Che Guevara (34 page)

In his negotiations with Rivera, Bayo claimed to be the front man for a wealthy Salvadoran colonel interested in the purchase of a large ranch outside his native country. Rivera fell for the story, whereupon Bayo introduced the foreign-sounding Guevara as the colonel. Rivera either couldn’t tell the difference between a Salvadoran and an Argentine accent or decided against asking any questions that might offend his rich client. In any case, the con job worked. Rivera agreed to a token rent of eight dollars per month while certain necessary “repairs” to the main house were made to bring the place up to the colonel’s specifications. After that the sale would go through. The repairs meanwhile would be undertaken by several dozen “Salvadoran laborers” to be brought in for the purpose.

As soon as the deal was struck, Fidel ordered Bayo to select a group of fighters to go to the ranch. Bayo thought highly of Ernesto—he later called him “the best guerrilla of them all”—and named him “chief of personnel.” In late May, they departed for the ranch with a first group of trainees. Ernesto said good-bye to Hilda, telling her he might not be back. Fidel had located a military-surplus American PT boat for sale in Delaware and hoped to buy it and have it brought to Mexico in time to sail for Cuba in July. If everything
worked out, they would finish their training at the ranch and go directly from there to the boat, and on to Cuba.

The training was tough. The walled compound at Rancho San Miguel was their headquarters, but the men spent most of their time on forays out from two rudimentary camps in the adjacent parched, brushy hills. Food and water were in short supply, and Bayo and Che led them on endurance hikes and night marches lasting from dusk to dawn. When they weren’t slogging through the bush, they engaged in simulated combat and stood guard. This was the first time Che had shared life on a sustained daily basis with the Cubans. Some of them still resented his presence, regarding him as an interloping foreigner, and now they had him as their direct jefe. They found him to be a rigid disciplinarian, but one who also joined in the marches and exercises, on top of his doctor’s duties.

It must have been a shock to the Cubans to find that this well-educated, wellborn Argentine doctor was something of a slob, even though the shabby brown suit he wore in the city had already established him as an oddball. His appearance didn’t jibe with the Cubans’ image of how a “professional” should look. In the socially stratified Latin America of the 1950s, being well groomed and formally attired was the norm for any self-respecting urban male. Now, out in the field, they discovered that Che didn’t like to wash, either. According to Hilda, “Ernesto used to be amused at the Cubans’ mania for cleanliness. When the daily work was done, they all took baths and changed their clothes. ‘That’s fine,’ he said, ‘but what will they do in the hills? I doubt we’ll ever be able to take a bath or change clothes.’”

One of the rebels, the mulatto songwriter Juan Almeida, wrote later about Che’s rigidity. He described an episode in which one of the men refused to walk any farther, protesting about the long marches, the excessive discipline, and the lack of food. Almeida wrote that the disgruntled man “sat down on the trail in frank protest against the Spanish [Bayo] and Argentine [Guevara] leadership.”

Che ordered the men back to camp. Insubordination was a severe breach of discipline that called for a death sentence. Fidel and Raúl were immediately notified of the incident and came quickly from Mexico City to hold a court-martial. In keeping with the Cuban revolution’s tradition of glossing over such unpleasant episodes, Almeida omitted the name of the rebellious trainee, but in his memoirs Alberto Bayo recounted the dramatic trial of the man whom he identified as Calixto Morales. In Bayo’s account, the Castro brothers called for the death sentence, comparing Morales to a “contagious disease” that had to be “exterminated” before he infected his comrades. Despite a plea by Bayo to spare his life, Morales was sentenced to
death, but Fidel later pardoned him, and Morales went on to win favor during the guerrilla war. According to the Cuban historian María del Carmen Ariet, even though Che had called for Morales’s court-martial, he argued against execution.

Universo Sánchez, Fidel’s aide responsible for counterintelligence at the time, was to have been Morales’s executioner. In an interview with Tad Szulc, the author of the most complete biography of Fidel Castro, Sánchez divulged that other trials took place and that at least one of them, of a spy unmasked in their midst, ended in execution. Szulc wrote that “the man, whose identity is unknown, was sentenced by a safe house court-martial and executed on Universo’s instructions by one of the rebels. ‘He was shot and buried there in a field,’ he says.” Locals living in the vicinity of Rancho San Miguel still speak of three bodies that lie buried within the compound’s sturdy walls. But for Universo Sánchez’s admission, such rumors could be dismissed easily as folklore. In Cuba, any mention of these events is taboo, and they remain officially unclarified and ignored.

By early June, Almeida’s group had returned to the city, and a second group arrived at the ranch for training. On June 14, Che celebrated his twenty-eighth birthday. Everything seemed to be progressing nicely when, on June 20, Fidel and two companions were arrested on a street in downtown Mexico City. Within days, virtually all the Movement’s members in the city had been rounded up. Safe houses were raided; documents and arms caches were seized. Bayo and Raúl were alerted and went into hiding. Before she too was arrested, Hilda—whose address was used by Fidel as a secret letter-drop—managed to hide Fidel’s correspondence and Ernesto’s more inflammatory political writings. She was interrogated repeatedly about the activities of Ernesto and Fidel and spent a night in custody, with the baby, before being released.

Fidel and his comrades were accused of plotting Batista’s assassination in collusion with Cuban and Mexican Communists, and Havana had demanded their extradition. On June 22, Fidel was allowed to issue a carefully worded public denial of his alleged Communist affiliations, pointing out his signal relationship with the late anticommunist Ortodoxo leader Eduardo Chibás. Meanwhile, still at large, Raúl and other comrades scrambled to assemble his legal defense team.

Out at the ranch, Che prepared for the inevitable police raid. After moving most of the weaponry to new hiding places, he and twelve comrades were waiting when the police arrived on June 24. Anxious to avoid a confrontation, Fidel went along to instruct Che to surrender himself and his men. Che obeyed and was taken away to join his comrades in the Interior Ministry’s prison on Calle Miguel Schultz.

The Mexican police mug shots of Ernesto show a determined-looking young man, clean-shaven but with unkempt hair. In the frontal shot, he stares straight into the camera. In the profile shot, his prominent forehead is plainly visible, his mouth is set, and his expression is thoughtful. The rap sheet beneath the photograph gives his name, the date and place of his birth, his local address, his physical characteristics, and the offense he was charged with—overstaying his visa. Beneath is a one-line declaration: “He says he is a tourist.”

On June 26, two days after the mug shot was taken, Ernesto made his first statements to the police. He admitted only as much as they already knew about him. Explaining the circumstances of his arrival from Guatemala, he admitted having been a sympathizer of Arbenz’s and having served in his administration. Once in Mexico, someone whose name he couldn’t remember had introduced him to María Antonia González. Later, he became aware that her house was a hub for Cubans “discontented” with their country’s political regime. Eventually he had met Fidel Castro Ruz, their leader. When, about a month and a half before, he learned that the Cubans were undergoing training to direct a revolutionary movement against Batista, he had offered his services as a doctor and was accepted. At Castro’s request, he had also served as his intermediary for the lease of the Chalco ranch. He dissembled about the quantity of men and guns at the ranch, saying they had only two rifles, which they had used for target practice and small-game hunting, as well as a .38 revolver for “personal defense.”

That same day, Mexico’s broadsheet pro-government daily
Excelsior
ran the story of the arrests across its front page under a banner headline: “Mexico Breaks Up the Revolt against Cuba and Arrests 20 Ringleaders.” The next day, a follow-up story quoting Mexican federal police sources revealed “More Apprehensions of Cuban Plotters Who It Is Said Had Help of Communists.”

The chief culprit, according to Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) sources, was none other than “the Argentine doctor Ernesto Guevara Serna ... the principal link between the Cuban plotters and certain Communist organizations of an international nature. ... Doctor Guevara, who has also figured in other political movements of an international nature in the Dominican Republic and Panama, was identified by the DFS as an ‘active member of the Instituto Intercambio Cultural Mexicano-Ruso.’” In the caption to a group photograph taken of the detained rebels, he was singled out as the man whose “intimate links with Communism have led to suspicions that the movement against Fulgencio Batista was cosponsored by Red organizations.”

The first known photograph of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro together. They are in prison in Mexico in the summer of 1956.

While the media flurry continued, Fidel’s people worked hard to free him. His lawyer friend Juan Manuel Márquez flew in from the United States and hired two defense attorneys. A sympathetic judge issued Fidel’s release order on July 2, but the interior ministry blocked it. Despite this setback, the judge managed to stay the deportation order. Trying other routes, Fidel reportedly authorized Universo Sánchez to try to bribe a high-level government official, but the attempt failed. The men went on a hunger strike, and on July 9 twenty-one of the Cubans were released; several more were freed a few days later. Fidel, Che, and Calixto García remained behind bars.

Che wrote to his parents on July 6, informing them of his predicament and finally coming clean about his activities. “Some time ago, quite a while now, a young Cuban leader invited me to join his movement, a movement for the armed liberation of his country, and I, of course, accepted.” As for the future, he told them, “My future is linked with that of the Cuban Revolution. I either triumph with it or die there. ... If for any reason that I can’t foresee, I can’t write anymore, and later it is my luck to lose, regard these lines as a farewell, not very eloquent but sincere.
Throughout life I have looked for my truth by trial and error, and now, on the right road, and with a daughter who will survive me, I have closed the cycle. From now on I wouldn’t consider my death a frustration, only, like Hikmet [the Turkish poet]: ‘I will take to the grave only the sorrow of an unfinished song.’”

Despite all the police leaks and sensational headlines regarding their revolutionary conspiracy, they were still officially detained only on charges of violating Mexico’s immigration laws. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Mexican and Cuban officials were wrangling over what should be done with them. At the same time, the police were trying to find out more about Ernesto Guevara. In the first week of July, he was interrogated at least twice more. Inexplicably, he now spoke freely and at length. These declarations to the police were kept classified in Mexico, but copies were obtained by Heberto Norman Acosta, the historian of the Cuban Council of State. A perusal of the carefully guarded papers reveals that Ernesto Guevara openly admitted his Communism and declared his belief in the need for armed revolutionary struggle, not only in Cuba but throughout Latin America.

Over the years, Fidel occasionally alluded to Che’s declarations to the Mexican police in a tone of fond admonishment, citing them as an example of how his late comrade was “honest to a fault.” At the time, however, Fidel was understandably furious. While Che prattled on about his Marxist convictions, here
he
was, billing himself as a patriotic reformer in the best Western nationalistic and
democratic
tradition. Since the one thing certain to mobilize increased support for Batista’s regime from the Eisenhower administration was a Communist threat, any evidence that Fidel or his followers contemplated turning Cuba into a Communist state would doom the revolution before it began. In this context, Che’s remarks were extraordinarily reckless, providing Castro’s enemies with just the kind of ammunition they needed.

In a second public statement on July 15, Castro accused the American embassy of pressuring the Mexican authorities to thwart his release. Where he got his information is unclear, but he was right. The Americans
had
asked the Mexicans to hold up his release. But Washington’s move had less to do with feelings of disquiet about Fidel Castro than with placating Batista for the sake of its own interests. The Cuban leader had threatened to boycott the July 22 summit of American presidents held in Panama if Castro was freed; the Americans wanted to make sure everyone attended.