course of the morning, among the growing number of onlookers, came the ex-detainees from the previous night, witnesses to our having been with the guerrillas. Like old acquaintances, we recognized each other’s faces, somewhat marred by exhaustion and the crude light of day. ‘Those idiots are guerrillas!’ shouted one, and lunged at us, forcing soldiers to intervene. Pandemonium broke out in the crowd egged on by our accusers. The army restored order and we were transferred to the building’s interior patio, a paved square surrounded by a verandah supported by ceramic pillars. The officer separated us, placing each of us by a pillar with a guard so we could not speak to one another. We did not see him, but a reporter from the La Paz newspaper Presencia climbed onto the roof of the house next door and took our photo, an act which saved our lives. My photo, which appeared in the Córdoba daily La Voz del Interior wearing Che’s jacket, smoking, leaning against the pillar, right hand hooked in my belt, in a recognizable pose of mine, reached Ana María, Oscar and the other Córdoba compañeros, although they did not know the name I was travelling under. Less than a week after their initial appearance in Presencia, in an amazingly effective race to offer journalistic protection, these photos of Debray, ‘Frutos’ and Roth provided irrefutable proof that we were alive and prisoners of the Bolivian army.
Hours on your feet are not recommended after several nights walking. Exhaustion took over and we slumped against the pillars. But the little soldier had orders that we stand: ‘Stand up, you shit!’ he said, but with more respect than fury. The day went by like that, while the village returned to its habitual drowsiness. The joint civic-military command decided to take us inside again but still incommunicado. We had no chance to discuss strategy or develop any line of argument, except the invented figure of Andrés and the fact we had only seen small groups of guerrillas, a decision we had taken in the nick of time. A small helicopter, making a menacing noise, landed in the patio. Debray was led to it and it took off again. At dusk, the roar of blades breaking the air announced it was back. This time it was Roth’s turn. I remained alone with the same guards. Friendlier now the danger had diminished, they told me that Colonel Rocha, commander of the Fourth Army Division in Camiri, had demanded the prisoners be handed over: he considered them guerrillas, carrying false documents. The news, as recorded in Che’s diary on 20 April, said: ‘They … told us that the three who left had been arrested in Muyupampa and two of them are in trouble for having false documents. Bad news for Carlos, but Danton should be all right.’ Debray had his valid passport, but the army was obviously referring to the false press passes, with the false authorization from the President.
In the days that followed, I could see that my passport was standing up better than I had hoped. Apparently I had to wait for the helicopter to return before I could be transferred and I spent the time putting my emotions in order and preparing a minimal plan of action: events were way beyond my control but I had to adapt to them with clarity and forethought. First, I weighed up the general situation. Clearly my first mistake was not obeying Che’s orders to the letter and striking out on my own over the hills. It is useless to speculate about its viability now but it led to the worst error a revolutionary can make: not to die at the right time.
I have before me a letter from one of my closest compañeros at that time, Oscar del Barco, written thirty-five years later apropos of a certain documentary film. ‘Your arguments are valid, rationally valid, but the Left, that Left, is not interested in rationality; they would rather you had died and not come out alive. That Left can understand you, but will not accept that you didn’t die.’ Yet saving their lives – the members of that Left – was one of my concerns at that time, and I decided to make sure they were safe, no matter what it cost me personally. But the Left always demands martyrs, because it does not live in the real world but through iconography, like all religions.
&nbs
p; Moreover, I had important instructions to carry out that were, to my mind, still urgent despite the fact that I was in jail.
The guerrillas’ situation was disastrous for three main reasons: total lack of communication; isolation from the local populace – made worse because guerrilla successes in battle meant the deaths of young soldiers, the sons of the nations’ poorest people; and the deplorable state of the guerrillas’ health, which could only deteriorate because of the first two reasons and progressive debilitation. The tasks Che asked me to carry out, given my previous experience, were aimed at alleviating this perilous situation. I was to re-establish contact with the clandestine grass-roots and outside support networks that could supply human and material resources. If this failed, there was no way for them but down. Obviously they could not incorporate defeated army units, as the Romans used to. But the numerous volunteers who had been trained, and/or were being trained in Havana to join the liberation struggle generated by the guerrilla foco, needed to be called to action.
Overcoming these hurdles did not depend entirely on me, of course; mine was only one of several attempts that were possible. But I had to do my part, even if it was only to communicate what was actually happening, because the united Left was intent on glorifying the guerrillas. As it happened, mine was the only attempt made. To my mind, as long as I was alive, I had to play the card of asking for legal assistance, and pretending that events had overtaken ‘my innocent intentions’. If I could see a lawyer – I thought obsessively about our Argentine lawyers, Lonatti or Roca – I could pass on Che’s instructions and things would take their course, regardless of what happened to me. Having come emphatically to this conclusion, I had to put it into practice. But I needed to be alone, I couldn’t think in the midst of all this civic-military hysteria. I faked intestinal colic, due to the freezing nights, spicy food, and nerves. They took me to the toilet, in a corner of the corridor. I reviewed my belongings, miraculously they were all intact. It was vital I save the 2,000 dollars which, if I was able to, I would give to the lawyer for Ana María and to cover any expenses incurred. The problem was how to keep them safe. I knew we would be searched any time now; incredibly they had not already done so. Despite forcing us into nudism, they had not so much as put their hands in our pockets, nor taken anything from us. I was ready to lose the 5,000 Bolivian pesos, but not the dollars (after all, it was what I was worth, according to Che’s calculation), so I tried putting them in the soles of my moccasins – also inherited from another of the Cubans – but it made them very bulky and I could not get them on. The soldier guarding me was banging on the toilet door so I had to go out without finding a solution. To my surprise, the time at my disposal was extended when I learned the helicopter would not be making another journey that day because of the mist. My turn would not come until the following day.