Che Wants to See You Read online

  CHE WANTS TO SEE YOU

  THE UNTOLD STORY OF CHE IN BOLIVIA

  CIRO BUSTOS

  Translated by Ann Wright

  With an Introduction by Jon Lee Anderson

  To Ana María

  To Paula and Andrea

  To the memory of Avelino

  Many people survived that combat, and they are all invited to write their memoirs, and add their experiences to our knowledge of those events. We ask only that, when telling their story, they do not deviate from the truth, or say something incorrect just to clarify or magnify a personal position or pretend they had been in some particular place.

  Ernesto Che Guevara,

  Prologue to the Diary of a Revolutionary War

  Then, in Bolivia, there were some Argentines, like Tania – who was actually German although she had been born in Argentina – and Ciro Roberto Bustos whom Che had known for a long time. Che always talked a lot about ‘El Pelao’. I met Bustos in Bolivia.

  Che’s Teachings, interview with Harry Villegas Tamayo (‘Pombo’),

  by Nestor Kohan, 11 October 2003

  When a man is born, he can choose one of three different paths. If he chooses the one on the right, the wolves devour him; if he chooses the one on the left, he will devour the wolves; if he continues straight on, he will devour himself.

  Anton Chekhov

  Moreover, we do not know if the universe belongs to the real world or fantasy.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  ‘I want you to tell me what Tania said when she met you in Córdoba.’

  ‘That you wanted to see me, I replied.’

  ‘No, no. I want you to tell me exactly what she said. In her own words.’

  ‘Ah, well. She said, “Che wants to see you.” ’

  Contents

  Introduction by Jon Lee Anderson

  Preface

  PART ONE: CUBA

  1 Mendoza: Where It All Started

  2 News of Castro’s Revolution Reaches Argentina: 1958

  3 My Journey to the Island: April 1961

  4 Starting Work in Cuba

  5 ‘Compañero, Che Is Expecting You’

  PART TWO: ARGENTINA

  6 A Project for Utopia

  7 An Army of Five Madmen

  8 Training and the Missile Crisis: October 1962

  9 Prague, Paris and Algiers: November–December 1962

  10 Death Takes Centre Stage: Algiers, January–May 1963

  11 Onwards to Bolivia and Argentina: May–June 1963

  12 The Base in the Argentine Jungle: June 1963

  13 Making Contacts in the Cities: July–August 1963

  14 They All Wanted to Climb Aboard: September 1963

  15 Bringing More Recruits to the Jungle Camp: November 1963

  16 Defections and an Execution: February 1964

  17 Sudden and Total Disaster: March 1964

  PART THREE: CHINA

  18 A Post-mortem with Che in Havana: May–July 1964

  19 Beginning All Over Again: August 1964

  20 Encounter in Uruguay with Raúl Sendic: September 1964

  21 A Decision to Suspend Guerrilla Activity in Argentina: 1965

  22 Summoned Back to Havana: May 1966

  23 The Terraces of the Rising Sun: June–July 1966

  PART FOUR: BOLIVIA

  24 ‘Che Wants to See You’: January 1967

  25 The Camp with an Absent Comandante: March 1967

  26 The Prophet in Tatters

  27 A War Is Won by Fighting

  28 Back at the Camp on the Ñancahuazú

  29 Che Reiterates His Strategic Objective: Argentina

  30 The First Battle: 23 March 1967

  31 Bombardment, Che Calls a Meeting, and a Night March

  32 Way Out Where There Was No Way Out

  33 Leave-taking and Farewells

  34 Under Arrest in Muyupampa: 20 April 1967

  35 The CIA Takes Charge

  36 On Trial in Camiri: October 1967

  37 The Death of Che Guevara: 9 October 1967

  PART FIVE: PRISON IN CAMIRÍ

  38 A Thirty-year Sentence

  39 Lunchtime in the Cage

  40 Night Flight to Iquique: December 1970

  PART SIX: EXILE

  41 Chile in the Time of Allende: 1970–1973

  42 Argentina: 1973–1976

  43 Sweden, 1976 to the Present

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Introduction

  By Jon Lee Anderson

  It has been nearly five decades since the epic life-and-death story of the Argentine-born revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara entered into the modern literary canon. The posthumously published diary of the literate, handsome young man who sought to bring socialism to the world through armed revolution and died doing so in Bolivia in 1967 rapidly became an international cult classic, a tragic new bible for a rebellious generation. The unavoidable parallels between the end of Che’s life and the mythologized passion of Christ made his story all the more potent, helping to ensure his legacy as the ultimate symbol of sixties idealism. Today, Che Guevara’s face is one of the most widely reproduced images in the world, universally recognized as an icon of youthful defiance against orthodoxy. In his adoptive homeland of Cuba, where the Castro revolution has endured for over fifty years, Che has become the emblematic patron saint of its officially cherished socialist principles. To millions of youngsters everywhere, meanwhile, ‘Che lives’, as the old slogan goes, if only on their T-shirts, while others seek even now to emulate his example on new battlefields. Not surprisingly, for the few surviving men and women who fought under Che’s orders, life has never been the same.

  Of the fifty-one guerrillas of various nationalities who joined Che in Bolivia, most were either killed in action or, like himself, executed after being captured. Only three out of the original eighteen Cubans made their way home again. The two Peruvians died. Out of twenty-seven Bolivian fighters, only seven survived. Most of them were captured and imprisoned; several switched sides and worked to apprehend their former comrades. Every war has its contingent of traitors.

  There were three Argentine guerrillas including Che, but only one survived. He was Ciro Roberto Bustos, a young artist-turned-revolutionary, and the author of this memoir. Bustos was already a key operative in Che’s fledgling guerrilla network in Argentina, when, in early 1967, Che summoned him to Ñancahuazú, his new, secret guerrilla base camp in south-eastern Bolivia. Che himself had only been there a few months. Ñancahuazú was supposed to be the training ground and staging post for a future Latin American guerrilla army that would spearhead a ‘continental revolution’ against US-backed imperialism in the hemisphere. Once a Bolivian foco was established, the cadres from Peru, Argentina, and neighbouring countries would ‘irradiate outwards’, taking their revolutions to their homelands. Che’s idea was to spark off ‘two, three many Vietnams’ simultaneously, overwhelming the Americans’ capability to suppress them. In trying to do so, their imperial system would be weakened and destroyed once and for all. Che intended to lead the future Argentine foco himself.

  Unfortunately for Che, the existence of Ñancahuazú was discovered by the Bolivian army prematurely, while it was still in the embryonic stage, and while he was away, on a gruelling, six-week training march through the wilderness with his small group of volunteers. This setback coincided with Bustos’s arrival in Ñancahuazú. He was accompanied by a young Frenchman, Régis Debray, a Marxist theoretician who had just published Revolution in the Revolution? a theoretical treatise on the very guerrilla strategy that Che was putting into practice in Bolivia. Debray had come to meet Che and to receive his instructions on creating an international solidarity campaig
n on behalf of the Bolivian revolutionary cause. Bustos was there to confer with Che on how best to proceed with the Argentine armed underground. A previous attempt at starting a guerrilla foco, in which Bustos had participated, had failed catastrophically three years earlier. Bustos had been a lucky survivor.

  Now, the authorities’ discovery of the guerrilla presence at Ñancahuazú had triggered an early initiation of hostilities. As Bolivia’s army sent in troops, and also warplanes, to attack them, Che and his men were forced to go on the run. It was an abrupt end to Che’s hopes for a stealthy, well-organized beginning to his ambitious new revolutionary project. When the enormity of the fiasco dawned on him, Che remarked with characteristic fatalism: ‘So, the war has begun.’

  As Che broke up his fighters into two smaller groups in order to escape the army dragnet, Bustos and Debray hiked out of the battle zone in the hopes of slipping away undetected and carrying on with their respective missions. They were immediately arrested by soldiers in Muyupampa, the first community they came to. It was April 1967.

  For Bustos and Debray, days of terror followed as they were interrogated by their army captors in Camiri, the garrison town where they were taken after their arrest. An early sighting of them in captivity by a local reporter who took their photograph and published it may well have helped save their lives. Debray’s high-level political affiliations in France (his mother was an official of the ruling Gaullist party) soon brought international visibility to their case, and with it a certain guarantee of protection. A pair of CIA agents, Cuban–American exiles who had been brought in to assist the Bolivian army’s anti-guerrilla operation, showed up, and began to question them more deeply. In the beginning, Bustos used a false name. He was Frutos, a travelling salesman – but soon, his true identity was revealed. He was forced to admit his links with Che’s guerrilla band in Bolivia, but managed to keep secret his role as Che’s operative in the Argentine underground.

  Under pressure from the CIA agents, Bustos drew pictures of the guerrillas he had spent time with and of the Ñancahuazú camp. He did so knowing that the identities of many of the guerrillas were already known thanks to photographs discovered at the base camp. According to one of the CIA agents, who spoke about it years later, Debray ‘sang like a canary’.

  It is a fact of life that most people who fall into the hands of their enemies in wartime break under the pressure, and talk. They may try to mitigate or otherwise colour their information, as Bustos did, but they provide it because they have no choice and are usually threatened with death, sometimes having been tortured first. Bustos and Debray were right to feel afraid of their captors; most of the guerrillas who subsequently fell into the Bolivian army’s hands were shot dead.

  In the coming months, as their guerrilla comrades were hunted down, Bustos and Debray were brought to trial. For Che himself, the end came on October 9, 1967. He had been wounded and captured in battle, held overnight in a dirt-floored schoolhouse in a tiny mountain hamlet, questioned repeatedly by various officers. He was then executed, shot to death by a Bolivian army sergeant on the orders of Felix Rodríguez, one of the same CIA men who had interrogated Bustos and Debray.

  A few weeks later, Bustos and Debray were sentenced to thirty years in prison. Three tedious years of detention in Camiri dragged by, with no end in sight. Then something unexpected, but very fortunate, happened. In December 1970, after a failed military coup, a left-leaning general, Juan José Torres came to power. As Bolivia’s president Torres moved quickly. Bustos and Debray were amnestied, put on a plane and flown to neighbouring Chile. There, the socialist politician Salvador Allende had become president just three months earlier, gave them a warm welcome. (They were very lucky indeed; Juan José Torres lasted only ten months in power before a right-wing officers’ faction overthrew him. He fled into exile in Argentina, where he was murdered by the military junta’s death squads in 1976.)

  After a time in Allende’s Chile, Debray returned to Paris, where he resumed his professional life as a professor, thinker and writer. He served as a special adviser on foreign affairs to the socialist Mitterrand government in the 1980s, and eventually broke with his old mentor Fidel Castro, excoriating the Cuban leader publicly for his traits of stubbornness and arrogance; he accused Che of possessing similar character defects.

  Reunited with his wife, Ana María, and their two young daughters, Paula and Andrea, Bustos remained in Chile, where he was given work in a publishing house. Shortly before Pinochet’s violent coup against Allende on September 11, 1973, he decided to return to Argentina, and thus narrowly escaped being caught up in the murderous military crackdown that followed. But in Argentina the dirty war against the Left had already begun as well, and Bustos soon found himself at risk. Some of his friends were killed; others disappeared. In January 1976, Bustos requested political asylum in Sweden for himself, Ana María, Paula and Andrea. It was immediately granted. Once in Sweden, the family was relocated to Malmo, the southwestern port town, and there they stayed.

  When I met Bustos in Malmo in 1995, I found a man who was in a deeper, lonelier exile than I could ever have imagined. He seemed to be still living in a state of limbo, as if he had left Argentina, but never really arrived in Sweden. After nearly two decades there, he still did not speak Swedish. He was alone, divorced from Ana María, although he saw her and their daughters regularly. He had a few friends – exiles from Latin America like himself – with whom he met up in bars or restaurants. Bustos’s most constant companion, however, was Gema. She was a young, playful German Shepherd, with whom he went everywhere, and who shared his spacious second-floor flat on a residential street.

  The nature of Bustos’s exile also showed up in his relationship to his art, for he was a painter who, to all intents and purposes, no longer painted and never exhibited. He explained that it was because of the Swedish fashion for postmodern conceptual art, which he took me to see in a series of galleries around Malmo: I recall a toilet decoratively enamelled with the Swedish royal crest; a photographed dog turd set into a ceramic tile and placed at the centre of the floor of a large room – and so forth. Bustos’s art was painterly and figurative; his canvases hung around his flat and were, to my eye, both beautiful and sad; all of them were large oil paintings of nudes, men and women embracing, reclining, rendered in gorgeous ochre hues, like the hulks of rusting ships. None of them had faces. This disquieting omission struck me as a testament to Bustos’s cauterized existence, symbolic of an extreme and long-lasting pain.

  Bustos had not spoken about his revolutionary past to anyone for many years. We began talking, and we didn’t stop. I stayed for a week. What I learned from him during those days dramatically enhanced my knowledge of Che Guevara, of the Cuban Revolution, and of the heyday of revolutionary ferment in Latin America.

  At the time, I had been researching Che Guevara’s life for several years, and had learned that there was a consistent pattern of behaviour amongst those people who had been close to the late revolutionary. Most remained clubbishly loyal to Che’s spirit and legacy, as well as to the espoused socialist ideals of Cuba’s revolution, and were generally self-effacing about their own past roles. There were several good reasons for this, other than revolutionary modesty. Many of them had suffered greatly for their allegiances. In the wave of anti-communist repression that had swept Latin America in the intervening years, most had lost close and dear friends, and sometimes relatives, too. Silence was the best way to survive, and then it had become habitual. In the early nineties, however, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a shift in the atmosphere, and some guerrilla veterans began to open up about their past activities, often for the first time.

  In Cuba, where I had gone to live so as to better research Che Guevara’s life, an officially sanctioned Che historiography prevailed for years. In the months and years following Che’s death, a narrative of events had been set out and, over time, the script had become unbudging. In this narrative, Che had gone off to Bolivia by his
own choice, and in the field, he had bravely fought and died. Che’s ordeal had become the Cuban Revolution’s ultimate passion play, an account of revolutionary sacrifice that helped validate Cuba’s place in the firmament. There were no Cuban failings in this narrative, no deceits nor betrayals other than those committed by ‘others’, a grab-bag of mostly Bolivian characters who, it was implied, were unreliable and had dragged the whole enterprise down. Che’s own published diary suggested there was more to the story, but few were able to question the official interpretation. There were holes in other parts of the chronology of Che’s life, such as the mysterious two-and-a-half-year gap between the time he vanished from Cuba and reappeared in Bolivia. About all of this, however, silence reigned.

  With the help of Che’s widow, Aleida March, and a handful of other people who had known him well, I overcame some of the obstacles in Cuba, eventually gaining access to Che’s personal archives, containing several of his unpublished diaries. This gave me a much greater insight into Che’s thinking at crucial points in his life. As I travelled beyond Cuba to conduct interviews and research in Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Russia, and other countries, I realized that I could take very little of the received wisdom about Che’s life for granted. Mythology, urban legend, and, in some cases, intentional obfuscation clouded the real narrative, and it took both detective work and luck to separate fact from fiction.

  One of the least satisfactory chapters in the official narrative of Che’s life was the so-called Salta episode, a guerrilla expedition to northern Argentina that he had organized and entrusted to an Argentine protégé, journalist Jorge Ricardo Masetti. In April 1964, after less than a year in the field, ‘la guerrilla de Salta’ had ended in disaster, with most of the fighters involved either killed or captured. In the debacle, Masetti, leader of the self-described EGP, or Ejercito Guerrillero del Pueblo, had vanished, never to be seen again. Afterwards, it was rumoured that Masetti, who had named himself Comandante Segundo, had actually been Che’s advance man for the Argentine revolution he’d supposedly hoped to lead, but the Cubans denied this. They dismissed the Salta fiasco as a minor event, just one out of a long list of unsuccessful guerrilla focos that Che had organized. Neither was there any indication that the failure of Salta had anything to do with Che’s final, fatal mission to Bolivia a few years later. But it did, of course, and Ciro Roberto Bustos, who had been written out of the history books as a marginal character, had played a crucial role in both.