Authors: Jon Lee Anderson
Seven months following the termination of the guerrilla operations in African territory and in the midst of an intense period of preparation and organization for our next adventure, conceived to take place in Peruvian territory ... Ramón [Che]
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gathered Pacho [Alberto Fernádez Montes de Oca], Tuma, and myself and read us a letter he’d recently received, in which Fidel analyzed [the situation] and urged him to coldly reconsider his decision, and as a consequence of that analysis he proposed: [Che’s] return to Cuba for a short period of time, and at the same time he pointed out the prospects for fighting in Bolivia, the agreements reached with Estanislao (Mario Monje) to launch the armed struggle.
[Che] told us that, faced with the correctness of these proposals, he had decided to send Francisco
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to La Paz, to explore the possibilities of the struggle. ... We anxiously awaited the return of Francisco. This took place in the first days of June. His report is that the results are positive. Papi affirmed that the conditions were propitious, even for our arrival there [in Bolivia]. Not-withstanding that, Francisco told Ramón he wanted to abandon ship, asking him not to tell us because he felt ashamed; as a reason he cited his feelings about dying far from Cuba.
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So, it would appear that Fidel himself persuaded Che to start the struggle in Bolivia, sometime in the spring of 1966—and that the plan was set into motion soon after Francisco’s return from La Paz and his and Papi’s positive assessments of the situation.
Che sent Pombo and Tuma ahead to La Paz, while he and Pacho made their way back to Cuba, arriving there around July 21. Che had been away for more than a year, but he was not returning “home.” He was lodged in a safe house on the rural fringe of eastern Havana, and his presence there was known to only a few people.
One aspect of the secret planning for Che’s Bolivian mission that most parties involved concur on is that, at a certain point, an “agreement” was reached between Cuba and the Bolivian Communist leader Mario Monje. Almost everyone concurs, that is, except Mario Monje. Speaking at length from his self-imposed exile home in wintry Moscow nearly three decades later, Monje offered a lengthy and candid explanation of his own tangled and often duplicitous dealings with Piñeiro, Fidel, and Che.
Monje’s relationship with the Cuban revolution extended back to its early days, and, as he told it, he had approved his Party’s help for Béjar’s
and Masetti’s guerrilla groups in hopes that Cuba would not try to start a guerrilla war in his own country. Even after the Masetti and Béjar episodes, however, Monje remained suspicious of Cuban intentions, keeping a watchful eye on their activities and, most especially, on Che Guevara.
When Che disappeared from Cuba in 1965 and rumors began circulating as to his whereabouts, Monje took notice. He said he never believed the stories of a rift between Fidel and Che. He knew that they shared the goal of revolutionary expansion, and he suspected that Che was probably somewhere in Africa. Then, in September 1965, the Bolivian Party received an invitation from the Cuban government for three of its members to attend the Tricontinental Conference convening in Havana in January 1966. Monje soon learned, however, that Oscar Zamora, leader of the rival Maoist Communist Party of Bolivia, had also been invited to attend and was being allowed to head a larger delegation. It appeared clear to Monje and his comrades in the Politburo that, for whatever reasons, the Cubans were favoring the pro-Chinese party. In November, Monje’s comrades urged him to travel to Havana ahead of time and get to the bottom of the mystery.
The Cuban overture to Zamora’s group raised the disquieting possibility in Monje’s mind that the Cubans were still plotting an insurrection in Bolivia. Zamora was known to have offered his forces to the Cubans for this option, and, significantly, Zamora was friendly with Che. At this point, Monje said, he began wondering: “Where is Che? What is his role in this?” From then on, he recalled, he began to study news reports closely, looking for clues as to Che’s whereabouts. Meanwhile, he told his comrades that when he went to Havana, he would be as conciliatory as possible and would ingratiate himself with the Cubans in order to learn what they were up to. His idea was to tell the Cubans that the members of his Party weren’t opposed to “preparing themselves,” with Cuba’s help, for an eventual armed struggle, and he would even offer himself and other Party members to personally receive Cuban military training.
Feeling “somewhat cautious,” in December 1965 Monje left for Prague, where many of the foreign delegations heading to the Tricontinental Conference were assembling for the flight to Havana. On the plane to Havana he recognized Régis Debray, a young French Marxist theoretician whom he knew to be closely linked to Fidel and Cuba’s security apparatus, and who had visited Bolivia the year before. By now, Debray was known—largely on the strength of a series of articles he had written—to be an active proponent of the Cuban revolutionary model in Latin America.
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When he arrived in Havana, Monje told the Cuban security service that he was there not only for the Tricontinental Conference but to discuss “another matter.” He was quickly transferred from his hotel to a safe house run by Cuban intelligence. There he was joined by two Bolivian Party comrades previously selected as escorts. He would later be joined by the other two Tricontinental delegation members still on their way.
Monje got in touch with the circle of young Bolivian “students” in Havana, all members of the Bolivian Communist Youth, and discovered that many had been receiving military training without Party approval. Instead of confronting them, he “joined” them, as it were. Meeting officials of with the Cuban Interior Ministry—Piñeiro’s people—Monje told them of his interest in undergoing military training along with some other comrades. “They were very happy,” Monje recalled—so happy, in fact, that Monje was able to thoroughly outmaneuver Zamora’s group. In what he proudly described as a game of brinksmanship, Monje demanded that the Cubans choose between granting official status at the conference to his group—now disposed to take up arms—or Zamora’s. His delegation was accepted as the official one, while, as Monje put it, Zamora’s group was sent on a “tour” of the Cuban countryside.
Monje quickly realized that what was important was not the speeches being given at the conference, but what was happening behind the scenes. “The Cubans began seeking out contacts with this group and that,” he recalled, “but always with the intention of seeing about creating new guerrilla
focos
in Latin America. They gave most attention to the more radical groups, the more defiant groups, those who to a certain degree were at odds with the more traditional Communists.”
Monje knew that the Soviets were uncomfortable with the Cuban guerrilla recruitment campaign, and when the Tricontinental was over he decided to make a quick trip to Moscow to “take soundings.” To his surprise, he was ushered straight through to Boris Ponomoriov, the supreme boss of the Central Committee’s International Department. “We began talking about Bolivia,” Monje said, “and he asked me about the Tricontinental, and what the thinking of the [Bolivian] Communist Party was about what [Cuba] was preparing. I gave him my critique, more or less, and told him what we were planning to do, and then he asked me if I knew where Che was. I told him that I knew that he had been in Africa, but that he had already left.” Monje said he had the distinct impression that this was news to Ponomoriov.
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Monje said that the Soviets wanted to know what role Che played in the conference, where the Cubans had encouraged “the most radical groups.” They had come to the same conclusion as Monje: the driving force behind the Tricontinental Conference had also been its most conspicuous absentee—Che Guevara.
After his briefing at the Kremlin, Monje returned to Cuba to begin military training. He had decided to ask the Bolvian students who had already been trained to stay in Cuba until he and the other newcomers had finished their own military training, at which point he would try to ship them all off to Moscow for “theoretical training.” He reasoned that he could thus forestall any surreptitious Cuban plan to put the youths in the field behind his Party’s back, as he suspected the Cubans were anxious to do. Monje knew that his training would take three or four months to complete, giving him time to alert his Party comrades back in Bolivia about what was happening.
As he was about to begin his training, in late January 1966, Monje was summoned to a meeting with Fidel. Several other people were there, including Piñeiro and some of his agents. According to Monje, Fidel asked him what his intentions were regarding his Bolivian cadres in Cuba. He gave Fidel a less than sincere answer, but one that sounded credible. Reminding him that Bolivia had a history of popular uprisings, he told Fidel that the current situation, with the nation again under military dictatorship, indicated the possibility of another insurrection. “If there is one,” he told Fidel, “we’ll be able to take control of the situation.” With the active backup of his Cuban-trained cadres, he explained, he could push for elections, in which the Communists would emerge in a strengthened position.
It was not the answer Fidel wanted to hear. What about the possibilities for a guerrilla struggle? Monje explained that he didn’t see that as a realistic possibility in Bolivia. At this point, several of Piñeiro’s agents leaped in to offer their own opinions; from what they said, Monje knew they had been to Bolivia and had been studying it closely. After the meeting, Monje recalled, Piñeiro buttonholed him. “Fidel didn’t like the interview,” Piñeiro said. “He doesn’t like your plan because you’re not thinking of the guerrilla struggle, and these people in training are destined for the guerrilla struggle. You have two or three months. Revise your points of view, and then start a guerrilla war.”
Using the excuse that he hadn’t realized he would be away so long, and that he had left certain situations unattended back in Bolivia, Monje asked Piñeiro to send for Ramiro Otero, the Bolivian Communist Party’s representative in Prague. “I played that game,” explained Monje, “because I knew they couldn’t let me leave.” When Otero arrived in February, Monje
took him into the garden of the safe house and gave him explicit instructions: “Go to Bolivia, ask for a meeting with the Politburo, and tell them the Cubans are preparing for a guerrilla war in Bolivia.”
With Otero hurrying back to La Paz, Monje’s training began. At thirty-five, he was the oldest in the group—most of the others were in their mid- to late twenties—but he tried to keep up. Then Otero returned with bad news. He hadn’t been able to talk to the Central Committee; he had talked only to members of the lesser Secretariat, and they hadn’t believed Monje’s story. They sent word that the military training should end and Monje should return immediately. Serious doubts had been cast on his activities during his absence, and he was in danger of losing his post.
Monje felt caught between a rock and hard place. According to his own slightly tortuous explanation, he had gone along with the Cuban plan for war in Bolivia only as a means to forestall that war, but now his Party compatriots were thoroughly alarmed. He needed to return to Bolivia to explain what was going on to the right people in his Party and clear up the misunderstandings, but the Cubans would be highly suspicious if he did so. It was also too late for his original plan—to keep the cadres away from Bolivia by sending them all to the Soviet Union—because his own training had almost ended and the cadres were now itching to go home. In desperation, Monje arranged to meet with Fidel, along with a visiting member of the Bolivian Politburo, Humberto Ramírez, to define the situation. In May, they flew to Santiago so that they could talk with Fidel in his car during the drive back to Havana.
In the car, Monje said, Fidel talked about everything other than Bolivia. “He would stop the car and explain to us how he had carried out ambushes. ... He was interested in having us see how a guerrilla struggle is waged. We even stopped to shoot along the way, testing marksmanship and weapons.”
Their car journey ended in Camagüey, where they stayed overnight. They still hadn’t spoken about Bolivia. The next day they boarded a plane for Havana. Monje, who was seated with Ramírez, began to fear that his mission had failed. Then Papi walked down the aisle to tell Monje that Fidel wanted to speak to him alone.
He sat down next to Fidel, who asked how Monje “saw things.” Before Monje could answer, however, Fidel started talking again: “You know, you’ve been a good friend of ours. You have developed an internationalist policy with us. Frankly I want to thank you for all the help you’ve given us, and now it turns out that a mutual friend wants to return to his country, someone whose revolutionary caliber nobody can question. And nobody can deny him the right to return to his country. And he thinks the best place to
pass through [to get there] is Bolivia. I ask you to help him pass through your country.”
Monje didn’t need to ask who the “mutal friend” was, and he immediately agreed to help. At that, Fidel added: “Look, as for your own plans, just keep developing them as you see fit. If you want us to help in training more people, send us more. ... We are not going to intervene in your affairs.” Monje says he thanked Fidel and repeated his willingness to help in the “transit” of their mutual friend.
Then, using his trademark combination of flattery and enigmatic language, Fidel said, “You’ve always been good at selecting people; I’d like you to choose the people that will receive [Che], accompany him in the country, and escort him to the border. If you and your party agree, they could accompany him within the country to gather experiences, or just go to the border and that will be the end of it.”
He then asked Monje to give him some names. Monje named four cadres he had authorized for training in Cuba: Coco Peredo, Loro VázquezViaña, Julio “Ñato” Mendez, and Rodolfo Saldaña. Papi, who was listening, commented, “Excellent.” Fidel noted down the names and told Monje: “That’s it.” Their business was finished. Monje felt greatly relieved and told Humberto Ramírez that they needn’t worry—the Cubans’ plans were different from what they had suspected—but they still needed to inform the Party.