The Death of Che Guevara

by Jay Cantor

  8/26/67: Two deserters from Joaquin’s group, and Jorge, were exhibited to the press. They all said that Debray had been an active combatant, killing many honest and courageous Bolivian soldiers. The three of them were heartily sorry for what they had done, misled by foreigners. The guerrilla leaders had lied to them, promising a camp with air defenses, good food, and a chance to rob the countryside. Instead they had faced starvation, and had been bullied by Cubans. The guerrillas would not keep any of their promises, for they were no more than common bandits.

  Jorge’s voice in this sour chorus of betrayal was a blow. My good name has no magic at this distance, against their torments. And what other cooperation might he have offered them already?

  Debray showed great nobility, saying nothing.

  From Coco’s Journal

  8/26/67: Camba came up to my brother on the march today, with a message that he wanted Inti to give to Che. He said that his physical condition didn’t allow him to keep on going.

  “Pustules,” he said, “like red flowers. You can’t see them, but they’re there. It’s a kind of leprosy.”

  Inti didn’t ask if Camba was embarrassed to show his legs, or had invisible pustules. “Why don’t you speak to Che yourself?”

  “He will never let me go,” Camba said, sounding very sad. “He likes my singing.”

  Not knowing what to say, Inti laughed. And suddenly Camba laughed, too, a few seconds after my brother, like someone doing an imitation.

  “There’s no future in this business anyway,” Camba said. He sounded like a young employee, anxious to find a company that had room for advancement.

  I told the story to Ponco. He laughed—his merriment sounds so sad and dry. He said he could see Camba’s point. Che has been talking a lot to Camba, listening intently to our loony bird, learning the paths through the forest. (I didn’t understand what Ponco meant.) Maybe, Ponco said, Camba can teach Che how to sing his verses on vegetables. (Ponco said that Che is tone-deaf!)

  Later Inti heard Camba speak with Che.

  Che was furious. He accused Camba of cowardice.

  Camba whimpered like a struck dog. “I don’t have a stick,” he said, like a disappointed child, “a big stick.” (Inti said Camba might have said “big prick.”) Then Camba wailed, saying over and over that he didn’t want to die.

  Che was disgusted. He made Camba walk ahead of the others with him and Inti, and then, when the others couldn’t hear, he promised to let Camba go soon—but not immediately, for Camba knows our route to Joaquin, and our possible rendezvous at Ispaca’s house.

  Camba laughed. “There is no route to Joaquin,” he said. “I’ve seen the maps. He’s not on them anymore.”

  Inti wanted to strangle Camba when he heard him talk like that.

  But Che spoke soothingly. When we reached Joaquin, he said, Camba could go. It would be better for everyone if he did go.

  Che made Inti promise not to tell anyone of his promise to release Camba.

  From My Journal

  8/26/67: Coco told me of Che’s conversation with Camba. Soon everyone will know. And this will put ideas in their heads. (Does he really intend to let Camba go? Impossible!)

  The loss of the caves, the imperiled city network—for Jorge knew many of our contacts—the losses, real or fictional, to Joaquin’s group, all have put morale at a dangerously low point. We must be on guard against deserters. (I think Pacho and Eusebio are likely candidates.)

  From Guevara’s Journal

  8/27/67: Now Eusebio! “I won’t leave now,” he said. “You can trust me, Che. That would be cowardice. But this goes on forever. There’s not enough food. My feet are all cut up. I want you to say that I can go in six months or a year, depending on our situation.”

  What cowardice! But I promised him what he wished.

  My word didn’t satisfy him. “Florida,” he said. “Abrapa. Morroco. The peasants hate us. We haven’t involved the masses. The guerrilla struggle has no mass base. We should try to get away.”

  “I will not tolerate such talk.”

  “My feet are in terrible shape,” he said again, to distract my anger. “How much more must we walk today? Why won’t Moro help me? I worry about my family. The deserters will have given our names. What will they do to our families? …”

  He went on in this disconnected way. I walked ahead of him.

  From My Journal

  8/26/67: Abrapa. The board on its trestles was still there, but covered now with empty plates, a few rinds of meat, pieces of broken crockery, bottles on their sides. The army arrived here before the Messiah returned. Again.

  Che had organized a troop to gather the people up from the fields and mountainsides where they run at our arrival.

  But this time it was unnecessary. As we came through their huge doorway Pastor Barrera and two other men bowed to Che. Other villagers peeked out from their huts at first, and, if they saw us looking, they, too, bowed or blew kisses up at the sky. After a few moments they joined us.

  The mayor once again had something to show everyone. He went to his big rock and with his theatrical flourishes took out a little package, wrapped with a cloth embroidered with red and blue squares. Slowly he unwound the cloth and held a small white object aloft.

  It was Che’s Inhalator!

  “Everyone here knows what this piece of you has meant to us. You are a man of great power and great knowledge, and we are all grateful that you left some of your power with us. Everyone knows the feats this part of you has accomplished, for it has cured many of us, and kept us safe from harm. Thank you.” He smiled and showed the holy relic to everyone, turning it in the air, saying, “We have kept your trust. We have kept this part of you safe from the army, no matter what they have done to our village.”

  I watched Che’s face to see his nausea form. But his face was untroubled.

  Forty or so people nodded their agreement with the mayor. Had there been so many people before? They came to us now like birds to grain.

  Inti addressed the crowd, speaking of our battles with the army, and the need for all Bolivians to help the miners in their struggle. Bolivia’s treasures must be used for Bolivians.

  The townspeople looked away from Inti, up at the green hills and beyond, at the sun, dreaming their dreams. This was not the food they had come out for.

  When Inti was done one of them said, “Sir, we have heard about the Giants.” We had gone among the villages, teaching that there were Giants in Bolivia. And we guerrillas knew the way to make the Giants do what we wanted. We knew how to offer the soldiers’ blood to them.

  The man took off his brown felt hat, and bowed his head. He kissed the tips of his fingers and shook them up towards the sky, then smiled at Che like a coquette—one that hadn’t taken care of her teeth, for they were jagged mountains worn down by an ice age of coca.

  And Che returned his smile. Their nonsense didn’t dismay him anymore; it even seemed to please him, make his breathing lighter.

  We ourselves, he said, the guerrillas and the people of Bolivia who fought for liberation, all those who struggled and sacrificed for the Revolution, were the Heroes who lived within the Giant. When we worked and sacrificed together then our blood ran through the Giant.

  “How do we know what the Giant wants?” the man asked, meekly turned into a child again, I thought, by this story.

  “The leader of the Bolivian Revolution will speak for the Giant. And that leader will come from the heroes of the Revolution.”

  The man nodded, taking in this new information, but it didn’t make him happy. He ran his hand through his hair. “Sir,” he said, looking at the dirt, “does that mean you won’t let us see the Big People?”

  These peasants, I thought, are just like Che, only interested in their own spiritual development!

  The Bolivian nation, Che said again, repeating his lesson (re-forming it, I thought, as he repeated it), its people and its land together, were a powerful Giant. The heroic acts of the Revolution would awa
ken the Giant. You could not see him, but all who worked for the Revolution would feel the Giant’s power protecting them.

  This was the grain they wished—and as he spoke more villagers came from their huts to join the crowd. There were even young men among them.

  “How will we know the leader who speaks for the Giant?” Pastor Barrera asked. I felt a new compliancy in him; he wanted to cooperate, to offer the right question.

  “Those who claim to lead Bolivia now, like Barrientos,” Che said, “are dead men. Barrientos is a stone. You cannot see yourself in him. You will know the true leader of the Bolivian Revolution because you will see your face in him. Each of us is already in the leader, as we are in the Giant. He will speak for us and for the Giant.”

  The townspeople no longer fidgeted like prisoners when Che spoke. They stared intently, as if his difficulty breathing, the odd way he carried his chest, were filled with necessary information for them. But I looked at our men around the edges of this crowd, and Che’s strange words were like a pain in their bodies. Ricardo’s head shook from side to side—not in disagreement, more like a tremor, a palsy.

  Che thanked the people for keeping his Inhalator safe from the army. He reminded them that they must never speak of us to the soldiers.

  The mayor nodded solemnly as if being given a sacred mission. He wrapped up the piece of plastic, sprinkled chicha on the cloth, and hid it again beneath its rock.

  From Coco’s Journal

  8/26/67: The courageous fellow who had asked Che about leadership took me aside in the evening. “There are things,” he said, “that we haven’t shown you yet.” He wanted to be friends, conspirators even. We went back to his hut, where he unwrapped another precious object. I could hardly see it in the dark smoky air. (Since my illness I, too, have a little trouble breathing.)

  “What is it?” I said.

  “We drink from it,” he said, “at festivals. When we’re alone.”

  It was a skull! A bowl had been attached to the top of the skull, and a nozzle came out of its clenched teeth. I could swear that the bowl was made of gold.

  “Is it a Spaniard?” I asked. I thought it must be very old, hidden away at the time of the Conquest, protected despite torture. I was pleased to think that he trusted us enough to show it to me. (Though gold was useless to us—as he might have calculated for himself.)

  My friend shrugged.

  “Or a troublesome soldier?”

  He shuddered. That was impossible! They would have been killed for that!

  “A priest then?”

  He smiled.

  They offered us food later, and wouldn’t take our money.

  Isle of Pines, July 1968

  JULY 1

  I see now. He was trying to make a seam between our world and the Indians’. Now he himself was—is—that seam. But he could not make the join heal together then, no matter how hard he clamped down—like an army ant!—with the teeth of his intelligence. If the words were the ones the Indians listened closely for, then the men grew uneasy. Maybe, some of them thought, Che has gone as mad as Camba.

  Che wouldn’t talk to us anymore; he wasn’t interested in explaining, or couldn’t. What we thought didn’t matter. Even our allegiance didn’t really matter. He didn’t need us, or not for very long. His plan didn’t involve us.

  Bolivia, August 1967

  From Guevara’s Journal

  8/27/67: A message from Fidel, in code. But we have lost the tape recorder, so we can’t replay it and translate. This god speaks now in a garbled voice, from afar.

  Some of the men thought they understood a phrase or two from the oracle.

  “Don’t sell any more milk, a hug, Fidel,” Ricardo said.

  “Don’t see any more of that ilk, my love, Fidel.”

  “Don’t be a piece of silk, you mug, Fidel.”

  Etc.

  It was the first laughter in weeks.

  But there was uneasiness, too. It reminded us all, again, of our isolation. These words half understood, like the peasants themselves, were a barrier we couldn’t fling ourselves against. We were somewhere else; put to bed in another room. A dark one.

  8/28/67: The army reports three killed in the Nancahuazu region. From the descriptions, it cannot be doubted that these are the party I sent out for medicine.

  From Coco’s Journal

  8/29/67: Morroco. Calixto’s village. This time, too, a larger crowd than before, more than twenty people, women, children, and a few young men. Curiosity now overcomes fear and their angry grief at the loss of Paulino.

  Calixto said, “You know how to make the Giants do as you wish. As only a Hero can.” He stood in front of his hut, near the cooking fire where his daughter had bewitched me. He was authoritative; it all made perfect sense to him I guess.

  Again Che said that the Revolution joined land and people into a Giant, ready to walk again among the liberated nations of the world. The Revolutionary struggle would make the Bolivian people into heroes, joined to the life of that Giant, part of his immortal life.

  A woman in the back cackled. “You don’t look like heroes,” she said. She had a sly mocking smile that I had seen before. Could this be the mother of my beloved? She had a round smooth face, and a body made round and smooth and enormous by her skirts and shawls. This was what I had to look forward to as we grew old together!

  That made me laugh, the idea of our growing old! Anyway the coca energy was gone from my body, from my prick.

  “If you had eyes to see,” Che said to the doubter, “you would know that we are indeed heroes.”

  “And so you have come to tell us what to do,” Calixto’s father said. They are all still angry, I guess, about the boy’s loss.

  “The Bolivian people themselves will decide what to do. The leader of the Revolution speaks for the power of the Giant. He will come from among the Bolivian heroes. And he will be someone you recognize.”

  “We know,” Calixto said. “We have heard. He will know what is in our hearts.”

  A light rain began to fall. My body felt hot. I thought steam would rise from my feverish skin, taking more of my flesh. Already I am even thinner than Inti.

  “Yes,” Che said. “But you will know, too, what is in his heart. You will see yourself in him. His heart will be a mirror in which you can see yourself, for he will be from among you.”

  “From among us?” Calixto said. He looked around him at his twenty friends, standing uncomplaining in the rain. “From among us?”

  “But we’re garbage,” the sly woman said.

  “I see her point,” Ricardo said to me. He doesn’t care anymore that I am Bolivian. His huge eyes swam towards my face from behind his thick glasses.

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  Che told them all how they might become Heroes.

  From My Journal

  8/29/67: One of the men Che had chewed coca with before took me aside. He showed me a heap of stones behind his house that had a small crockery vase on it, a household shrine. The vase had a picture faintly outlined on it that looked like a man in a flowing robe with a sunburst behind his head. “Look,” the man said. “His ashes.” He looked up at the sky and blew a kiss from his fingertips.

  “Whose ashes?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” the man said. “But they’re very powerful.”

  “Why do you blow a kiss to the sky?”

  He shrugged.

  “Ah,” I said.

  We were getting to be pals.

  “Who stole your voice?” he asked.

  “I sacrificed it,” I said, “to the Revolution.” I thought to add, Now the Giant speaks for me. But my theology wasn’t clear—was it the Giant or the Heroes or the leader?—and I was afraid of blaspheming.

  “Will you get it back?” he asked. “After the Day of Change?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, for once again I didn’t have the right answer. I must ask Che; or Camba.

  From Guevara’s Journal

  8/30/6
7: We moved along the lower edge of a thick junglelike area, then back towards the Rio Grande. Humid, yet we are far from water. Benigno found some small cane which we sucked on for moisture. But Pacho and Eusebio are falling to pieces and look on the verge of collapse.

  8/31/67: Two of the macheteros fainted today. Eusebio, forgetting all that I had said, drank his own urine from his canteen cup, with the expected results of diarrhea and cramps. He didn’t trust my word; or thought he couldn’t be certain of a truth unless he tested it on his own body.

  Benigno, our scout, brought contradictory reports about Joaquin’s presence in the zone. Some of the local people say that guerrillas have been in the area, others deny it.

  Monthly Summary: Until we rejoin with Joaquin our situation remains precarious. We cannot risk battle and further losses; but without battles there isn’t even the possibility of new recruits. The myth continues to spread, taking unpredictable forms.

  SEPTEMBER

  9/1/67: Benigno went down into a canyon overgrown with thick bushes and vines and found a small stream.

  9/2/67: A day scaling ridges between here and the river. We will wait in this area for Joaquin.

  From My Journal

  9/3/67: Che set up an ambush near the Rio Grande. I don’t understand his thinking. We can’t risk contact with the army if we are to remain in this area.

  In the afternoon ten soldiers marched on the other side of the river as if they were about to cross. Che ordered us to wait until the column was all the way into the water, and then fire. But Marcos fired as soon as the point man came to the edge of the rocks. The other soldiers scattered.

  Marcos is afraid of the army and wants to avoid a battle.

  Che was furious with him, and called him a coward. Marcos bowed his head, and Che called him other names, like someone bringing a stick down across a mare’s face, over and over.

  From Coco’s Journal

  9/5/67: We camped an hour’s march from the house of Honorato Ispaca, near the junction of the Masicuri and the Rio Grande. Che established an ambush with a good view of the hut, under El Chino.