Che Wants to See You Read online

  Despite the new assault on his emotions caused by meeting Fidel Castro, Masetti got through his long dreamed of interview. He asked Fidel about the genesis of the 26th of July Movement, his ideas for transforming a society of exploiters and exploited, his political convictions, revolutionary aspirations, etc. The interview was broadcast from the primitive Rebel Army radio transmitter and was heard all over Cuba. For the first time, the leader of the barbudos was talking directly to his people.

  Back in Havana, living clandestinely, Masetti learned that the interview’s re-transmission by Venezuelan and Colombian radio stations had not been picked up in Buenos Aires. As far as his journey’s funders were concerned, the work had not been done. So, he performed what Rodolfo Walsh called a ‘heroic feat of Latin American journalism’. He went back to the Sierra Maestra and did the interviews all over again.

  What impressed me most listening to Che was not his public discourse, nor his revolutionary message (actually there wasn’t one, since the Buenos Aires radio station concentrated on his role as an Argentine mixed up in almost Bolivarian wars of independence). No, what drew me to him was first and foremost his voice. It wasn’t the arrogant pompous voice of a politician or professional demagogue. It was a voice that could have belonged to a brother, or friend, nothing strident, like having a quiet conversation in a café. He spoke almost apologetically about getting himself noticed for something he considered self-evident: acting in accordance with his commitment to a cause, a reality that needed no explanation. If he did not take sides, did not get involved, he would be betraying himself. But taking sides meant fighting, because to defend ideas of social justice you have to take up arms. Che also took the opportunity, as if he were a contestant in a tango show, to say hello to his mother and other members of his family to whom he owed an explanation for his enforced two-year silence.

  In a few words, he had demolished the doubt over whether he was an adventurer in search of glory and profit, or a mercenary in the service of foreign causes. The suspicion of imperial penetration of some description or other vanished. Masetti brought this up. ‘What about Fidel’s communism?’ he asked. ‘Fidel isn’t a communist. Politically you could call him a revolutionary nationalist’, answered Che.

  The programme continued with Fidel Castro, who was the main dish. But I only had ears for Che, that resonant voice I was hearing for the first time, the voice of truth. Fidel was more grandiloquent, added to which his Cuban accent had something unreal, distant, about it. He was the leader and therefore somehow out of reach. Fidel was dignity standing tall, talking to a dormant America. But the other voice spoke to me personally, from conscience to conscience.

  The Cuban Revolution became the focal point of my politics. I began copying articles and sought out Masetti’s recently published book. The interviews inspired me to go to Cuba the following year and find the truth for myself. But meanwhile, there were new developments. Encircled by Che’s troops, the city of Santa Clara fell on the last day of December, 1958. The dictator Batista boarded a plane at dead of night and flew off into the arms of Uncle Sam. The Cuban Revolution exploded with a force that eradicated any ambiguous or reactionary doubts about the need to bring about social change and replace the power structures underpinned by imperialism. It exploded like a depth charge and, at the same time, a forbidden fruit. Both those defending multinational interests and the man on the street pricked up their ears at this unique event, so different from the pacific, fraudulent, controlled elections by pact, which history had accustomed us to. The lines of dominance and dependence had always been passed from hand to anxious hand between the political agents of local aristocracies. These usual gentlemen’s agreements, between demons and bandits, seemed about to be torn up. The Latin American Communist Parties initially criticized the ‘militarist’, ‘putschist’ experiment in Cuba as petty bourgeois deviation. But when faced with the spontaneous support of the people and the growing prestige of the Revolution’s young leaders, they finally realized it was a gift from heaven come to rejuvenate their tired discourses, and decided to appropriate it. The cultural establishment, as we have seen, burst out in praises, odes, hymns, and even adulatory red masses, beginning with the canonization of the Communist Party, and the control and administration of revolutionary fervour by the Central Committee.

  Meanwhile, democratic channels were closing again in Argentina. The union bureaucracy lurched between manipulating the masses and flirting with the army, capitalism and the brutal Peronist right-wing. Factory occupations, strikes in packing plants, sackings and bankruptcies all made the political air unbreathable, accompanied by deafening background music courtesy of the pipe-bombs. The government took control of the CGT (the principal trade union movement), handing it over to select members of the Peronist bureaucracy and pro-imperialist unions, with the State Internal Disorder Plan (CONINTES) already in place. The most combative unions were now in open confrontation with three groups: the government, the army and the union bureaucracy. The army patrolled the streets of Mendoza, pointing machine guns at passers-by, while I put the finishing touches to my plans to go to Cuba.

  3

  My Journey to the Island: April 1961

  Feverish, almost conspiratorial, activity possessed us. Claudia and I had to get money together and find a way of travelling that fitted our limited means. An English passenger shipping line sailed from the port of Valparaiso in Chile to Southampton, England, and after navigating the Panama Canal, stopped at Havana. The Pacific Line’s Queen of the Sea was making its last voyage before being withdrawn from service. A travel agency in Mendoza made the arrangements to buy the tickets.

  Diplomatic relations between Cuba and the US had been broken off, and the latter was putting pressure on the rest of Latin America to follow suit. The ‘concerto’ of nations opposed to Cuba had begun under the US baton. La Coubre, a French ship carrying the first shipment of arms bought in Belgium by Cuba, exploded at Havana docks killing a hundred and leaving several hundred wounded. In this uncertain climate, we packed our belongings and confirmed our reservations. We wanted to get there as soon as possible. If we had to fight to defend the Cuban Revolution, we were ready. Cuba was so fashionable that news of it was more up to date than Stock Exchange information. We knew that visas for Cuba were controlled by the good will of the Latin American Communist Parties who, in a rush of inter-party ardour for the Cuban Communist Party (PSP), had taken the task upon themselves. In other words, the more recommended by the Communist International you were, the better. The idea, which went against the spirit of the Revolution, was justified by the fact that the communists were the only organized political force able to guarantee the level of revolutionary purity or sympathy, or at least that was the idea. So I resorted to an old school friend, Petiso García, who happened to be the son of the secretary of the local Communist Party, no less. I went to see him but came away empty-handed. In what appeared to be social-bureaucratic practice, he greeted me at the door but did not invite me in. I asked him to explain to his father that I needed a certificate of good moral standing to present if need be. Petiso duly went in only to come out with a recommendation from his father not to go to Cuba: ‘it is a uniquely Cuban experience that has nothing to do with us. We have our own reality; we need to put our own house in order first.’ That was a no, then. This negative from the party supremo stymied any other possibility. We left with no recommendation whatsoever.

  The departure date was 15 April 1961, the same day as the air attack on Havana, a taste of the invasion to come two days later. The ship’s radio had a worrying tendency to interrupt the anodine musak with hysterical communiqués in English on the situation in Cuba. But at one stage during the afternoon, there was a news flash in Spanish which reported the bombing, though with no details as to the consequences. That is why my memory of the first days on board was zero, a black hole, no images. Docking at Callao, passengers were told they had half a day to see the city of Lima, to which we would be taken by a shipping compan
y bus. In Lima I searched for a newspaper to dispel my anxieties, only to find one that talked of an invasion of Cuba by the Yankee navy from Nicaragua. Back on board, there was an atmosphere of euphoria among the passengers and crew. The latter thought the stopover in Cuba would be apocalyptic – all fiery mulattas and rum. The passengers were sorry they would miss the chance to see the barbudos in the flesh, but thanked heaven the communist threat would be over. There was nothing for me to do but watch the coast rising and falling over the bows. The next morning, news flashes came thick and fast then became increasingly sparse as the day went on. The dining room looked like the Titanic as we crossed the Equator. Who knows if the popping champagne corks and bubbling laughter at dinner were celebrating the crossing or a victory for debauchery. Judging by the bulletins, the war in Cuba was still going on. But the paucity and ambiguity of the news, plus the faces of the ship’s officers, revived my hopes. A few days later, we reached Balboa, port of entry to the Panama Canal.

  Again they announced that passengers interested in seeing Panama City would be taken by bus to the city’s main street in the morning, and returned in time for dinner. Crossing the city by bus, I noticed a modern building with a sign saying ‘Anthropological and Archeological Museum’ and right beside it a kiosk selling cigarettes and newspapers. We made a bee-line for it. The kiosk, I mean. There was no dark tobacco on board, and the Negros we had brought with us had gone up in smoke amid the bombing and disembarking. I couldn’t smoke American cigarettes, so our first task was to replenish our stock. The kiosk attendant was a garrulous fellow with a Caribbean accent. While showing me his range of dark tobacco, he asked the fatal question. ‘Where are you from, chico?’ ‘Argentina’, I replied with quiet pride. ‘Coño, you’re Argentine!’ he shrieked and proceeded to slag off Argentines and their mothers. He ended up throwing a handful of what looked like dollars onto his magazine counter. ‘Look at that, look what he’s done to our dignity, to our money, coño, your compatriot, that bloody Argentine, that butcher Che.’ And he showed us the new Cuban peso note, on which the president of the Cuban National Bank had merely signed ‘Che.’ He was a Cuban who had fled the Revolution, with a furious hatred for those he blamed for his exile. I paid for the cigarettes to avoid getting involved, and went to the museum next door. In tropical countries, fossils are more trustworthy than lippy street vendors. The newspaper I had bought before the incident carried a complete if somewhat venomous version of the defeat inflicted on the invading forces. It had all ended with the surrender of 300 Cuban mercenaries on a military operation directed and financed by the CIA and the Pentagon, but which had served to strengthen the ties between the Revolution’s leaders and the Cuban masses.

  The ship’s captain received orders to cancel the stop-over in Cuba. Instead, he stopped in Curaçao, then doubled back to Maracaibo, in Venezuela. We anchored there the following morning but the passengers were not allowed off, as it was to be only a short stay. By noon the passengers were getting restless, wondering what was going on. Around three in the afternoon, the captain summoned me to his cabin, as if I were an aristocrat travelling below the decks. To put it bluntly, there was an insoluble problem. The ship had to sail straight for England now that the stop in Cuba had been cancelled. He could not alter his orders for the sake of two passengers. However, the situation was complicated because the Venezuelan immigration authorities refused to allow passengers without Venezuelan visas to disembark, least of all those bound for Cuba. I argued that our contract said we had to be taken to Cuba, not Venezuela, and that getting us there was his responsibility, not ours. He said his company would pay the cost of whatever means of transport we used. He thought by air would be most suitable, if we agreed. In that case, I insisted, he could use his authority to get us a visa. He mumbled a form of acquiescence. I couldn’t help but imagine Captain Cook boiling with rage in his place. British phlegm had increased proportionately with the loss of empire. He added that he was waiting for one last demarche in Caracas which, he assumed, would solve the problem. The ship had to leave no later than five. ‘And what happens if it isn’t solved?’ I asked. ‘You can visit Sussex’, he answered. A couple of hours later, the delegated official arrived with two military looking characters. The solution, conjured up between the British authorities and Venezuelan immigration, was to allow us to disembark but be kept under house arrest until the next flight to Cuba. Naturally, flights had been suspended for the foreseeable future.

  Nevertheless, we disembarked with all our luggage. The Venezuelans broke the agreement and two days later we had to leave our hotel in Maracaibo, not with any great regret I might add, since sharks patrolled the other side of the metallic mesh protecting the hotel’s little bay. We were taken to Caracas over a mountain range in a police van and dumped in a far from exclusive hotel. The next day, we were taken to Maquetía airport and put on a plane to Mexico, via Guatemala. The reason for deportation was our visa for Cuba, the bad boy island with which Venezuela had just broken off diplomatic relations.

  Cuba’s international airport is called Rancho Boyeros. I got a stiff neck straining to look out of the plane’s window to see the island through the cumulus and nimbus clouds that moved like a flock of sheep under the fuselage. We dipped through the white wool and lost sight of it until the clouds suddenly parted and we saw the sea of palm trees waving in the breeze to welcome us. We were in Cuba. The flight had been a fiesta; the handful of euphoric passengers sang and danced in the aisles, shouting revolutionary slogans and ‘Viva Fidel!’ They were people on official business abroad, trapped by the suspension of flights after the Bay of Pigs invasion and now returning to their posts. Flying over the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, they gave us a crash course in revolutionary fervour, anticipating what proved to be the norm on terra firma.

  When we finally got permission to disembark, the humidity embraced us like the Revolution itself, enveloping our bodies, sticking to our skin, dripping down our necks – an all-embracing way of life, breathing, sweating, tongues dry, hearts beating, yet exultant, exuberant, enthusiastic. Huge drops of rain fell here and there, raising clouds of vapour as if on a hot tin roof. And the voices! Cubans talk at the tops of their lungs. Incongruously, in the midst of the din, a quartet struck up with Cuban folk music, guajiras and sones, to welcome the new arrivals. What with the Tannoy and the cries of the porters and umbrella sellers, it was like running the gauntlet to get to a safe haven, but with no escape. The journey down the motorway to Havana was the visual equivalent of the airport racket. Multicoloured posters shouted victory slogans about the aborted invasion, imperialism, Cuban exiles, and the departed bourgeoisie. Rifles held aloft by olive green arms, above beards like continental forests, caricatures of guerrilla fighters giving the Miami mercenaries a kick up the bum, with Uncle Sam cowering, green with fear. Nothing solemn, nothing tragic.

  Havana was a splendid city, a mixture of colonial style and modern architecture, built against a natural background of palm trees and bourgainvilleas, with narrow multi-coloured streets, crossed by wide avenues, surfed by huge luxury cars speeding and hooting, controlled by coordinated traffic lights, with planned agility. Convincing the taxi driver we did not want a plush hotel, but a family pension, took the whole journey and proved fruitless; nothing would convince him we belonged in the Old City. He dropped us at the Hotel Colina on 23rd Street, just by the University in the modern suburb of Vedado.

  When you get to a new country, first impressions are often best. Waking up the following morning, at almost noon due to the musical cacophony in the lobby that went on till two, I began a relationship with a people who have the gift of seducing you for life. The city was a fiesta of joie de vivre, with music everywhere, and multifarious smells: from luxury aromas like cigars and coffee, to the whiff of the port in the background, and the pervasive odour of fried fat from carts selling pork crackling. A cart of oysters with hot sauce, another with oranges peeled round in strips (a local invention), coffee stalls on every corner, maki
ng endless cups, a stand with breaded fish fillets here, another with avocadoes and limes there. Flowers, fruit, freshly baked bread, strong cigarettes and cigars, very strong women’s perfumes, and so on. The city is full of aromas, each more tempting than the last.

  Nobody dresses formally, Argentine-style, in a suit and tie. It would be crazy here, as well as looking ridiculous. The men wear white guayaberas or unbuttoned shirts outside their trousers. The trousers look like tents, enormously wide but tighter at the ankle. The women, their sinuous carnality exposed to furtive pursuers, painted like Japanese opera stars, part the crowd before them with their very presence. Everyone is armed, at least verbally. Buses, called guaguas, force their way through by blowing horns and screeching breaks. Lottery touts add their voices to vendors of other wares under arches, in galleries, on corners, and in squares. Two types of uniform stand out: olive green with a peaked cap could be either the rebel army or the police; blue grey with a beret is the newly created military police, which had made its debut at the Bay of Pigs. Beards are no longer in evidence since the new shaving law was introduced, with exceptions made for the historic barbudos of the ‘Granma’.

  The general climate of enthusiasm was heightened by the May 1st celebrations the following day. Expectations were higher than usual because Fidel was giving his first speech since the Bay of Pigs. On the day itself, you only had to follow the sea of people with placards and kids on their shoulders, straw hats and uniforms, maracas and drums, a huge wave of people headed for the Plaza de la Revolución. The guerrilla leaders led the parade, arms linked at the head of a multitude of happy faces illuminated by patriotic fervour. ‘Cuba sí! Yanqui no!’ The red and black of the 26th of July Movement dominated the sea of banners, challenged only by the Cuban flag. The river of people was unstoppable, moving to the rhythms of guerrilla anthems, rousing songs, and voices shouting ‘Viva …’ and ‘Muerte …’. Reaching the square and getting near the platform seemed impossible. A mass of people converged in front of the (horrendous) statue to the apostle José Martí.