Four researchers and the legend
Adolfo Gilly, Helena Hirata, Carlos M. Vilas and the PRT (Argentina) [40 pages]
• £2/$3.50/20FF. Cheque payable to P. Rousset, IIRE, Postbus 53290, 1007 Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Four biographers, two Mexican, one American, and one French, try to capture a unique personality, and a personal history that, 30 years later, has still not revealed all its mysteries.
Janette Habel
• Che: Ernesto Guevara, une légende du siècle by Pierre Kalfon
Paris, Seuil éd., 628 p., 148 F
• Ernesto Guevara, tambien conocido como el Che by Paco Ignacio Taibo II
• La vida en rojo
Buenos Aires, Espasa, 1997, 450 p. Jorje I. Castañeda
• Che Guevara, a revolutionary
Jon Lee Anderson
London, Bantam Press, 1997, 814 p.
How can one write a biography of Ernesto "Che" Guevara without also writing the history of the Cuban revo-lution? When, how and why did the tragedy emerge? And why the Che myth? In different ways, these four biographers have provided the answers of historians. But Cuban history is still misty. Many of Guevara's writings, particularly those produced after he left Cuba, are still unknown. The events in 1964-65 that fixed Guevara's tragic destiny are still classified as Cuban state secrets.
It is hard to reconstruct the 1960s, looking backward from the end of the centhat the Stalinist Soviet Union played in tury. The Sino-Soviet split, and the role To order the books and magazines mentioned in International Viewpoint, try your nearest progressive bookstore, or write to La Brèche, 9 rue de Tunis, 75011 Paris, France O (+33 1) 43676357 fax 43792961 (English, French and Spanish spoken). Where no price is given, we suggest you enclose US$ 10 in any convertible the world were only just beginning to be perceived by the left.
After the collapse of the USSR, tongues have loosened, and mouths have opened. The partial opening of archives in
Moscow and Washington helped Anderson and Castañeda. Anderson also benefited from the support of Aleida March, Guevara's companion, and from his long period of residence in Cuba.
The guerrilla fighter
Che Guevara swept down from the
Sierra Maestra mountains bathed in tremendous prestige. An Argentine, he had come to fight for the liberation of a foreign land, where he had demonstrated exceptional military and political skills.
Taibo Il skilfully recreates the guerrilla warfare campaign in the Escambray region, and the fall of Santa Clara, which provoked the collapse of the Batista regime. The Argentine strategist's forces surrounded the town, and took it. Che had never set foot there before. His success was the result of the unity that he had been able to impose on the various rebel organisations in Las Villas province. Che proved to be a talented negotiator, despite being a toreigner, and given that the "26 movement was divided to the point where the Revolutionary Directory had
Che was a strategist, an ideologue and a political leader. An intellectual and a man of action. Heterodox, heretical, nonconformist, and irreverent.
He gathered the lessons of his military victories in a short book, Guerrilla Warfare. His ideas bear little resemblance to the caricature of guerrilla focos (nuclei) that they acquired later on. Nevertheless, his arguments are the product of a specific experience, in a social formation where the land question was key. developed Latin America, the countryside must be the fundamental terrain of the armed struggle," he wrote.
Pierre Kalfon provides details how Guevara created a liberated territory in the Sierra Maestra, with a "field hospital," school, the El Cubano Libre newspaper, and Radio Rebelde. "Little by little, the gaujiros (peasants) overcame their fear and began to join the rebels As the initially urban guerrilla group became more and more peasant-based, the peasants became more and more willing to become guerrillas," Kalfon explains (p. 212).
Che underplayed the importance of urban struggles, and did not trust urban leaders. All four biographers agree that
Guevara's distrust of the leaders of the 26
July Movement (M-26-7) was political.
The right-wing of the rebel movement was strongly represented there. Guevara violently denonced the opportunism of M-
26-7 leaders, and pushed for the concentration of power in the hands of Fidel
Castro. By doing so, he underestimated the fundamental role the urban support networks in Santiago had played, under the leadership of
Frank Pais, ever since the landing of the Granma. The guerrilla group had been decimated shortly after landing on the island in December 1956, and only survived thanks to aid from the urban network
Dozens of new reinforcements arrived to join Fidel's group in the first few weeks of
1957. Later, when Che took a small group of guerrillas to Bolivia, there would be no such aid from the towns.
Even in the mountains, the Che legend was already spreading. He read Goethe,
Victor Hugo, and Pablo Neruda. "He is feared, because he is a demanding and rigorous commander, but he is also respected, because he is fair, and accepts no privileges" (Kalfon, p. 207). In 1960, Time magazine presented him as the "brain" of the revolution (Kalfon, p. 293). After the rebels took power, Che's political role was indeed decisive, as Castro confirmed: "Che was, from a theoretical point of view, much better educated than I. He was a more advanced revolutionary than I" (Castañeda p. 113). The intellectual journey
All four biographies trace Guevara's early intellectual development in a similar way. We now know, for example, how the impact of the Bolivian and Guatemalan revolutions pushed him towards Marxism, even though he never joined a Communist partin the Sierra Maestra, he came closer to the pre-revolutionary Popular Socialist Party (PSP), the Cuban CP, recognising it as a potential ally against the right wing of the M-26-7. He linked up with Raul Castro, who had been educated in the Communist Youth. But the PSP tried to
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION currency to cover the postage costs of the publisher. To annonce your publication in this free listing, send a sample copy to "Book reviews" c/o International Viewpoint, PECI, BP
85, 75522 Paris cedex 11, France.
22 International Viewpoint #294
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
Populism in Latin America
win hegemony in the new party Fidel was trying to build. With the M-26-7 weakened and divided, the old Stalinists thought their hour had come, and occupied the key posts in the new party. "Some old cadre started to occupy management positions, and enjoy various privileges: pretty secretaries, Cadillacs, and air conditioning.
They got used to their new lifestyle very quickly. They preferred to keep the doors closed, so that the air conditioning would work better, leaving the Cuban heat outside where the workers waited," commented Guevara. Castañeda shows how this sectarianism would affect Che's later judgement on the Soviet Union.
Guevara gradually distanced himself from the Soviet model, as the result of what he saw and heard during his trips to the USSR and Central Europe. After the Cuban missile crisis, he was furious at the way the Soviet Union had so nonchalantly violated Cuban sovereignty. His indignation grew stronger when, responsible for Cuba's economic affairs, he was confronted with Moscow commercial practices: arrogant and incompetent bureaucrats, and a desire for hegemony. The ethics of power
Being in power while Cuba was forced to make dramatic economic choices in response to the break with Washington changed the relationship between Che and his comrades from the Sierra. As a minister, Guevara was austere, frugal, disciplined and driven by ethical concerns about how to exercise power. Many of his comrades did not share this outlook. His iconoclast personality and non-conformism, prominent in Jon Lee Anderson's account, shocked Cuba's apprentice bureaucrats.
"The Argentine,"
• An irritation. His leadership methods were very different from those of Fidel, as Anderson illustrates. His intransigence made things awkward. He had little taste for diplomacy, in the sense of realpolitik and opportunism. Castañeda has a psychological "explanation" - apparently, asthmatics detest ambivalent situations!
The tensions become more visible in 1962, as the economic problems emerge. Guevara's rigor leads him to make harsh judgements about the economy. He denounces a "crisis of production" which Fidel immediately denies (Castañeda, p. 272). Guevara is the only leader to stand his ground against Fidel. He insisted on the importance of a public debate on the priorities and strategy of economic development.
Here all four authors offer simplistic explanations. They fail to understand what Guevara was actually suggesting, and present his plan as either unconscious totalitarianism or unworkable voluntarism. Castañeda calls it "fundamentalism." Taibo says Che is the prisoner of "neanderthal Marxism!"
Guevara's ideas are certainly not free of errors. He was constantly modifying and developing his arguments. But what was essential was not the debate about the law of value. Che was engaged in a radical critique of bureaucratic socialism, and searching for an alternative model. Che's "new man" (actually more a new leader) is an inaccurate sketch — what he was working towards was an ethical and humanist conception of power.
But Che's views were ignored. Cuba's increasing co-operation with the Soviet Union made his position increasingly shaky. He was accused of Maoism (the Sino-Soviet split was at its height) and Trotskyism. Castañeda reports that Che's Russian-Spanish interpreter was actually a KGB agent assigned to spy on him.
In his Algiers speech, Che called into question the true nature of Soviet relations with the Third World. The rupture is confirmed. "Che now knew that he was a handicap to Fidel in his relationship with the Soviets," writes Anderson (p. 677). He The Bolivian mousetrap
Why, and in what conditions did Che choose first the Congo, then Bolivia? What led to his death? Kalfon, Anderson che and Castañeda converge in their explanations. After researching the Soviet and
U.S. archives, Castañeda is an authority on the relationship between Havana and
Moscow. Anderson has had access to important Cuban sources. He claims it was
Fidel who chose the Congo, as a less delicate destination than Latin America. After all, the USSR supported the Congolese rebels [while Latin American Communist parties were mostly opposed to Che's call for new armed struggles].
After the failure of the Congo expedition, it was again Fidel who organised the
Bolivian project, with the "support"
(which would prove fatal) of local CP leader Mario Monje. Anderson's account
(p. 677) is based on an important source, the then unpublished diary of Harry
"Pombo" Villegas, Che's bodyguard and one of his closest comrades. Official
Cuban sources still claim it was Che himself who made the choice.
In any case, Bolivia proved to be a réal mousetrap. The support promised by
Monje did not materialise.
CP leader later denied having made any agreement with Castro, but why believe him? The urban support network in Bolivia was quickly dismantled by the CIA
According to Castañeda, it had been infiltrated from the beginning
Castañeda claims Che left Cuba without any knowledge of Monje's opposition to the guerrilla project (p.413).
Fidel, and Cuban CP head of
Latin American affairs Mañuel
Pineiro certainly did know, however.
When the Soviet Union discovered that Che was in Bolivia, they threatened to suspend their aid to Cuba if Havana intervened to save him.
Totally isolated, Guevara was doomed. The guerrillas were abandoned, their only liaison agent,
Ivan, was recalled from La Paz to
Cuba, where Guevara's reinforcements were prevented from leaving.
As Castañeda argues, how else can one explain why the Cubans did not publicise Che's presence in
Bolivia, since the Americans and the Russians already knew. It is easy to imagine the intercould have been organised to
Thirty years later, mystery, in plots and in emerges above all this, dian, a lucid dreamer and a methodical rebel. Not as a cultural icon, but a breaker of icons. *
Reprinted from La Quinzaine littéraire
#719. 1 July 1997
23