Che Guevara (35 page)

Fidel was taking no chances, and he went even farther than before in distancing himself from Communism. He said that allegations that he was a Communist were “absurd,” and he pointed to Batista’s past alliance with
Cuba’s Partido Socialista Popular. He named Captain Gutiérrez Barrios of Mexico’s Dirección Federal de Seguridad, the number three man in Mexico’s secret police hierarchy, as a witness to his being cleared of any links to “Communist organizations.”

Fidel’s mention of the twenty-seven-year-old Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios was revealing. He had struck some kind of a deal with Gutiérrez Barrios, and although neither of them ever gave details of their pact, the Mexican’s help was a key factor in Castro’s eventual liberation. In an interview years later, Gutiérrez Barrios admitted to having “sympathized” with Castro from the outset. “First, because we were of the same generation, and second, for his ideals and his sense of conviction. He has always been a charismatic leader. And at that time it was obvious that there were no alternatives for him other than to triumph in his revolutionary movement or die. ... These reasons explain why there was a cordial relationship from the beginning. ... I never considered him to be a criminal, but a man with ideals who sought to overthrow a dictatorship and whose crime was to violate the [immigration] laws of my country.” Mexican nationalists (whose own revolution had occurred only four decades before) had little love for their meddlesome American neighbors, and a certain stick-it-in-your-eye attitude very likely played a part in Gutiérrez Barrios’s gesture. Indeed, later on, during his long career—more than thirty years—as chief of Mexico’s secret police, Gutiérrez Barrios granted protection to many other Latin American revolutionary exiles, including several on Washington’s wanted list.

On the day of Fidel’s second public statement, July 15, Ernesto responded defiantly to a remonstrative letter from Celia. Judging from his tone, she had questioned his motives for being involved with Fidel Castro in the first place, and wondered pointedly why he hadn’t been freed along with the others after their hunger strike. He told her he and Calixto would probably remain in prison even after Fidel’s release. Their immigration papers were not in order. But as soon as he was freed, he would leave Mexico for a nearby country and await Fidel’s orders, to be “at the ready whenever my services are necessary.”

“I am not Christ or a philanthropist, old lady. I am all the contrary of a Christ,” he wrote to his mother. “I fight for the things I believe in, with all the weapons at my disposal and try to leave the other man
dead
so that I don’t get nailed to a cross or any other place. ... What really terrifies me is your lack of comprehension of all this and your advice about moderation, egoism, etc., ... that is to say, all of the most execrable qualities an individual can have. Not only am I not moderate, I shall try not ever to be, and when I recognize that the sacred flame within me has given way to a timid votive
light, the least I could do is to vomit over my own shit. As to your call to moderate self-interest, that is to say, to rampant and fearful individualism ... I must tell you I have done a lot to eliminate these. ...

“In these days of prison and the previous ones of training I identified totally with my comrades in the cause. ... The concept of ‘I’ disappeared totally to give place to the concept ‘us.’ It was a Communist morale and naturally it may seem a doctrinaire exaggeration, but really it was (and is) beautiful to be able to feel that removal of I.” Breaking the severe tone, he wisecracked: “The stains [on the stationery] aren’t bloodstains, but tomato juice. ...” Then he went on: “It is a profound error on your part to believe that it is out of ‘moderation’ or ‘moderate self-interest’ that great inventions or artful masterpieces come about. For all great tasks, passion is needed, and for the revolution, passion and audacity are needed in large doses, things we have as a human group.”

He ended with a soliloquy on their changed personal relationship: “Above all, it seems to me that that pain—pain of a mother who is growing old and who wants her son alive—is respectable, something I have an obligation to attend to, and which I
want
to attend to. I would like to see you not only to console you, but to console myself for my sporadic and unconfessable pinings.” He signed the letter with his new identity: “Your son, El Che.”

What Che didn’t tell his mother was that he was primarily responsible for his prolonged detention. In the end, he cared less about this than about the future of the Cuban revolutionary enterprise. The most important thing at the moment was for Fidel to be freed so that the struggle could go forward.

Batista attended the Panama summit, and on July 22 a joint declaration committing the hemisphere to a pro-Western course of political and economic development was signed. While Eisenhower was rubbing shoulders with military dictators, Fidel’s lawyers went to see Lázaro Cárdenas—Mexico’s former president and the architect of its land reform. Cárdenas agreed to use his influence with President Adolfo Ruíz Cortines on Fidel’s behalf. It worked, and Fidel was finally released on July 24, on the condition he leave the country within two weeks.

Only Che and Calixto García were left in prison, for the official reason that their immigration status was more “complicated.” In Che’s case, his Communist affiliations undoubtedly had a lot to do with it. García was apparently held because he had stayed illegally in Mexico for the longest period, since March of 1954. Meanwhile, even as the threat of extradition continued to hang over both their heads, Che refused offers made by his Guatemalan friend Alfonso Bauer Paiz and Ulíses Petit de Murat to pull diplomatic strings on his behalf. An uncle of Che’s happened to be the Argentine ambassador to Havana, and Hilda was pushing the idea of using
him to secure Che’s release. “Fidel approved, but when we explained the idea to Ernesto, he said: By no means! I want the same treatment as the Cubans,” Hilda wrote.

While Che balked, Fidel was under pressure to get moving. Mexico was no longer a safe place; he was vulnerable to both the Mexican police and Batista’s agents. As a precaution, he had dispersed his men, sending most of them to await developments in remote areas far from Mexico City. Che told him to proceed without him, but Fidel swore he would not abandon him. It was a magnanimous gesture that Che never forgot. “Precious time and money had to be diverted to get us out of the Mexican jail,” he wrote later. “That personal attitude of Fidel’s toward people whom he holds in esteem is the key to the fanatical loyalty he inspires.”

Around this time. Che wrote a poem that he called “Ode to Fidel.” He showed it to Hilda and told her he planned to give it to Castro when they were at sea, on their way to Cuba. Though sophomoric and purple, the poem reveals the depth of Ernesto’s feelings toward Fidel.

Let’s go, ardent prophet of the dawn,
along remote and unmarked paths
to liberate the green caiman you so love ...
*
When the first shot sounds
and in virginal surprise the entire jungle awakens,
there, at your side, serene combatants
you’ll have us.
When your voice pours out to the four winds
agrarian reform, justice, bread and liberty,
there, at your side, with identical accent,
you’ll have us.
And when the end of the battle for
the cleansing operation against the tyrant comes,
there, at your side, ready for the last battle,
you’ll have us ...
And if our path is blocked by iron,
we ask for a shroud of Cuban tears
to cover the guerrilla bones
in transit to American history.
Nothing more
.

In mid-August 1956, after having been incarcerated for fifty-seven days, Che and Calixto García were freed, apparently because Fidel had bribed someone. Che hinted as much to Hilda, and he later wrote that Fidel had done “some things for the sake of friendship which, we could almost say, compromised his revolutionary attitude.”

Like their comrades before them, Che and Calixto were freed on the condition that they leave Mexico within a few days. And, also like the others, they went underground. But first, Che went home for three days to sort out his affairs and to see the baby. Hilda said that he spent hours sitting by Hildita’s crib, reciting poetry aloud to her or simply watching her in silence. Then he was gone again.

On Fidel’s orders, Che and Calixto went to the weekend retreat of Ixtapan de la Sal. They registered in a hotel there under false names. During this underground period, which lasted three months, Che returned discreetly to the city a couple of times, but mostly Hilda traveled to see him. Che’s absorption with Marxism and revolution now dominated his life. Even at home on visits, he was unrelenting, either delivering sermons to Hilda on “revolutionary discipline” or burying himself in dense books on political economy. He was even ideological with the baby. He recited the Spanish Civil War poem by Antonio Machado in honor of General Lister to her, and he regularly referred to her as “my little Mao.”

Once, Hilda watched as Ernesto picked up their daughter and told her in a serious voice: “My dear little daughter, my little Mao, you don’t know what a difficult world you’re going to have to live in. When you grow up this whole continent, and maybe the whole world, will be fighting against the great enemy, Yankee imperialism. You too will have to fight. I may not be here anymore, but the struggle will inflame the continent.”

In early September, after suffering a recurrence of his asthma, Ernesto moved with Calixto from Ixtapan de la Sal to Toluca, where the climate was drier. Then Fidel called for them to join some of the other expeditionaries for a meeting in Veracruz. Afterward, they returned to the capital, where they lived for several months in one of the safe houses in the Casa de Cuco, near the shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe in the northern suburb of Linda Vista. Fidel was desperately trying to get things ready for their departure, and the men were asked to provide information about next of kin. Che recalled this later as a significant moment for him and his comrades. They realized that they might soon die.

Fidel was keeping up a frenetic pace. Besides moving his men around to avoid surveillance, he sought to shore up a political alliance with the increasingly competitive Directorio Revolucionario, whose leader, José Antonio
Echeverría, had flown to Mexico to meet him at the end of August. They had signed a document called the Carta de Mexico, voicing their shared commitment to the struggle against Batista. It fell short of an actual partnership, but the two groups agreed to advise each other in advance of any actions, and to coordinate their efforts once Castro and his rebels landed in Cuba.

Che with his first child, Hilda Beatriz. He called her “my little Mao.”

A few weeks later, forty new recruits for the war arrived from Cuba and the United States. With the loss of the Rancho San Miguel, they had to be trained at far-flung bases—one in Tamaulipas just south of the U.S.-Mexican border, and another at Veracruz. By now, most of Fidel’s general staff had joined him in Mexico City, leaving regional chiefs behind to coordinate activities on the island. But his coffers were nearly empty and he still had no vessel to carry his men to Cuba. The hoped-for purchase of the PT boat had fallen through, as had a short-lived scheme to buy a vintage Catalina flying boat.

In September, Fidel made a secret trip across the U.S. border to Texas, where he met with his erstwhile enemy, the former president, Carlos Prío
Socarrás. Since his ouster, Prío had been linked to several anti-Batista conspiracies, and the latest reports had him plotting an invasion of Cuba together with the Dominican dictator, Trujillo, but now he agreed to bankroll Fidel. Perhaps he believed that Castro would do the heavy lifting that could sweep him—Prío—back into power, or perhaps he simply saw Fidel as a useful diversion in his own campaign against Batista. Whatever Prío’s motivations were, Castro came away from the meeting with at least $50,000—with more to be handed over later—according to those involved in arranging the encounter. Fidel took a political risk by accepting money from the man he had so vociferously accused of corruption while president, but right now he had little choice.

According to Yuri Paporov, the KGB official who bankrolled the Instituto Cultural Ruso-Mexicano at the time, the money Fidel received was not Prío’s at all, but the CIA’s. He did not specify his sources for that assertion, but, if true, it would lend weight to reports that the CIA had tried early to win over Castro, just in case he succeeded in his war against the increasingly embattled Batista. According to Tad Szulc, the CIA
did
funnel money to his July 26 Movement, but later on, during a period in 1957 and 1958, via an agent attached to the American consul’s office in Santiago, Cuba.

Whatever the provenance of Fidel’s money, he continued to act as his own man. He may have made a pact with the devil in the form of Prío, but no evidence has emerged that he ever delivered his end of the deal—if indeed there were strings attached. Any funding he received from Prío—or, unwittingly, from the CIA—certainly had no negative repercussions on his quest for power.