Che Guevara (86 page)

In August, at a conference held by the Organization of American States in Punta del Este, Uruguay, Che sent a message of gratitude to President Kennedy through Richard Goodwin, a young White House aide. “Thank you for Playa Girón,” he said to Goodwin. “Before the invasion, the revolution was shaky. Now, it is stronger than ever.”

Kennedy felt morally obliged to secure the release of the 1,200 prisoners taken at the Bay of Pigs, and Fidel had been rubbing his face in his predicament. Fidel offered to free them for 500 bulldozers; Kennedy was willing to give tractors. Fidel insisted on bulldozers, then asked for money. A haggling session had ensued, and talks had broken down in June. The POWs remained in Cuban prisons. (In December 1962 the prisoners were finally released in exchange for $62 million worth of medical supplies.)

Cuba was an open sore in Kennedy’s battle of wills with Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviet Union had awarded the Lenin Peace Prize to Fidel in May, and Kennedy worried that the Soviets would consolidate their foothold by installing missile bases on the island. Despite Khrushchev’s reassurances to the contrary, Attorney General Robert Kennedy warned of this prospect in April, in a memo to his brother. He urged prompt action. “The time has come for a showdown, for in a year or two years the situation will be vastly worse.”

Khrushchev seemed to revel in the Cold War competition. He pressed his advantage wherever he could. For years, Washington and Moscow had fought to assert power in the vacuums left by the retreating European colonial governments in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and Moscow seemed to be winning. Washington or its allies had taken beatings in Suez, Lebanon, Indonesia, and Hungary. The Soviet Union had raced ahead with its nuclear arms program, and the ensuing controversy in the United States over a “missile gap” had led Eisenhower to put U-2 spy planes over Russia. Gary Powers had been shot down in May 1960 and then appeared on Soviet television, apologetically confessing that he had been on a spying mission. (Before the end of 1961, U.S. intelligence would determine that the United States was far ahead of the Soviets in nuclear strike capability, but the supposed missile gap continued to influence American policy for decades.)

In 1957, the Soviet Union had become the first nation to put a satellite into space, and in early April 1961—as the Bay of Pigs invasion was being launched—the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was sent into orbit. On the eve of Kennedy’s decision about whether to go ahead with the invasion, a triumphant Khrushchev had trumpeted his victory in space, daring the West to catch up. JFK grumbled that he didn’t like having America come in second.

New flash points continued to erupt around the world. In the Congo, rival factions backed by East and West jockeyed for power. Rwanda, Tanganyika, and Sierra Leone had all gained independence, and in Angola, an armed resistance movement was struggling against Portuguese rule. In Algeria, the war for independence had already cost hundreds of thousands of lives and threatened to ignite a civil war within France itself. Top commanders of the French army, angered over de Gaulle’s decision to negotiate
Algerian independence with the Front de Libération National (FLN), had staged a revolt. In Southeast Asia, Vietcong guerrillas backed by Ho Chi Minh’s Communist North Vietnamese government in Hanoi were harassing the U.S.-backed government of South Vietnam. In neighboring Laos, Soviet and Chinese-backed Pathet Lao guerrillas launched a major offensive against the U.S.-backed Vientiane regime, forcing JFK to consider American military intervention there. In the end, a cease-fire was arranged, but Laos remained tense and unstable.

In the Caribbean, there was one less dictator to worry about after May 30, when Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo’s life was cut short by a fusillade of bullets. The assassination team’s weapons had been supplied by the CIA; Washington had been under mounting pressure from the Latin American “reformist” governments to do something about Trujillo as a quid pro quo for their backing of Washington’s anti-Castro policies.

Kennedy spent summer weekends in 1961 reading both Mao’s and Che’s writings on guerrilla warfare. He instructed the army to beef up its antiguerrilla capability, and by September a new elite counterinsurgency corps, the Green Berets, was created.

Kennedy and Khrushchev had met for the first time in early June at a tough-talking two-day session in Vienna. They agreed on neutrality for Laos, but their discussions about a nuclear test–ban treaty and disarmament were inconclusive. Khrushchev took the occasion to move another chess piece. Demanding that Berlin be “demilitarized,” he threatened to deny the Western occupying powers—France, Great Britain, and the United States—access to the city. The Western governments responded by sending more troops to Berlin. Invoking what he called the “worldwide Soviet threat,” Kennedy called for a huge increase in the U.S. military budget. In August, East German and Soviet troops erected the Berlin Wall, sealing off East and West Berlin, and for some tense hours U.S. and Soviet tanks faced off against each other in the newly divided city.

To ensure the United States’ continued hegemony in Latin America, Kennedy drew up an ambitious, unprecedented $20 billion, ten-year aid-development package for the region. He called it the Alliance for Progress. It was announced at the OAS conference in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in August. Kennedy sent the treasury aecretary, Douglas Dillon, to represent him. Fidel sent Che.

Punta del Este is a resort city on the Atlantic coast. The staid atmosphere was electrified by the arrival of Che, who immediately stole the show from the other ministers. Photographers and journalists eager for pictures and quotes followed him around everywhere. His adolescent bodyguard, Leonardo Tamayo, lent an exotic touch to the proceedings. While all the
other ministers attending the conference wore suits, Che wore his olive-drab military uniform. While the other ministers gave their speeches sitting down, he delivered his opening speech standing up. Douglas Dillon ostentatiously looked at the ceiling and yawned as Che lambasted the Alliance for Progress as a move to further isolate Cuba while extending U.S. control over the rest of Latin America’s nations through financial bribery. Che argued that the Cuban example of asserting political and economic independence—carrying out land and housing reform, kicking out the monopolies, and choosing its own trading partners and creditors—provided a more desirable blueprint for the rest of Latin America. The U.S. estimated that the Alliance for Progress would spur a 2.5 percent annual economic growth rate in Latin America. Cuba expected to attain a
10 percent
growth rate within a few years.

The president of Uruguay, Víctor Haedo (at right, in the white cap), is among those listening raptly to Che during the OAS conference in Punta del Este in August 1961.

Lest Cuba be seen as a spoiler, Che suggested a series of conditions that should be set by the countries that joined the proposed alliance: freedom to
export their raw materials wherever they chose; an end to the protectionist American subsidies of its own goods, which kept out competition; and aid to industrialize their economies, the cornerstone of economic independence and prosperity. Then, after a lengthy catalog of the multiple acts of U.S. aggression against Cuba, culminating in the recent Bay of Pigs invasion, Che waved an olive branch to the Americans. Cuba wished no harm to its neighbors, he said, and wanted only to be part of the American family of nations. The Cubans were willing to sit down and discuss differences with the United States at any time, so long as there were no preconditions. All Cuba asked for was a guarantee that it would not be attacked and would be granted the right to be
different
within its own borders. “We cannot stop exporting an example, as the United States wishes, because an example is something that transcends borders. What we do give is a guarantee that we will not export revolutions, we guarantee that not a single rifle will leave Cuba, that not a single weapon will leave Cuba for battle in any other country of America.” But he warned that Cuba could not guarantee that its example would not be imitated. Unless its neighbors improved social conditions in their countries, the example of Cuba would inevitably “take fire” and, as Fidel had warned in his July 26 speech a year earlier, “the cordillera of the Andes would be the Sierra Maestra of the Americas.”

As Che finished his two-hour-and-fifteen-minute speech, the hall was interrupted by a loud cry of
“Asesino!”
and then, as security guards scuffled with the heckler and dragged him outside, two other strangers climbed onto the podium where Che stood and began insulting him. Ignoring them, Che calmly left the conference room. Later, police informed the press that the hecklers were Cuban exiles who belonged to the Frente Democrático Revolucionario, the CIA-sponsored anti-Castro group.

Che’s family had traveled to Uruguay, and for the first time since leaving Argentina, he saw his brother Roberto and his sister Ana María. His father, mother, brother Juan Martín, sister Celia, and aunt Beatriz were there as well. Quite a few friends also came: Julio “Gaucho” Castro, whom Che had tried to get to come to Cuba; Beto Ahumada; Pepe Aguilar; his old business partner, “El Gordo” Carlos Figueroa; and that other
gordo
, Ricardo Rojo, who had resigned his post in Bonn and returned home since seeing Che in Cuba.

Che and his brother Roberto could not have been more different. Roberto had married a woman from one of Argentina’s aristocratic families, and, although publicly apolitical, he was a lawyer for the social welfare office of the Argentine navy, one of the most conservative organizations in the country. A family photo taken at Punta del Este shows Che, looking scruffy and dressed in fatigues, surrounded by his family. Standing slightly
behind him to one side, Roberto looks well groomed, conservatively dressed in slacks, a white shirt, a cardigan, and a tie. His hands are in his pockets, and he is staring intently at his brother. Roberto has never said if he and Che discussed their differences in Punta del Este. He would only comment that he found Che “radically different” from the brother he had seen eight years earlier: austere, driven, and evidently lacking in humor. When he remarked about this transformation, Roberto recalled, Che told him curtly. “I’m no longer interested in witticisms. I have a different sense of humor now.”

Che’s bodyguard, Tamayito, said that he witnessed an argument between the brothers. “Che criticized Roberto for serving as an instrument of repression,” he said, “and took the occasion to relate how
he
had evaded the military draft after graduating from medical school because he wasn’t willing to serve in the armed forces of a corrupt regime that was an ally of American imperialism.” Although Tamayito’s recollection of what was said may not be accurate, Che’s sermonizing would have rankled his brother. After all, Ernesto had been turned down by the draft because of his asthma, not because of any heightened political consciousness.

Roberto Ahumada, who had known Che in Córdoba and who was still close to the Guevara family, also found his old friend changed. “He had always been a free man,” Ahumada recalled, “and now here he was hooked into a process with responsibilities ... a position that implied constant danger. ... He was a more reserved man, more careful in the things he said.”

After a brusque meeting in public, Che arranged to spend a little time with his childhood friends in private. He handed out Cuban cigars to everyone, and they all smoked and chatted. According to Ahumada, one by one they offered their services to Che if he felt their skills could be of use to Cuba. Che seemed to find this amusing. “He joked with us, pulled our legs,” Ahumada recalled. “He told Carlitos [Figueroa], who was selling real estate, that in Cuba they didn’t need real estate specialists because the state owned the property, and nothing was for sale. And he ribbed me, telling me I wasn’t needed as a lawyer, either, because in Cuba there were no lawsuits, so what could I possibly do there?”

Carlos Figueroa thought that Che’s bantering was a sign that he really was “the same old Ernesto.” He seemed to be trying to impress them with tales of his thrilling experiences. “You can believe it or not,” he boasted, “but I went hunting on an elephant with Nehru.” And he said that when the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had recently come to Cuba, he had been so excited to meet the first man to go into space that he’d stayed glued to him for an entire day. Figueroa recalled that one night at dinner, Che’s aunt Beatriz leaned over and asked him about his new wife, Aleida. “She’s a
country girl,” Che said, “a
guajira
.” “And what is that?” Beatriz asked in bewilderment. “A
hacendada
?” Che laughed uproariously. His sheltered aunt seemed to imagine that he had married an aristocratic Cuban landowner’s daughter.

Che paid special attention to his youngest brother, Juan Martín, who had just turned eighteen and was still living at home with his mother. Juan Martín was halfheartedly studying journalism in Buenos Aires and had begun going out with a fellow student, María Elena Duarte, who was four years older than he was. He chafed under his father’s comparisons of his life with the achievements of his older brothers and sisters. At the same time, he idolized Che and read Marxist texts avidly. Sensitive to his brother’s predicament, Che tried to give him some direction during their time in Uruguay and invited him to come to Cuba and go to school there. Juan Martín was enthusiastic, but the decision about exactly when he would go was left up in the air.