Hunting Che

by Mitch Weiss

  When he’d wriggled onto the top of the storage tank, Salazar jumped without hesitation. The first time, his legs buckled after hitting the ground. The second time, though, he landed perfectly. He smiled and ran back to do it again. As with all the training exercises, repetition was the key. They trained over and over until it became second nature.

  That night, Salazar gripped a pencil in his bandaged hand and wrote a letter to his mother. “I am working hard, but I am getting used to it,” he wrote. “After many tries I was finally able to climb a rope, and in another exercise I jumped from a high ledge and landed on my feet. After weeks, we all are getting the hang of it. We are coming together. I have faith that it will all work out. We feel like we are doing something great.”

  Salazar told her not to worry. He was doing something noble. He ended the letter by telling his mother he missed her and was thinking about everybody back home. Then he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  * * *

  Medics James Hapka and Jerald Peterson were doing everything possible to keep the Bolivians healthy. For weeks, they had been conducting exams on the soldiers. They didn’t like what they found.

  A doctor had never treated some of the men. While the Special Forces medics were not medical doctors, they had more than enough training to prevent diseases, treat wounds, and keep soldiers alive in the field. Now was the moment for prevention, when there was time enough to isolate and treat conditions that might cripple the mission later on. Hapka and Peterson had their work cut out for them.

  Before embarking on the mission, the two of them had studied up on local diseases, parasites, scorpions, spiders, and snakes. They learned that southwest Bolivia was a hot spot for hepatitis B and yellow fever. They were expected to treat illnesses and injuries at the training camp, set up a clinic for the villagers, and train several Bolivian soldiers to be medics for their companies. As time went on, the American medics found long-term health issues eroding troop strength. Dental hygiene was unheard of among the conscripts. Their mouths ached constantly from gum disease and rotting teeth. Some soldiers had to be ordered to bathe or wash their clothes, and then had to be shown how. The hygiene problem was only made worse when they were injured during training.

  In the early weeks, dozens of men were scratched and cut while working and training alongside fields of thorns and thistles. Venchugas, a kind of boring insect, attacked the wounds and sparked infections. Flies deposited eggs inside the cuts, which created painful boils that had to be lanced and cleaned.

  The Special Forces soldiers weren’t immune. Shelton’s men encountered venomous scorpions, as well as snakes and spiders, especially in wooded areas. They tried to protect themselves at night by using mosquito nets, but they were little help. The men were always covered in itchy welts and hives.

  The medics knew that with all the guns and ammunition around, they would have to be prepared for more than bug bites. They kept their medical bags stocked with bandages, tourniquets, IV fluids, splints, and painkillers. At some point, they knew all of them would be needed.

  * * *

  Back in La Paz, it was one crisis after another—and Barrientos blamed it all on Che and the damn guerrillas. They were stirring up trouble in the cities. They had to be, he thought. Everything seemed to be going to hell at once, so someone had to be behind it all. A teachers’ strike had paralyzed schools, and the miners’ unions were making more demands by the day.

  Fed up, Barrientos took strong steps in early June to exert total control. First, he placed the entire nation under a state of siege. All personal rights—and there weren’t many to begin with—were suspended. Anyone who protested against the government was thrown in jail. No one dared call the president a dictator, but Barrientos’s word was law.

  In a move to undercut striking teachers, he declared an “early winter vacation.” Children were sent home and schools closed, so it didn’t matter if teachers were on strike.

  A few days later, Barrientos lost patience with the miners.

  They could not have been more provocative. At a June 6 assembly, the Huanuni miners held an open demonstration and declared solidarity with the guerrillas. Protests in other areas pointed out dangerous working conditions and unfair practices. The president sent in the army. The troops occupied the Catavi and Siglo Veinte districts—key tin mining centers. But nothing prepared the country for Barrientos’s next move.

  On the night of June 23—the eve of the Feast of Saint John and a major holiday in Bolivia—miners at the Siglo XX mine gathered with leftist political and union leaders. They rallied, calling for a restoration of wages and a reinstatement of miners who had been fired. Early the next morning, while the miners and their families slept, troops rolled into the mining camp. When the miners resisted, soldiers opened fire.

  The government said sixteen people were killed and seventy-one wounded. But the miners put the number at nearly ninety dead, many of them women and children. They called it the Saint John’s Day Massacre. Barrientos was unapologetic. He believed he had the authority not only to send in troops, but to use deadly force. The miners, he claimed, provoked his soldiers. They were the ones to blame.

  And U.S. officials praised his action. Ambassador Henderson said it was justified. In Washington, Walt Rostow, a special assistant to the president for national security affairs, sent a soothing three-page report to President Johnson saying the crisis precipitated by the miners apparently had “run its course.”

  He painted a rosy picture of Bolivia: Student demonstrations were waning, and the miners seemed to have capitulated since Barrientos took a strong-arm approach. A successful threat from any other quarter had been prevented because the government and the armed forces remained unified. Rostow said that life in Bolivia was returning to normal and that the remaining problems were a “fall in government revenues” and “the guerrillas.”

  The report never explained that government revenues were falling, in part, because the Barrientos regime was riddled with corruption. Or that Che Guevara was leading the guerrillas.

  The United States had been trying to keep track of Che for years, chasing his ghost across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Intelligence analysts had put together an extensive profile. The bearded icon took the international stage when Castro rose to power in Cuba. Che and Castro were as close as brothers and shared a missionary zeal for Cuban-supported revolution. Che was a Communist evangelist, and his disdain for the United States and its economic hegemony was part of his appeal in an era of youthful rebellion and Cold War paranoia.

  Che was a teenage rebel, too, back in his comfortable middle-class school days in Argentina. His friends called him “Chancho” or “Pig,” because he always wore messy and dirty clothes. It was all a show. Che wanted to present himself as an outlaw.

  He loved playing the loner, the rebel. He got the nickname Che—which means “hey” in Spanish—because he used it so much. It was the equivalent of saying “yo.”

  The Americans knew everything about Che except where he was. The CIA maintained he was dead, his body lying in an unmarked grave in the Dominican Republic. Ambassador Henderson held firm to his belief that Che was not in Bolivia.

  But Bolivia had more information. A few days after the Saint John’s Day Massacre, Ovando called national and international media to a press conference. He revealed comments Debray had made to authorities about Che Guevara’s activities in Bolivia.

  Debray “apparently has spoken more than is necessary, although we cannot know the implications of this, nor the circumstances in which he said what he has said,” the general told them.

  In other words, Debray had confessed that Che was actively involved with the guerrillas. Debray, the Marxist intellectual, had turned on his hero.

  Ovando didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to. His comments were enough to attract even more international attention to Bolivia.

  The CIA dismissed
Ovando’s comments. Henderson pooh-poohed it all. Still, he asked the U.S. embassy to prepare a study called Is Che Guevara in Bolivia? to allay American fears.

  The conclusion the study reached: “We’re not sure.”

  But Barrientos was sure Che was alive and in Bolivia, creating this disaster just for him. It wasn’t a matter of “if” Che would strike again—but “when.”

  CHAPTER 12

  State of Siege

  The bearded men in green fatigues jumped from the pickup truck and pointed their rifles in Lieutenant Juan Vacaflor’s face.

  The stunned Bolivian officer didn’t have time to react. One minute he and some of his soldiers and villagers were standing at a snack stand, the next minute a half-dozen guerrillas were screaming “hands up” and waving guns.

  They had no choice. They raised their hands and surrendered. The gunmen told them to sit in a line on the ground and keep their hands in sight.

  These weren’t drug runners, Vacaflor thought. A couple of them had Cuban accents. These were the foreign mercenaries his unit had been hunting in the forest. And here they were in broad daylight, on the outskirts of Samaipata.

  Samaipata, a Quechua village, lay about seventy-five miles southwest of Santa Cruz, in the Andes foothills. Its cool, high-altitude climate made it a popular resort for city dwellers. It was also a strategic point, high up on the main road from Cochabamba to Santa Cruz.

  If the guerrillas took control of Samaipata, they could cut off the main artery between the cities.

  Vacaflor watched carefully as more guerrillas emerged from the truck, spread out, and corralled the villagers near the snack stand. For weeks now, he’d heard they were in the area. They always seemed to be one step ahead of the army, despite the campesinos telling his men their every move.

  He had to warn his men in town.

  The Bolivian Army was spread out in small units along the road. Vacaflor didn’t have a radio. His only communication was the state telegraph system, which often didn’t function. He was isolated, with no way to warn his men or the other units nearby.

  Vacaflor listened as the guerrillas talked of food and medical supplies. This wasn’t a full-scale attack, but a resupply mission, a shopping trip.

  Still, Vacaflor knew he was in danger. He was acquainted with some of the men killed in the springtime ambushes, and everybody knew these were cold-blooded killers. There were six guerrillas in the truck: Ricardo, Chino, and Pacho were foreigners. The others were Bolivian.

  A Gulf Oil Company pickup truck was parked near the snack stand. Pacho, a Cuban, sat down inside the cab of the truck. Villagers and two Gulf Oil men were standing nearby watching. No one moved. Like the soldiers, they were shocked to see the guerrillas in person.

  One of the guerrillas went to the snack stand and bought drinks for everyone. As he walked, his arms full of bottles, he smiled like a host at a party. He stopped at Vacaflor and handed him a drink. Before Vacaflor could finish, four of the guerrillas pointed their guns at him and told him to get up.

  Vacaflor scrambled to his feet and the guerrillas escorted him and his sergeant to their pickup truck. Two guerrillas stayed on the road and guarded the highway.

  “Take us to your barracks,” a guerrilla ordered Vacaflor.

  There was nothing he could do but take them. The truck drove down the rutted path toward the center of town. Vacaflor could see the colonial buildings and feel the cobbled streets under the tires. The truck stopped in front of the door of the school, which Vacaflor’s unit used as a barracks. He watched in stunned silence as the guerrillas grabbed his sergeant and shoved him toward the gate to the courtyard.

  “What is the password?” a guerrilla whispered. “Say the code. Tell them to open the gate.”

  Vacaflor couldn’t hear what was being said, but he watched as the sergeant stopped at the door and leaned in close like he was talking to someone behind it.

  The gate slowly opened, and the four guerrillas rushed in waving their weapons, yelling for the men inside to surrender. A burst from a Mauser cut through the yelling like a chainsaw. Vacaflor heard the guerrillas fire back. The firefight lasted several seconds before he saw a number of his men being led out of the school, their hands on their heads.

  Moving to the gate, Vacaflor ran to the guardhouse inside the courtyard. Private José Verezain’s body splayed on the floor. A bloodstain on his tunic grew bigger as Verezain’s heart beat a few final times before stopping. Vacaflor made the sign of the cross over the man, then turned away and joined the other soldiers outside the school.

  Two of the guerrillas brushed by him with an armload of Mauser rifles and a Bruno light machine gun. The Bolivian soldiers kept their heads down. If Vacaflor thought the guerrillas might execute him at the snack stand, he was sure they would do it now. He couldn’t shake the image of Verezain’s body, his empty eyes. At least the private had had the chance, and the courage, to fight back.

  After loading the weapons into the truck, three of the guerrillas came over to Vacaflor.

  “Come with us,” one of them said.

  This was the end, Vacaflor thought. The guerrillas left two men to guard his nine soldiers. The other two took him down to the grocery and the pharmacy. They bought canned goods and candy, and paid in cash for their purchases. At the pharmacy they picked up some bandages, alcohol, and aspirin. They demanded that the druggist get them asthma medicine, but the pharmacy carried only common remedies, no asthma drugs. The men paid and headed back to the pickup truck.

  Vacaflor heard one of the guerrillas urge his comrades to hurry up, an army patrol might arrive and they didn’t want to get caught in town. Vacaflor knew there were no patrols in the area, but he wasn’t about to tell the guerrillas.

  The men threw the supplies into the truck and then ordered Vacaflor into the cab. They collected their comrades at the school and snack stand, and gathered up Vacaflor’s men as well. The heavily laden truck wallowed down the dirt road. Vacaflor had no idea where they were taking him. He silently prayed they would spare him and his men—the guerrillas had let prisoners go in the past.

  After a half-mile ride, the guerrillas stopped along the road and ordered the soldiers out.

  They lined them up and ordered them to strip. The guerrillas picked up the soldiers’ clothes, documents, and money, climbed back into the truck, and drove away.

  Vacaflor watched as the red taillights disappeared. He took a deep breath. He’d survived. The soldiers walked back to town. They were grateful to be alive but fearing what was to come. Vacaflor began framing the shameful report he would have to make to his commanders. Six guerrillas had taken his town, killed one of his men, forced him to give up uniforms and weapons, and disappeared. There was no way he could pursue them. It was a miserable defeat.

  The lieutenant made one addition to his report. Instead of just six anonymous guerrillas, Che Guevara himself had come to raid Samaipata. The revolutionary had led the way into the schoolhouse, killed his soldier, and taken all of Vacaflor’s equipment.

  * * *

  The raid made international news.

  Press accounts suddenly portrayed bloodthirsty guerrillas overrunning the southeastern part of the nation. Residents of Samaipata claimed that between forty and seventy guerrillas had attacked—led by a fiery-eyed Che in a black beret. Some reports claimed the guerrillas had cut the highway between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz—a vital trade route for sugar, rice, corn, wood, alcohol, and tourists.

  Barrientos and the Bolivian high command were in shock. More than three months after the first shots were fired, the guerrillas were getting stronger and more brazen. The high command counted its blessings: What would have happened if a passenger train had been going through Samaipata when the guerrillas struck? What if they’d stopped the train and robbed the passengers? Barrientos was trying desperately to keep things from spinning out of control. There already was panic. F
amilies in the countryside were fleeing to the city, while city-dwellers pondered moving northward, away from the trouble spots.

  International media covered the chaos. The New York Times said the Bolivian government was in “serious trouble,” facing open rebellion from the guerrillas, rival politicians, unhappy businessmen, rampaging university students, and miners. “How the Barrientos government manages to survive while Bolivia is being ripped apart by such violence and disunity is the key question right now,” the editorial intoned.

  The U.S policy was to keep Barrientos in power as long as it could, the theory being that the “handsome former air force general” was the “best of a mediocre lot.” But Washington’s patience was running out.

  By simply standing by, the government was allowing the guerrillas to win militarily. U.S. experts were appalled by the “poor quality and poorer motivation of the Bolivian foot soldiers.”

  “It is hard to imagine what a coup d’etat against President Barrientos would accomplish in the way of solving any of the nation’s violent problems,” a newspaper wrote. “Yet a coup does not seem far off. But after that, Bolivia’s future is totally unpredictable.”

  Frustrated, Barrientos renewed his call for more U.S. equipment. Ovando pressed neighboring countries for more supplies. Barrientos turned his eye to the Rangers-in-training. He needed them now, not later. The country was facing an unprecedented peril.

  He ordered them activated for immediate duty.

  But what Barrientos didn’t count on was strong push-back from Shelton. The Rangers weren’t Rangers yet, he told SOUTHCOM. If they went into the field now, they would be in deep shit. They needed more training. The brass in Panama told the president no. The Rangers would stay in La Esperanza.