Che Wants to See You

by Ciro Bustos

  The tribunal made good use of the publicity, and some paragraphs mentioning Debray were quickly sent from the Army High Command in La Paz. But actually the trial came to a rapid close since there was nothing left to discuss. There was just time for the accused to speak. Debray read a manuscript resounding with emotion that he had penned alone in his cell. It was his best moment. With the full military tribunal listening religiously, he gave an interpretation of American history and current revolutionary events as a continuation of it. The courtroom applauded, so did some army officers.

  As for me, my lawyer and I had another disagreement. He wanted me to write an historic speech, reclaiming the essence of Che as an Argentine. But I said if I did that, I would have to start telling the truth, and that meant throwing lots of people to the lions. We did not know what the Frenchman was going to say but that was not why Mendizábal was so insistent. For him, history remembers the grand gestures, the famous phrases, not serious intentions or mediocre reality. I did not give a toss for that argument. So I wrote five lines, in which I disclaimed any responsibility, insisting I had come to Bolivia because I was invited to a completely different kind of event. It took me half a minute to read it out but even then I was very nervous about the public’s reactions. The tribunal devoted a whole day to ‘sitting behind closed doors’ (a military/legal euphemism) and when they came back to the courtroom for the last time, it seemed the fiesta was continuing.

  The members of the military tribunal were dressed to kill, and even the military police had new uniforms with a lick of paint for the PM on their helmets. Still greater numbers of international press and specially invited guests packed the doorways, and the courtroom, its windows open to combat the heat, was full to bursting. On the podium, the stars of the show played out the final scene, but the cameras were focusing on the extras on the benches.

  The tribunal’s president, Guachalla, banged his gavel for silence. Another member read the tribunal’s verdict, which found us guilty on all counts. Guachalla then pronounced the expected sentence for the foreign mercenaries, Régis Debray and Ciro Bustos: thirty years – a life sentence – in a military prison. The other defendants were freed immediately, either because they had deserted opportunely or had collaborated, or for lack of evidence.

  The journalists fought to get near us, while a kind of general enthusiasm enveloped us rather than those who had been freed. One way or another, we had won.

  Part Five

  Prison in Camiri

  38

  A Thirty-year Sentence

  Thirty years begin alone. Algarañaz packed his things and departed emotionally, leaving the room for my personal use. Like anyone renting an apartment, I did a spring clean. I stuck a photo of Ana María and the girls on the wall, made myself a reading corner under the window where Algarañaz’s bed had been, and tried to mend the huge holes in the mosquito netting covering the windows. I rearranged the furniture. It consisted of a box with a primus on which to make coffee, another which served as a library with a few books, and a table and chair from the Club.

  The scenery outside the window was neither attractive nor very active. The routine of the Officers’ Club carried on as usual, and it was only on weekends that we heard voices, and drunks having arguments. Through the bars on the window, we could spy a slice of life on a corner of the square. Two houses further up to the right was Camiri’s only cinema, with matinées and evening shows on Saturdays and Sundays. That’s when youngsters would march up and down and, passing our windows, shouted their messages: ‘Régis, my love!’ or ‘Goodbye, Peladito’. And the most daring among them walloped the shutters.

  It is strange how seductive criminals are. From then on the rhythm of the day and its eventual altercations depended on what Régis Debray and his team did. The multitude of foreign journalists who had come so far to see him did not want to leave without an interview, so there were press conferences every day. Only with him, mark you. My thirty-year sentence did not merit a single article. Reporting on Debray became staple fodder for European publications for the next three years, on anniversaries, at New Year, on national days, etc. What with processions of journalists, help from the embassy, the Consulesa visiting on average once a month, and his wife every two months, Debray had in no way been abandoned. With the approval of the former president of the tribunal, brand new General Guachalla (all the officers involved had been promoted), and Fourth Division commander, General Reque Terán, authorization had been given for Debray to marry Elizabeth Burgos. He asked me to be his witness at the wedding, but the Civil Registry office refused because I had no legal document in my real name. I don’t remember who the eventual witness was but the wedding, presided over by the registrar at seven in the evening in the Officers’ Club lounge, was a proper social event. With the help of the embassy, the mother of the groom brought cases of Moët Chandon and Chivas Regal, which the tribunal members plus the Fourth Division top brass finished off like magic.

  I was invited although I did not have the proper clothes (I had returned the suit), so Debray and I were like a couple of post-moderns in shirt sleeves, among the be-starred generals and be-spangled ladies of the court. The happy couple withdrew early, around nine, and so did I, since there was no dancing. The honeymoon was spent in the Frenchman’s cell, transformed into a fairytale bedchamber for a week.

  Rumours circulated that we would be transferred to a more serious military prison, and names of terrible places were bandied about: Viacha, high up in the Altiplano; Coroico, in the tropical rainforest. Debray played his cards in favour of the Panóptico prison in La Paz, a sinister place if ever there was one, controlled by a series of mafias. But it had the advantage of a separate political section (given the volatile nature of Bolivian institutions, the inmates went back and forth), safe from pathological prisoners but exposed to ideologues. Debray was so keen on it that the army got suspicious and, thankfully, the idea did not prosper. Debray saw himself running an international office, connected by telephone, with diplomatic links and a diary choc-a-block with personal interviews. The alternative, he said, was confinement, human and political degradation.

  I thought differently. Our relative isolation made us a special case, and since we survived – thanks to General de Gaulle, not to Debray – as products to be used in some future trade-off, we needed to be kept in good condition. They would not leave us to rot in some god-forsaken garrison, yet being on the crest of the wave did not improve our chances. There were too many offended army officers about.

  Although the decision had been made, we did not know what it was, and in any case our lives went on with a semblance of routine. Our mail was controlled, but at least there was some. Ana María hoped to get some money at Christmas and New Year art fairs by selling paintings donated by well-known artists (Alonso, Viola, Deira), organized by Ignacio Colombres of the Argentine Artists Association. I was to have no visits this year, but on Christmas Eve, Doña Maria acted as go-between for a series of anonymous transfers.

  I was lying on my bed reading when I heard scraping on the metal mesh window giving onto the patio and a voice saying: ‘Don Ciro, Don Ciro!’ I then saw Doña Maria destroying my repairs to the netting by trying to push in a bottle of champagne and a couple of packets tied with a string. ‘Some ladies asked me to give you these, Señor Ciro’, and then ‘Don’t tell anyone, I don’t want to get involved.’ There was roast turkey with potatoes, rice with mayonnaise, spicy sauces, jams. The champagne was cold, but sweet unfortunately. Only in Bolivia!

  In mid-January, Ana María came for a second visit, the first after the sentence. She installed herself in the Marietta: this hotel restaurant-cum-‘three-star’ headquarters of international organizations had added private bathrooms and showers to its rooms. After discussions with the divisional commander, she was given a permit for two visits a year, allowing her to see me two hours per day during a stay of two weeks or sometimes a bit more, according to the time and money she could afford. On that first occasion,
to compensate for Debray’s wedding, they gave her a couple of nocturnal visits.

  Her personal situation in Argentina, alone with two traumatized little girls under a military dictatorship, had got worse, and she had had to go and live with her parents in a small apartment in Buenos Aires. My girls, about two and three then, drew pictures as all children do and sent them to me. Their works of art almost always involved a strange person-object with four rolling legs and knobs under a rectangle with squiggles on it: it was the television, where they saw the father they had lost. Ana María brought books, carefully selected because of the cost. Some were donated, others were sent by friends: curiously my most intellectual friends, like Oscar del Barco, sent the worst type, like cowboy novels I had never read in my life, because they thought I would only want to read comics. Only once was a book confiscated: A Plan for Escape by Bioy Casares, which had nothing to do with prisoners escaping.

  In February, Elizabeth Burgos came again. She crossed the patio accompanied by the sergeant in charge of the keys, who retired to wait patiently with a beer in the dining room. I watched from my window only because something was happening outside, but without paying much attention. Five or ten minutes later, the sergeant had to abandon his beer and answer Debray’s call. I then saw Elizabeth walk quickly and angrily out of the Club.

  According to the sergeant, Debray had refused the time stipulated for the visit, which was short in fact, only half an hour. He told Elizabeth to go back to La Paz on the plane she had come on, one that arrived twice a week in the late afternoon and left the following day. It was yet another episode in the tug of war between omnipotent forces to which I was a mere spectator. However, a few days later, Elizabeth complained in the Diario de La Paz (as far as I remember because my newspaper clippings were burned in the fire in San Rafael, Mendoza) that: ‘Ciro Bustos’ wife lives in Camiri and they share his room like a normal couple, while I only get thirty minutes.’

  Thirty years are nothing, it all depends how they are spent. Having a political enemy next door can bring acrimonious confrontations but also some benefit. A religious fanatic of an enemy can be a daily penance. But a revolutionary Pope, enemy of the human race, is Dante’s inferno, requiring infinite intelligence and patience to deal with. Debray and I were scheduled to have thirty years of it, although fortunately, in practice, we only did 10 per cent.

  To cap it all, to the rumours of our transfer were added rumours about something mysterious being built in the grounds of Fourth Division headquarters just across the road. Some said it was an impregnable fortress, others talked of a cage like in a zoo. And that’s what it turned out to be: a cage.

  39

  Lunchtime in the Cage

  Lunch was the strategic objective of our morning. Mornings spent waiting for it went by slowly, ponderously, altered only by the daily rituals of barracks life: changing of the guard, insulting chore dodgers, square bashing and new profanities. But that all went on outside the cage, on the other side of the walls and mesh netting. Inside the cage, the only turmoil was inside our own minds. Our attention was divided between the small pleasures of freshly made coffee, news on the radio, or the magical power of music, transporting us through the bars of the peephole in the door and wafting us away on the vibrant air of the morning light.

  But mornings could be busy too, when the sudden clatter of the cage’s chains and locks clearly announced a ‘visit’. It might be another lesson in political zoology. A recently-posted major or colonel, accompanied by his wife, keen to see the international fauna, the jewel in the Fourth Division’s crown and envy of the entire army. They would open the three doors, and we would have to come out to stand in the patio of the cage like monkeys. We could see the officer and his wife, and sometimes their children, looking at us excitedly, and we had to listen to their stupid questions.

  Or it might be some sergeant rushing in all of a sweat to inform us of the new rule, going into effect immediately, prohibiting electric light after ten at night. Tragic news indeed, because the night had to be attacked with a goodly bout of reading, totally divorced from the outside world, far from the cage, alone with our complex and neurotic thoughts. For a few hours we escaped the pettiness of our reality, rediscovered our inner selves, connected with our consciousness. But night has its dangers too. Doctors say it is when our organism lowers its defences, neglects its psycho-physical alliances, and surrenders to death.

  What’s more, the inhabitants of the night come out. Cockroaches reigned supreme. They were huge, some about five centimetres long, a sort of rusty red colour, appearing from God knows where, and advancing along the supports holding up the tiled roofs until they all but covered them. And they didn’t just lie there quietly. They bustled and jostled with almost inaudible crackling noises. Many lost their footing and fell onto the unsuspecting reader, like a fleeting fag end. The rain of falling cockroaches was so bad I managed to beg a mosquito net off the sergeant. Mosquitoes were on hand too, a source of permanent harassment. If my pyrethrum and palo santo spiral ran out, I was stuffed. They arrived with the El Mundo radio news at around nine and battle was waged all night: not conducive to enjoying reading and music. There were some nice bugs, almost good company; but others were invisible, clandestine, and attacked the few books and clothes we had.

  The fiercest creatures were a kind of termite, invisible to boot. Once inside a book, they did not wait to demolish it entirely, as any self-respecting termite would do, but spurred on by a peculiar traveller’s instinct, continued without pausing through all the adjacent books, no matter how thick the book, how good the paper, or how famous the author. When they reached the end of the shelf, they began tunnelling homewards, until someone picked up a book and found the insides eaten by the subterranean censor.

  The night stimulated feelings. I wanted to live it to the full, make it last longer, delay consciousness. Night also heightened perception of the good and bad around me, as well as the things I longed for; the suppressed desire made me sweat profusely, running off in rivulets, soaking the mattress. Despite the spotlights on the four corners of the cage that kept the patio permanently lit, I sensed the dawn approaching with a mixture of relief and resignation. There was still time for a period of quieter sleep, free of demons.

  Between seven and eight in the morning, the chains jangled, the door screeched, and guards came into the patio to undo our padlocks and open our cell doors. We had half an hour for our ablutions. We shuffled out like lingering ghosts, piss-pots in hand, and took turns to use the facilities while we discussed the radio news. Back in our cubicles, we returned to the long morning wait for lunch.

  With the inauguration of our brand new quarters, we lost our access to the food in the Officer’s Club, our former home. The foot soldier’s daily fare, lagua as it was called, was a soup of maize flour with noodles and bits of fatty meat or charqui floating in it. To a petty bourgeois stomach, unaccustomed to the rigours of permanent hunger, it acted like a laxative. With thirty years stretching before us, the Consulesa arranged for Debray’s food to be brought from the Marietta, and Ana María made the same arrangement for me, paying for it on her six-monthly visits. But León was not part of the deal. He got the lagua.

  The food contract with the Italian owner of the Marietta brought our relationship with the restaurant full circle, marking a year since that first dinner on its open-air terrace. The restaurant had had an unexpected boom since then, as Camiri became a centre of international journalism. On the pretext of attending to gastronomic specifications, the Italian came to our cage and we discussed our refined culinary palates with him personally. We ended up with three alternative dishes: roast chicken with potatoes and mixed salad, pasta with meat stew, and steak with onions or fried eggs plus chips and salad. No arrangement was made for wine. We had to wait two years for this shortcoming to be rectified and, left to our own devices, we bribed the guards. Some situations were really comical: ‘Soldier!’ we called through the wire mesh. ‘Yes, señor’, he answered,
standing to attention. ‘When you go off duty, buy me a bottle of wine!’ I said, more as an order than a request. ‘No, señor, I can’t!’ he replied, uneasily. ‘What do you mean, you can’t? And while you’re there, have a few snacks on me.’ He ended up agreeing. An hour later, he was back with a bottle hidden in his clothes. It was about then that León’s luck changed.

  León was a great guy, a fantastic human being, a disciplined militant whom the Communist Party had put in charge of the Casa de Calamina. He had left his wife and children in the Beni but they were abandoned by the Communist Party when it broke with the guerrillas, and he stayed on as a putative farmer. He ended up as guerrilla-cum-cook. Che appreciated him, writing in his diary on 27 September: ‘León had a lot of promise.’ Sadly, that was the day after the vanguard column was caught in an ambush and he became separated from the group. According to León, he abandoned his backpack but not his gun – not a sign that he intended to desert – and scrambled up to the pre-established emergency point. Nobody else made it up there. He waited until it was clear he had to leave the area. On his way, he came across the house of an oil worker who promised to take him out by tractor, but only if he left his gun which was too noticeable. He lent him clothes to change into but, instead of keeping his word, took him straight to an army post where he turned him in.