Exposing the Real Che Guevara

by Humberto Fontova

  “Forget about any help!” snorted Alarcon’s fellow guerrilla Antonio Olo Pantoja. “Forget about it! Dammit! I’m telling you that over there in Cuba what they want is to get rid of us. It’s obvious!” 19 And Antonio was in an excellent position to know. He was a veteran Cuban intelligence operative who knew full well how these things worked. He’d planned the offing of many fellow revolutionaries himself. Now he recognized that his turn had come.

  While Che was posing for snapshots by Dariel Alarcon, neither he nor anyone in his group had any way to communicate with Cuba. By late summer, their antique tube radio had finally sputtered out. Castro had sent an agent named Renan Montero to La Paz to keep in touch with Che, but Montero abruptly left Bolivia in July and returned to Cuba. Significantly, just a week earlier, Aleksey Kosygin had visited Cuba and met with Castro.

  Kosygin had just come from a meeting with Lyndon Johnson, during which the U.S. president complained about what he saw as “Castroite subversion” in Latin America. (If he’d only known the real motive.) This “Castroite subversion” was a clear breach of the deal the United States and the Soviets had cut back in October 1962, which had left Castro unmolested. Now this mischief in Bolivia might force the United States into an agonizing reappraisal of that deal, LBJ explained.

  Hearing this from Kosygin, Castro concluded that the time had come to speed things up and finally rid himself of Che. Within days, Montero came home and Che was cast completely adrift. Barely two months later, the “National Liberation Army” was wiped out and Che was dead.

  On September 26, a Bolivian patrol, alerted by those chronically unenlightened peasants, ambushed Che’s vanguard near the village of La Higuera and killed three guerrillas. Felix Rodriguez, who had been getting a wealth of valuable information from the captured Jose Castillo Chavez, or “Paco,” identified one of the dead guerrillas as “Miguel.” This was a Cuban named Manuel Hernandez, a captain in Castro’s rebel army who was second-in-command of the “vanguard” right behind Che. Felix sensed that Guevara was nearby and advised the Bolivian military to send their U.S.-trained ranger battalion to the area.

  “But their training isn’t complete,” replied the Bolivian commander.

  “No matter!” answered Rodriguez. “I think we ’ve got Che pin-pointed! Send them in!” Barely a week later Che was yelling his pitiful plea to those Bolivian rangers. “Don’t shoot! I’m Che, I’m worth more to you alive than dead!”

  Che’s capture merits some clarification after the romanticization of his last day by his hagiographers. Che was defiant, they claim. Che was surprised, caught off-guard, and was unable to properly defend himself or to shoot himself with his last bullet, as was his plan. Jon Lee Anderson is particularly obsessed with this version. Jorge Castañeda has a machine-gun burst not only destroying Che’s carbine, but actually “blasting it from his very grip and wounding him in the process.”20 Christopher Hitchens has written of Che’s “untamable defiance.”

  In fact, Che, after ordering his men to fight to the last man and the last bullet, surrendered enthusiastically. His famous “wound” was a bullet graze near his calf that missed bone and most muscle. Che surrendered voluntarily from a safe distance, and was captured physically sound and with a full clip in his pistol.

  “Che could not shoot back,” claims Castañeda. “His pistol had no clip.”21

  “Che fired his M-2 carbine but it was soon hit in the barrel by a bullet, rendering it useless,” writes Anderson. “The magazine of his pistol had apparently already been lost; he was now unarmed.”22

  And where did Che’s diligent and hard-nosed biographers get this heroic version of events? Their source reads: “We have been able to precisely determine that Che had been battling even while wounded until the barrel of his M-2 carbine was damaged by a shot that made it totally useless. And his pistol was without a clip. These incredible circumstances explain why Che was captured alive.”23

  The above passage is in the prologue to Che’s Bolivian diaries, published in Havana. This prologue had been written by Fidel Castro.

  After all, PBS, in its 1997 special on Che commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of his death, informs us that “Mr. Anderson . . . gained unprecedented access to both Che’s personal archive through his widow and to formerly sealed Cuban government archives.” Aleida March, of course, is now a Castro regime official who chairs the Ernesto Guevara Research Center in Havana. Anderson received unprecedented access to the propaganda of one of the world’s most censored societies. It’s as if historians were to uncritically accept neo-Nazi claims that Hitler had died battling Soviet troops, instead of commiting suicide.

  What really happened? Castro, obviously, wasn’t at the scene. The three Cuban guerrillas who escaped Bolivia were nowhere near Guevara at the time of his surrender. Willy, a Bolivian miner and guerrilla captured with Che, was executed along with Che the following day.

  Why not consult the full records of the Bolivian officers actually on the scene of the capture? We know perfectly well why. The truth isn’t pretty.

  Bolivian army officers Captain Gary Prado and Colonel Arnaldo Saucedo Parada both inspected and listed all of Che’s personal effects upon his capture. Both list his Walther PPK 9mm pistol as containing a fully loaded clip.24

  More tellingly, though he was in the bottom of a ravine during the final firefight and could have made a fighting escape in the opposite direction like a few of his men, Che actually moved upward and toward the Bolivian soldiers who had been firing, ordering his comrade at the time, the hapless Willy, along with him. Yet Che was doing no firing of his own in the process. Then, as soon as he saw soldiers he made that yell, “Don’t shoot! I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!” and came out of the brambles completely unarmed, having dropped his fully loaded weapon.

  “We represent the prestige of the Cuban Revolution!” Che had thundered to his men hours before. “And we will defend that prestige to the last man and to the last bullet!”25 But he himself was ready to do no such thing.

  “If he had wanted to die he could have stayed further down and kept fighting,” says Captain Gary Prado. “But no, he was trying to get out.”26

  Che was surprised by “concealed soldiers who popped up a few feet away,” writes Anderson, who got this version straight from Castro’s sources while living in Havana itself.

  “Che was surprised . . . caught off guard,” claims Castañeda.

  Again, these unattributable stories conflict with those from the men who were actually there. “Che made his position known to our soldiers well in advance so that they would stop firing,” writes Colonel Saucedo Parada, “yelling, ‘Don’t shoot! I’m Che!’ Then he came out unarmed.”27

  “Che raised his carbine from a distance,” says Bolivian general Luis Reque Teran, who commanded the Fourth Division. “Then he yelled: ‘I surrender! Don’t kill me! I’m worth more alive than dead!’ ”28

  “When captured all of Che’s and Willy’s weapons were fully loaded,” writes Colonel Saucedo Parada, further demolishing the media’s titillating fantasy of Che’s “untamable defiance.”29 Also overlooked by his hagiographers is that the fully armed Che and Willy were confronted by only two Bolivian soldiers. That makes two Bolivian rangers against two armed guerrillas. But then, even odds were never to Che’s liking.

  What about Che’s “damaged” carbine? Castro’s account has Che armed with an M-2 carbine, as were all Cuban guerrilla officers. Captain Gary Prado lists a damaged carbine, but it is a damaged M-1 carbine, which may have been that of Willy, Che’s partner in the final firefight. Naturally, none of Che’s diligent biographers care to speculate on the above discrepancies.

  Immediately after his capture, Che’s demeanor was even more telling. “What’s your name, young man?” Che asked one of his captors. “Why what a lovely name for a Bolivian soldier!” he blurted after hearing it.30 The firefight was still raging after Che’s surrender. His men, unlike their comandante, were indeed fighting to the last bull
et. Soon a wounded Bolivian soldier was carried by.

  “Shall I attend him?” Che asked his captors.

  “Why? Are you a doctor?” asked Captain Gary Prado.

  “No, but I have some knowledge of medicine,” answered Guevara, resuming his pathetic attempt to ingratiate himself with his captors, and admitting on the record that he was not, in fact, a doctor.31

  “So what will they do with me?” Che asked Captain Prado. “I don’t suppose you will kill me. I’m surely more valuable alive.”

  A bit later, Che asked again, “What will you do with me? I’d heard on the radio that if the Eighth Division captured me the trial would be in Santa Cruz, and if the Fourth Division captured me, the trial would be in Camiri.”

  “I’m not sure,” responded Captain Prado. “I suppose the trial will be in Santa Cruz.”

  “So Colonel Zenteno will preside. What kind of fellow is Colonel Zenteno?” asked an anxious Che.

  “He’s a very upright man,” answered Prado, “a true gentleman. So don’t worry.”

  “And you, Captain Prado,” said Che quickly. “You are a very special person yourself. I’ve been talking to some of your men. They think very highly of you, captain. And don’t worry, this whole thing is over. We have failed.” Then to further ingratiate himself, “Your army has pursued us very tenaciously . . . now, could you please find out what they plan to do with me?”32

  A young Bolivian schoolteacher named Julia Cortes from the village of La Higuera had brought the captured Che some food on his last day alive. “He seemed to think he’d come out of it alive,” she recalls. “They might take me out of here,” Che told her. “I think it’s more in their interest to keep me alive. I’m very valuable to them.”33

  Like an actor, Che was warming up to his new role as captured hero. In fact, he was captured wearing his famous black beret, sporting a bullet hole, yet those on the Bolivian mission with him, such as Dariel Alarcon, attest that Che never once wore that beret during the Bolivian campaign. Che had always worn a military cap. All pictures of him in Bolivia back this up. Marcos Bravo, an anti-Batista operative now in exile who knew many of Che’s Cuban revolutionary comrades, speculates that Che put on his famous black beret (and even shot a hole in it) to make a dramatic celebrity surrender and impress his captors. Che probably expected a few snapshots in the process.

  After a peaceful capture, Che expected a celebrity trial erupting into a worldwide media sensation. Bertrand Russell and Jean Paul Sartre would issue eloquent pleas for his freedom. Norman Mailer and Susan Sontag would lend their voices from New York. Joan Baez, Country Joe McDonald, and Wavy Gravy would hold a concert and candlelight vigil in Golden Gate Park. Ramsey Clark would take a leave of absence as LBJ’s attorney general to assist William Kunstler in Che’s courtroom defense. And above all, college students around the world could be counted on to protest, riot, and disrupt their campuses until Che was released.

  Here is what happened.

  “Finally I was face to face with the assassin of thousands of my brave countrymen,” recalls Felix Rodriguez. “I walked into the little schoolroom and he was tied up lying on the ground. My boots were next to his face—just like Che’s boots had been next to my friend Nestor Pino’s face after he was captured at the Bay of Pigs. Che had looked at Nestor with that cold sneer of his and simply said, ‘We’re going to shoot every last one of you.’ Now the roles were reversed, and I was standing over Guevara.”34

  Both CIA officers involved in his capture, Felix Rodriguez and Mario Riveron, affirm that—leftist legend to the contrary—the agency happened to agree with Guevara. They wanted him alive and made strenuous efforts to keep him that way. “Handled decently, a prisoner talks sooner or later,” says Riveron, “a dead prisoner, obviously, won’t.”

  Despite attempts by Felix Rodriguez to dissuade the Bolivian high command, the orders came through to shoot the prisoner. Rodriguez reluctantly passed them on to his Bolivian colleagues. “I was their ally in this mission, an advisor,” he says. “I wasn’t the one who gave the final orders. But I operated the radio at that location and had the official rank of captain. The orders came to me: Che to be executed.”

  Felix passed the order along as he was duty bound, but kept trying to change the Bolivian officers’ minds. “Felix, we’ve worked together very closely and very well,” replied the stern Bolivian Colonel Zenteno. “We’re very grateful for the help you and your team have given us in this fight. But please don’t ask me to disobey a direct order from my commander-in-chief. I would be dishonorably discharged.”

  Now that Che was gone from his command post, the fight by his guerrillas back at Yuro was really raging, and the Bolivian rangers were taking casualties. Unlike their gallant commander, Che’s men were holed up and defiantly blasting away to the last bullet. So Colonel Zenteno had urgent business at his own command post.

  “Felix, I have to go back to my headquarters now,” Colonel Zenteno said. “But I’d like your word of honor that the execution order will be carried out by two this afternoon. We know the terrible damage Guevara has done to your country, and if you’d like to carry it out personally we’d certainly understand.”

  Instead, Felix kept trying to change the colonel’s mind. Finally he saw it was futile. “You have my word, colonel.”

  “Actually, I knew that execution order was coming a little before I got it,” says Rodriguez, “when I heard on the Bolivian radio station that Che Guevara had been killed in combat. So I asked Sergeant Teran to shoot Che below the neck to simulate combat wounds. Then I walked back into the little schoolhouse to break the news to Che. ‘Look, comandante,’ I said. ‘I’ve done everything in my power to try and save . . .’ At that moment Che turned white. He knew what was coming. So I asked Che if he had any last words he’d like me to pass along.

  “He told me: ‘Yes, tell Fidel that the armed rebellion will eventually triumph,’ but Che said this very ironically, with a sad smirk on his face. I’m convinced that Che finally—at long last—realized that Castro had deliberately sold him down the river. For some reason, here I was finally face to face with one of my bitterest enemies, yet I felt no hate for Che Guevara at the moment . . . It’s hard to explain.

  “I walked outside the little schoolhouse and heard the shots. I looked at my watch and it was 1:10 P.M., October 9, 1967.” Ernesto “Che” Guevara was dead.

  Che’s biographers, basing their accounts on Castro’s fictions, tell a different, more edifying story. When it comes to heroism, perhaps it is better to remember the courageous and defiant yells of Che’s firing squad victims.

  “I kneel for no man!”

  “Viva Cuba Libre!”

  “Viva Cristo Rey!”

  “Abajo Comunismo!”

  “Aim right here!”

  NOTES

  Introduction 1“Benicio Del Toro Talks Guevara,” EmpireOnline.co.uk, April 3, 2005.

  2 “The Legacy of Che Guevara,” PBS, November 20, 1997.

  3 Luis Ortega, Yo Soy El Che!, Mexico: Monroy Padilla, 1970, p. 179.

  4 Mona Charen, Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First, Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2003, p. 186.

  5 Ryan Clancy, “Che Guevara Should Be Scorned—Not Worn,” USA Today, October 30, 2005.

  6 Jorge Castañeda, Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara , New York: Alfred. A. Knopf, 1997, p. xx.

  7 David Kunzle, Che Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997.

  Chapter 1: New York Fetes the Godfather of Terrorism1Homer Bigort, “Bazooka Fired at U.N. as Cuban Speaks,” New York Times, December 14, 1964.

  2 Pedro Corzo, tape of Guevara speech in documentary Guevara: Anatomia de un Mito, Miami: Caiman Productions, 2005.

  3 Jon Lee Anderson, Che: A Revolutionary Life, New York: Grove Press, 1997, p. 617.

  4 “Che’s Explosive Return,” Newsweek, December 21, 1964.

  5 Anderson, Che, p. 618.

>   6 Laura Berquist, “Our Woman in Havana,” Look, November 8, 1960.

  7 Laura Berquist, “28 Days in Communist Cuba,” Look, April 9, 1963.

  8 Edward V. McCarthy, “Conspiradores en Nueva York Vinculador a Fidel Castro,” Diario de las Americas, February 18, 1965.

  9 “Person of the Year,” Time, December 31, 2001.

  10 Daniel James, Che Guevara: A Biography, New York: Stein and Day, 1969, p. 276.

  11 “Carlos the Jackal: I’m Proud of Bin Laden,” Fox News, September 11, 2002.

  12 Humberto Fontova, Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant, Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2005, p. 2.

  Chapter 2: Jailer of Rockers, Hipsters, and Gays1Sean O’Hagan, “Just a Pretty Face,” The Observer, July 11, 2004.

  2 James, Che Guevara, p. 305.

  3 Ibid., p. 323.

  4 Ernesto Guevara, Que Debe Ser un Joven Comunista, Secretaria Nacional de Propaganda y Educación Política, FSLN, 1962.

  5 Anderson, Che, p. 470.

  6 Leo Sauvage, Che Guevara: The Failure of a Revolutionary, New York: Prentice-Hall, 1973, p. 126.

  7 Ibid., p. 258.

  8 “The Legacy of Che Guevara,” PBS, November 20, 1997.

  9 Dariel Alarcon, Benigno: Memorias de un Soldado Cubano, Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 1997, p. 253.

  10 Castañeda, Compañero, p. 146.

  11 Author interview with Carmen Cartaya, February 21, 2006.

  12 Víctor Llano, El Carnicerito de la Cabaña, Libertad Digital, Madrid, November 22, 2004.

  13 Author interview with Henry Gomez, February 22, 2006.

  14 Ibid.

  15 Guitar World, February 1997.

  16 Proceso, Mexico, October 17, 2004.

  17 Marc Cooper, “Che’s Grandson: Fidel’s an ‘Aged Tyrant,’ ” Marccooper.com, October 19, 2004.

  18 Hector Navarro, “Un Viaje a Cuba,” ContactoCuba.com, January 22, 2006.

  19 Sauvage, Che Guevara, p. 70.