Latin America Diaries

by Ernesto Che Guevara

  The “Pachuca” left Golfito at 1 p.m. with us on board. We were well stocked with food for the two-day voyage. The sea became a little rough in the afternoon and the Río Grande (the ship’s real name) started to be tossed about. Nearly all the passengers, including Gualo, started vomiting. I stayed outside with a black woman, Socorro, who had picked me up and was as horny as a toad, having spent 16 years on her back.

  Quepos is another banana port, now pretty much abandoned by the company, which replaced the banana plantations with cocoa and palm-oil trees that gave less of a return. It has a very pretty beach.

  Costa Rica

  I spent the whole day between the dodges and smirks of the black woman, arriving in Puntarenas at 6 in the evening. We had to wait a good while there, because six prisoners had escaped and couldn’t be found. We visited an address Alfredo Fallas had given us, with a letter from him for a Sr. Juan Calderón Gómez.

  The guy worked a thousand miracles and gave us 21 colones. Arriving in San José we remembered the scornful words of a joker back in Buenos Aires: “Central America is all estates: you’ve got the Costa Rican estate, the Tacho Somoza estate, etc.”

  A letter from Alberto, evoking images of luxury trips, has made me want to see him again. According to his plan, he’ll go to the United States in March. Calica is destitute in Caracas.

  We’re firing blanks into the air here. They give us mate at the embassy. Our supposed friends don’t seem to be good for anything. One is a radio director and presenter, a hopeless character. Tomorrow we’ll try to get an interview with Ulate.

  A day half wasted. Ulate was very busy and couldn’t see us. Rómulo Betancourt has gone to the countryside. The day after next we’ll appear in El Diario de Costa Rica with photos and everything, plus a big string of lies.26 We haven’t met anyone important, but we did meet a Puerto Rican, a former suitor of Luzmila Oller, who introduced us to some other people. Tomorrow I might get to visit the Costa Rican leprosy hospital.

  I didn’t see the leprosarium, but I did meet two excellent people: Dr. Arturo Romero, a tremendously cultured man who due to various intrigues has been removed from the leprosarium board; and Dr. Alfonso Trejos, a researcher and a very fine person.

  I visited the hospital, and just this morning, the leprosarium. We have a great day ahead. A chat with a Dominican short-story writer and revolutionary, Juan Bosch, and with the Costa Rican communist leader Manuel Mora Valverde.

  The meeting with Juan Bosch was very interesting. He’s a literary person with clear ideas and leftist tendencies. We didn’t talk literature, just politics. He characterized Batista as a thug among thugs. He is a personal friend of Rómulo Betancourt and defended him warmly, as he did Prío Socarrás and Pepe Figueres.27 He says Perón has no popular influence in Latin America, and that in 1945 he wrote an article denouncing him as the most dangerous demagogue in the Americas. The discussion continued on very friendly terms.

  In the afternoon we met Manuel Mora Valverde, who is a gentle man, slow and deliberate, but he has a number of tic-like gestures suggesting a great internal unease, a dynamism held in check by method. He gave us a thorough account of recent Costa Rican politics:

  “Calderón Guardia is a rich man who came to power with the support of the United Fruit Company and through the influence of local landowners. He ruled for two years until World War II, when Costa Rica sided with the Allies. The State Department’s first measure was that land owned by local Germans should be confiscated, particularly land where coffee was cultivated. This was done, and the land was subsequently sold, in obscure deals involving some of Calderón Guardia’s ministers. This lost him the support of all the country’s landowners, except United Fruit. The Company employees are anti-Yankee, in response to its exploitation.

  “As it was, Calderón Guardia was left with no support whatsoever, to the point where he could not leave his house for the abuse he was subjected to on the streets. At that point the Communist Party offered him its support, on the condition he adopt some basic labor legislation and reshuffle his cabinet. In the meantime, Otilio Ulate, then a man of the left and personal friend of Mora, warned the latter of a plan Calderón Guardia had devised to trap him. Mora went ahead with the alliance, and the popularity of Calderón’s government soared as the first gains began to be felt by the working class.

  “Then the problem of succession was posed as Calderón’s term was coming to an end. The communists, in favor of a united front of national reconciliation to pursue the government’s working-class policies, proposed Ulate. The rival candidate, León Cortés, was totally opposed to the idea and continued to stand. At this time, using his paper El Diario de Costa Rica, Ulate began a vigorous campaign against the labor legislation, causing a split in the left and Don Otilio’s about-face.

  “The elections saw the victory of Teodoro Picado, a feeble intellectual ruined by whisky, although relatively left leaning, who formed a government with communist support. These tendencies persisted during his entire period of office, although the chief of police was a Cuban colonel, an FBI agent imposed by the United States.

  “In the final stages, the disgruntled capitalists organized a huge strike of the banking and industry sectors, which the government did not know how to break. Students who took to the streets were fired on and some were wounded. Teodoro Picado panicked. Elections were approaching and there were two candidates: Calderón Guardia again, and Otilio Ulate. Teodoro Picado, opposing the communists, handed over the electoral machine to Ulate, keeping the police for himself. The elections were fraudulent; Ulate was triumphant. An appeal to nullify the result was lodged with the electoral commission, with the opposition also requesting a ruling on the alleged violations, stating it would abide by the verdict. The court refused to hear the appeal (with one of the three judges dissenting), so an application was made to the Chamber of Deputies and the election result was set aside. A giant lawsuit was then launched, with the people by now roused to fever pitch. But here a parenthesis is needed.

  “In Guatemala, Arévalo’s presidency had led to the formation of what came to be known as the Socialist Republics of the Caribbean. The Guatemalan president was supported in this by Prío Socarrás, Rómulo Betancourt, Juan Rodríguez, a Dominican millionaire, Chamorro and others. The original revolutionary plan was to land in Nicaragua and remove Somoza from power, since El Salvador and Honduras would fall without much of a fight. But Argüello, a friend of Figueres, raised the question of Costa Rica and its convulsive internal situation, so Figueres flew to Guatemala. The alliance came into operation; Figueres led a revolt in Cartago and with arms swiftly took over the aerodrome there, in case any air support was necessary.

  “Resistance was organized rapidly, however, and the people attacked the barracks to obtain weapons, which the government was refusing to give them. The revolution had no popular support—Ulate had not participated—and was doomed to failure. But it was the popular forces headed by the communists who had won—a conclusion extremely disconcerting for the bourgeoisie, and with them, Teodoro Picado. Picado flew to Nicaragua to confer with Somoza and obtain weapons, only to find that a top US official would also be at the meeting, and who demanded, as the price for assistance, that Picado should eradicate communism in Costa Rica (thereby guaranteeing the fall of Manuel Mora), and that each weapon supplied would come with a man attached to it—signifying an invasion of Costa Rica.

  “Picado did not accept this at that time, as it would have meant betraying the communists who had supported him throughout the struggle. But the revolution was in its death throes and the power of the communists so frightened the reactionary elements in the government that they boycotted the defense of the country until the invaders were at the gates of San José and then abandoned the capital for Liberia, close to Nicaragua. At the same time, the rest of the army went over to the Nicaraguans, taking all the available ammunition. A pact was made with Figueres, underwritten by the Mexican embassy, and the popular forces actually laid down their weap
ons in front of that embassy. Figueres did not keep his side of the deal, however, and the Mexican embassy was unable to enforce it because of the hostility of the US State Department. Mora was deported. It was pure luck he escaped with his life as the plane he was traveling in came under machine-gun fire. The plane landed in the US Canal Zone, where the Yankee police arrested him and handed him over to the Panamanian chief of police, at that time Colonel Remón. The Yankee journalists wanting to question him were expelled, and then he had an altercation with Remón and was locked up. Finally he went to Cuba, from where Grau San Martín expelled him to Mexico. He was able to return to Costa Rica during the Ulate period.

  “Figueres was faced with the problem that his forces consisted of only 100 Puerto Ricans and the 600 or so men who formed the Caribbean Legion. Although he initially told Mora that his program was designed for a 12-year period and that he had no intention of surrendering power to the corrupt bourgeoisie represented by Ulate, he had to make a deal with the bourgeoisie and agreed to give up power after only a year and a half, an undertaking he fulfilled after he had fixed the election machinery to his benefit and organized a cruel repression. When the time was up, Ulate returned to power and kept it for the appointed four years. It was not a feature of his government to uphold the established freedoms or to respect the progressive legislation achieved under the previous governments. But it did repeal the anti-landowner “law on parasites.”

  “The fraudulent elections gave Figueres victory over the candidate representing the Calderón tradition, who now lives as a closely monitored exile in Mexico. In Mora’s view, Figueres has a number of good ideas, but because they lack any scientific basis he keeps going astray. He divides the United States into two: the State Department (very just) and the capitalist trusts (the dangerous octopuses). What will happen when Figueres sees the light and stops having any illusion about the goodness of the United States? Will he fight or give up? That is the dilemma. We shall see!”

  A day that left no trace: boredom, reading, weak jokes. Roy, a little old pensioner from Panama, came in for me to look at him because he thought he was going to die from a tapeworm. He has chronic salteritis.

  The meeting with Rómulo Betancourt did not have that history-lesson quality of the one with Mora. My impression is that he’s a politician with some firm social ideas in his head, but otherwise he sways toward whatever is to his best advantage. In principle, he is solidly with the United States. He spoke lies about the Río Pact and spent most of the time raging about the communists.

  We said our good-byes to everyone, especially León Bosch, a really first-rate guy, then took a bus to Alajuela and started hitching. After several adventures we arrived this evening in Liberia, the capital of Guanacaste province, which is an infamous and windy town like those of our own little province, Santiago del Estero.

  A jeep took us as far as the road permitted, and from there we started our long walk under quite a strong sun. After more than 10 kilometers, we encountered another jeep, which took us as far as the little town of La Cruz, where we were invited to have lunch. At 2:00 we set off for another 22 kilometers, but by 5 or 6 p.m. night was falling and one of my feet was a misery to walk on. We slept in a bin used for storing rice and fought all night over the blanket.

  The next day, after walking until 3 in the afternoon, making a dozen or so detours around a river, we finally reached Peñas Blancas. We had to stay there as no more cars were heading to the neighboring town of Rivas.28

  The next day dawned to rain and by 10 a.m. there was still no sign of a truck, so we decided to brave the drizzle and set off for Rivas anyway. At that moment, Fatty Rojo appeared in a car with Boston University license plates. They were trying to get to Costa Rica, an impossible feat because the muddy track on which we ourselves had been bogged a few times was actually the Panama-Costa Rica highway. Rojo was accompanied by the brothers Domingo and Walter Beberaggi Allende. We went on to Rivas and there, close to the town, we ordered a spit roast with mate and cañita, a kind of Nicaraguan gin. A little corner of Argentina transplanted to the “Tacho estate.” They continued on to San Juan del Sur, intending to take the car across to Puntarenas, while we took the bus to Managua.

  Nicaragua

  We arrived at night, and began the rounds of boarding houses and hotels to find the cheapest accommodation. In the end we settled on one where for four córdobas we each had a tiny room without electricity.

  We started out the next day tramping round the consulates and encountering the usual idiocies. At the Honduran consulate Rojo and his friends appeared; they’d been unable to get across and were now rethinking the plan because of the outrageous price being charged. Things were then decided very quickly. The two of us would go with Domingo, the younger Beberaggi, to sell the car in Guatemala, while Fatty and Walter would travel by plane to San José in Costa Rica.

  That evening we had a long session, each of us giving their perspective on the question of Argentina. Rojo, Gualo and Domingo were intransigent radicals; Walter was pro-Labor; and myself, a sniper, according to Fatty Rojo at least. Most interesting for me was the idea Walter gave me of the Labor Party and Cipriano Reyes— very different from the one I had already. He described Cipriano’s origins as a union leader, the prestige he slowly won among the Berisa meat-packers and his attitude toward the Unión Democrática coalition, when he supported the Labor Party (founded by Perón at that time) in the knowledge of what it was doing.

  After the elections, Perón ordered the unification of the party, causing its dissolution. A violent debate ensued in the parliament, in which the Labor supporters, headed by Cipriano Reyes, didn’t bend. Finally talks got underway for a revolutionary coup d’état, headed by the military under Brigadier de la Colina and his assistant, Veles, who betrayed him by telling Perón what was happening.

  The three main leaders of the party—Reyes, Beberaggi and García Velloso—were imprisoned and tortured, the first barbarically. After a time, the judge, Palma Beltrán, ordered the prisoners’ conditional release into police custody, while the state prosecutor appealed against the sentence. Beberaggi managed to escape when the parliament was in session and made his way secretly to Uruguay; all the others were arrested and are still in prison. Walter went to the United States and graduated as an economics professor. In a series of radio talks he denounced the Perón regime in no uncertain terms, and was stripped of his Argentine citizenship.

  In the morning we left for the north, having left the others on the plane, and reached the border as it was closing.

  We only had $20. We had to pay on the Honduran side. We crossed the whole narrow strip that is Honduras at that point and made it to the other border, but couldn’t pay because it turned out to be too expensive. We slept in the open air—the others, on rubber mattresses, me, in a sleeping bag.

  We were the first to cross the border and continued north. It was very slow going because the number of punctures we’d had left us with some rotten spare tires. We reached San Salvador and set about wrangling free visas—which proved possible with the help of the Argentine embassy.

  We continued on to the [Guatemalan] border,29 where we paid the surcharge with a few pounds of coffee. On the other side it cost us a torch, but we were on our way, albeit with only $3 in our pockets. Domingo was tired, so we stopped to sleep in the car.

  Guatemala

  After a few minor incidents, we made it in time for breakfast at Óscar and Luzmila’s boarding house, only to find that they had somehow fallen out with the landlady. We had to find another boarding house where we wouldn’t have to pay upfront. That evening, December 24, we went to celebrate at the house of Juan Rothe, an agronomist married to an Argentine girl, who greeted us like old friends. I slept a lot, drank too much and fell sick immediately.

  For the next few days I had a terrible asthma attack, so I was immobile because of my asthma and also the festivities. By December 31 I was well again, but was careful what I ate during the celebrations.

&
nbsp; I’ve met no interesting people worth mentioning. One evening I had a long session with [Ricardo] Temoche, a former APRA30 deputy. According to him, APRA’s principal enemy is the Communist Party—for him neither imperialism nor the oligarchy has any significance; the Bolsheviks are the irreconcilable enemy. At the same party was a noted economist, Carlos D’Ascolli, but he was too drunk to speak to me. After my attack, and at the end of the festivities, we witnessed the end of what had seemed to be a serious romance between Domingo Beberaggi and a girl called Julia. On Sunday he sold the car and flew to Costa Rica.

  Juan Rothe is going to Honduras as a technician, so he threw a farewell barbecue. It was formidable in every sense. The only person not drunk was me because of my diet. I visited Peñalver,31 a supporter of Acción Democrática and a specialist in malaria, who has got a few things moving for me. Now I am close to the minister, but he doesn’t have much weight.

  Another contact I’ve made is a strange gringo32 who writes bits and pieces about Marxism and has it translated into Spanish. The intermediary is Hilda Gadea,33 while Luzmila and I put in the hard yards. So far we’ve made $25. I’m giving the gringo Spanish lessons.

  Another find has been the Valerini couple. She is very pretty; he’s very drunk, but a decent guy. They agreed to introduce us to an éminence grise within the government: Mario Sosa Navarro. We’ll see what comes of it.

  The days pass with no resolution. In the afternoons I work with Peñalver for a while, but he pays me nothing. In the mornings I go out to sell paintings of my Black Christ of Esquipulas, who is adored by people here, but that also earns me nothing as no sales are made. Among the interesting people I’ve met is Alfonso Bawer Pais,34 a lawyer and president of the Banco Agrario, a man with good intentions. Edelberto Torres is a young communist student and son of Professor Torres35 who wrote a biography of Rubén Darío. He seems like a decent guy. No news from the éminence grise. I had an intense political discussion with Fatty Rojo and Gualo, in the home of an engineer named Méndez.36