The Death of Che Guevara

by Jay Cantor

  No. I have no right to alter anything.

  Bolivia, 1967

  APRIL

  From Coco’s Journal

  4/3/67: My feet, and those of a couple of comrades, have begun to swell up. Edema from malnutrition, Che says. I poke at them sometimes at night. My finger sinks right in. Ponco showed me his feet, and they’re the same. “See,” he said, “watery flesh, fleshy water.” We’ve worn through our boots, they’re just scraps of leather.

  I walked with Ponco. I think I have a lot to learn from him, but he doesn’t talk much to me, or to anyone, I think, except Che. He asks me questions about my past, and listens very intently. And when he does speak he’s very funny, very sharp. His voice is raspy, a low growl. They say he was operated on for cancer. He has known Che for more than eleven years, and they seem very close. He is the only one who talks alone with Che, and once I even heard Ponco shout at him. I wish he would talk more to me about his experiences. But he doesn’t like to tell stories about his life.

  Today the sun was so hot it was cracking stones. I don’t think I could have gone on if it weren’t for Che’s example. He is suffering from asthma, but he doesn’t complain.

  From Guevara’s Journal

  4/4/67: Four of the men have come down with malaria.

  4/5/67: We will continue to move southeast towards Gutierrez.

  4/6/67: Tania is sick with fever. Malaria. A bad case. I can see it not only in the puffiness and redness of her face, but in its unformed quality. In the time before her illness her face would have this unformed look also, just after waking—as if she had to shape it by an effort of will, remind herself of who she is, what she is supposed to be like; sometimes I felt she could give it any shape she wished. It reminds one that she is an agent. But now her face has that look all the time; slack; her muscles are weak; her will is weak. The heat is hard on all of us; it is impossible for her to bear.

  And Debray is scared. He skitters about. He demands (not asks) to be taken into the guerrilla as a combatant. Half an hour later he talks of how useful he would be on the outside; the necessities of struggle demand that he return to Cuba; he describes a safe route. At each turning he has precise reasons of great clarity and insight. Perhaps his mind can work at the service of any goal. (What provides the goal, then?) He must go. He has a journalist’s credentials, and there are few soldiers near Muyupampa. If he hasn’t been betrayed, his cover should keep him safe. A necessary risk. Bustos will go with him, with messages to Argentina. Tania is another matter; she is too valuable; we must find an absolutely safe route for her. But we have to get Debray and Bustos out before more soldiers arrive in the zone. And Tania and the other sick ones are slowing down the march.

  From Coco’s Journal

  4/9/67: I walked with Joaquin. He moves slowly, but stands upright though he has a fever. Debray is very thin. Each day he seems to grow thinner. He walks with a stoop, though he is not carrying a full pack. We were all silent for a while. Then Joaquin spoke very rapidly. “Don’t you see Regis? It didn’t start out for me as an idea. When I joined Fidel I had few ideas except trying to survive. There wasn’t much to eat. I looked after a few cows. I knew Fidel’s men would kill us if we collaborated with the army. The army would kill us if we helped Fidel. Some days the army would come and take some of my cattle. Some days Fidel would come and take some. I wanted to live. Sure, I despised Batista’s men. But it wasn’t just Fidel’s speeches that made me join the Movement. It was also the feel of the weapon Ricardo handed me, the wooden stock slapped against my shoulder, the recoil of my weapon, and the way it shook my chest. It was the possibility of doing something about my feelings. I had no words for it.”

  “Later there were words, Joaquin, don’t forget that. Or how would you have known whom to point the rifle at?”

  “Yes, that’s true, Grandfather. Later there were words, oh my, were there words! Around Fidel there are always plenty of words. But you’re right. I came to understand what the feelings I had meant in my world. There’s room for words. There have to be words, too. But that isn’t the way it started for me. When I listen to you, I don’t know. Can it start out as thinking?”

  I didn’t say anything. I thought of my father’s house in La Paz, the big dining room with its carved wooden furniture, the portraits. It had begun as thinking for me.

  From Guevara’s Journal

  4/11/67: Near Iripita. Set up an ambush on both sides of the river. The ambush was eight men from the rear guard, on both banks, and a reinforcement of three from the vanguard. The soldiers tracking us advanced with little caution, exploring the edges of the river. A few of them walked into the wooded area, and ran into Braulio and Pedro, before reaching the main body of the ambush. The firing lasted a few seconds. One dead, three wounded, four escaped back down the river. El Rubio was found wounded. His gun was jammed, and at his side was an unexploded grenade with its pin pulled. Inti, who found him, said his legs were still twitching. He was unconscious by the time they brought him to camp. I knelt by him in the dirt of the clearing, and put my hand hard against his chest. He was still alive, breathing faster and faster, shallower and shallower, his heart moving more quickly, his body giving off heat. It is the way a lamb feels, or a horse, the rapid respiration, the life coming and going, going so rapidly beneath my fingers, as if, as he died, he were moving backward from man to animal to matter.

  Later, Debray, moved by the event, asked again to be incorporated into the guerrilla. He meant well. But I couldn’t take any more of it. “You have no experience. You have little endurance. Ten city intellectuals are worth less to me as guerrillas than a single peasant from the region. The peasant doesn’t know dialectics but he knows geography.”

  “Well, until you have a little more success in recruiting peasants, perhaps a few city intellectuals will have to do.” He must have been very angry at the way I’d spoken to him, to come so close to criticizing me.

  “You have your point.” I was jumpy about El Rubio’s death. Debray’s eyes showed that he did not mean what he was saying. Or so I think. He would change his mind in a few hours. I wanted to make it easy on him to leave. I wanted him to leave.

  “You have your point. As always. But it wasn’t criticism of you that I meant. The peasant wouldn’t be any use to me in the city. There are messages that I must get to Fidel about the Bolivian Party. I need you to set up support committees for the Bolivian Revolution. Speak to Sartre and Russell in my name. It will be difficult enough for you getting out of here.”

  “In any case, I should stay with the guerrillas. Every man matters now.”

  “But do you want to?”

  “My personal preference doesn’t matter.”

  “I am putting an end to this discussion. You will return to Cuba. Give my messages to Fidel. You can have the child you’ve been talking about with Elizabeth.” El Rubio’s death had made Regis think of that; for the last few hours we had been talking about my children, about his desire to become a father. “You’ll make a good father. You’ll give them clear standards to measure themselves against. Let’s not talk of it anymore.”

  Still, there was something impressive about Regis. Each night, nervous as he was, exhausted as we all were, he would sit and go over a manuscript on the Latin American Revolution he was carrying in his knapsack, revising, getting it right.

  We learned from the captives that Gutierrez is occupied by the army. We cannot risk leaving our contacts there. We will move south towards Muyupampa, and look for a spot there.

  4/13/67: We continued southwest towards Muyupampa, to put some distance between ourselves and the army. It is imperative that we find a safe place for the visitors, our contacts with the world beyond this canyon. It is particularly troubling that Tania disobeyed orders—an inexplicable lapse of judgment on her part—and came back to the camp. We must regain our links with the city network—and what might be suitable for Debray will not do for her.

  4/17/67: We spent the day in camp, resting. The can
ned food has run out.

  Tania put her arms towards the fire, catching her sleeve in the flame. She did it very slowly, so everyone could see, but no one did anything about it. She just stared at her burning arm, with a dazed expression. Moro grabbed her and with his good arm pushed her to the ground, rubbing her sleeve into the dirt till the fire went out. The doctor looked at the arm; she wasn’t badly burned. No one said anything.

  She began to scratch herself with her nails, running them across her cheeks with a nervous mechanical motion. She was mumbling something to herself. Her nails began to dig into her skin hard, the blood rising under them, turning up furrows of some rich red earth. This time she was screaming, but not from pain, I think: wailing and crying.

  I went to talk with her, to shut her up. There would be food to eat soon, I said. Her fever would get better. She wouldn’t have to march long distances anymore. I was going to leave her with Joaquin and many men. She knew Joaquin was a good man, our comrade from many struggles. They would stay near here, safe from the army. We’d drop off Debray and Bustos and then rejoin Joaquin. She’d feel better soon. Joaquin would find a safe way for her to leave while we distracted the army. The doctor would take care of her now. She’d be feeling better soon, her fever would break. She would be on her way back to the city.

  She became calmer, she apologized. It was not her talking, she said, but her fever.

  It was her own fault, I thought, but did not say. She should never have come to the camp again. Debray could have found his own way there, as he was supposed to. She had disobeyed orders and common sense. Once the army found the camp, we had to get them out, wander about until we did, or be cut off from our support.

  Why had she come?

  I gave Joaquin his orders: Stay in the zone. Make a show of strength to keep down the army’s mobility. Wait three days while we go towards Iripita to drop off Debray and Bustos. “After that, if we haven’t returned, remain in the zone, avoid any head-on fighting, and wait for our return. It will give the sick a chance to rest.” We were standing in the sun, a distance from the camp, in a field of tall grass. It made my head ache. Sweat glistened all over Joaquin’s forehead. He looked past me as I spoke, his eyes glazed, his mouth open. The sun, I thought. It makes him look vacant, distant. He didn’t even nod in agreement.

  We parted. I led the center group out of there. I couldn’t wait to put some distance between us and Tania and the other sick ones.

  And now to get Debray out, away, gone.

  4/19/67: We will continue to move south, to divert the army from Joaquin’s group. And there will be a safe town for Debray in that region, perhaps Lagunillas or Muyupampa.

  4/26/67: A coded message from Havana. We tape-recorded it and played it over and over to decode it. Dark news: Brizola’s group in Brazil is finished. They were decimated by bubonic plague, and the few remaining ones picked up by the army.

  Monje has met again with Fidel and announced to him his full support of the guerrillas. He has requested more money for operations in the city. Should it be given to him?

  One almost has to admire Monje’s audacity. Ponco was right, I should have killed him when I had the chance.

  Or is he responding to news of our victory at Nancahuazu? We are still the darlings of the airwaves. It is possible that the Party is coming around to our point of view. I must get a message to Fidel of our needs and how to contact us. He must oversee the Party’s good faith.

  4/27/67: The Chilean radio station reports that U.S. military advisers have arrived in Bolivia.

  Another Vietnam

  From My Journal

  4/29/67: Guerrilla strength is estimated by the radio to be three hundred men.

  That means there are 257 phantoms. There are thirty-three human guerrillas with us, and ten with Joaquin. So far there has been no contact between us. The liaisons to Argentina, Peru, and the rest of the guerrilla groups already in operation or that Che hopes to form are here with us, trapped. Tania, our contact with the city, is trapped with Joaquin’s group. Debray, our liaison to Cuba, is with us. The radio equipment is broken, and there’s no way to broadcast to Cuba.

  We can only listen.

  Listen to the Meeting of the Tricontinental Conference in Havana. Fidel read Che’s message from “somewhere in the Americas.”

  “The solidarity of all the progressive forces of the world towards Vietnam is similar to the bitter irony of the plebeians coaxing the gladiators into the Roman arena. It is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing his fate: one must accompany him to death or victory. Vietnam must not be abandoned.

  “We must ask ourselves, How shall rebellion nourish? We have said for quite some time now, The struggle in our America must achieve continental proportions.

  “The beginning will not be easy. All the oligarchies’ power of repression, all their capacity for brutality will be placed at the service of their cause. Our mission, in the fìrst hour, shall be to survive. Later we shall carry out armed propaganda, in the Vietnamese sense: that is, the bullets of propaganda of the battles won or lost—but fought!—against the enemy.

  “The great lesson of the invincibility of the guerrillas will take root in the dispossessed masses. The galvanizing of the national spirit. Hatred as an element of the struggle, a relentless hatred of the enemy impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective violent selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy.

  “How close we could look into a bright future should two three many Vietnams flourish throughout the world with their share of deaths, and their immense tragedies, their everyday heroism, and their repeated blows against an imperialism impelled to disperse its forces under the sudden attack and increasing hatred of all the people of the world.

  “Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism, a battle hymn for the people’s unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America. Wherever death may surprise us let it be welcome, provided that this our battle cry may have reached some receptive ear, and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons, and other men ready to intone the funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine guns, and new cries of war and victory.”

  (Prolonged applause.)

  A nice piece of work. Vietnam must not be abandoned! His favorite word. Forlorn word! We played the radios very quietly at night, deep in the forest. The glow from the dials was the only light. (Now is the hour of the radios.…) We had to lie on the ground with our heads near the speakers to hear.

  Afterward no one said anything.

  From Camba’s Journal

  4/30/67: Last night I had a dream. We were on a high mountain together, Che and I. The air was very thin at the top of the mountain. I felt woozy in my dream. There was a little crust of blood inside my nose (I touched it with my finger as he was talking and brought it out to look at). We were above the timberline. The earth was red and dry. There was snow on nearby peaks. It was very quiet, the only sound the whoosh whoosh whoosh of the wind moving around us. Che was pointing out the countryside to me, saying that from this mountain we could see four of the countries of the continent at war. “There’s Patagonia,” he said, “and that’s Babylonia, and that’s Folderol, and that’s Pompadoodle.” (They were all funny names. I can’t remember them exactly.) “See, Camba,” he said, “they’re all turning red.” And it was true; the ground down there was oozing blood. When he finished pointing out the different countries, he said, “See, there’s a hill that looks like a dinosaur, don’t you think?” And he pointed to a hill that had an egg-shaped bulge in front of it. That was the dinosaur’s head. And on its trunk there were long thick bulges, columns of red and green. Those were its legs. I could see it. Suddenly we were standing in front of the hill. It was a giant green-and-red lizard with a man’s face. The face was craggy, like a mountain, because it was a mountain, and bearded
with a very wispy black beard. It wore a funny green cap. It said to Che, “You think you can eat me, young man? You want to try my tough salty meat?” It had a woman’s voice—very deep, but a woman’s voice. It laughed, a little high-pitched trill, like the nervous major who we captured. Then it swept its tail across us. The tail had sharp scales on it, sharp as razors. And they were so sharp, and moved so quickly, that if he cut you, you wouldn’t feel anything. (I don’t know how I knew this, but I knew it in my dream.) I looked at Che, and his face was covered with blood. I started to scream, and put my hands to my face, because I wanted to know if it was covered with blood too. But Che took my hands away from my face. He said, “Be quiet, Camba,” and put his arms around me. “Don’t worry, Camba,” he said. I was crying, and he rocked me in his arms. It was nice being held and rocked. That’s when I woke up.

  I never got to feel my face and find out if there was blood on it.

  Isle of Pines, May 1968

  MAY 15

  But why did Che separate himself from Joaquin? From that time on we nosed about the countryside, looking for him, like an old dog with a cold. The army blocked our way to Joaquin—without even knowing what they were doing—and we wandered off in another direction, telling ourselves that we would join up later on, that Joaquin’s group must go this way, too, until the reports of their losses began to come on the radio, and we couldn’t tell ourselves that anymore.