The Death of Che Guevara

by Jay Cantor

  We had our first batch of homemade bread.

  SUMMARY:

  We’ll finish our work on the camp and fortifications (pits with pointed sticks for the most part), then move north to threaten Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and Sucre. Take control of the railway line from northern Argentina.

  We will threaten the Gulf Oil pipeline. This will force the imperialists to send troops to defend it.

  Divided into small bands we will hit several points north of the river. While the army is still dispersed we’ll retreat back towards camp, and our fortifications.

  If the army follows, we’ll kill them.

  The zone is sparsely populated: harder to organize but easier to defend. Food will be a constant problem here. But the army will have difficulty operating; and we know the terrain.

  We must have stable lines of communication, and supplies of food. The Party’s support is essential. With it providing supplies, doing propaganda work in the cities, spreading news of our victories, and sending recruits, we can and will stay here a long time.

  Hostilities will begin when we’re well established. Not before fall of 1967.

  12/23/66: Today the men finished work on the supply caves and lined them with canvas. Radio equipment (the transmitting unit), spare clothing, photos, passports, lists of urban contacts have been stored. The caves were covered over with wire gratings, logs, then camouflaged with dirt and bushes.

  12/24/66: The mosquitoes are thick at night, and very annoying. I still have an allergic reaction to their bites; they swell on my arm to the size of walnuts. So I’ve appropriated the only mosquito netting for my own hammock (fortuitous conjunction of power and need). Poem on mosquito netting?

  On the radio: a strange piece of advice for the lovelorn of Camiri: “And for my good pal: keep watch! Your lover with the Italian name is on his way to you.” This means that Mario Monje, first secretary of the Bolivian CP, is coming to the Nancahuazu camp.

  12/25/66: We were gathered in the amphitheater when he arrived, digesting Christmas dinner—roast pig, nougat from Spain, beer and cider. I was leading a session of self-criticism. In the last few days there have been fights between the Bolivians and the Cubans, especially Ricardo, who has been leading the vanguard group. Many of the Bolivians—Chingolo and Coco among them—say he’s too harsh, makes them work too much, shows favoritism to Cubans. But many of the Bolivians (I suspect Chingolo) are slackers. It’s a bad sign against us (I was saying), for even the shadow of nationalism must be banished. The only nationalism for a country under imperialism is socialist internationalism. So I was saying. (I had to be vague; I didn’t know if the Bolivians involved were lying.)

  I was speaking from my place on the logs, my words rising into the cool evening. I could hardly see the men’s faces, causing a lazy infatuation with my own voice. “You have no nationality anymore except the liberated territory directly under your feet.” At first I wasn’t glad to see Monje. His presence could only draw these apparent contradictions more sharply. But that would be good for us, after the initial difficulty: it would purify our forces.

  I got up from the log and went over to him. At another time I would have stood up, but waited for him to come to me. That would have been better for the men to see: we must rely on ourselves only, not on outsiders. But I needed the Party’s support in the cities, for agitational work, supplies, cadres. And I wanted to bridge the gap between the Cubans and the Bolivians. So I walked over to him.

  “I am Che Guevara,” I said. I still had a balding forehead and gray hair; I was barely recognizable. Monje and I clasped hands, and he looked down quizzically at mine, for one expects a stronger grip from a warrior. I’d barely touched his flesh. His hand was tender, a bureaucrat’s, but his grip was firm. His face, only dimly lit now, looked round and plump, with small eyes, slight black beard, and he wore a green cap that was too small, perched high on his head. His clothes were the same fatigues we all wore, but fresh-looking compared with ours; more of a costume, I thought. He looked uncomfortable, kept hitching his shoulders back to make things fit. He was a young man, about my age.

  “Guevara,” he said, “I am honored. We must talk. When I get my breath back, that is. That was a long walk for me.” He smiled. The men were all looking at us. Monje’s unstated question—Why are you here?—was in everyone’s mind.

  “Yes. We must talk.” I started to squat down.

  “But we cannot talk here.” His voice was deep but not overly resonant, a sincere effective voice for small gatherings, for committee meetings.

  “Why not?” I said (though I knew).

  Monje gestured very slightly with his arm, indicating the men watching us.

  “Anything we say can be said in front of them. We’re together in this now,” I said, though that was not yet clear. “It is liberty or death for all of us.”

  “Yes. I know. I understand. I appreciate that fact deeply.” He smiled a little at my speech. A politician’s admiration for a gesture, tempered by the fact that it was at his expense. “Still, I think we should talk alone. We might both feel freer, find it easier to curse at each other a little.”

  I agreed. We walked over to the round brick bake-oven, near where my own hammock swung between the trees. It was a clear night now, a little chilly, with many sharp stars. There was a fire going in the oven—fresh bread for the morning—and the flame gave a low steady reddish light to our bodies. Monje squatted down, as countrypeople do, low on his haunches, flatfooted, with his ass up against his ankles, the body balanced, self-contained. Were his parents peasants? I didn’t know his class background. That made me feel off balance.

  I sat as he did, opposite him. We might have been about to draw figures in the dirt between us, discuss the weather, the crops.

  He gave me a cigar, lit it with a square silver lighter, then lit one for himself. His hand flared before me, and his troll’s face with its little black beard. His features were in the shadow of his peaked cap; his eyes were a deeper darkness in the darkness of his face.

  “I needn’t tell you,” he said, “that these cigars are Cuban. A present from Fidel, when we last talked this matter over.” He puffed for a moment, circling the cigar end in the lighter’s flame. “Your name wasn’t mentioned then. Or at all, until quite recently.”

  “I’d like to make clear now,” I said, “that I am here in my name only. And my intention—to realize my ideas—is mine alone. I don’t want to damage relations between the Cuban and Bolivian parties.”

  He made his cigar glow for a moment, not speaking, illuminating a silver ring on his finger. (A wedding ring?) “I am here,” he said, “for the BCP, to begin with you a discussion, a serious discussion, on the problems facing the Bolivian Revolution. Before we begin that discussion, I must say that the Party cannot be committed to any specific scheme.”

  This was already a betrayal. He had promised to commit men to the struggle. But I didn’t say anything about his duplicity. I needed his support. And you have to be careful with bureaucrats, they have enormous vanity. “And I want you to know, before we talk, that I intend to begin the struggle with those here with me now, with whoever remains with me. We want your participation as political head of the guerrillas, subordinate only to the military chief. For the moment that is me.”

  “Well, we have a lot to discuss.”

  “What I said was clear.”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. It was clear. The Party thinks, though, that there must be a Bolivian head of the revolution as long as it has a Bolivian environment.”

  “I will be military chief. There will be one command.” I wanted to define the positions sharply. He would have to confront it and eventually change. I would not allow the Party to control the guerrillas.

  “The Party,” he said, “must direct the guerrilla movement.”

  “I understand,” I said angrily. “You will supply the ideas from the city, and we will supply the dead in the countryside, in ‘the mountains.’ No. The guerrilla movement is now the vangu
ard of the class struggle. It is the people in uniform.” The Party, if I allowed it, would compromise our goal: continental revolution. I was sure of it. They want the guerrillas to put pressure on the national ruling class, then call them off if a good deal can be made, if they’ll share power. But the guerrilla is the only instrument that can smash the army, and without that no socialist revolution can stay in power in America. “One form of struggle is primary if the aim is revolution. Guerrilla war. There must be a single command to the struggle: the guerrilla chief. The guerrillas do not merely create the conditions in the city for a coup d’état. Quickly won and quickly lost. The people have not struggled, they have not shaken off their passivity, they are not transformed. And the army remains. The imperialists will share power only for a moment. The guerrilla struggle is the method for class struggle throughout Latin America, for making the Continental Revolution. We will win.”

  “Bolivia is not Cuba, comrade. Our country is strongly nationalist. You will not be able to unite the masses unless the Bolivian Revolution is also a nationalist revolution, and has a Bolivian head.”

  “You know, Monje, the imperialists see you rolling your little ball of twine across the field, saying, ‘Everything on this side is Bolivian and belongs to me, and everything on the other side belongs to Guevara.’ And they laugh. Because they know that the whole field is theirs. And as long as you talk like that it will always be theirs. Something called the ‘Bolivian Revolution’ cannot be won. They’d strangle this country to death: you have no pon. They’d organize the petite bourgeoisie against you. They’d have you overthrown. It’s a joke, a running joke, already on its way to a plane into exile. If we do not struggle on many fronts, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, we cannot win. We must divide the forces of imperialism, here, and in Brazil, in Peru, in Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, Ecuador. We will make this continent another Vietnam. They cannot fight like that, here and in Indochina. We’ll bleed them to death. The Revolution must be continental. Once we make that clear, once you help us make that clear, the people will understand. You must share my vision.”

  I was gesturing with my cigar as I spoke, and by mistake touched the lighted end on my own wrist. I yelped.

  “What?” Monje said.

  “Nothing. An accident.” We paused for a moment. The pain was good for me; it distracted my mind from my anger. I cooled off, but my anger had left me exhausted. Monje was scratching himself through his beard, over and over. My words were annoying flies. Or maybe he was being bitten by mosquitoes. Lenin’s phrase came to mind: If you want to know what the bourgeoisie is thinking, don’t listen to their words, watch their hands. And a phrase then came to my mind, I don’t know from where: If you want to know what you’re thinking, watch your own hands in dreams. I wondered what Lenin would have thought of that? … Clearly I was tired.

  “You haven’t heard me out, Comandante.” That was true. We had both been talking very quickly, exchanging slogans. Though I did not expect to hear much from him anymore, perhaps he would come around now that my stand was clear, now that he saw the possibility of continental revolution. We would go ahead without him. If the Bolivian Party didn’t support us they’d be swept away. His voice slowed down. “As the head of the Revolution,” he said, “I will be better able to secure our relations with other groups. I can secure the support of the Communist parties throughout the continent. You have spoken of how important it is for the work in the cities to complement the guerrilla groups in the mountains. I think I can secure Venezuela’s support for Douglas Bravo. Codovilla is a friend of mine.”

  This was more crap. “You are certainly welcome to try. But it won’t work. For Codovilla to support Bravo is for him to support an insurrection in his own party. I am sure I will be able to unite the revolutionary forces of the continent.” I didn’t need him.

  “You seem very certain of your powers,” Monje said, almost sarcastically.

  “I am sure of the correctness of my ideas. And I am willing to risk my life to prove that they are right.” I tried to talk more slowly, too. But I wanted to get this over with. I wanted Monje to leave. I could tell we’d never get anything from him till we won victories. This whole conversation—though I’d given nothing away—made me feel unclean. I felt as if my bowels and ass were straining, as if I were trying to defecate.

  Monje said, “I will resign my position in the Party, secure its neutrality, and bring cadres with me.”

  He would be of the Party and not of it. I needed his cadres, but he’d find a way to make us dirty, to compromise us. It wasn’t worth that. “Your resignation is up to you,” I said. “But you’re just protecting the good name of the Central Committee members who should be denounced for betraying the struggle if they don’t support us. It’s a vacillating position. They should be condemned for their crookedness. We must make our position clear. Time will decide who is right. Our task now is to unite all who will be united to make the Revolution.”

  “That is another point,” Monje said, calmly, as if he didn’t care, or didn’t notice, that I’d insulted him. “We think your force is attracting all the heterodox elements, the pro-Peking groups, the Trotskyites. You’ve been negotiating with the renegade Moises Guevara. As political chief of the guerrillas I can give the force a consistent line. I will keep out adventurers and provocateurs. And infiltrators. We will follow the Party line and have their cadres.”

  For a time I said nothing; I was weary and anxious at once; I wanted to be out of this. Monje again lit his cigar, and I imagined I could see the expression on his face, a look of hurt, and great anger. But I had nothing more to say. “These polemics are for the rich. I will unite all who will be united to make the revolution. I will be the chief of the guerrillas.”

  “Comandante, I must ask if your stand is subject to bargaining?” Monje, too, sounded nervous, as if he’d done what he had to do, and wanted to leave.

  “No.” He knew it wasn’t. It never had been. This was all shit. I wanted it over with. “I am the chief.”

  “Then we have no more to discuss. I must take this opportunity to tell your men that whatever my personal feelings may be—and I admire you very much—they will not have the support of the Party, and they will be breaking Party discipline by staying here.”

  Monje rocked forward and heaved himself up quickly. I, too, stood up, but my right foot had fallen asleep and my leg crumpled under me. I half fell to the ground. Monje caught me and pulled me up.

  “Thank you.”

  “Think nothing of it.”

  Neither of us wanted to look the other in the face.

  We walked back into the camp. My bowels were heavy-still.

  We gathered the militants together in a semicircle by the lectern. There was a lantern on the table. The Bolivians looked like young boys. My comrades from Cuba, who stood farther off in the shadows, had all entered the country disguised as old men. Seen together like this we look odd, something indefinably off about us that annoys at the edge of consciousness; find what’s wrong with this picture; it was as if some of us were wearing putty noses, or ears, or chins. A family of normal sons and a clownish group of fathers.

  Monje said, “The Party cannot support the guerrilla movement. As a matter of Party discipline, the militants must leave with me.”

  The men, their faces softly illuminated by the lantern, looked at each other and at me. I said nothing and made no sign. A fair test: it would purify our forces. Jorge shuffled a bit on his legs and ran his hands over his face. But no one else moved.

  Monje spoke again, resonantly, “As the first secretary of the Communist Party of Bolivia, I am ordering all Party members, as a matter of Party discipline, to leave now, with me.”

  Not one of my chicks moved. They looked over at the cooking fire where Ricardo was making a big tin pot full of coffee. Their ears were filled with talk about me, Fidel’s praises, which we’d just heard on the radio, their own dreams of glory. And something more, I thought: the beginning of a commitm
ent whose end was not clear. My position had been the correct one. It had held them.

  Jorge said, “I’m staying. Victory or death.” He needed to spit in someone’s eye, a gesture to ratify his decision.

  One by one the men repeated the statement.

  Inti concluded the circle, very sad-looking, as always. “It’s victory or death,” he said, fabricating a little benediction of his own. Inti, tall, stooped, reminded me of a minister. Or an undertaker. “They make it that way. We cannot share power with imperialism. We cannot, we will not, share this world with them.”

  Monje turned towards him and stared. “If you ask me, Inti, it’s you that makes it that way. Right now we can breathe and carry on our work. You’re going to put a stop to all that.”

  Then, clearly, he regretted speaking. He worked his lips nervously, sucking them in and out, looking at the ground. “Well,” he said finally, in a calm voice, “you’ve won their hearts, Comandante. I hope Jorge and the others are more obedient to your orders, to this commitment, than they were to the Party’s. And you may find that the countrypeople don’t know your name as well as Party militants do.” He smiled, and everyone else smiled as well, relieved. “This is a historic moment, isn’t it?” Monje said. “The beginning of this great enterprise?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Let’s have a drink.”

  Ponco poured rum into the tin cups, and I personally gave each man his drink. I raised my cup. “This marks the beginning of a new War to the Knife, the Continental Revolution, the liberation of our continent. Our lives, the lives of any man among us, mean nothing, nothing when compared with the importance of making the Revolution, the deeds of revolution.”

  The men raised their glasses and we all drank down the sweet burning liquid.

  Coco said, “Let’s have another.”

  So we did.

  Later, by the fire, after Monje had left, we tossed in the dregs of rum, making little hisses and flicks of flame. Ricardo served up the coffee. Camba said, “We should mingle blood.” He extended his wrist and made a light cutting motion across his vein with a finger of his other hand. “It would show that we’re all comrades, and that when one man’s blood is spilled, so is everyone’s.” Camba is the youngest of the men. His face is thin, his eyes intense, his movements angular, jerky. Maybe he was drunk on the rum and the beer from dinner.