Che Guevara (71 page)

“Che wasn’t in agreement,” Orlando Borrego said, “but when Fidel explained the measure, demonstrating the advantages and disadvantages, that it was more favorable to the revolution to halt the process, Che accepted it. He accepted it, but it bothered him as much as it did the rest of us, because there were cases we were in the middle of processing.”

Stopping the executions ultimately earned Fidel little credit in Washington. By now, the Americans’ paramount concerns were the Communist infiltration of his government, the extent of his still-to-be announced agrarian reform bill, and mounting evidence that the Cubans were trying to subvert their neighbors. To Whiting Willauer, the U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica, Cuba’s disclaimers in the Panama affair were just smoke and mirrors.

Willauer—a veteran Cold Warrior and, as ambassador to Honduras, a key player in the 1954 operation against Arbenz in Guatemala—cited the Panamanian incident as proof that the Cubans were up to no good. On April 30, while Fidel was still en route to Buenos Aires, Willauer sent a seven-page, single-spaced typed letter labeled “Secret” to Roy Rubottom, the assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs. It was the latest in an exchange of letters between them over Cuba, and Willauer made little effort to conceal his contempt for Rubottom’s dovish position. He argued for a preemptive strike against Castro. “Unless there is some excellent explanation to the contrary I find it difficult to believe that this [Panamanian incident] could have happened without the connivance, to say the very least, of high officials in the Cuban Government, particularly in the army,” Willauer wrote. “This conclusion seems even more plausible in view of the fact that it is known that the army is riddled with Communists and that it is generally believed that ‘Che’ Guevara, among others, holds a very strong position of control.”

To Willauer, “the Castro visit to the United States was very probably one of the most blatant soft-soap jobs in recent Communist history.” He would be prepared to believe Castro’s denials of Communist links “when and only when ‘Che’ Guevarra [
sic
] and the other top Communists are given a one way ticket out of the country. ... In short, while you state in your letter that ‘considerable progress is being made in calming down this phase of Caribbean tensions,’ I unfortunately find myself in complete disagreement. I feel that the situation in the Caribbean today is worse than it has ever been and that it is going to get much worse very rapidly unless the Communist beachhead in Cuba is liquidated.” Willauer wrote that “the guts of the situation” was the growing body of evidence that “the Communists have a very
strong position of command and control in the army. This they never achieved in any effective manner in the Guatemalan situation.”

Willauer was right. Ernesto Guevara had watched and learned from the mistakes made by Guatemala’s would-be socialist “revolution,” and five years later, he was able to apply preventive medicine before Washington could act. The Cubans were one step ahead of the Americans. Che’s many reminders to Fidel of the causes for Arbenz’s failure had paid off: the old army was being thoroughly purged, and the “new army” was being staffed with trustworthy men whose loyalties and political orientation were beyond doubt. As for the rank and file, they were being politically “reeducated.” Arms and training would be given to “the people,” and a nationwide citizens’ militia would be organized to bolster the regular army. By the time Washington could muster its forces, as Che knew it must, Cuba would be armed, ready, and waiting.

Perhaps even more than Fidel himself, Che was well on his way to becoming Washington’s number one concern in Latin America. On May 4, J. L. Topping, the political affairs officer at the American embassy in Havana, sent a confidential cable to Washington detailing his debriefing on April 29 of Dr. Napoleón Padilla, a Cuban tobacco industry expert. Padilla had recently been in meetings with Che as a member of El Forum Tabacalera, a committee set up to explore the possibilities of increasing tobacco production and employment. He was described as a “liberal, nationalistic, Catholic” and a past supporter of the revolution against Batista. “I felt that he was deeply worried, and sincere in his remarks,” Topping noted.

Padilla says Guevara is a “stupid international Communist”—not even a bright one. (The word in Spanish is “vulgar.”) He believes Raúl Castro is even worse. He says Guevara is violently and unreasoningly anti-American and bitterly opposed to the sale of American products, even if made in Cuba. He mentioned Coca-Cola and Keds, as well as American cigarettes. He feels that Guevara and Raúl Castro want to establish a “Soviet” system in Cuba, and that they will soon show their hands. Guevara talks frequently about how he controls Fidel Castro.

Guevara describes the new Army as a “people’s Army,” the “defender of the proletariat,” as the “principal political arm” of the “people’s Revolution.” He also says that the new Army will be a principal source of “indoctrination” for the Cuban people, and that
it will engage in “useful works”—apparently meaning construction, harvesting, and so on—but will always be ready to spring to arms in defense of the revolution, which will inevitably be attacked by the United States. ...

Padilla said that Guevara talked frequently about the “Guatemalan incident.” Guevara had said that freedom of the press was dangerous. He had pointed out that the freedom of the press in Guatemala under Arbenz had been one of the causes for the fall of the regime. He had said that freedom should be restricted in Cuba.

Che was not usually described as “vulgar,” but most of Padilla’s other observations have the ring of truth if we assume Che had spoken out intentionally to provoke Padilla. He had never lost his predilection for shocking people whom he sensed were shockable. Che’s alleged bragging about “controlling Fidel,” on the other hand, smacks of eager-to-please speculation by Padilla, for Che was never anything but respectful of Fidel outside conversations with his closest friends.

But evidently something
did
happen during Fidel’s trip abroad to cause Che to lose patience with the pace of events. According to one report, Che gathered his group of young bodyguards and told them: “
Yo sigo viaje
” (“I’m off”). Their assumption, in view of all the rumors, was that he was planning to lead an imminent guerrilla expedition against Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. If this was a possibility being considered by Che, he had a change of heart. To judge from the events that followed, his decision to stay was due to a clear signal from Fidel that he was ready to accelerate moves to build a socialist society in Cuba.

Fidel’s days of temporizing were coming to an end. At the economic conference in Buenos Aires, he made new headlines and disturbed his Latin American colleagues by calling on Washington to finance a “MacArthur-style Plan” to right Latin America’s economic and social ills. The price tag he came up with was $30 billion in development aid over the next decade. The United States had no intention of supporting such a scheme, and the Latin American ministers quickly fell into line with Washington. Ironically, a version of Fidel’s idea would be launched two years later by a new U.S. president, John F. Kennedy: a $20 billion program called the “Alliance for Progress.” Kennedy’s plan, of course, was intended to prevent more Cuban-style revolutions in the hemisphere.

Within days of his return to Havana on May 7, Fidel signed the agrarian reform bill into law, and INRA became a reality. The agriculture minister, Humberto Sorí-Marín, who had been sidelined throughout the discussions of reforms, promptly resigned. Next, Fidel officially confirmed
Che’s status as a
comandante
of the Revolutionary Armed Forces before dispatching him on an extended “goodwill” tour abroad. Officially, Che’s mission was to increase diplomatic and commercial ties for Cuba with emerging industrial nations such as Japan and with the new nonaligned states of Africa, Asia, and Europe—most important, India, Egypt, and Yugoslavia. Unofficially, of course, Che’s temporary removal from Havana helped Fidel create the impression that he was, as he had hinted in the United States, “casting off” the Argentine Communist whom the Americans and his own July 26 aides found so troublesome.

Che’s trip had been on the drawing board for some time. Alfredo Menéndez first learned of Che’s interest in the so-called “third-position countries” or “Bandung Pact” states—the core of the future nonaligned movement—during their collaboration on the agrarian reform law at Cojímar, when Che had asked for an economic analysis of Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Japan. “He wanted to know what commercial relations existed between Cuba and these countries, what did we import, what we exported, and what possibilities we had to increase our trade with those countries.”

Menéndez finished the study and gave it to Che, but he learned about the trip only when he was introduced to Fidel as “our sugar man” on the day of the signing of the agrarian reform law. With characteristic panache Fidel had made the entire cabinet travel to his old guerrilla base at La Plata for the ceremony. After asking Menéndez a few questions, Fidel suddenly said: “Get yourself ready—you’re going on a trip with Che.” The purpose of their mission was described to Menéndez when he returned to Havana. “Things had begun to chill [with the United States], the American pressure was getting greater and Cuba wanted to open up breathing space,” he recalled. “The strategy of the revolution was to open relations with the greatest possible number of countries. That was the objective of the trip. It had a political and an economic objective, that is to say, to not let the revolution become isolated. This was a constant of Che’s. ... He always told me that Arbenz fell because he had allowed himself to become isolated, and that the [Cuban] revolution had to go out fighting in the international arena.”

Che and Aleida March were married on June 2, 1959, at the La Cabaña home of his bodyguard, Alberto Castellanos. From Left, Raúl Castro, Vílma Espín, Che, Aleida, and Castellanos.

Che and Aldeida on their wedding day, with Harry “Pombo” Villegas and his wife, Cristina.

Before leaving, Che put his house in order. On May 22, he obtained a divorce from Hilda. On June 2, in a small civil ceremony, he and Aleida were
married. There was a party at the La Cabaña home of his most rambunctious bodyguard, Alberto Castellanos. Efigenio Ameijeiras, the new police chief of Havana, was there, and so were Harry Villegas, Celia Sánchez, and Raúl and his new wife, Vílma Espín. Camilo barged in with good-natured shouts, brandishing bottles of rum. Aleida looked pretty in a new white dress, while Che wore, as always, his olive green uniform and black beret.

Two weeks earlier, he had written to his old friend Julio “El Gaucho” Castro in Buenos Aires, inviting him to come to Cuba:

Gaucho
,

This experience of ours is really worth taking a couple of bullets for. [If you
do
come,] don’t think of returning, the revolution won’t wait. A strong hug from the one who is called and whom history will call. ...

Che
.

On June 12, 1959, Che flew to Madrid en route to Cairo. Fidel had urged him to take Aleida along and make it a honeymoon, but he left her behind. According to Aleida, this was because of his insistence on the need for revolutionary leaders to show austerity in their personal lives. “That was how he was,” she said.

Che’s new assignment was perceived by his men in La Cabaña as a
tronazo
, or demotion, especially since it came on the heels of Fidel’s order to halt the firing squads. “We were really upset when we heard he was going away,” Orlando Borrego recalled. “We had the impression that they had stripped him as commander of the regiment.” Borrego and a few others went to see Camilo Cienfuegos to complain, but Cienfuegos was unsympathetic. He said that they were soldiers and had to obey orders, and that Che would not approve of their behavior. Chastised but unmollified, they returned to La Cabaña. Then, apparently confirming their worst fears, they were told that the La Cabaña regiment was to be demobilized and sent to Las Villas. “It was like the house falling down,” Borrego said.