The Awakening of Latin America

by Ernesto Che Guevara

  Golfito is a real gulf, deep enough for ships of 26 feet to enter easily. It has a little wharf and enough housing to accommodate the 10,000 company employees. The heat is intense, but the place is very pretty. Hills rise to 100 meters almost out of the sea, their slopes covered with tropical vegetation that surrenders only to the constant presence of human activity. The town is divided into clearly defined zones, with guards to prevent unwanted movement. Of course, the gringos live in the nicest area, a little like Miami. The poor are kept separate, shut away behind the four walls of their own homes and restrictive class lines.

  Food is the responsibility of a decent guy who is now also a good friend: Alfredo Fallas.

  Medina is my roommate, also a decent guy. There’s a Costa Rican medical student, the son of a doctor, as well as a Nicaraguan teacher and journalist in voluntary exile from Somoza.

  The “Pachuca” left Golfito at 1:00 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.

  I spent the whole day between the dodges and smirks of the black woman, arriving in Puntarenas at 6:00 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.4 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.5 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 dema
nded, 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 weapons 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 goodbyes 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 5:00 or 6:00 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 3:00 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.

  The next day dawned to rain and by 10:00 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. [...]

  Days pass—eventful and uneventful. I have the firm promise of a job as assistant to a medical worker. I returned my dollar. I visited Obdulio Barthe again, the Paraguayan who told me off for my behavior and confessed he thought I might be an agent for the Argentine embassy. I also discovered that his suspicion, or something along those lines, is widely held, except for the Honduran leader Ventura Ramos, who does not believe it. As the fight with Sra. de Holst continues, I sneak in once a day and sleep in Ñico (the Cuban’s) room, who pisses himself laughing all day but never does anything. Ñico leaves on Monday, so I’ll shift rooms to share with a Guatemalan friend called Coca. A Cuban (who sings tangos) sleeps in Ñico’s room and has invited me to head south on foot as far as Venezuela. If it wasn’t for the job they have promised me, I’d go. They’ve said they’ll give me residency, and Zachrison has now become head of immigration. [...]

  Once again the days pass uneventfully. I am at the boarding house, sharing with the Cuban songbird, now that ñico has gone to Mexico. I go day after day looking for this job, but nothing, and now they have told me to leave it for a week, and I’m not really sure what to do. I don’t know whether the compañeros are still set on my not getting something or not. Little news arrives from Buenos Aires. Helenita is leaving for an unknown destination and I’ve stopped looking, but she will take me to her aunt’s house, who will give me lunch. She’s going to call the minister. I’ve got a good old attack of asthma, brought on by what I’ve been eating these last days. I hope I’ll recover with a strict, three-day diet. [...]

  Recent events belong to history: a feature, I think, appearing in my notes for the first time.

  A few days ago, some planes from Honduras crossed the border with Guatemala and flew over the city in broad daylight, shooting at both people and military targets. I joined the public health brigades to work in the medical corps and also the youth brigades that patrol the streets at night. The course of events was as follows: After these planes flew over, troops under the command of Colonel Castillo Armas, a Guatemalan émigré in Honduras, crossed the border and advanced on the town of Chiquimula. The Guatemalan government, although it had already protested to Honduras, let them enter without putting up any resistance and presented the case before the United Nations.

  Colombia and Brazil, docile instruments of the Yankees, drew up a plan to hand the matter over to the OAS but this was rejected by the Soviet Union, which favored a cease-fire agreement. The invaders failed in their attempt to get the masses to rise up with the weapons they had dropped from planes, but they did capture the town of Bananera and cut off the Puerto Barrios railway line.

  The goal of the mercenaries was clear: to take Puerto Barrios and then ship in various arms and more mercenary troops. This became clear when the schooner Siesta de Trujillo was captured as it tried to unload arms in that port. The final attack failed but in the hinterland areas the assailants committed extremely barbarous acts, murdering members of SETUFCO (the unio
n of the United Fruit Company workers and employees) in the cemetery, where hand grenades were thrown at their chests.

  The invaders believed they only had to say the word and the people would rise up as one to follow them, and that is why they parachute-dropped weapons, but the people immediately rallied to defend Árbenz. Although the invading troops were blocked and defeated on all fronts until they were pushed back beyond Chiquimula near the Honduran border, the pirate airplanes kept attacking the battlefronts and towns, always coming from bases in Honduras and Nicaragua. Chiquimula was heavily bombed and bombs also fell on Guatemala City, injuring several people and killing a three-year-old little girl.

  My own life unfolded as follows: First I reported to the youth brigades of the Alliance where we stayed for several days until the minister of public health [Dr. Carlos Tejedas] sent me to the Maestro Health Center where I am billeted. I volunteered for the front but they wouldn’t even look at me. [...]

  Today, Saturday, June 26, the minister came by when I had gone to see Hilda; she gave me hell because I wanted to ask him to send me to the front [...].

  All of Guatemala’s admirers have taken a terrible, cold shower. On the night of Sunday, June 28, without prior notice President Árbenz declared his resignation. He publicly accused the fruit company and the United States of being directly behind the bombing and strafing of the civilian population.

  An English merchant ship was bombed and sunk in the port of San José, and the bombing continues. Árbenz announced his decision to hand over command to Colonel Carlos Enrique Díaz, explaining that he is motivated by a desire to save the October revolution and to block the United States from marching into this land as masters.

  Colonel Díaz said nothing in his speech. The PDR [Revolutionary Democrat Party] and the PRG [Party of the Guatemalan Revolution] both expressed their agreement, calling on their members to cooperate with the new government. The other two parties, the PRN [Party of the National Revolution] and PGT [Guatemalan Workers Party], said nothing. I fell asleep feeling frustrated about what has come to pass. I had spoken to the Ministry of Public Health and again asked to be sent to the front. Now I don’t know what to do. We’ll see what today brings.