The Death of Che Guevara (2 page)

1954
Batista again declares himself President of Cuba. (He takes the commas out of letters, reties his tie. He plays canasta for hours, sitting on the edge of his bed. He has the television stations show more horror movies, his favorites.) Peron begins an attack against the Catholic Church and its power. There is an insurrection in the city of Algiers against the French. The insurrection is quelled. (Certain theoretical proofs must be made in practice.) The war against the French will continue in the countryside for seven more years. In Vietnam Dien Bien Phu falls, overrun by the Communist forces. (The country surrounds the city: a children’s nursery rhyme.) Peron makes all labor decrees of his government binding on the now powerless unions. General Castillo Armas, leading his army of CIA-trained mercenaries (their symbol: the cross and the sword), overthrows the nationalist government of Guatemala.
1955
Batista, hoping to increase his popularity, establish some legitimacy, declares a general amnesty for political prisoners. Fidel Castro, a free man, goes to Mexico, Costa Rica, and the United States, to organize Cuban exiles and prepare an armed landing. In a suburban house near Mexico City, he meets an asthmatic Argentine doctor, Ernesto Guevara. They talk through the night. Peron bars Catholic education in the schools. He is excommunicated by the Pope. Peron signs an agreement with Standard Oil. Eva gone, and his economic programs in shambles, enthusiasm for Peron wanes in working-class quarters. They wish him well, but they do not wish to die for him. He is overthrown by the air force and the navy. Demonstrators for Peron in the public squares of Buenos Aires are bombed by air force planes. The Geneva Accords are signed, ending the fighting in Vietnam. The United States does not sign. Elections called for by the accords are never held. The United States establishes a puppet regime in Saigon.
1956
Fidel Castro, a bold man, announces in Mexico, “This year we will be free or else martyrs.” His boat, the
Granma
, leaves Mexico for Cuba, with eighty-two rebels aboard. To coincide with their landing, an armed rising is to be led by Frank Pais in Santiago. But the
Granma
is delayed by choppy seas. The rising in Santiago is put down. (“Put down”? And if one could find the words that would make so much death palpable? And to what end?) The rebels land, but they are betrayed by a guide and are surprised by the army in a sugar-cane field near Alegria de Pio. They are strafed from the air and the ground. Twelve men (or was it twenty? Mythology—or is it propaganda?—here has needs that long ago overwhelmed history) survive. The men, isolated, in small groups, lost, are helped by peasants, and make their way to the Sierra Maestra Mountains. There they are reunited with Castro. A few men, most of their weapons lost, wander in land barely known to them. “The days of the dictatorship,” Castro says, “are
numbered.” An uprising in the city of Budapest is crushed by the Soviet Army.
1957
Duvalier, a juju man, seizes power in Haiti. The Cuban guerrillas make successful attacks on the army barracks at La Plata, and at El Uvero. The army, the police, the militia arrest any suspected rebels throughout the island. The police shoot down Frank Pais on the streets of Santiago. A spontaneous strike is sparked by Pais’s death, paralyzing the western provinces of the island. Demonstrators and mourners at Pais’s funeral are machine-gunned by the army. Radicals leave the cities and make their way to join Castro in the mountains. Castro forms a second rebel column in the Sierras, under the command of Ernesto Guevara. The guerrillas declare El Hombrito, in the Sierras, a “free territory.” They decree a land reform for the region, set up a shoe “factory” to make boots for the peasants and soldiers, and they establish a radio station, a rebel newspaper, and a hospital. The urban resistance organizes a series of attacks on power plants and government buildings in Havana and Santiago. These urban rebels suffer heavy losses to the army and the police. More than twenty thousand will die during the Revolution. (In the Cuban Revolution death is in the cities.)
1958
The urban movement blows up the electric plant and the water works in Havana. Airport runways are cratered by rebel bombs. Raul Castro, with sixty-seven men, opens a second front in the northern provinces. Fidel Castro, an inspired leader, calls for a general strike in Havana. But the plans for the strike fall into government hands, and it is crushed, its leaders arrested and shot. Street battles break out in several towns throughout the island. The army begins a major offensive against the Sierra strongholds. (In a guerrilla war, one does not engage in battle unless certain of victory.) The army occupies rebel positions at Las Mercedes, and continues to advance, terrorizing the peasants who have been sympathetic to the rebels, and who are now without protection. The army occupies Las Vegas, four hours’ march from the rebel “capital.” The rebels begin a counteroffensive at the San Domingo River. Two army battalions are routed, fleeing in disorder. At El Jigue the rebels take two hundred fifty army prisoners and hand them over to the Red Cross, as part of “Operation Trojan Horse.” (That is: the Cuban Army vindictively tortures and then kills rebel prisoners. Thus there is no point in surrendering to the government, you may as well fight until you are killed. But the rebels free prisoners unharmed. In any engagement government soldiers can save their lives simply by giving up.) The columns of Che Guevara and Camillo Cienfuegos recapture Las Vegas. The army, its spirit broken, turns and withdraws from the Sierras. The Guevara and Cienfuegos columns begin a march down from the mountains, into the plains, towards the cities. Fidel Castro’s column descends into Oriente Province. Raul Castro organizes a Congress of Peasants in the liberated areas. Guevara’s column moves across the
length of the island, to Santa Clara. Batista’s air force bombards the outskirts of Santa Clara. The columns of Guevara and Cienfuegos, raggedy, tired, hungry, and footsore from the march, meet outside the city, and begin the battle. The army garrison capitulates. Batista flees to the Dominican Republic. In Algeria, the French Army revolts. De Gaulle becomes President of France. In Venezuela, Perez Jimenez is overthrown by nationalist army officers under Fabricio Ojeda. In Peru, Hugo Blanco begins organizing peasant unions.
1959
Che and Camillo’s columns advance on Havana. Fidel Castro’s column crosses the island, and the three enter the capital in triumph. Guerrillas appear in the countryside in Paraguay. There are rebellions in Panama, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. (All are defeated by the army.) Haiti is invaded by rebels (the rebellion fails). Peronist guerrillas appear in Argentina. The Peasant Leagues are organized by Juliao in Brazil. The Vietnamese Communists organize guerrilla resistance to the United States. Before his eyes, the world of the second half of the century appears to take shape. Death from hunger, death from parasites, death from cold, these have been the most ordinary facts for most of the people of the world. Suddenly, with the success of the Chinese Revolution, the Vietnamese Revolution, the Algerian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, these facts seem extraordinary. The people of the industrialized countries will learn that there is not, has never been silence. What was called a time of peace was only the moment before the victim cried out. The Chinese Revolution, the Vietnamese Revolution, the Algerian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution: a nursery refrain: the country surrounds the city: the revolution is in the countryside, among the peasants. Colonialism is a city being strangled, and as it dies it releases its final savagery. It becomes a fire on the skin of the colonized countries.
But colonialism is dying
.
1960
(Year of the Agrarian Reform) Cuba and the Soviet Union sign a commercial treaty. Eisenhower orders the CIA to train Cuban exiles for an invasion of the island. (The CIA are in this text, but as a subtext, in secret. One will not know of them until, like a pun, a mistake, a slip of the tongue—that joke just kills me!—they break the surface, break cover.) A French ship, carrying arms for the Cuban government, explodes in Havana Harbor, killing seventy; Castro, a suspicious man, accuses the CIA of sabotage. The United States refuses to buy the remainder of that year’s Cuban sugar quota, some seven hundred thousand pounds of sweet stuff; the Soviet Union agrees to purchase this residue. At a mass meeting outside the Presidential Palace in Havana, Ernesto Guevara thanks the Soviet Union: “Cuba is a glorious island in the center of the Caribbean, defended by the rockets of the greatest power in history.” The Cuban government nationalizes the telephone company, the sugar mills, the oil refineries—belonging, as so much of the island does, to U.S. corporations. The United States declares
a partial embargo on trade with Cuba. (The steps seem now as ordained, as formal, as some terrible dance … but you are unwilling … your partner comes towards you.) The Chinese government denounces its “Elder Brother” the Soviet Union for its unfamilial dictatorial ways. The Soviet Union recalls all its technicians from China and begins its own economic blockade. In Guatemala, Yon Sosa, a dissident army officer, establishes a guerrilla center. It is a lyric time in Latin America. Rebels hope that the bourgeoisie of their country will “side with the nation” against the imperialists. Once power is gained a social revolution can be carried out under the protection of Soviet missiles (Cuba’s example is a difficult poem to interpret). Paz Estenssoro, leader of the Bolivian MNR, grown rich, his party rotten with U.S. money, becomes, once again, President of Bolivia. The Belgian Congo declares its independence. Moise Tshombe, financed by Belgian mining interests, leads a secessionist movement in Katanga Province. Prime Minister Lumumba appeals to the United Nations. Lumumba, betrayed, ignored by the UN forces, his death desired, plotted by the CIA (those jokers!), will be delivered to his enemies and assassinated. Tshombe becomes head of the Congo.
1961
(Year of Education) One hundred thousand young people leave Havana to begin a great literacy campaign in the countryside; peasants of all ages will be taught to read. The United States breaks off all diplomatic relations with Cuba. Ernesto Guevara—an advocate of strong central planning, and of socialist development based not on “profit accounting” but on the social needs of the people, becomes Minister of Industries. He begins an ambitious program of factory development. (The epic of industrialization, read as the epic of national independence: plans for the construction of a sulpho-metallic plant, “Patrice Lumumba,” producing three hundred metric tons of sulphuric acid daily; a brush factory; a screw factory; an iron and steel foundry; a factory for picks and shovels; factories for welding electrodes; barbed-wire factories; a cement plant; the island has iron ores, hemalites, magnetites, laterites, nickel, cobalt, chromite, manganese, silicon, dolomites, limestone, copper; plans for a shipping industry; sucrochemistry, fermentation of sugar, paper pulp from bagazo, synthetic fibers from sugar, plywood from sugar pulp; machinery for cutting cane; technical training for workers; radio and television courses. “We must perfect the plan’s control mechanisms, eliminate unemployment, establish work standards, avoid supply shortages, subsidize laid-off workers, establish complete salary justice.” Cuba will read the poem of industrialization not in two hundred years, but in ten years! To arrive, within the shortest possible time, at socialism.) The Central Intelligence Agency, and the anti-Castro forces trained by them, bomb the Havana and Santiago airports, to prepare for the landing of their expeditionary force. At the funeral for the victims of this bombing,
Castro, an angry man, declares the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution. The anti-Castro forces land from U.S. ships at the Bay of Pigs. Their plan: to set up a small beachhead, declare themselves the free government of Cuba, and, as that “government,” request that the U.S. military invade. But the Cuban Army and militia surround the invaders, and within two days take twelve hundred prisoners. The U.S. declares a total embargo on all trade with Cuba. (An embargo: All Cuban machinery before the Revolution was made in the United States; all spare parts and supplies have come from there. Now each machine feeds on the others, till there are no parts left.) John Kennedy begins the Alliance for Progress in Latin America, to “promote the continent’s development” (or at least that development which does not infringe on the prerogatives of the United States). The U.S., a generous donor, will provide the bullets for the army, the penicillin for the hospitals, the textbooks for the schools, the ideas for the government, the most modern techniques for the police … the bullets for the army. Fidel Castro establishes the United Party of Socialist Revolution: “I am a Marxist-Leninist, and I shall remain one until the end of my life.” The United States has formed its own interpretation of the Cuban poem. And it will enforce it. Kennedy intensifies the anti-guerrilla campaigns in Latin America, in Vietnam and Laos, increasing the number of elite forces and advisers. The Venezuelan ruling party splits over the extent (and the evil) of United States control of their industries, their country. Fabricio Ojeda, now a prominent parliamentary delegate, resigns and joins the guerrillas. The nationalist party in Peru, APRA, divides over the necessity of armed struggle for the independence of Peru. (Second Havana Declaration: “We cannot stand in our doorway and watch the corpse of imperialism carried by, with the national bourgeoisie and the Soviet Union as pallbearers. It is the duty of revolutionaries to make the revolution. One cannot make the revolution without willing it.”) Luis de la Puente sets up the “Rebel APRA.”
1962
(Year of Planning) The Organization of American States expels Cuba. Cuba institutes the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations, the block-level organs of party rule, party participation, party surveillance, party control. Rationing is introduced for food and clothing, with severe penalties for speculators, hoarders, and (that useful but vague category) counterrevolutionaries. (Many will be arrested, imprisoned; at the end of each of these declarations, these sentences, many will find themselves sentenced. Many more, when allowed, and with very few of their possessions unconfiscated, will flee Cuba for the wealthier United States.) The United States warns the Soviet Union that it must remove its missiles from Cuba. The U.S. Navy is sent to blockade the island and turn back all Soviet ships. The U.S. Marines prepare for invasion; the people of North America, speechless audience to their kings, think on last