And I still have my 200; believe me, right now they would do more harm than good, unless we make a definitive decision to fight alone, in which case we’ll need a division and we’ll have to see how many divisions the enemy puts up against us. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration; maybe a battalion would be enough to get back to the frontiers we had when we arrived here in order to threaten Albertville. But numbers are not what counts; we can’t by ourselves liberate a country that does not want to fight; you have to create a fighting spirit and find soldiers with the torch of Diogenes and the patience of Job—a task that becomes more difficult, the more fools there are messing everything up along the way.
The question of the launches deserves a separate mention. For some time, I have been requesting a couple of mechanics to prevent the dock at Kigoma from becoming even more of a cemetery for broken-down boats. Of the three brand-new Soviet launches that arrived a little over a month ago, two are already out of service and the third, in which the emissary crossed the lake, is in bad shape. The three Italian launches will go the same way unless they have a Cuban crew. But this and the artillery business require the acquiescence of Tanzania, which will not be easy to obtain. These countries, unlike Cuba, are not going to stake everything on a single card, however big, and the card being played right now is feeble. I have given the emissary the task of clarifying how much support the friendly government is prepared to offer. You should know that almost everything that came on the ship has been impounded in Tanzania, and the emissary will also have to talk to them about that.
The business with the money is what hurts me most because of the repeated warnings I have given. At the height of my “spending spree” and only after they had made a big fuss, I committed to supply one front (the most important one) on condition that I would lead the struggle and form a special mixed column under my direct command, in accordance with the strategy that I had outlined and communicated to them. With a very heavy heart, I calculated it would need $5,000 a month. I now learn that 20 times that sum is given to people who are just passing through, so that they can live it up in all the capitals of Africa, with no acknowledgment of the fact that they receive free board and lodging and often also their travel costs from the main progressive countries. Not a cent will reach the wretched front where the peasants suffer every imaginable misery, including the rapaciousness of their own protectors; nor will anything get through to the poor devils stuck in Sudan. (Whiskey and women are not expenses covered by friendly governments, and they cost a lot if you want quality.)
Finally, 50 doctors would give the liberated area of the Congo an enviable ratio of one per 1,000 inhabitants, a level surpassed only by the Soviet Union, the United States and two or three of the most advanced countries in the world. But they are distributed according to political allegiance without the least consideration given to the organization of public health. Instead of this gigantism, it would be better to send a contingent of revolutionary doctors augmented as I requested by some very experienced nurses of a similar caliber.
The attached map summarizes the military situation, so I will limit myself to a few recommendations that I ask you all to consider objectively: forget all the men in charge of phantom groups; train up to 100 cadres (not necessarily all black [Afro-] Cubans) and choose from Osmany [Cienfuegos]’s list plus whoever stands out most over there. As for weapons: the new bazooka, percussion caps with their own power supply, a bit of R-4 and nothing else for the moment; forget about the rifles, which won’t solve anything unless they are electronic. Our mortars must be in Tanzania, and with those plus a new complement of men to operate them we would have more than enough for now. Forget about Burundi and tactfully discuss the question of the launches (not forgetting that Tanzania is an independent country and we have to play fair there, leaving aside the little problem I caused). Send the mechanics as soon as possible, along with someone who can steer across the lake reasonably safely; this has been discussed and Tanzania has agreed. Let me handle the problem of the doctors by giving some to Tanzania. Don’t make the mistake again of handing out money in such a manner, for they cling to me when they feel hard up and certainly ignore me if the money is flowing freely. Trust my judgment a little and don’t go by appearances. Shake up those in charge of providing truthful information because they are not capable of untangling this mess and paint utopian pictures which have nothing to do with reality.
I have tried to be explicit and objective, precise and truthful.
Do you believe me?
Warm greetings,
Machado and I agreed that it was impossible to have 50 doctors here, unless we organized them as a guerrilla unit. He also agreed with me about the genuinely alarming aspects of the situation as he had witnessed all the depravity at the fronts and had developed a feel for the spirit of this revolution.
I had hoped that some compañeros, such as the local minister of public health, might help to create a little order, especially because he came from the Fizi area and had some authority. But he proved to be a nobody. He remained there until the end, except for a brief time when he left on account of something to do with his work, but he kept completely detached from Massengo (I can’t say which of them was to blame) and even more detached from reality. Of course, he could not occupy himself with public health; he had only the Cuban doctors, and the few medicines that arrived were for the fronts or for some primary care in the areas where our forces were based. We had once spoken with Massengo of the need to concern ourselves more with Fizi, to impose authority on the general and pay him some attention (as far as doctors and the radio were concerned, for example), but that was now history as Fizi had become enemy territory.
Moja arrived from Lubondja, where he had been to inspect the aftermath of the explosion at the munitions dump. He told us that Baraka had been lost without a fight, in his opinion, and that the cannon and mortars had been abandoned by the men in charge of them. In this case, I think it was the brand-new Bulgarian instructors.4
With all this information, we called a meeting with the leaders for whom a search had been made and who finally showed up. Until then we had not managed to get any cohesive action from either Calixte or Jean Ila (the commander at Kalonda-Kibuyu); I don’t know whether they themselves were to blame for this, or whether the fault lay with Lambert, whose outlandish method of work precluded any proper organization. In the end, the meeting was attended by Massengo, Compañero Muyumba, the public health minister, commanders Jean Ila and Calixte, Lieutenant-Colonel Lambert, other commanders from Lambert’s front, and the usual political commissars and observers. A message had been sent to Zakarias but he had not replied, so the Rwandans were not represented. What I had to say was more or less the following:
First, an introduction of those present: the minister of public health from Cuba, who had come to assess healthcare needs; Siki, the chief of staff of a Cuban army; Tembo, the party organization secretary who had left his post to join the fight here; Compañero Moja and Compañero Mbili, with a long record of struggle. My points were more or less the same as what I had said to Massengo, but I added a review of each leader’s conduct. Lambert was undoubtedly a dynamic compañero, but he had to do everything himself. He had not formed an army; people did things when he was present, but made no progress when he wasn’t around. I gave the example of the dead compañero. He was at the front line because his compañeros had insisted that he go and stay there. Calixte, on the other hand, had never shown up on the battlefield. Both attitudes were bad: a leader should not stay so close to the front line that he cannot survey the whole of his sector of the front and make overall decisions; but neither should he be so far in the rear that he loses all contact. To the representative from Kalonda-Kibuyu, I stated that the barrier that they claimed to have on the road was an illusion, as there had never been a single clash with the army, and hence there was no reason to keep 150 men there in such circumstances. I went on to analyze the acts of indiscipline, the atrocities and the parasitic feat
ures of the army; it was a real diatribe, and although they politely weathered the storm, no one accepted the scolding.
In discussing the meeting with me, Compañero Tembo said that in his view I had offered virtually no way out of the problems of the Congo; I had described all the negative aspects, but none of the possibilities offered by guerrilla warfare. It was a fair comment.
I also had a meeting with my compañeros as rumors had reached me of certain remarks that reflected a growing despondency; some men were saying that the Cubans remained in the Congo because Fidel did not know the real situation they were in there. I told them that the situation was certainly difficult, that the Liberation Army was falling apart and that a struggle had to be waged to save it from ruin. Our work would be very hard and thankless, and I could not ask them to have confidence in victory; I personally thought that things could be sorted out, although it would take a lot of work and we would have many partial failures. I said I could not demand that they have confidence in my leadership capacity, but I could, as a revolutionary, demand that they respect my honesty. Fidel was aware of the fundamental situation, and nothing of what had happened had been covered up. I hadn’t come to win glory for myself in the Congo, nor was I going to sacrifice anyone for my personal honor. If it was true that I had not communicated to Havana the view that all was lost, it was because I honestly did not believe that was the case. But I had expressed the men’s state of mind, their vacillations, their doubts and weaknesses. I told them about the days in the Sierra Maestra when I was in total despair over the lack of faith among the new recruits, who, having sworn their unshakable commitment in the name of every saint, “cracked” the very next day. That’s how things were in Cuba, at our level of development and with the strength of our revolution. Why should it not be expected in the Congo? The Congolese soldiers were there among the masses; it was our task to check out each one and find them—this was our fundamental task.
The fact that this explanation was necessary shows the ferment that had been dissolving the morale of our troops. It was difficult to get the guys to work; quite disciplined compañeros would formally follow the orientation, but they took no initiative; everything had to be repeated several times over and strictly checked; I had to use my proverbial scoldings (which are not particularly gentle) to get certain tasks performed. That romantic time when I would threaten those who were undisciplined with being sent back to Cuba was long past; if I did that now, with luck the present numbers would be reduced by half.
Tembo wrote a long letter to Fidel in which he described the situation as it was at that moment, mainly in the form of anecdotes. Machado left to return to Cuba, carrying all this material and his own perception of the reality.
As a result of the meeting with the commanders, some modifications were made to the composition of the academy: it would now have 150 soldiers—50 from each of the three fronts (Lambert, Kalonda-Kibuyu and Calixte)—plus 60 to be recruited by Muyumba from among the local peasants.
I again spoke with Massengo about Baraka and agreed to send Siki there with some men to organize a defense of Fizi, which, after some planning, would make it possible to bring all the forces there and to attack at the first point. But Siki demanded, as a precondition, that things were done seriously and that the Cubans had total command; then we could undertake to send all the men to fight there. This ultimatum was necessary. Recently, at the time of the failed attempt to attack Lulimba, the grumbling among our compañeros had been such that if the Cubans were again left to fight alone and die needlessly many would propose abandoning the struggle because it was not possible to go on like this.
I couldn’t risk an attack on Baraka unless we had all the weapons in our hands and made a serious analysis of the situation. We didn’t know how many men the enemy had there, but their positions were problematic for them. They had a beachhead surrounded by mountains, in hostile territory. Something could happen there. Eventually, I almost begged Massengo to use his authority to make the people from Fizi see sense, and to write again to Kabila officially urging him to come to the Congo. It was not possible to denigrate Soumialot and his people, and at the same time to keep up the show of constant promises to come to the Congo, while enjoying feasts and orgies in Kigoma and Dar es-Salaam. I hesitated a great deal before raising such sensitive matters, but I thought it was my duty to present them to Massengo so that he could transmit them directly to Kabila. It was not our intention to lecture, but there are sacrifices that a revolutionary leader has to make at certain moments.
Massengo promised to write to Kabila, but I don’t know if he did. He left with Siki for the Fizi area, while Muyumba left for Mukundi with the promise to send the 60 peasants within seven days, a promise that was never kept, although I don’t know why since he showed no further signs of life.
Lambert sent me a letter in which he reported rumors that Fizi had already fallen and he asked for authorization to take 25 men; he would find another 25 on the way and recapture Baraka or, if it was already lost, Fizi. I replied that I was not able to give such permission, but that, in my view, there were many weaknesses at the front, that the enemy was about to attack and that his [Lambert’s] presence there was indispensable. Besides, it was unthinkable that with 25 or 50 men he could recapture what had been lost when there had been hundreds. He was kind enough to send me a reply as he departed for Fizi with his little band.
For all these reasons, the chances of simply harassing the enemy in the Lulimba area were virtually nil; the men at the main barrier were no longer coming down to the plain. A contact group was sent to the barrier on the Kabambare road with the aim of crossing the Kimbi River and reconnoitering the soldiers’ positions from the other side, and the report came back that it was at the same general level; the lieutenant in charge of the barrier declared he could not hold his men at the position (only 25 remained); they didn’t obey him and did what they liked, and they would desert if they were sent off to some military action. It was a barrier only in theory, and the group there could be discounted as a fighting force.
1. José Ramón Machado Ventura, Cuba’s minister of public health (1960-68). Currently he is a member of the political bureau of the Cuban Communist Party and first vice-president of the Council of State, the position held by Raúl Castro until he became president in 2008 following Fidel Castro’s retirement.
2. The map referred to here was never included in the original manuscript.
3. Che’s note: I was told about Soumialot’s drunken sprees by people from the other group, but this does not appear to be true.
4. Che’s note: I follow the custom in the Congo of awarding students the nationality of the country where they trained.
VARIOUS ESCAPES
We kept trying to incorporate Congolese into our little army and to give them rudimentary military training so that this nucleus might save the most important thing: the soul, the life of the revolution. But those charged with imparting the divine breath, the Cubans, had an ever weaker grip on it themselves. The effects of the climate were still being felt, as gastroenteritis was added to the endemic malaria. Until the rigors of the task got the better of my scientific spirit, I noted in my field diary my own statistics: I had the shits more than 30 times in 24 hours. Only the bush knows how many more there were after that. Many compañeros suffered from the same malady; it didn’t last long and it responded to strong antibiotics, but it contributed to undermining an already fragile morale. Nor did anything happening outside our camp help to raise our spirits—not one high-minded gesture, not one intelligent action.
The few Congolese we had managed to recruit went to get a dawa in a nearby camp, or to be examined by a Congolese doctor (medicine man). After that, they simply deserted. This made me feel the impotence that comes from a lack of direct communication. I wanted to instill into them everything I felt, to convince them how I really felt, but having to speak through a translator and perhaps my skin color also undermined everything. After one of the frequent tran
sgressions (they had refused to work—another of their characteristics), I spoke angrily to them in French; I rattled out the worst things I could think of with my poor vocabulary and, at the height of my rage, said that they should be made to wear skirts and carry cassava in a basket (women’s work) because they were good for nothing and worse than women; I preferred to have an army of women than individuals like them. But while the translator turned the “volley” into Swahili, the men looked at each other and guffawed with disconcerting naivety.
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