Che Guevara (105 page)

On March 15, 1965, a little over two weeks after Che gave an inflammatory speech in Algiers that was critical of the Soviet Union, he was met at the airport in Havana by Fidel; his wife, Aleida; the old Communist Carlos Rafael Rodríguez (with the goatee); and Cuban president Osvaldo Dorticós.

When Che arrived at Rancho Boyeros airport on March 15, Aleida was waiting for him, together with Fidel, President Dorticós, and, perhaps most significantly, the old Communist Carlos Rafael Rodríguez. Aleida would not speak about what happened next, nor did Fidel, but it seems that Che went directly from the airport to a closed-door meeting with Fidel that lasted for many hours. Some observers have interpreted the meeting as the fateful climax to the tension that had supposedly built up between the two of them. A knowledgeable Cuban government source said elliptically that there were “probably” some “strong words” from Fidel, but that they would have been less over fundamental differences of opinion than Che’s “tactlessness” in his speech in Algiers. In this context, the presence of Carlos Rafael Rodríguez at the airport can probably be interpreted as providing representation on behalf of the ruffled Kremlin.

Maurice Halperin saw it rather differently. “I was astonished when I read the speech a few days later,” Halperin wrote. “When I asked a high official in the ministry of foreign trade what the meaning was of Che’s blast, he answered with a broad grin: ‘It represents the Cuban point of view.’” Halperin concluded that this was quite likely. He thought that Fidel’s appearance at the airport to welcome Che back to Cuba personally was his way of showing his approval. Indeed, Che’s speech in Algiers was later printed in
Política Internacional
, the official government quarterly, which would seem to erase any doubts about Fidel’s own position.

Most evidence suggests that Che and Fidel were working in tandem, even coordinating their public remarks. In a speech on January 2 commemorating the sixth anniversary of the revolution, Fidel had delivered a strong critique of the Soviet socialist model—though without mentioning it by name—and, for the first time ever to the Cuban people, spoke of “problems” existing within the socialist fraternity of nations. Cuba’s people had the right to speak with their own voice, he said, and to interpret the ideas of Marx, Engels, and Lenin according to their own perceptions and conditions, and they should be prepared to survive on their own if the current aid received from abroad were to be abruptly halted. It was an unequivocal message to Moscow that Fidel would not accept efforts by the Soviet Union to impose its political model in Cuba.

On March 13, two days before Che’s return, Fidel spoke at Havana University, allusively blasting both China and the Soviet Union for their rivalry and for hypocrisy in supporting “people’s liberation” while doing nothing to help the Vietnamese in the face of escalating American military attacks. “We propose that Vietnam should be given all the aid which may be necessary! Aid in weapons and men! Our position is that the socialist camp run whatever risks may be necessary!” There was, he reminded
his audience, a recent precedent for the kind of solidarity he was referring to: Cuba itself. During the missile crisis, Cuba had volunteered to face the threat of “thermonuclear war” over its acceptance of Soviet missiles on its soil for the purpose of strengthening the socialist camp. Cuba continued to believe its historic duty was to fight against Yankee imperialism, Fidel said, and Cubans felt a bond with those making efforts elsewhere in the world.
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But Che had gone even farther than Fidel in Algiers, saying everything he felt and believed—and damn the consequences. He had issued his challenge, and there was no stepping back. His remarks made it harder than ever for Fidel to defend him to the Soviets. So Fidel “suggested” that he leave Cuba immediately and return to Africa, to lead the Cuban guerrilla contingent already in training for the Congo mission. It was not where Che’s heart lay, but the conditions in South America were not yet ready, while the present moment in Africa seemed to offer real revolutionary possibilities. Che agreed to go.

Juan Carreterro—Ariel—said that Manuel Piñeiro and Fidel himself had “urged” Che to go to the Congo. It would be for only a couple of years, and in the meantime, they promised him, Piñeiro’s people would continue building the guerrilla infrastructure in Latin America. The Congo war would be an invaluable toughening-up exercise for Che’s fighters and would provide a useful screening process for those who would go with him afterward to South America. As Piñeiro recalled it, Che didn’t need much convincing. “Che came back really excited by his contacts with the Africans, so Fidel told him: ‘Why don’t you go to Africa?’”

On March 22, Che gave a speech in the Ministry of Industries, briefing his colleagues about his African trip but making no announcement that he was leaving. A week later, he visited the
guajiro
veterans from his old sierra column who worked on the Ciro Redondo experimental farm in Matanzas and told them that he would be going off to “cut cane” for a while. Back in Havana, he assembled some of his closest comrades at the ministry and told them the same story. Very few people knew that Che was making ready to leave Cuba for good, but that was his intention. His return to Havana amounted to a fifteen-day disappearing act in which he gradually
withdrew from sight, avoiding public contact and saying good-bye to a few people who could be trusted to keep the secret. For the Cuban people at large, Che’s well-publicized arrival back from Africa at the airport on March 15 was the last time they would ever see him.

Che’s children would never see him as their father again, and the youngest of them would retain no memory of him at all. Che had been away for the birth, on February 24, of his last child, a boy Aleida had named Ernesto.

Aleida was upset. She asked Che not to go, but his decision was final. He promised her that when the revolution was in a more “advanced stage,” she could join him. Not long before he left, they were eating lunch with their nanny, Sofía, and he asked Sofía what had happened to the widows of the Cubans who had died in the revolution. Had they remarried? Yes, Sofía told him, a lot of them had. Che turned to Aleida and, pointing to his coffee cup, said, “In that case, this coffee you serve me, may you serve it to another.”

At dawn on April 1, Che left his home of the past eight years disguised as Ramón Benítez, a staid-looking, clean-shaven man wearing glasses.

The last Guevara family portrait, March 1965. Che is holding his newborn son, Ernesto. He has his arm around Camilo, who is next to Aliusha. Aleida is holding Celia on her lap.

“One fine day, I appeared in Dar es Salaam,” Che wrote in his Congo
Pasajes
. “Nobody knew me; not even the ambassador [Pablo Ribalta], an old comrade in arms, ... could identify me upon my arrival.” He had made a circuitous journey via Moscow and Cairo, accompanied by José Maria “Papi” Martínez Tamayo, his roving guerrilla emissary. Papi had been involved in the missions in Guatemala and in Argentina, and he had assisted in Tania’s clandestine training. They traveled with Víctor Dreke, the Cuban officer who had been selected as the official—and acceptably black—commander of the Cuban internationalist brigade. Che was full of high expectations. “Africa for adventuring, and then that’s it for the world,” he had written to his mother a decade earlier. Since then, Che had seen a great deal of the world, but too often within the restrictions imposed by his role as a government minister and a VIP. Now, he was free once again to be himself.

“I had left behind almost eleven years of work for the Cuban Revolution at Fidel’s side, a happy home—to the extent one can call the house where a revolutionary dedicated to his work lives—and a bunch of kids who barely knew of my love,” he wrote. “The cycle was beginning again.”

Che and his companions arrived in Dar es Salaam on April 19, 1965. While they waited for more members of the Cuban brigade, who were traveling in groups using different itineraries, they were housed on a little farm Ribalta had rented on the outskirts of the city. Pulling out a Swahili dictionary, Che
chose new names for the three of them. Dreke was henceforth Moja (One); Papi was Mbili (Two); and Che himself was Tatu (Three).

Laurent Kabila and the other Congolese rebel leaders were away in Cairo for a summit meeting. A mid-level Congolese political representative in Dar es Salaam, a young man named Godefroi Chamaleso, who was contacted and introduced to the three men, was told only that they were a Cuban advance party. The explanation for the presence of two white men in the group was that Tatu was a doctor, spoke French, and had experience as a guerrilla. Mbili was there because of his vast and invaluable guerrilla experience. Che told Chamaleso that the number of Cubans coming—130—was greater than that originally planned and that they wanted to enter Congolese territory as soon as possible. Chamaleso went off to Cairo to inform Kabila of their arrival, still unaware that the man he had met was Che.

When to reveal Tatu’s true identity, and to whom, loomed as a difficult decision. “I hadn’t told any of the Congolese of my decision to fight here,” Che wrote. “In my first conversation with Kabila I hadn’t been able to do so because nothing had been decided, and after the plan was approved [by Fidel] it would have been dangerous for my project to be known before I arrived at my destination; there was a lot of hostile territory to cross. I decided, therefore, to present a fait accompli and proceed according to how they reacted to my presence. I was not unaware of the fact that a negative response would place me in a difficult position, because now I couldn’t go back, but I calculated that it would be difficult for them to refuse me. In essence, I was blackmailing them with my physical presence.”

Che had made the same commitment he had demanded of Masetti’s followers when they prepared to leave for Argentina. He had told them then that they should consider themselves dead from that moment on. If they survived—though survival was doubtful for the majority—they would probably spend the next ten or twenty years of their lives fighting. This was the nature of the obligation Che had now assumed for himself. He had not just “left Cuba” but truly burned his bridges. He had written a note to Fidel that was at once a farewell letter, a waiver of any responsibility the Cuban government might be perceived as having for his actions, and a last will and testament:

“Fidel,” he began:

At this moment I remember many things—when I met you in the [Mexico City] house of María Antonia, when you proposed I come along, all the tensions involved in the preparations. One day they came by and asked me who should be notified in case of death, and the real
possibility of that fact struck us all. Later we knew it was true, that in revolution one wins or dies (if it is a real one).

Today everything has a less dramatic tone, because we are more mature. But the event repeats itself. I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban revolution in its territory, and I say good-bye to you, to the comrades, to your people, who are now mine.

I formally resign my positions in the leadership of the party, my post as minister, my rank of commander, and my Cuban citizenship. Nothing legal binds me to Cuba. ...

Recalling my past life, I believe I have worked with sufficient integrity and dedication to consolidate the revolutionary triumph. My only serious failing was not having had more confidence in you from the first moments in the Sierra Maestra, and not having understood quickly enough your qualities as a leader and a revolutionary.
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I have lived magnificent days, and at your side I felt the pride of belonging to our people in the brilliant yet sad days of the Caribbean [missile] crisis. Seldom has a statesman been more brilliant than you in those days. ...

Other nations of the world call for my modest efforts. I can do that which is denied you because of your responsibility at the head of Cuba, and the time has come for us to part.

I want it known that I do so with a mixture of joy and sorrow. I leave here the purest of my hopes as a builder and the dearest of my loved ones. And I leave a people who received me as a son. That wounds a part of my spirit. I carry to new battlefronts the faith that you taught me, the revolutionary spirit of my people, the feeling of fulfilling the most sacred of duties: to fight against imperialism wherever one may be. This comforts and more than heals the deepest wounds.