The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.22           June 2, 1997 
 
 
The Story Of An Epic Chapter In History Of The Americas

Preface and introduction to `Pombo: A Man of Che's guerrilla'  

BY MARY-ALICE WATERS
The following is the publisher's preface to the English- language edition of Pombo: A Man of Che's guerrilla, which will be released in June by Pathfinder Press. It is copyright Pathfinder Press and is reprinted by permission.

Pombo: A Man of Che's guerrilla is "the story of an epic chapter in the history of the Americas," says Harry Villegas in these pages. The story tells us even more about the present and future than about the past. It needs to be told and retold today, because the importance of the struggle waged in the mid-1960s by the men and women of Che's guerrilla in Bolivia-the necessity of the socialist future for which they fought-has not receded with time. To the contrary, it has become more urgent than ever and to an even larger portion of humanity.

This is the story of several dozen men and women-Bolivian, Cuban, Peruvian, Argentine-whose struggle helped shape the closing decades of the twentieth century and create the foundations for the titanic battles that will mark the twenty-first. It is told through the eyes of a Cuban then still in his twenties, but already a veteran of a decade of struggle around the globe. The combatants, regardless of nationality, had all been deeply affected by the Cuban revolution and sought to emulate its example. They were fighters whose life experience, acquired habits of organization and discipline, and political understanding of history convinced them that working people little different than they can remake the world and, by the many millions, transform themselves in the process.

As Washington's bombs rained down on the people of Vietnam with ever greater destructiveness, the men and women of Che's guerrilla had the confidence to up the ante against the mightiest empire in the world and act on the intention of creating "two, three, many Vietnams." They knew the weaknesses as well as the brutal power of what Che Guevara calls "the great enemy of the human race," the imperialist government of the United States of America. Fully conscious of what they were doing, they sought to accelerate the struggle for national liberation in Latin America that culminated a few years later in massive revolutionary upsurges throughout the Southern Cone of that continent. They knew their acts would help determine the course of history.

The title of the book accurately conveys the story to be told.

This is Pombo's story, his firsthand account of the 1966-68 revolutionary campaign in Bolivia led by Ernesto Che Guevara. Harry Villegas-Pombo-today a brigadier general in Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces, was a member of Guevara's general staff in Bolivia. He commanded the six combatants who fought their way out of the encirclement by the U.S.- aided Bolivian armed forces in which Guevara and many others were killed. Of the two Bolivians and three Cubans who lived to continue the revolutionary struggle, he was the only one who kept a campaign diary, on which this book is based.

Aside from the extensive notes kept by Guevara, published in 1968 as his Bolivian Diary,(1) the only other firsthand account, which was written soon after the events, is My Campaign with Che by Inti Peredo, the central leader of the combatants who was Bolivian. Like Pombo, he was a member of the general staff. Peredo wrote the account in 1969 while living clandestinely in La Paz, helping to reorganize the ELN, the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, to continue the struggle. He was aided in this work by ELN combatant and Chilean journalist Elmo Catalán (Elías). My Campaign with Che was published in Bolivia and several other countries of Latin America soon after Peredo, betrayed by an informer, was wounded, captured, and murdered by the Bolivian police in September of that year. It is published for the first time in English as an appendix to Pathfinder's edition of The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara. Peredo's account, however, was necessarily silent on numerous details of the combatants' escape. To have told the story then would have cost the lives of many who had aided them.

Now, with Pombo's account, we learn much more: the months of preparation, including the sharp conflicts with leaders of the Bolivian Communist Party; the aid and support from dozens of Bolivians who risked their lives to help the surviving revolutionaries as they eluded the more and more massive concentration of forces determined to bring them in dead or alive. We learn the bitter story of Ñato's death, and how the three Cuban veterans finally fought their way across the border to Chile, and from there made their way literally around the world in order to regain their homeland and continue their internationalist fight.

In October 1967, near the village of La Higuera in Bolivia, when the fact of Guevara's death was inescapably confirmed for Pombo and his co-combatants, they took an oath-each to himself, as well as to each other-to fight to stay alive in order to continue the struggle they had begun together with Che. "Your banners, which are ours, will never be lowered. Victory or death." That pledge has not only continued to guide the actions of Harry Villegas, but it embodies the internationalist commitment evident through the entire course of the leadership of the Cuban revolution: from the war against the Batista dictatorship itself, to Venezuela, to Algeria, to Vietnam, to the Congo, to Bolivia, to Angola and the battle against the apartheid invaders at Cuito Cuanavale, to Nicaragua, Grenada, and many others, to today. The most intransigent foes of the Cuban revolution in Washington and elsewhere have no doubt that if conditions allow, the revolutionary leadership of Cuba, from Fidel Castro on down, will not hesitate to act again with exactly the same internationalist selflessness.

Pombo's account is also a book about Ernesto Che Guevara, the Argentine-born revolutionary recruited by Fidel Castro in Mexico City in 1955 to the July 26 Movement and the nucleus of the new Rebel Army. Guevara had graduated from medical school in Buenos Aires two years earlier and spent the intervening months traveling the Americas. In the course of these travels, Guevara became a more and more serious student of Marxism and was increasingly drawn toward action consistent with his revolutionary convictions.

In Guatemala Guevara met some Cuban veterans of the July 26, 1953, assault on the military garrisons of Moncada and Bayamo. In 1954, when U.S.-organized mercenaries overthrew the regime of Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz after limited steps towards land reform threatened the vast interests of the U.S.-owned United Fruit Company, Guevara volunteered to join the armed resistance.

Forced to flee from Guatemala, Guevara was introduced to Castro in Mexico City and became the third confirmed member-Raúl Castro had been the second-of the expeditionary force that landed in eastern Cuba in December 1956 to relaunch the insurrectional struggle against the Batista dictatorship. Originally recruited as the troop doctor, Guevara rapidly proved himself an outstanding soldier and leader. Within months he became the first combatant selected by Castro to command a separate column.

The Cuban revolutionary war was the practical experience that transformed Guevara from a young revolutionary intellectual, in the best sense of that term, to a seasoned communist, a combat leader of men and women. As he fought side by side with the men and women of the Sierra, the Rebel Army became his school of Marxism. Through the war, working with and learning from Fidel Castro, who became increasingly recognized throughout the Americas as the central political and military leader of the struggle, Che developed the capacities that enabled him to become one of the most capable communist leaders of the twentieth century. The war, and his own discipline and study, prepared him to assume a broad range of responsibilities in the new revolutionary government that emerged following the January 1, 1959, victory over the Batista tyranny-from military commander, to president of the National Bank, to minister of industry, to international spokesperson, to organizer of volunteer work brigades, to educator, communist theorist, journalist, and party organizer.

The story of the revolutionary war and how it educated and transformed the men and women of the Rebel Army, including Che Guevara, is told with humor and eloquence in Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, originally written by Guevara as a series of articles published in Cuba and elsewhere in the early 1960s. A new, and for the first time complete, English-language edition of that work was published by Pathfinder Press in 1996. It is indispensable reading to understand the story told by Harry Villegas in these pages. Not only Guevara and Villegas, but every one of the Cuban combatants who participated in the Bolivian campaign, were veterans of Cuba's revolutionary war, graduates of the Rebel Army's school of life, leadership, and revolutionary training.

Harry Villegas volunteered for the Rebel Army and was recruited by Guevara when he was seventeen years old. He has spent the last forty years of his life as a revolutionary determined to live up to the high standards of conduct and discipline Guevara demanded of himself and those around him. Pombo's story can be found in the pages of At the Side of Che Guevara: Interviews with Harry Villegas, published in English and Spanish by Pathfinder Press, 1997.

Villegas fought at Guevara's side in every campaign commanded by Che from 1957 on. He belonged to Rebel Army column no. 4 in the Sierra Maestra mountains of eastern Cuba; he took part in the 1958 march across several provinces of eastern and central Cuba by Rebel Army column no. 8 to establish a new front in the Escambray mountains; he fought in the battles that ended January 1, 1959, with the capture of Santa Clara, Cuba's third-largest city, and sealed the fate of the Batista dictatorship; he joined Guevara in the 1965 internationalist mission to aid the anti- imperialist forces in the Congo; and he was part of the general staff of the 1966-68 revolutionary campaign in Bolivia.

For more than half a decade, Villegas commanded the troops that guard Cuba's border with the U.S.-held Guantánamo naval base in eastern Cuba.

Between 1975 and 1990, Villegas volunteered for three tours of duty in Angola, where Cuban military forces, at the request of the newly independent government, helped turn back repeated invasion attempts by the apartheid regime of South Africa and armed assaults by imperialist-backed counterrevolutionary groups.

Pombo's story-written through the eyes and experiences of an individual combatant-is the story of the Cuban revolution.

"Let it be known that we have measured the scope of our acts and that we consider ourselves no more than a part of the great army of the proletariat." Those words of Guevara, part of his "Message to the Tricontinental," penned as he prepared to leave for Bolivia, are reprinted in this volume. It was his last major political writing, in which he examines the world political situation and explains the course of revolutionary action he and his comrades will follow in Bolivia.

Che's guerrilla-like the Rebel Army and militias before it, and the Red Army born of the October Revolution-was a nucleus of the international proletarian army referred to in the "Message to the Tricontinental."

In Guevara's as yet unpublished "Notes on the Revolutionary War in the Congo" he explains this even more precisely. The volunteers from Cuba who went to the Congo to fight alongside and help train the anti-imperialist fighters there, Che says, were drawn by nothing except ties of proletarian internationalism. He then adds: "They were initiating something new in modern wars of liberation: the creation of an international proletarian army, through having experienced people fighting alongside [less seasoned combatants] in battles for liberation and, later on, against reaction."

"We never envisioned a sectarian undertaking," Villegas states in his introduction. "Such a conception would have been impossible not only on a Bolivian scale, but above all on a continental scale. Our idea was to create a broad revolutionary movement that would draw in all honest individuals prepared to struggle for social justice, together with all revolutionary organizations, parties, and sectors of the people."

"Che's guerrilla" invites an easy but misleading translation into English as simply "Che's guerrillas." But for Che, la guerrilla was more than an armed unit or the summation of individual fighters. It was the organic political nucleus through whose actions and example-as well as actions related to it-the entire revolutionary movement and its cadres would be differentiated, reconstructed, and transformed, in the cities, towns, and countryside as well as within the guerrilla nucleus. That political content is subtly lost in the translation, "Che's guerrillas." For the title of this English edition of Pombo's account, therefore, we decided to use the familiar and understandable term Villegas chose for the original Spanish: Pombo: un hombre de la guerrilla del Che.

Most readers of this English-language edition who will find themselves devouring the pages of Pombo's account were not yet born when the events recorded here took place. Those readers especially will find themselves drawn to the record that Pombo's account supplements, The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara, together with its "Necessary Introduction" by Fidel Castro.

The first notebook of Pombo's Bolivian diary fell into the hands of Bolivian military forces on October 8, 1967, when Guevara was wounded and taken prisoner. He was murdered in cold blood by his captors the following day. In his introduction, Villegas describes how a typed transcript of his first notebook was sent to Cuba in March 1968. Along with a microfilm copy of Guevara's captured diary, it had been smuggled out of Bolivia with the knowledge and aid of Bolivian interior minister Antonio Arguedas.

The transcript of Pombo's notes was translated and published in English in July 1968 as part of a book entitled The Complete Bolivian Diary of Che Guevara and Other Captured Documents. Stein and Day, the U.S. publishers of the book, claimed they had been granted "exclusive literary rights" by Bolivia's military dictatorship. In light of the document's origins, obvious distortions, and incongruous passages, the version made public by Bolivian and U.S. military intelligence, later published in Spanish in Bolivia and elsewhere, was of limited use to those who sought the truth about the events in Bolivia.

With the publication of Pombo: un hombre de la guerrilla del Che, those obstacles are cleared away. The first part of this volume is the text of the diary, revised and corrected by the author himself, who used, among other things, the typed version released in 1968, his own notes and recollections, and other documents and reports of the time-but still without ever having had access to his original handwritten notes. Fighters who seek to learn from the strengths and victories of the revolutionaries who fought in Bolivia, as well as from their errors, now have a document on which they can rely.

The Pathfinder English-language edition could not have been prepared without the generous collaboration of Gen. Harry Villegas, who gave many hours of his time to review maps, identify photos, explain words and phrases that were difficult to translate, and answer numerous questions.

Rodolfo Saldaña, one of the Bolivian revolutionaries who carried central responsibilities in the clandestine urban support network, provided invaluable help.

Aleida March, Che's widow and comrade-in-arms, clarified a number of details. Information provided by Manuel Piñeiro, Armando Campos, and Rafael Salas (Santiago) of the Americas division of the Department of International Relations of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party enabled the editors to provide annotation that is more complete and thus more accurate than would have otherwise been possible.

The assistance of Editora Política, the publishing house of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, was indispensable, especially the care and attention to detail of Iraida Aguirrechu, editor-in-chief of the current affairs department. Ana Rosa Gort reviewed portions of the translation.

Many of the historic photos came from the archives of Editora Política; others were located by Delfín Xique's, director of the archives of the newspaper Granma.

Pathfinder is also appreciative of the photos provided by Richard Dindo, director of the film Ernesto Che Guevara: The Bolivian Diary. A number of these, including the photo of Guevara and Pombo used on the cover of this edition, were taken by the revolutionary combatants in Bolivia themselves and subsequently seized by the Bolivian military, some of whose officers have trafficked in these murderously acquired goods for three decades.

Translation of the English-language edition was supervised and edited by Michael Taber, who also drafted the extensive annotation, chronology, and glossary. Michael Baumann organized production of the book. The team of translators who volunteered their skills and efforts included Marty Anderson, Susan Apstein, Seth Galinsky, Mariposa Geller, Joya Lonsdale, Harvey McArthur, Aaron Ruby, and Matilde Zimmermann.

Book, photo-signature, and cover design are by Eric Simpson, who, together with Harvey McArthur, also prepared the many maps.

In the closing months of the Bolivian campaign, as the weeks passed and still the Bolivian and Cuban combatants managed to elude the manhunt organized by the regime's U.S.- trained forces, the stature of the revolutionaries grew. In the popular culture of Bolivia, as well as in the minds of their military foes, the guerrillas who had fought their way out of the encirclement assumed mythic proportions. Pombo himself, we learn in the pages that follow, was believed to be "a Black man of tremendous size who fought with two machine guns, one in each hand."

As with many popular myths, this one was not without foundation.

"You are alive because you were aggressive, because you fought," Fidel Castro told the three Cuban combatants when they arrived back in Havana in March 1968. "Had you been scared, had you shown fear, you would have perished. It is precisely your ability to resist, your capacity to fight, that shows your revolutionary strength and conviction."

That example, the example of the Cuban revolution, is what Pombo: A Man of Che's guerrilla, has to offer to new generations of fighters around the world. Now those millions of workers and youth whose reading language is English can make this chronicle their own.

May 1997

1. The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara, Pathfinder Press, 1994.

*****
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The following is the author's introduction to the English-language edition of Pombo: A Man of Che's guerrilla. It is copyright Pathfinder Press and is reprinted by permission.

BY HARRY VILLEGAS TAMAYO

This introduction to the English-language edition of my diary and account of the Bolivian campaign is appearing more than thirty years after the first entry was written. I began keeping the diary in July 1966, and the last entry of the first notebook is dated May 28, 1967. I later continued my diary in other notebooks, until my return to Cuba in March 1968.

On April 19, 1967, Commander Ernesto Che Guevara ordered that all the diaries kept by members of the guerrilla unit, together with other documents, be collected and held for safekeeping in a knapsack I carried. (On that day a British journalist had given us a false report that very dangerous internal information had leaked out. The cause of this, the journalist said, was Braulio's diary, supposedly found in the main camp by the Bolivian army.) The diaries would then be taken out, updated, and in a disciplined manner returned to the place Che ordered them kept. In fairness, it should be said that Che was visibly irritated to have to take this step. But he did not want those personal notebooks to endanger the rigorous security measures the initial guerrilla force needed to maintain under extremely adverse circumstances.(1)

In his "Necessary Introduction" to The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara, Commander in Chief Fidel Castro referred to these measures in commenting on the rigor and discipline that were essential at those moments, as well as the criticisms, often severe and frank, that are a necessary part of the first stage of creating a small nucleus of combatants such as ours. It was necessary to prevent the slightest act of carelessness, Fidel said, however insignificant it might appear. At the same time, criticism would serve to educate the combatants, while appealing-as Che always did-to the honor and dignity of each one of us.(2)

On October 8, 1967, the first booklet containing my notes was captured together with Che's diary and other documents. It was transcribed in Bolivia. In 1968 Antonio Arguedas, Bolivia's minister of the interior at the time, sent a typed copy of the notes to Cuba. The original, which I did not receive a photographic copy of, remained in Bolivia, in the custody of the army high command.

Almost thirteen years later, on July 17, 1980, Division General Luis García Meza seized power in a military coup and assumed the presidency of a junta that lasted until the end of 1981, when it was succeeded by other military governments that ruled Bolivia until October 1982. During the time he held power, García Meza sold the original of Che's diary and the first notebook of mine to British dealer Erick Galantiere, who was given the diaries on December 15, 1980, along with "exclusive written authorization . . . to sell the diaries of Che and Pombo." The British businessman closed the deal on February 25, 1981, with "a certified check for the total agreed amount."(3)

In 1984 Galantiere sold the documents to the British firm Sotheby's, which informed the world that the documents were in its possession and would be put up for public auction, with a minimum asking price of approximately $400,000.

Bolivian journalist Humberto Vacaflor denounced both the illegal sale and the subsequent announcement they would be auctioned off. Faced with charges of illegal possession of the documents and international indignation over these events, plans for the auction stalled. In 1986, following measures taken during a trip to Britain, Bolivia's minister of foreign relations, Guillermo Bedregal Gutiérrez, succeeded in getting the diaries back through official diplomatic channels - an event that was noted by the international press at the time. The originals of the diaries were then placed in box A-73 of the vault of the Central Bank of Bolivia, under the custody of the Bolivian foreign ministry.

From May 28, 1967, through the end of the Bolivian campaign, I was able to continue my diary. I kept it up until the arrival of the group of survivors in Chile, on whose fraternal soil we were warmly received. Later, through the determined and valiant efforts of the late president Salvador Allende-then a senator of the Socialist Party of Chile-comrades in Chile sent me the three notebooks I had kept during the latter stage.

Many years lapsed between those events and the publication of the first Cuban edition of this book, brought out by Editora Política at the beginning of 1996. A number of clarifications are therefore necessary to help place the diary in context.

After returning to Cuba, I gave a series of talks in the La Cabaña military fortress to my comrades in arms, using as a guide and reference my diary of nearly twenty months of guerrilla and clandestine struggle. For part two of the present edition, I have based myself on those talks, with the aim of rounding out these historical recollections. I have summarized part of what I presented at the time. This is the first time the material is being published in its entirety.

Observations and comments written three decades ago in the heat of the struggle may appear harsh and full of passion. I am indeed struck by this today when I reread and relive some of the passages. At all times, however, the diary reflects the critical spirit, expressed in language that is frank and direct, straight to the point, in which we were educated by Commander Che Guevara. This was undoubtedly among the greatest lessons we received in his incomparable school.

In making revisions to the transcript of the first notebook of my diary previously published outside Cuba-based on my notes and on documents of the time-I am not attempting to alter or modify what was written in the heat of struggle. My aim, rather, is to clarify the words, commentaries, and ideas that were misunderstood, or were deliberately distorted, when the diary was transcribed. By doing so, I hope that the comments recorded in the diary can be seen in accurate historic dimension, reflecting the reality, grandeur, and truth of the events themselves. Distortions of historic reality in previous editions of the diary have been corrected.

It is necessary to make a few comments on the political and historical circumstances that existed at the time the diary was written. On the international level, the years 1966 and 1967 were marked by an escalation of one of the most horrendous crimes humanity has ever witnessed: the aggression against the people of Vietnam, a small but unflinchingly heroic country, by the strongest imperialist power on earth.

This genocide expressed, in all its cruelty, the U.S. government course of using force to impose its criminal interests of domination, plunder, and exploitation wherever in the world these interests were seriously threatened.

In Vietnam they applied a new strategy of military intervention known as "flexible response." The old doctrine of "massive retaliation," which included the threat or use of atomic weapons, had ceased being effective in a world characterized by nuclear parity with the Soviet Union and by the advance of struggles for national liberation on an international scale. The triumph of the Cuban revolution on January 1, 1959, and its influence in the hemisphere, foretold new victories.

The empire then tried to develop and apply a new mode of aggression providing for appropriate differentiated responses to small conflicts, to local wars, to struggles for national liberation, and even to a possible nuclear confrontation and holocaust.

In the end, "flexible response" was simply another term for imperialism's efforts to continue unleashing all its power in acts of extermination against movements for national liberation and their leaders, which by then were active in the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. There has been nothing new under the sun since the term "thieving eagle" was coined by our national hero José Martí at the end of the last century to refer to the U.S. policy of expansion, intervention, and conquest. Cubans are quite familiar with these acts by the empire. With regard to Cuba, the first U.S. moves toward annexation date back to 1803, when the United States had barely established itself as an independent state.

In his 1966 Message to the Tricontinental,(4) Che made a thorough and deep-going analysis of this policy of imperialist domination. At the same time he expounded, in all their strategic and continental dimensions, his anti- imperialist ideas and course of action that by then were already being put into practice through his own personal example. In that message, Che proclaimed: "Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism and a call for the unity of the peoples against the great enemy of the human race: the United States of North America."

This deep conviction of the Heroic Guerrilla concerning the role played by the United States was rooted in the innumerable acts of imperial aggression that make up the history of contemporary colonialism and neocolonialism in this hemisphere. To mention only a few examples of bloody interventions in our century, there are the cases of Mexico, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Haiti, and Cuba.(5)

The continent as a whole has experienced the varied forms through which this imperialist policy has been systematically implemented. Neocolonialism has left its imprint of economic and political domination and deep social crisis, with its resulting hunger, poverty, unemployment, marginalization, and devastation. An entire region has been ravaged by foreign control over its natural resources and products, the exploitation of its workers, and the sharp impoverishment of its economies. Tribute is exacted in ways that violate the sovereignty of the nations of Latin America, pillage their material and spiritual patrimony, deepen their dependence and subjugation to imperialism, and close off possibilities of development and progress.

Together with a handful of heroic Bolivian, Peruvian, and Cuban combatants who accompanied him to Bolivia, Che fought to change this reality of the 1960s-a reality whose cruel mechanisms of plunder have since been deepened and refined. Che's death resounds vividly in his stirring message to revolutionaries around the world:

"Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear, if another hand reaches out to take up our arms, and other men come forward to join in our funeral dirge with the rattling of machine guns and with new cries of battle and victory."

With the new century virtually upon us, this image of Che remains present in the revolutionary dreams of Latin Americans. Among them are receptive ears.

The apostle of Cuba's independence, José Martí, also conceived of a continent-wide anti-imperialist struggle. On the eve of his death in combat, in his last letter to a Mexican friend, Martí was unambiguous:

"I am in danger each day now of giving my life for my country and for my duty-because I understand that duty and am eager to carry it out-of preventing the United States, as Cuba obtains her independence, from extending its control over the Antilles and consequently falling with that much more force upon our countries of America. Whatever I have done till now, and whatever I shall do, has been with that aim."

Simón Bolívar, Miranda, O'Higgins, San Martín, and other great figures of Latin America's independence struggle also raised the ideal of a free and united Latin America.

Che's dream was the dream of Martí and Bolívar. In elaborating his strategy, given the struggles already under way in different countries of the continent, Che envisioned the possibility of forming a guerrilla nucleus, a mother column that would pass through the necessary and difficult stage of survival and development. Later on it would give birth to new guerrilla columns extending outward toward the Southern Cone of Latin America,(6) giving continuity to a battle that would become continent-wide in scope. He took into account the experience of the mother column in Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains, which gave rise to new guerrilla columns and fronts, culminating in the defeat of the Batista dictatorship and the victory of the Cuban revolution.

Totally convinced that the political conditions were ripening and that this perspective was realizable, Commander Che Guevara carried out his plans and initiated actions to open a path toward victory. In his view, victory was certain to the degree that the struggle extended as far as possible throughout Latin America.

Never has such a small group of individuals undertaken an enterprise of such gigantic proportions. That small detachment of heroic combatants was Che's "sling of David." As our commander in chief pointed out, Che did not outlive his ideas, he enriched them with his blood.(7)

Following the conclusion of his internationalist activity in the Congo, and given the confrontation unfolding in Latin America at the time, Che chose Bolivia as the place from which to initiate his strategic course in Latin America.

One factor behind Che's selection was his analysis of the Bolivian people's combative traditions going all the way back to the fight of the indigenous peoples against the royalists, to the so-called little republics.(8)(We learned about this epoch initially through the book Santa Juana de América, which vividly describes the battles by the Indians with primitive weapons against much more powerful forces.) With its mixture of victories and defeats, courage and fears, this chapter in history resembled Bolivia in the 1960s. Students, peasants, miners, and workers all fought heroically, under the noteworthy leadership of the Central Organization of Bolivian Workers (COB), against the new version of the conquistadors, and the growing poverty, misery, and marginalization of the majority of the people. Bolivia's geographic characteristics and continental location figured in the selection, as well.

Another factor that weighed heavily for Che was the nature of the Bolivian Communist Party, which had shown signs of determination during the popular battles taking place in those days. The party had also demonstrated its solidarity with revolutionary efforts for national liberation in neighboring countries. This included its backing for the Peruvian ELN (National Liberation Army), which began actions in Puerto Maldonado; its support to the combatants in Argentina led by Jorge Ricardo Masetti (Comandante Segundo); and its solidarity with the young Cuban revolution.(9)

The Bolivian Communist Party was assigned an important role in the complex preparatory stage of organizing our efforts in that country. Under those difficult circumstances, different points of view were being debated within the party over the conception held by the leadership regarding the struggle and the possible forms it would assume. These differences are reflected in the discussions we were compelled to have with them on this subject, given our responsibilities during that initial time and because that organization's participation and support were essential to us.

For these reasons, the observations I made in my diary on these discussions recorded the justifiable condemnation of conduct by party leaders that appeared to us improper given the historic moment in which we were living. Such was the case with Mario Monje, the party's general secretary, whose conduct contrasted with that of true communists like Coco and Inti Peredo, among others. The diary also reflects the firm conviction and internationalist fervor of our efforts for the national liberation of Latin America, as well as the real possibilities that existed for achieving that objective. The diary reflects our conviction that the struggle we were initiating would increasingly widen those possibilities. The precondition for this was to overcome the hard and difficult stage in which the guerrilla unit struggled to survive, in order to develop later on along the lines conceived by Che.

We never envisioned a sectarian undertaking. Such a conception would have been impossible not only on a Bolivian scale, but above all on a continental scale. Our idea was to create a broad revolutionary movement that would draw in all honest individuals prepared to struggle for social justice, together with all revolutionary organizations, parties, and sectors of the people. This was the basis on which the ELN (National Liberation Army) was formed, as is made clear by its five public communique's, containing information and appeals addressed to the Bolivian people.(10)

Examining the events recorded in Che's Bolivian Diary and in my own, one can see how relations were established not only with different political forces within Bolivia and their representatives, but also with leaders and representatives of other political organizations of the continent. These contacts and relations would inexorably lead to an expansion of ties with other progressive forces in the region provided that the struggle intensified and succeeded in surviving the initial phase, which imposed severe restrictions on contacts and communications.

My only hope is that the recollections contained in my diary give a true picture of the war in Bolivia. This was a confrontation carried out by a group of men true to their ideas. They fought a professional army equipped by the United States and aided by the CIA- starting with the country's president René Barrientos and extending to phony journalists, officers, soldiers, and peasant infiltrators. The participation of U.S. Rangers and agents from the CIA's station in La Paz and its general headquarters in the United States was, of course, direct and open.

I present these materials for the consideration of the reader. They tell the story of an epic chapter in the history of the Americas. I believe they will be of use to young people who wish to study the life and work of the Heroic Guerrilla. It is my hope that these youth get a better understanding and appreciation of the times we are living through and of the greatness of the human values embodied in Che's life, expressed through his early and lifelong decision to fight for humanity.

Che taught us many lessons, which were passed on to us through his practical activity. In Cuba he, also, had the possibility of learning, of self-improvement. One of the virtues he acquired from contact with our people was confidence in victory, faith in human beings, and the deepest sense of loyalty. I am certain that he was true to what he stated in his letter of farewell,(11) and that his last thoughts were of our commander in chief, Fidel Castro.

February 1997

Notes
1. For Guevara's account of this incident see The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara (New York: Pathfinder, 1994), pp. 175-78.

2. Castro's "A Necessary Introduction" is contained in the Pathfinder edition of The Bolivian Diary, pp. 51-70.

3. From letter of Div. Gen. Luis García Meza to Erick Galantiere, December 15, 1980, and letter of Galantiere to García Meza, February 25, 1981.

4. Reprinted elsewhere in this volume.

5. U.S. military operations took place against Mexico in 1914, 1916, and 1918; Guatemala in 1904, 1920, and 1954; the Dominican Republic in 1904, 1912-14, 1916-24, and 1965; Panama in 1903, 1908, 1912, 1918, 1919-20, 1925, and 1989; Haiti in 1914, 1915-34, and 1994; and Cuba in 1898-1902, 1906-9, 1912, 1961, and 1962.

6. The countries of the Southern Cone are Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

7. Fidel Castro, "A Necessary Introduction" to the Bolivian Diary, p. 58.

8. During Bolivia's independence war of the early nineteenth century, the largely indigenous guerrilla fighters set up six enclaves that became known as the "little republics."

9. In May 1963 a group of fighters led by Javier Heraud entered Peru from Bolivian territory, where they had received assistance from members of the Bolivian CP. After making their way to Puerto Maldonado in Peru, the guerrillas were crushed by the Peruvian police, and Heraud was killed. A guerrilla nucleus in the Salta mountains of northern Argentina functioned from late 1963 to early 1964, led by Jorge Ricardo Masetti (Comandante Segundo). Members of the Bolivian CP provided logistical support along the border. In early 1964 the Argentine guerrillas were wiped out by government troops. Masetti was killed.

10. These are printed elsewhere in this volume.

11. Guevara's 1965 letter to Fidel Castro, written right before he left Cuba, is published in Pathfinder's edition of Guevara's Bolivian Diary on pages 71-73.

 
 
 
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