The Death of Che Guevara (53 page)

But as the mild sound of the crowd died away, Fidel leaned across and in front of my body, towards the microphone. I could smell him strongly. His shirt was drenched. For the last week he’s been drinking rum and beer steadily, eating yogurt (with cherries) to coat his stomach—a Bulgarian custom. He gave off a heavy pungent boozy smell. In a low harsh voice, a stage whisper (audible in Miami), but the more intense (as he calculated) for the seeming restraint, he added to, or revised, my conclusion:
“Ever
Onward!” And then again, in the same whisper, but diminished—a man going down a road—
“Ever
Onward!”

He didn’t wait for a response. He drew himself back as if recoiling from something, pivoted on the heel of his fancy black boot, turned his back on the crowd. The whisper, amplified a thousand times, still echoed from the speakers at the back as he turned. His immobility, his silence, his sudden sharp motion to the microphone, the loud whisper, the quick turn (Fidel too had abandoned them!), it riveted their attention. Except for the children, kicking their balls in the back, there was a great stillness.

Then the people shouted, a few at first, the Party members no doubt, the Revolutionary Defense Committee men, but then more and more joined, their voices chased after the departing man, arched towards the platform, gulls rising from the ocean after feeding, a few and then many, until the sky was white with them, repeating
“Ever
Onward!,” gathering and rising above our heads. The field of white stones revealed itself as a flock of silent birds, waiting for the word to come to rise and fly. The sound died away, the last wing gone into the sun and out of sight.

How I admired him! If he sold Coca-Cola, I thought, they would be drinking it now on the Ho Chi Minh Trail! He is the master manipulator, the man of the intricate particular rhetorical skills for constructing socialism. His music builds the walls of the cities. I had said, Battle and final victory: peace, release, rest. (My theoretical journal:
Final Point!
) But Fidel was marriage,
daily trials, long sacrifices, begin again, it all must be done over.
Ever
Onward! He sliced towards the microphone with his whisper, and left me out in the cold—an affair. As Ponco said, He’ll be the stay-at-home. That day he had made it a way of dividing the world, and he had taken the better, the more noble part for himself. Could he see it that way now?

“No,” Ponco said, recalling me to our open field.

“What?”

“You’re right. It’s not your work.” We faced the ocean. A mild breeze cooled my sweat. “I liked your poem.”

“Good.”

“A love poem.” He smiled, but I couldn’t rise to the challenge or even feel the sting of his mockery. We walked closer to the waves. “Has Fidel seen it?”

“No. Of course not.”

“I think you should send it to him.” I heard anxiety shadowing his voice. “I could give it to one of the guards.”

Guards? I thought. Who are they guarding? The young Communists? The mad people? The prisoners?

Or me?

Walter was gone when I woke up. Off on a walk, I thought, or to get supplies in town.

He returned without food, but with a sheaf of papers in his hand. Unfortunate harvest? He smiled coming up to the porch, where I had appropriated his seat for some more convenient ocean-staring. I had not seen
that
smile before from the virtuoso of that expression. There seemed both fear and expectation in it.

“News from the Inca,” he said. He stood before the porch, in the sunlight, with the ocean behind him, as I had stood once, disfiguring a picture of him, rubbing him out. What was he doing to me? Anxiety scrabbled in my chest. Why did he hesitate to give me the documents, to come forward and give me the papers he held in his right hand?

There was a report from Debray:

Ramon:

Fidel’s instinct was right. Bolivia is the location for the guerrilla, and this is the most opportune political conjuncture. Monje, Chairman, Central Committee of the BCP, told Fidel in talks in Havana that the country is ripe for
rebellion. They would need only ten thousand dollars to get under way. Fidel has provided the money. Fidel did not mention your participation as political-military leader, or the continental scope of the rebellion, but that will, of course, only make the process of recruitment, within and outside Bolivia, that much more rapid.

SUMMARY:

1. All possible electoral remedies have been exhausted. The entire population considers General Barrientos’s election to be a charade. The first of the necessary conditions has been fulfilled: “When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.”
   
2. Recent developments, along with the electoral charade, make several strata ripe for movement in our direction, once the guerrillas appear:
   

The miners’ position at first looked strong. They had a miners’ militia already organized; some (though out-of-date) arms; a radio station to propagandize with; dynamite; detonators; expertise; control of the tin.

But:
They remained in their liberated zone, the area around the mines. They did not go on the offensive. They waited to win a few concessions from the government—for their leaders said that the time for insurrection was … not yet. Once again the miners’ leadership forced them to relearn your propositions on the necessity of guerrilla warfare—at the cost of their lives.

The army waited. The army cut the road to La Paz. La Paz is the source of the miners’ food. The mines themselves are in rocky soil, twelve thousand feet above sea level. The land produces stones. There are a few communities of Aymara Indians, who raise potatoes, and dry llama meat.

After a few weeks the miners began to run out of potatoes and the dried llama meat the Indians gave them.

The army waited. The army didn’t need the ore from the mines right away. It had U.S. loans.

After ten days the miners ran out of milk for their children, meat for their families, medical supplies for their infirmaries. They had no cough medicine left for their silicosis. Each man wanted to tear at his lungs.

The army waited.

The miners remained in their liberated zones. How often must your theses be proved and re-proved! They were afraid to leave their wives and children to the army. The miners had no military-political leadership. The miners’ militia guarded their homes.

They did not become what you have shown they had to become to survive: a guerrilla army.

The army waited. The generals, the North American advisers, met in bars, drank toasts, smiled, set the hour of the miners’ massacre.

When the soldiers came the miners hurled dynamite at them. It had worked for their fathers against the decrepit guns of the old army, a decade ago. But it did not work against machine guns. It was ineffective against airplanes, against the weapons and tactics the army had received from the United States.

The Bolivian Rangers, elite force of jackboots, trained by the United States, surrounded and destroyed the miners. Mines were bombed from the air. The miners’ windowless wooden barracks, laid out in neat rows, made easy targets for the planes. And the bombs only incinerated the people; the mines themselves are safe underground. Nothing of value was lost. The smelters are in the United States and England.

The army occupied the zone, went from house to house, dragged the families of the militants into the open field and murdered them, men with their women and children. A common grave was dug for their bodies.

Your theses were proved again:

An insurrection, spontaneous, and without military-political leadership, cannot defeat a modern army trained and armed by the United States. The miners learned last year that the victory of 1952 will never be repeated.

Now they are in mourning, in despair.

But
your theses will be proven:

Your appearance will transform that despair into a realistic hope. “It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them.” Your appearance will make them see the new possibilities their violence can create. The miners now realize that an insurrection in the mines will be effective—as you have written—only as the last stage of a guerrilla war against the army, a war carried out in the locale you’ve named, in the countryside, far from the army’s sources of supply. As you have argued, the objective cannot be reform, coexistence, or a liberated zone that allows the gorillas to decide the hour of the people’s death. The objective must be state power, final victory for the oppressed over the imperialists. The only instrument for this victory is guerrilla war.

The miners’ blood has set the stage for your arrival, for the appearance of the guerrilla. Once again your theses will be proven correct!

Onward to Final Victory!
Danton                         

Ramon:

Despite Danton’s doubts I strongly suggest the ranch be in the southeast. It will be easy to construct storage caves. The ranch land itself has plenty of water. The vegetation of the region is thick. If we move north we can travel to Vallegrande, through a mountainous and heavily wooded area. Difficult for the army to follow. From there on the woods become sparser. If we move south to Argentina the terrain is similar. The farm is in a canyon between the Serranias de las Pirirendas and the Serranias Incahuasi. “Ask me my name and I will respond with geography.” (You see: Ricardo, too, has learned some poetry! Please pass that on to Walter.) The ranges join up farther south and become the Salta range in Argentina.

Ricardo

Ramon:

Tania has told Monje that we will only establish a base here in the southeast, and then move into Argentina. Monje is suddenly very protective of his sphere of control, the time isn’t ready for rebellion, the Party must have more complete control of the Bolivian operation … etc. He is a coward.

But
I once again strongly suggest that Bolivia be our first goal. Monje’s original report to Fidel—that the conditions are ripe here—is accurate. And from here we can coordinate with Brizola in Brazil, and Bustos and the others
in Argentina, Lobaton and Gadea in Peru. Monje has already assured Fidel of his support for a guerrilla movement—and this is before he could know that
you
will be the leader. Surely that will keep him from turning tail!

A farm has been purchased, against my advice, in the southeast.

But
it is far from populated zones, and the region itself is sparsely populated. We will have to bring in everything ourselves.

But
if we succeed in supplying ourselves we could stay here forever. It will be very difficult for the army to discover us, or attack.

But
it will also be difficult here to sink roots into the peasantry.

Conclusion: this could be, if you O.K. it, a kind of base camp, and the group could move out from here for operations elsewhere, then return to this area, where virtually impregnable camps could be built.

Danton

Buenos Aires,
April 1965    

My Dearest One:

Sometimes I think we can no longer confide in each other directly? Or could it be that we never did! Perhaps we have always spoken with such maddening indirectness and irony? Perhaps we have always misunderstood one another.

But that’s how it is now isn’t it? So I have to decipher your letters as if they were a document for one of our family meetings over the newspaper! What is their
true
story? Who did what to whom? We speak through masks!

But I can’t talk that way anymore. I don’t have time. I
have
to
get
right to the
point
.

It’s madness, just complete utter lunacy, that when there are so few people on the island of Cuba on the continent on the planet earth who have our knack for planning that we should all go cut cane for months. I’m sure there are lots and lots of fine cane-cutters people who are very
happy
doing that kind of thing. You should be organizing their labor, not doing it yourself. Is that why you dropped from sight? As you said? To cut cane? I can’t believe it?

And then you write about serving as manager of a factory for five years! There are many people who can manage factories Tete. (Excuse me, but I
named you first, before the crowds did. I am your mother after all, so you must excuse me?)

It’s crazy for you to cut cane for months, but it is absolute total lunacy for you to go manage a factory for five years
[For that is what I had said I was going to do. To confuse those who monitored my movements. To obscure the nature of my dispute with Fidel.]

When your trip abroad went on and on, I asked, Will Ernesto still be minister? Who has decided in this struggle—for I could smell that there was a struggle—that led to your foolish plan?

Well, you’re no longer minister, you’re going to manage a factory! That is a waste of your enormous ability! This is not your mother speaking! It’s an old woman, a sick woman, a woman who has dedicated her whole life to the triumph of rationality, of socialism [
I remember, sadly, that I laughed at this point, certain that she could not be very sick if so much of her old paint box were available to her.]
And this old woman wants to see the triumph of reason, the triumph of socialism!