The Death of Che Guevara (67 page)
Read The Death of Che Guevara Online
Authors: Jay Cantor
Wolfe continued with his story, as if by establishing how he’d gotten here he’d prove that he was who he said he was. He had begun looking for us months ago, in November, at the first rumors. (November? I saw the men look at each other, wondering: What rumors? Who had spoken of us? Monje? Someone here with us now?—I must speak with Tania when we rejoin Joaquin.) He had begun searching north of the Rio Grande. When he had heard on the radio about the first battles, his guide had deserted him. But Paulino, a brave young boy, had led him down the Camiri road. He pointed to Paulino, a boy no more than fifteen years old, who leaned against a tree with Ponco. Paulino looked disconsolately at the soup. He picked out one of the beans with his finger, and wiped the scummy water off on his shirt before eating it.
“I’ve come a long way,” Wolfe said, “to interview your commander.”
Wolfe, I suspected, had already recognized me. I was skinnier than my pictures, and the ends of my hair were gray from my old-man’s disguise. But it had mostly grown back, and my brown beard was full again. I was recognizably myself. Yet Wolfe would never dare mention my name—dark magical powers resided in that syllable; I was King of the Cannibals; it was taboo to say it; my men would rend him for the profanation.
“I am the commander of the guerrillas, Che Guevara,” I said, stepping forward from among the men.
“But you’re so thin!” Wolfe exclaimed. It was involuntary speech. People come to feel that they know those whose pictures they have so often seen in the newspapers. One becomes like a figure in their dreams, something they are often given to look at, that speaks to them obscurely, though they have no control over it. They come to have a proprietary feeling towards the image—they feel they deserve, at least, a reassuring continuity. So they’re distressed when one changes. Wolfe’s squeak was different from a friend’s concern. It was more intimate.
“Mr. Wolfe,” I said, “it will be a pleasure to give you an interview. In
return I would like you to accompany two other journalists who I’m afraid have preceded you, Mr. Regis Debray of Maspero Publishers in France, and Mr. Bustos of Argentina. I would like you to take them back to Muyupampa.” Wolfe was happy to be accepted by us, but deeply sad to think that we had already been discovered by the press.
“Of course,” he said wanly.
“I would like a favor: I would like to have a few rolls of your film. I used to be a photographer myself, and it’s very hard for me to get film now. And I would appreciate it if you’d distribute a communique of ours to the Bolivian newspapers. It will be no risk for you.” Of course I had many more vital messages about supplies to get to the city. But Wolfe couldn’t be trusted with the name of a city contact; the army would suspect him for a while, and follow his movements.
Wolfe agreed to all I asked.
We left my men to get news from the guide, and Wolfe and I went off a little ways into the forest for our talk. “You needn’t worry for your safety while you’re with us,” I said. “No harm will come to you here, you have my word on that. You can say absolutely anything you like to me. Let’s have a good open honest talk together.” I wanted Wolfe to be someone it was possible to talk with, I wanted to make him a little more courageous.
But, as it turned out, Wolfe didn’t require my reassurance. Once he took his small tape recorder from his knapsack, and set it whirring, he changed utterly. He became a reporter, a contentious, all-too-knowing man, quite able to hold his own.
Interview of Che Guevara by Michael Andrew Wolfe
W
OLFE
: Mr. Guevara, when you talk in your “Message to the Tricontinental,” of turning this continent into another Vietnam, aren’t you talking of an unparalleled reign of violence for this continent, an unprecedented suffering for its people?
G
UEVARA
: They suffer now, Mr. Wolfe, less spectacularly perhaps, but just as inexorably. In this country, where we are now talking, few tin miners live beyond the age of thirty. When they enter the mines as young men they know they will die near that age. If they don’t enter the mines, they have no work and nothing to eat. So they are forced to kill themselves. Each year more children die in Latin America of curable diseases and malnutrition than all who died at Hiroshima. There is already a war going on against my people. Now we are going to fight back. We are going to make
the sacrifices necessary so that our children may have a different life.
W
OLFE
: But the war you speak of means that many of those miners won’t live till thirty, or twenty-five or even fifteen. And many of their wives and children will die as well.
G
UEVARA
: The struggle will be long and difficult. But none of us should hesitate to offer the necessary sacrifice. If we fight here, and in Asia, and in Africa, we will win. The Revolution will be continental. All of Latin America will rise against the United States. And then the Revolution will become worldwide. The people of the Third World do not want to die. But they do want to live freely, and with dignity.
W
OLFE
: The War in Vietnam has shown that the United States, too, is willing to make sacrifices. They will not allow the victory of a Communist Revolution. Bad as you say things are here, they could be far worse. Now the people have potatoes and beans. They work. They read the newspapers. You know what I mean: they’re alive!
G
UEVARA
: They read the newspapers! I can see that that would seem a supreme pleasure to a journalist. But seventy percent of the Bolivian people can’t read. In any case, the United States can’t kill all of us. They aren’t all-powerful. The world situation, the balance of powers, means that they cannot use their nuclear weapons. People’s war will defeat them. The Vietnamese are teaching us that. We must not abandon Vietnam. We must fight alongside it. The revolution will be on three continents. It isn’t in the interest of the United States to fight all the world’s people. Such a war cannot be won. It would drain them of their sons and their resources. Such a war would barbarize their country. The people of the United States would not accept it. If their rulers demand it, then they will rise against those rulers.
W
OLFE:
Y
OU
have great faith in the people of the United States.
G
UEVARA
: (No response.)
W
OLFE
: But isn’t there some other way, some way of less violence for our continent, less suffering and death?
G
UEVARA
: No. The imperialists will not allow any other way.
W
OLFE
: But who are you, who is any man, to choose this for our people, this magnitude of suffering?
G
UEVARA
: We do not choose it for them. We begin the struggle, and so show the way the fight must be carried out. We offer it to the people. If the people do not join their efforts to ours then we will not win. But they will, and we will win. Right now the people of Bolivia suffer history. We will give them the chance to become agents of history, actors. We perform
the actions that history demands of those who would step on to its stage.
W
OLFE:
H
OW
can you say that “history” demands anything? Don’t you interpret “history” as if it were an oracle, a god? Isn’t it
you
that demands?
G
UEVARA:
(NO response.)
W
OLFE:
Comandante Guevara, perhaps you would like to explain why, at the last moment, when you were surrounded in the Churo ravine and you asked for volunteers to cover your retreat, and all the men volunteered, you chose, among others, Inti Peredo, whom you thought the best of the Bolivians, destined to lead the war of national liberation here, and Walter Villamil Tulio, captain in the Cuban Army, a very decent fellow, your closest friend, and the man who loved you most in the entire world?
G
UEVARA
: (NO response.)
W
OLFE
: Isn’t it true that in the terrible violence that you are now engaged in, you do the very things you say you’re fighting against? After all, I’ve been with the Bolivian soldiers. They are just young men who couldn’t get any other work. They are terrified. They don’t want to die. And they aren’t the imperialists.
G
UEVARA:
You are right. They are only the unknowing agents of imperialism. But we must first kill the specters of imperialism, so that the United States will then be forced to send its own soldiers, as they have in Vietnam. We will defeat them as well.
W
OLFE:
You kill as the army does. And in your book on guerrilla warfare you speak of the necessity of using terror against the countrypeople, to keep them from aiding the opposition.
G
UEVARA
: Their terror and our violence are not the same thing. Our violence will help the countrypeople shake off their passivity; it shows them that they might act. The army, on the other hand, mean to terrify the peasantry, to keep them from acting, to turn them to stone.
And no countryperson would help the army of his own free will. We must at least warn them not to cooperate with their oppressors.
W
OLFE
: That is not very clear to me, Comandante. I think it means that you both threaten the peasants.
G
UEVARA
: We didn’t construct this situation, Mr. Wolfe, but we must all live in it. We are none of us bad enough for this world. Our movement thinks this: If we are to win our liberation we must make ourselves into killing machines. Effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machines.
W
OLFE
: My God, that’s monstrous! Can you hear what you’re saying?
G
UEVARA
: It is the image of what’s necessary. We are trying to become what History calls for. It has been very good speaking with you, Mr. Wolfe.
Here is the communique you promised to distribute for us, and the two colleagues, fellow journalists like yourself, who are most anxious to leave with you. Good-bye, and you may leave whatever way seems best to you. We must continue our march.
STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY OF BOLIVIA
Our national resources have served, and are still serving, to make foreigners rich, leaving us Bolivians a terrible wound in our side, and the worm of hunger gnawing at our guts. This is why we fight, and why we ask you to join us. Our country or death!
I found my talk with Wolfe—empty though it was—enjoyable. As for the content of the thing:
G
UEVARA
: Exploited masses Class struggle Imperialism Armed struggle Historical conditions Liberation
Violence
W
OLFE
: Conscience Sadness The Cruelty of the World The Vale of Tears Pity The Human Condition Misery
Horror
It wasn’t much! But I cannot argue with my comrades, cannot talk even that freely with them. I can only listen and give orders. (The distance between me and the men is, of course, now a tool of my work.) And the peasants evade and look down; they cannot really talk to us yet. When they have sometimes spoken it has been, so far, shameful nonsense. In time, of course, our victories will change them, and they will have the courage to argue with us. But for now I am surrounded by silence.
Wolfe reported that Muyupampa, too, has soldiers in it. Debray was informed—for it may increase the risk to him—but he insisted on making his departure. Very well!
I am left with one troubling thought: how had Wolfe known, several months ago, before we were established, long before a battle where I carefully did not show myself, that
I
was the commander of the guerrillas, a celebrity worth the trip to speak with? Even Monje would not have known. I must interrogate Tania when we rejoin Joaquin.
We will move back north, towards Joaquin’s group and the rendezvous.
• • •
5/10/67: The scouts report troops in almost every direction. We cannot remain in the appointed area.
5/12/67: The army, without knowing the trouble it causes us, has pushed us north, towards Ticucha and El Meson.
5/13/67: Shortly after we set up camp near El Meson, a column of sixty-five soldiers was spotted, and I ordered an ambush put near the river. The advance column of the army was led by a man with two bloodhounds. I shot at the first and missed. Inti fired and killed the guard and a dog. I immediately ordered a retreat, and as we withdrew the army exchanged fire with us. Rolando was fatally wounded.
Poem for Rolando? Rolando, carrying his father’s table on his back, fleeing Batista’s army. “Between them and you,” he had said, “things can’t get any worse.”
5/13/67: A story about Rolando? His small slim body reminds me of children’s stories. Once upon a time …
5/13/67: Rolando, wounded in the neck, died. I liked him best of the Cubans. Besides Che, of course. But I admire Che rather than like him. It’s a different feeling.
5/14/67: The smell of the soldier’s blood marks our location. We will have to leave completely the area where we were to rejoin Joaquin. We will move back towards the Nancahuazu camp. The army patrols and staging areas will force Joaquin back in that direction as well.
5/15/67: We have continued moving north, looking for signs of Joaquin’s group, but without success. It has been slow going. For the last two days we have been short of water. Game in the area is scant. Today Inti killed a big black bird: thereby we shall save supplies. There is a reserve now for two days: dehydrated soup and canned meat.
I recorded a message from Fidel and have laboriously replayed the tape for decoding. The message: “Kolle, speaking for the Bolivian Party, said that Monje had confused the Party’s Central Committee by saying that the operation was only on a national scale. I made clear the continental dimensions of the struggle, and the strategic place of Bolivia. Kolle asked to speak with you, to discuss their participation in the operation. He seemed staggered by the idea of a continental movement. He leaves immediately for the zone. I think something can be done. He wants economic aid to pay for training for his cadres.”
