by Ciro Bustos
The hoo-ha surrounding the trial meant the officers shared the dangers of war with the spotlight of fame: that is, being invited to the Marietta restaurant by Life magazine or Paris Match. Camiri had become a sought-after posting. The General Staff school benefited from the local war praxis, and its students settled down there. One of its graduates, Captain, then Major, Juan García Mesa, became the new commander of the intelligence section, replacing Echeverría. They were like chalk and cheese. García Mesa had a big wide smile of perfect teeth which got him nicknamed ‘Crocodile’. He was determined to show signs of ‘good faith’ and prison conditions certainly improved on his watch. He was always trying to debate his vision of Latin American history with Debray, supposedly as part of the school’s curriculum.
I left the Club on two occasions but they were not related to interrogations or press interviews. I was suddenly put in a jeep – Tania’s jeep, in fact, now in army service – and trundled off to Choreti barracks. There, I was taken to a corner of the parade ground to identify corpses brought in from the jungle by helicopter. Anyone who has ever seen a corpse after a couple of days in the tropics will understand how impossible that is. The corpses, like animals carried away by the river, swell up in the positions in which they die: features, posture, any personal traits, disappear. Their skin is the colour of earth, clothes in tatters stuck to it, stiff, unrecognizable organic matter. Their mouths open in dull sounds like distant echoes, their eyes half closed, their gazes lost in infinity, and an appalling smell. I had heard rumours that Joaquín’s group, split off from the main column, had been massacred. But the only corpse I thought I recognized was Negro, the Peruvian doctor who had stayed to look after them. He was on his back on the ground a little way from the others, a hand on his chest, as if he was sleeping in the sun, his face serene. I did not see Tania among the bodies, they were all men. But the number of dead, eight altogether, suggested it really was them, and they had been murdered.
Che noted in his diary, on 4 September: ‘The radio brings news of a death at a new clash in Vado del Yeso, near where the group of ten men was wiped out, which makes the news about Joaquín look like a trick; but on the other hand, they gave a physical description of Negro, the Peruvian doctor, killed in Palmarito and his body was taken to Camiri; Pelado assisted with the identification. This seems to be a real death; the others could be fictitious or members of the resaca. In any case, there is a strange tone to the reports that are now focusing on the areas Masicurí and Camiri.’
The trial kept being postponed from week to week, and we were now in September. Mendizábal told me he had to go through endless red tape to get travel permits, and any other legal or family authorization would be refused. He had continual problems accessing documents that were crucial to his preliminary investigation, and got them only for a few days at the last minute. He said Debray’s lawyer, Dr Novillo, gave him more help than the members of the tribunal whose job it was supposed to be.
The prosecution centred on two main points: Debray and myself were accused of being mercenaries and combatants, responsible for thirty to forty deaths to date, plus the wounded, and charges of theft. They would be asking for the maximum sentence, but it was still not known whether President Barrientos’s request to restore the death penalty had been granted. The panorama was sombre and uncertain. The defence consisted of denying our participation in any military action whatsoever: in this the Frenchman’s statements coincided with mine. However, in an event of such magnitude, once military action was known to have started, only authorized journalists could be considered neutral. That had been Roth’s defence before he was released. It was harder to plead innocence when we were already there, and had arrived clandestinely. The explanation I had concocted began to sound like the only plausible one. And I knew it, having spent many sleepless nights, devoured by mosquitoes, trying to come up with an alternative.
Finally Mendizábal arrived to announce that the trial was beginning. He thought our appearance would play an important role; looking like ‘gentlemen’ rather than dangerous criminals was more likely to win them over. So he took my measurements to get a suit made up for me in La Paz. I was not happy about it. I did not want to be smartened up. But he said he had discussed it with Novillo, and he in turn with Debray, and had decided to change the outlaw look for a more acceptable one. When he came back for the trial, he brought a grey pinstriped suit which was a perfect fit, with an almost new white shirt, tie and shoes, collected by Almaraz’s friends in La Paz.
On the morning of the trial, Mendizábal and Novillo waited in the patio to accompany us to the tribunal building. I came out of our room with Algarañaz in his black wedding suit, but Debray caused a delay by registering his rejection to the ‘illegal’ military tribunal, refusing to participate in it, and centring all attention on himself. In the end, his media show over, and thanks to his lawyer with whom he had been working for the last few days without mentioning that he rejected the trial, Debray appeared at the door to his room in his normal everyday clothes, a navy blue long-sleeved shirt, outside his trousers, unshaven and uncombed, as befitted a proud prisoner, defenceless and alone, confronting the forces of repression. I tried to go back into my room and change, but the soldiers had run out of patience. They made us get in a canvas-covered lorry, waiting at the entrance, surrounded by a mass of photographers, cameramen and more or less spontaneous demonstrators. A French writer knows how to create a good autobiography early in life.
Ana María had arrived in La Paz for the second time, accompanied by a group of prestigious figures: lawyers from the Argentine League for Human Rights, among them Dr Cerruti Costa, a Peronist; Dr Lopez Acotto, from the Socialist Party; and another from the Communist Party whose name I can’t remember. However, no matter how much red tape they went through and strings they pulled through local opposition and even government politicians, they were not given permission to travel to Camiri. General Torres put the responsibility for this firmly on to General Ovando’s shoulders, and both of them blamed the state of insecurity caused by popular demonstrations against the ‘mercenaries’.
Ana María did not get to the opening of the trial, but Ricardo Rojo, forewarned by his first experience, came overland by train to Oruro and then by ‘taxi’ to Camiri. Mendizábal helped him to get permission to say hello and spend about ten minutes with me. He was not allowed into the courtroom for some technical reason, so we sat outside and chatted under the trees. Ricardo was a great big man, balding, warm and affectionate, and a true son of Buenos Aires. He had a soothing effect on me, exuding love from my Argentine friends. He even extended his feelings of solidarity to Debray who was with us. He greeted him unceremoniously and the Frenchman took to him immediately. He told me later: ‘He is the warmest human being I have ever met!’ It did not stop Ricardo Rojo being expelled from Camiri.
Finally, the doors of the courtroom opened and we went in. It was a rectangular hall with a raised podium at the end, rather like a church, with all the symbols of the law on display. Facing the podium separated by an aisle, were rows of chairs and benches, lent by the community. A few stairs led up to the podium and on it, beneath a long banner saying ‘The sea is our right, regaining it is our duty’ and Bolivian flags draped either side like curtains, was a long table covered by a red cloth with another flag over it, and chairs behind for the five judges. To the left was the prosecutor’s pulpit; to the right, the table for the court registrar. In front, on the right and perpendicular to the podium, was the table for the defence counsel and at an angle to him, sat the two principal defendants. Behind, in the second row, were the other accused. Local dignitaries and public figures filled the 200 seats on the floor of the hall.
The tribunal members made their solemn entrance, headed by the president of the tribunal, Colonel Guachalla. The latter had been made to look ridiculous a few days earlier when he was asked the million-dollar question by European journalist-philosophers: ‘What will the result of the trial be? The death penalty?’ Gu
achalla said he did not know the answer ‘because I am not homo sapiens’. From then on, anyone and everyone added fuel to the fire, taking pot shots at the tribunal’s honour.
The world’s intellectual class mobilized on behalf of its own, and turned morality and ethics on its head, aligning themselves with those on top of the social pile rather than those on the bottom. A German activist interrupted the opening ceremony to read a communiqué questioning the tribunal’s legitimacy and demanding the release of the young philosopher, a paradigm of the fight for freedom. All hell broke loose and an exchange of insults, applause, whistling and shouting paralyzed the proceedings and provoked an energetic reaction from the tribunal’s president who banged his gavel so hard the wooden top flew off and hit someone in the second row. The session was suspended until the objectors were removed from the hall. Order was restored, but not gravity.
The main charge and other official documents were read out. The prosecutor set out his stall. Evidence, he said, would prove that we had taken part in the criminal events that had thrown a nation into mourning. For our part, through our lawyers, we pleaded innocent to the charges against us. After the order of proceedings for the prosecution and defence was established, the opening session was closed. Our truck left the Officers’ Club for the tribunal each morning, Monday to Friday, and although the show went on for a month, its script and especially its finale having been approved to the last detail, the crowd of locals, foreigners and professional onlookers watched every arrival and departure without fail.
The guerrilla war had intensified, producing more fatalities, so there was no cause for satisfaction. Public opinion, however, seemed to have taken a turn to the left, as a reaction to certain repressive measures taken by the army. It had gone from fighting guerrillas to the criminal massacre of striking miners at the Siglo XX mine near Oruro, on the night of San Juan in June. President Barrientos had been seduced by power and moved away from the populism he had once espoused to adopt the ‘National Security Doctrine’ methods recommended by the US.
There were days of high tension: for example, when the prosecutor presented his witnesses. Yet, like in the theatre, we knew the scenes of emotion and terror were not for real. Both sides lied. Several soldiers, said to be survivors of the ambushes that happened while we were with the guerrillas, related fictitious events, flushed with excitement. One pointed to me and said: ‘He was in the river, among the stones, and fired a submachine gun at me.’ Another soldier denounced Debray for something similar. None of it was true. One day, the prosecutor called the two officers captured in the first ambush, Major Plata and Captain Silva, who were questioned by Alejandro while I feigned being an armed guard. I had been afraid all hell would break loose, but now I had a feeling it would not happen. If the army was using false witnesses, it was because the real witnesses had not come forward. It was the sort of thing that might happen if two neighbours or work colleagues met by chance in a house of ill repute, a sado-masochistic brothel or a paedophile sect. Both would keep quiet about it, even if they had not explicitly agreed to. They had seen me, armed, assisting a Cuban guerrilla, but I had also seen them behaving in ways unfitting for Bolivian army officers. In the end, neither of them mentioned the fact.
Major Plata made a very measured statement, only verging on the emotional when he talked of the death of soldiers, mere boys. A disaster befalling them out of nowhere, without warning, an unknown enemy: chaos, wailing, shouting, the size of the tragedy, after the lethal strike. However, in reply to the prosecutor’s question about some of the prisoners present, he said he had not seen us, either then, or later. Captain Silva, always the more nervous of the two, exaggerated the gun battle, which in fact had been little more than a few volleys, in an attempt to illustrate the danger he had been in. Yet, looking me straight in the eye, he too denied having seen us. As witnesses, they accentuated the dark, evil side of the action, which ‘obliged’ the army to promise to wipe out the guerrillas.
That left the survivors of the second battle. The little soldier I captured might have had something to say. But the actual witnesses were all false too, obviously so as they recited texts from memory. I think that panic-stricken little boy waited till he got home to his community in Oruro or Sucre to relate what had happened to him. If he even came out alive, that is.
The prosecutor had to prove all the crimes, not only those committed in battle. The guerrillas were accused of stealing from farmers. This was an important detail, because respect for the property and families of the local inhabitants was crucial to encouraging farmers to support the guerrillas, and the government needed, therefore, to undermine this support by discrediting the ethics of the guerrillas in the eyes of the public. To this end, the prosecutor called a peasant farmer from near the village of Gutiérrez, where we had made our first unsuccessful attempt to escape.
It is useful at this point to look at the social composition of the scant population in this area, using the excellent analysis of the subject by Humberto Vázquez Viaña in his book A Guerrilla for Che. The original inhabitants were Guaranís (Chiriguanos), who had settled in the Chaco region long before the Spaniards arrived. The MNR’s agrarian reform in 1952 had given the Guaranís ownership of land that was de facto theirs, but the dominant social class was made up of mestizos or Quechuas who came to the region with the idea of farming cash crops, whereas the Guaranís economic life revolved around subsistence farming. They were not interested in expanding or modifying their habitat, but were used to changing habitats according to their moods or the climate. They were also historically famous as the indomitable warriors who had stopped the advance of the Inca empire; defeating them in a famous battle at the fortress of Samaipata (a town the guerrillas took on 6 July). They knew the area like the backs of their hands – two children made a mockery of the army cordon by leading Roth to the guerrillas – and were the true owners of the land.
The witness, however, owned the house where the guerrillas had camped and bought a pig that took us all night to barbecue and eat. He was an ambitious mestizo. A Guaraní would have said we paid him for the pig – as we did in actual fact – but this farmer was moulded by capitalist society. He thought the state would pay him for any damage, so he swore the guerrilla had stolen a hundred pigs, the fruit of years of work, as well as destroying his corrals and fences and threatening the women in his family. The room fell silent, overwhelmed by the weight of the prosecutor’s argument and the witness’s lies. I passed a piece of paper to Mendizábal on which I had written hurriedly: ‘Ask him how many trucks you need to transport a hundred pigs!’ Mendizábal understood the irony and took the sting out of the charge, which was left with non-existent pigs scattering in all directions.
37
The Death of Che Guevara: 9 October 1967
Through seeing my lawyer every day and the officers at their libations in Doña María’s Club, we gleaned much more information than before, and we knew that military actions were not going in our favour. What is more, the officers were euphoric, a bad sign for us in the short term. They would often exaggerate victory or talk of it in a loud voice on purpose, knowing we were listening, but their upbeat mood was enough of an indication. It is hard to simulate such expectations and it was not all show. Things were not going well for the guerrillas. On top of the catastrophe of the rearguard column being wiped out, there was talk of the vanguard being ambushed, with the death of Coco Peredo and other guerrillas.
There was something in the air; you could feel it in the courtroom. With judges whispering among themselves and aides-de-camp going to and fro, the prosecutor was losing his audience. According to Mendizábal, Barrientos thought it was all over, and Ovando considered the defeat of the invaders imminent. On the other hand, it could have been a ruse to counteract the political crisis Bolivia had been thrown into since the massacre of the miners in June.
One Tuesday morning, however, excitement turned to jubilation. The judges were in a pow-wow with the prosecutor on the podium, wh
en he suddenly turned round and declared he was in a position to confirm that the famous Che Guevara had been captured and had died from his wounds in La Higuera.
When I had stood before the pile of corpses weeks earlier, I had been gripped by a sense of tragedy way beyond my own personal feelings. Even so, this news hit me like a bullet, targeting my emotions even more profoundly than that macabre spectacle in Choreti. We were on our feet, I don’t know why; perhaps the prosecutor had asked for it, to inform the prisoners. A deep silence descended on the room, broken only by the clicks of the cameras shooting in our faces, and a timid buzz of satisfaction that grew as it circulated round the hall. The spectator part of me got the upper hand and, turning my head full circle, I looked at the images around me. The officers on the tribunal were embracing. Debray put his hand to his forehead, in a gesture of despair, and kept it there. The reporters crowded round us, behind the benches. In the windows, cameras held above heads were filming and taking photos. Time seemed to stand still, until the tribunal broke up for the day.
The following morning, Debray asked for the floor and said he wanted to withdraw his defence. From now on, he wanted to be considered equally responsible for the revolutionary project for which those brave fighters had died. He sincerely wished he could ‘meet the same fate as my compañeros’.
Che’s death also meant the capture of his belongings, among them his diary. Reading it would make the show trial practically irrelevant. Yet I was comforted by Che’s words. He had said: ‘I have to be careful what I write, I could be ambushed one day and my backpack lost …’ In fact, despite his desire to meticulously chronicle everyday events, he refrained from making any reference to things that could compromise me in any way. Not a single word describing our old project, or the new one under his leadership. Nor did he write things like my telling him about Rubio’s death, which I know affected him deeply. And not only that; he made it look as if Inti told him part of the story, when Inti was up on the hill, in the sentry post, and not down by the river where I was. In short, he did not make matters worse for me, nor mention the work I was to do in Argentina. To me, those words, said in the calm of a conversation at camp, show that Che did not say or write anything in vain.