Che Guevara (82 page)

A second urban reform law banned Cubans from owning more than one home and took over all rented properties, making their inhabitants tenants of the state. On October 19, Washington responded to the latest mass seizures—which had affected many American companies—by imposing a trade embargo on Cuba, prohibiting all exports to the island except food and medicine. On October 25, Fidel nationalized 166 U.S.-owned companies,
in effect signing the death certificate for all remaining American commercial interests in Cuba. He boasted that he had both the people and the arms he needed to fight off an invasion. By now, Washington knew this claim was true. On October 28, the U.S. government filed a protest with the OAS, charging Cuba with having received “substantial” arms shipments since the summer from the Soviet bloc. The next day, Ambassador Bonsal was recalled to Washington yet again, this time for “extended consultations.” He was never to return to Cuba. By then, Che was in Prague, en route to Moscow.

On November 7, Che stood in a place of honor next to Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow’s wintry Red Square, overlooking the annual military parade commemorating the forty-third anniversary of the October Revolution. Nikolai Leonov, his interpreter, watched from the stand where the diplomatic corps was assembled. Moments earlier, Che had been at Leonov’s side, shivering from the cold, when a messenger had come to inform him that he was invited to join Khrushchev. “Che said no,” Leonov recalled, “he didn’t feel important enough to be in a place that was so sacred to him.” The messenger
left but soon returned. The Soviet premier was insistent. Che turned to Leonov and asked what he should do; Leonov told him to go. To Leonov’s knowledge, it was the first time a person who was not a head of state “or at least a Party chief” had been invited to stand on the hallowed Supreme Soviet tribune above the red marble tomb where Lenin’s embalmed body lay in state.

In November 1960, Che traveled to Moscow, where he met with Nikita Khrushchev. Che’s translator, the KGB officer Nikolai Leonov, is standing next to him.

José Pardo Llada was also in Red Square that day, as part of a Cuban press delegation invited by the Soviet Journalists’ Union. Seeing Guevara on the exclusive terrace of the Presidium, with Nikita Khrushchev next to him and surrounded by the luminaries of the Communist world, he noted that “Guevara, in the midst of the international paraphernalia of Communism, looked satisfied, radiant, happy.”

Che was on his first tour of the Communist bloc, a two-month trip that took him to Prague, Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Irkutsk, Beijng, Shanghai, Pyongyang, and Berlin. The main purpose of Che’s trip was to secure the sale of that portion of Cuba’s upcoming sugar crop not already committed to Moscow, a mission that had taken on some urgency following Eisenhower’s decision to halt the purchase of all Cuban sugar for the rest of 1960. He knew that this was only a prelude to a total American ban on Cuban sugar imports, but he could hardly have been unhappy about that prospect; it was, after all, something he had worked hard to bring about ever since the rebels’ victory.

Che had left Havana on October 22, three days after the U.S. embargo was announced. He was accompanied by Leonardo Tamayo, his eighteen-year-old bodyguard, who had been with him since the Sierra Maestra; Héctor Rodríguez Llompart, his messenger for the talks with Mikoyan; and several Cuban, Chilean, and Ecuadorean economists who worked for him at INRA. At their first stop, Prague, Che toured a tractor factory, gave interviews, and obtained a $20 million credit to build an auto assembly plant in Cuba. In Moscow, between talks with economic, military, and trade officials and tours of factories, he went sightseeing. He visited the Lenin Museum and the Kremlin, laid a wreath at Lenin’s tomb, attended a Tchaikovsky concert, and, with Mikoyan, watched a performance at the Bolshoi Theater. Leonov went with him everywhere.

“He was highly organized,” Leonov recalled. “In that sense he was not at all Latin, rather more like a German. Punctual, precise, it was an amazement to all of us who knew Latin America. But the other members of his delegation were really undisciplined. One day, the [sugar] negotiations were programmed to start at ten in the morning. Che came down to where the cars were waiting, alone; none of the other members of the delegation had come down yet, they were all still half-asleep. I asked him: ‘Che, shall we
wait? Don’t worry, I’ll tell the minister to wait for us for fifteen or twenty minutes.’ He said: ‘No, let’s go alone,’ and he went off to the negotiations accompanied only by me. When we arrived the Soviets were amazed because they had the whole delegation sitting there, and on the other side was only Che.”

The meeting began, and, after twenty minutes or so, the other members of the Cuban delegation started arriving, out of breath and without ties. “Che said nothing, not a single word of criticism, not even the slightest expression altered his face—nothing. But that night, he told me: ‘Listen, Nicolás, organize a visit for us tomorrow to Lenin’s Museum, and tell the guide to place special emphasis on the discipline Lenin demanded of the Politburo members of that time, tell him to talk about that.’”

Leonov arranged everything, just as Che had requested, and the next day the whole group went off to the museum. “The young woman giving the history began to talk about Lenin’s administrative discipline,” Leonov recalled. “She explained that when someone was late to a meeting of the Council of Ministers, the first punishment was a very serious warning. The second time they were late, it was a heavy fine and their lapse was published in the Party newspaper. The third time, they were fired.” Che’s comrades took the hint. Leonov could see the impact on their faces and on Che’s, which was “grave, ironic.”

Leonov said that after the example of Lenin was suggested at the museum, discipline problems among the entourage ended. Héctor Rodríguez Llompart, however, was punished for having done a sloppy job proofreading the text of a commercial treaty that was to be signed with the government of Romania. Che spotted an error that Llompart had missed and upbraided him furiously. “He said horrible things,” Llompart recalled. “I felt crushed, but I had no excuse. I simply hadn’t done what I was supposed to do. At first he reacted violently, demanding explanations, but then he became aware of my humiliation and stopped talking. He knew I understood my mistake and that I was ashamed of it.” That wasn’t the end of it, however. A few days later, Llompart roused himself early to join the rest of the delegation for a sightseeing tour of Leningrad. Che saw him and asked: “Where are you going?” “Well, Comandante,” Llompart said, “to Leningrad.” “No,” Che told him, “first you must learn to fulfill your duty.” The group left without Llompart. The sanctions against him lasted for several days.

Che was hardest on those he felt had the ability to become true revolutionaries. If they failed, he could be merciless; if they passed muster, he repaid them with his trust. A few weeks after the proofreading incident, Che named Llompart his representative to visit Vietnam. And when Che returned to Cuba, he appointed Llompart to head the delegation to the remaining
Eastern-bloc states on the agenda: Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania.

Che was often blunt to the point of causing offense. When they were in Moscow, Leonov decided to treat him to a private meal. His own apartment was too small for such an occasion, and he arranged with Alexiev’s family to prepare a special dinner at their larger, more comfortable flat. They worked hard, preparing sturgeon and other Russian fish delicacies, but when Che arrived, he exclaimed: “
Madre mía!
I’m going to go hungry tonight!” He informed his crestfallen hosts that he couldn’t eat fish because of his allergies, and they hastily cooked him some eggs. Later, seated at the magnificently prepared table, Che began tapping on the plates and looking around pointedly at his dinner companions. The Alexievs, who had once lived in Paris, were showing off their best china. Lifting an eyebrow, Che remarked: “So, the proletariat here eats off of French porcelain, eh?”

Che never said so publicly, but those who knew him say he returned from his first trip to Russia dismayed by the elite lifestyle and the evident predilection for bourgeois luxuries he saw among Kremlin officials. Four and a half decades of socialism had not created a new Socialist Man, at least not among the party elite.

Nikolai Leonov spent a good deal of time with Che on the trip, and they spoke of many things, including Che’s experience in Guatemala. Che castigated Jacobo Arbenz for having “given up the battle” without a fight. Leadership was a sacred duty granted to an individual “chosen” by the people on the basis of trust. It was a privilege that came with the obligation to honor that trust, if necessary, with one’s life. “I don’t know if the Cuban revolution will survive or not,” he told Leonov. “It’s difficult to say. But if it doesn’t ... don’t come looking for me among the refugees in the embassies. I’ve had that experience, and I’m not ever going to repeat it. I will go out with a machine gun in my hand, to the barricades. ... I’ll keep fighting to the end.”

Leonov was present for Che’s talks with Khrushchev. Among other things, Che wanted Cuba to have its own steel plant—the indispensable cornerstone to industrialization—with a capacity for a million tons of steel. He also wanted the Soviets to fund and build it. “Khrushchev heard him out reservedly and said, ‘Well, let’s study it,’” Leonov recalled. “And for the several days that the ministerial experts were studying the project, Che became more insistent. Every time he saw Khrushchev, Che asked, ‘Well, Nikita, what about the factory?’ Finally Nikita told him: ‘Look, Che, if you want, we can build the plant, but in Cuba there is no coal, there is no iron, there isn’t enough skilled labor, and there’s not a consumers’ market for a million tons with Cuba’s incipient level of industry. Wouldn’t it be better if
you build a small plant to work from scrap metal, and not spend so much money?’ But Che was intransigent. He said: ‘If we build that factory we’ll train the necessary cadres to [work it]. As for the iron ore, we’ll get it from Mexico, or some other place nearby, and we’ll find the coal somewhere else; we could bring it from here, on the ships going to pick up sugar from Cuba.’”

Later, when they were on their own, Leonov suggested to Che that perhaps Khrushchev was right. The Cubans might be better off building by stages, more gradually. Such a huge plant might be premature. “Look, Nicolás,” Che replied, “there are other factors at stake here—social and political ones. The Revolution must be something big, imposing. We must combat the single-crop economy of sugar, we must industrialize, and anyway, you, here in the Soviet Union, also began your industrialization program without a base.” In the end, Leonov said, the idea didn’t go anywhere. “It seemed to me,” he recalled, “that Che’s concept was a bit artificial, with more social and political foundations than economic ones.” After consulting with Cuba, Che lost some of his enthusiasm. He didn’t push the idea anymore, and the Soviets didn’t mention it, either.

Che took Leonov with him on his trip to North Korea, thinking he might need an interpreter, but as soon as they arrived in Pyongyang, they were separated. The Sino-Soviet dispute was in full swing, and North Korea was an ally of Beijing. “They didn’t allow me to work with him,” said Leonov, who was deposited at the Soviet embassy while Che was taken off to an official government guest house. He remained there throughout Che’s trip to China, before they reunited for the return trip to Moscow.

According to Leonov, Che’s motives for visiting North Korea and China were twofold: “In the first place, he wanted to see the examples of Asian socialism, and secondly ... he wanted to secure some sales of sugar there. He resolved the two tasks, because he saw their socialism, a bit despotic, a bit Asian, in that style they have, and he made the sale, I believe, of two hundred thousand tons of sugar to China.”

In fact, Che’s trip to China had been extremely successful. He had secured the sale of a million tons of Cuba’s 1961 sugar crop and obtained a $60 million credit for the purchase of Chinese goods. He had met with Mao Tse-tung and been feted by his deputy, Chou En-lai. Chou had praised the Cuban revolution, and in return Che had lauded China’s revolution as an example for “the Americas.” No doubt all this irked the Soviets, and their unease must have deepened when, upon leaving China, Che remarked that “in general there was not a single discrepancy” between himself and Beijing.

Che’s fraternal remarks did not go unnoticed by the Americans. In a secret U.S. intelligence report about his mission, his Chinese sojourn was
mentioned with interest. “A noteworthy feature of Guevara’s visit to Peiping [Beijing] was his apparent siding with the Chinese on several key points in the Sino-Soviet dispute. Speaking at a November 20 reception, Guevara praised Communist China’s commune movement (which has come under Soviet attack) and two days earlier held up the Chinese Communist revolution as an ‘example’ that has ‘revealed a new road for the Americas.’ Guevara made no such statement about the U.S.S.R.’s example while in Moscow.”