Authors: Jon Lee Anderson
When it came time for Che and Bustos to talk, the first thing Che wanted to find out was why Bustos hadn’t come earlier. Bustos told him Tania had not given him a specific time frame for his visit. Calling Tania over, Che tongue-lashed her for misrepresenting his instructions. “Damnit, Tania, what did I tell you to tell El Pelao [Bustos]?” he demanded. “What the fuck do I tell you things for!”
“I can’t remember exactly what he said to her, but they were strong and violent things, and she started to shake,” Bustos recalled. “She went away crying.” Later, Che told Bustos to try to comfort her. But Che was already unhappy with Tania for having risked exposure by coming to the camp again. After her first visit, with Monje at the end of December, he had told her not to return.
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What’s more, Eduardo Jozami, the young Argentine dissident he had wanted to meet with, had come to Bolivia and gone home again when she hadn’t shown up for a rendezvous with him.
Turning back to his business with Bustos, Che told him what he had in mind for Argentina. “My strategic objective is the seizure of political power,” he said. “For this I want to form a group of Argentines, to prepare a couple of columns, season them in war for a year or two over here, and then enter. I want this to be your mission. And I want you to hang on as long as possible until you have to join up [in the mountains]. I want you to be the coordinator sending me people.” Che added that the work had to be done well, “not like this shit here, where everyone does what they want.” He said Bustos should work together with Papi on the means of transporting men, and with Pombo on the question of provisions, and he reeled off names of others he should coordinate with for specific issues. Che said his intention was to form a central command divided into two columns totaling about 500 men, including Bolivians, Argentines, and Peruvians, who would later split off and take the war to other zones.
As Che talked, Bustos wondered how he was going to arrange a food-supply line between Ñancahuazú and Argentina. And how was he supposed to coordinate with Pombo, when Pombo was in the bush with Che? These details weren’t discussed, but it didn’t sound realistic to Bustos. “It was like something magical,” he said. “Out of this world.” Che told Bustos that his first priority was to see Bustos safely out of the mountains so that he could get to work in Argentina, but a dense air of uncertainty hung over everything. The guerrillas’ presence had been detected. A soldier had been killed. It was only a matter of time before an army patrol came looking for them.
It came two days later, on March 23, a day Che recorded in his diary as one “of warlike events.” Che had sent out men to prepare ambushes, creating a
defensive perimeter, and at 8:00
A.M.
Coco came running in to report that they had ambushed an army unit, killing seven soldiers and taking twenty-one prisoners, four of them wounded. They had also seized a nice bunch of weapons, including three mortars, sixteen carbines, two bazookas, and three Uzi submachine guns. And they had captured a document that showed the army’s operational plans. Seeing that it called for a two-pronged advance, Che quickly dispatched some men to the other end of the river canyon to lay another ambush. In the meantime, he sent Inti Peredo—whom he was impressed by and was beginning to groom as a leader for the Bolivians—to interrogate the two captured officers, a major and a captain. “They talked like parrots,” Che reported later.
Che recorded the victory tersely. He was worried about food supplies now that the approaches to Ñancahuazú were cut off and they had been forced to leave their camp with their stores behind. Another problem, and a serious one, was that their radio transmitter was malfunctioning. They could receive broadcasts and “Manila’s” messages, but they could not send.
The next day brought no new ground troops, but a plane flew over and dropped bombs around the Casa de Calamina. Che sent Inti back to interrogate the officers again, then ordered the prisoners to be set free. The soldiers were ordered to strip and leave their uniforms behind, but the officers were allowed to keep their uniforms. The major was told he had until noon on March 27 to return and collect his dead.
After the prisoners had gone, Che turned his attention to his men. Marcos had been repeatedly insubordinate and had continued to mistreat some of the Bolivians. He had already been warned that he risked expulsion, and Che now demoted him again, naming Miguel to take his role as chief of the vanguard. Since the desertions, tension between the Bolivians and the Cubans had increased. The revolutionary fortitude of the four remaining Bolivians that Moisés Guevara had recruited—Paco, Pepe, Chingolo, and Eusebio—was openly questioned, and the men found themselves treated with contempt and suspicion. On March 25, Che told them that if they didn’t work, they wouldn’t eat. He suspended their tobacco rations and gave their personal belongings away to “other, needier comrades.” He criticized another Bolivian, Walter, for being “weak” on their trek, and for the fear he had shown during the previous day’s aerial bombardment. To another couple of men, he gave words of encouragement; they had performed well in the last few days. Finally, Che chose that day to name his little army: the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), or National Liberation Army, adding to the ranks of the similarly named Cuban-backed guerrilla
focos
in Peru and Colombia.
Over the next few days, the guerrillas concentrated on looking for food. Scouts came back having sighted groups of soldiers not far away,
while others observed a group of about sixty soldiers and a helicopter stationed at Algarañaz’s house. On March 27, Che wrote, “The news exploded, monopolizing all the space on the radio and producing a multitude of communiqués including the Barrientos press conference.” He noted that the army was making wild claims of having killed fifteen guerrillas and taken four prisoners, including two “foreigners.” He resolved to write the first guerrilla communiqué to refute the army’s claims and announce the guerrillas’ presence at the same time. “Obviously, the deserters or the prisoners talked,” Che wrote. “But we do not know exactly how much they told and how they told it. Everything appears to indicate that Tania is spotted, whereby two years of good and patient work are lost. ... We will see what happens.”
What happened was a whirlwind of bellicose activity that threw all of Che’s plans out the window and forced him to pursue the war he had begun, almost inadvertently, through a cumulative series of errors and and mishaps. Within a few days of the ambush, news reports became more and more exaggerated as the government mobilized its available troops. After first doubting the existence of the guerrillas, President Barrientos seized upon evidence found at their camp, including photographs, to decry the foreign invaders as agents of “Castro-Communism” and to call upon the patriotism of his fellow citizens in resisting the outsiders. In this intensely nationalistic country, the appeal to xenophobia was an effective way to isolate the civilians from the guerrillas; the foreign nature of the “Reds” was something Barrientos would now propound ceaselessly. There was little Che could do to combat the propaganda except write communiqués. His immediate priority was to avoid being wiped out. Che surmised from the radio reports that the army knew exactly where his band was located. He ordered men to dig new caves for storing weapons at a smaller camp that they called El Oso, since an anteater, or
oso hormiguero
, had been shot there.
In Cuba, the two dozen or more guerrillas who were preparing for the “second phase” did not include Orlando Borrego, but he and his brother-in-law, Enrique Acevedo, begged Fidel to be allowed to go to Bolivia. Their request was refused. The guerrillas had been prematurely discovered, Fidel said, and the situation was too volatile; what’s more, direct contact with Che had been lost, so there was no way to insert them safely into the field any longer. As the months passed, Borrego and his comrades read the reports from Bolivia with increasing anxiety. The situation of Che and his band seemed to slide irrevocably toward disaster.
In his end-of-the-month summary for March, Che wrote laconically, “This month was full of events.” After analyzing his troops and the current situation, he wrote, “Evidently we will have to get going before I had thought. ... The situation is not good but today begins a new phase to test the guerrillas, which should do them much good once they get over it.”
Their days were now spent on the move, alternately looking for or hiding from the army, which seemed to be everywhere around them in large numbers. On April 10 they fired upon a platoon of soldiers as they came down the river. “Soon the first news arrived, and it was unpleasant,” wrote Che, who had stayed at his command post. “Rubio, Jesús Suárez Gayol, was mortally wounded; he was dead on arrival at our camp, a bullet in his head.” Che had lost his first man in action, a Cuban, but three soldiers had been killed, and several others wounded and taken prisoner. After interrogating the prisoners and determining that more enemy forces were on their way, Che decided to leave his ambush in place. By the afternoon, more soldiers appeared and they too fell into the trap. “This time,” he wrote, “there were seven dead, five wounded, and 22 prisoners.”
That night, Bustos recalled, Che did something he found very strange. Rubio’s body was placed on the ground in the middle of the camp and remained there until morning. It was, Bustos said, like a kind of wake. Nobody referred to the body, but it was right there, unavoidable, a grim reminder of what could await each of them. The next day, after Che made some remarks about Suárez Gayol’s bravery—and his carelessness—he was buried in a shallow grave and the prisoners were set free. The captured enemy officer was sent off with Che’s “Communiqué No. 1” announcing the commencement of hostilities by the ELN. Che noted the motley composition of the men sent in against him. “There are Rangers, paratroopers, and local soldiers, almost children.”
Reluctantly, Che was forced to concede that there might be truth to what the news media were reporting: that the army had found their original camp and uncovered photographs and other evidence of their presence. A group of journalists had been taken there, and on April 11 Che listened to a reporter on the radio describe a photo he had seen in the camp of a beardless man with a pipe. It sounded like a photo of Che, although he wasn’t identified. Two days later came the news that the United States was sending military advisers to Bolivia. This move was said to have nothing to do with the guerrillas: it was only part of a long-standing military assistance program between the two countries. Che didn’t believe it for a second and made a hopeful note: “We may be witnessing the first episode of a new Vietnam.” He was partly right. The United States
was
, of course, sending advisers to help the Bolivians quell the guerrilla threat, but if he thought it
would spark off a campaign of national resistance as in Vietnam, he was wrong.
The question of what to do with Bustos and Debray had remained unresolved as Che’s band reacted to the emergency at hand. It had already been decided that Juan Pablo Chang would stay on for the time being, as would Tania, whose cover had been blown since the discovery of her jeep, which she had left in Camiri, along with her identity papers as Laura Gutiérrez Bauer. Debray, meanwhile, had become increasingly nervous. Che observed on March 28, “The Frenchman stated too vehemently how useful he could be on the outside.” A few days later, as Che tried to move his band out of the dragnet, he spoke to Bustos and Debray, outlining their options: to stay with them, to try to leave on their own, or else to stay on until the guerrillas reached a town where they could be left safely. They settled on the final option. Three dramatic weeks had passed since then, with more clashes and constant movement. The government had outlawed the Communist Party and declared a state of emergency in the southeastern region.
Applying the tactics he and Fidel had used in the first days of the sierra war, Che had decided to surprise the enemy by operating in a new area, around the village of Muyupampa; if possible, Bustos and Debray would leave from there. Then he and his men would move north to the eastern Andean foothills. He prepared his “Communiqué No. 2” for Debray to take out, as well as a coded message to Fidel informing him of the present situation. According to Bustos, Che stressed to him the importance of getting news of the guerrillas’ actual circumstances to the island. He needed a new radio urgently, and Fidel should dispatch the men in training in Cuba to open a new front, farther north, to distract attention from his group.
*
As they approached Muyupampa, Che joined the vanguard column and left Joaquín behind at a river crossing to wait for him. In order to make faster progress, Che had decided to split the column in two, leaving Joaquín
in charge of the rearguard column, made up of those who were sick—both Tania and Alejandro had a high fever—or malingering, such as the Bolivian
resacas
. Joaquín was ordered to make his presence felt but avoid frontal combat and to expect Che’s return in three days. Che, Bustos, Debray, and the rest moved on, through an area inhabited by peasants who were clearly terrified by their arrival. When they approached Muyupampa on April 20, they found that the army had taken up positions there, and civilian spies had been sent out to look for them. Che’s advance men captured the civilians, who were accompanied by a suspicious character, an Anglo-Chilean reporter named George Andrew Roth. He had come, he said, for an interview with the rebel leader.
Inti Peredo gave Roth an interview, and then Bustos and Debray decided to use him as a cover for their escape. They would try to outsmart the soldiers by separating from the guerrillas and walking into the village posing as journalists. The ruse failed, and they were immediately arrested. When Che learned what had happened, he calmly noted the odds of their survival; both Bustos and Debray had been carrying false documents. Che thought it “looked bad” for Bustos, but he speculated that Debray “should come out all right.”
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